that have been since augmented Yet however I doubt not but that if it had been Gods will further to have lengthen'd the last reign the Course of Nature would then have operated as I have mention'd And if it shall appear that those natural Considerations I have urged shall have the success of such further Parliamentary Supplies to His gracious Majesty as may tend to the further greatning of his Character and that of the Kingdom I shall account my claim the more equitable to have the pardon of my fellow Subjects of what Religionary Sect soever for any thing in this Discourse that may disgust them And as an eminent Protestant Divine hath in a Printed Sermon thus said viz. that man is not worthy to breathe in so good a Land as England is who would not willingly lay down his life to cure the present divisions and distractions that are among us I shall say that any Subject deserves not to live here under the Indulgence of so good a Prince who for the helping him to money by all due means for the defence of this good Land would not wish himself as well as his Bigottry a Sacrifice and who would not as to any Extravagant dash of a Pen lighting on his Party and bringing Money to his Prince cry foelix peccatum rather then such Divisions and Distractions and Diffidences of the Government and stifling of Publick Supplies should still live as were formerly known in some Conjunctures and when the Art of Demagogues appear'd so spightful in endeavours to frustrate the Meetings of Parliaments But our Prince having freed all his dissenting Subjects from their uneasiness under Pecuniary Mulcts for Religion and the Members of the Church of England from the uneasiness of imposing such Soul-Money will I doubt not when he shall please to Call a Parliament find from them such necessary Supplies for the support of the Body of the Kingdom as may ease him under the weight of his great Desires for it and that it will then appear to all as absurd to Crown such a Head with Thorns as hath taken the Thorn out of every man's foot in England and that his pass'd Sufferings for his Conscience and others of his Communion having too suffer'd for his Conscience bespeaking us in those words of the Apostle Fulfil ye my joy that both his and theirs will be then Consummated and as the Ioy of those of the Church of England and of all nominal Churches in England hath been fulfill'd by him and that as Luther was pleas'd in a Christian-like transport of good Nature to Profess in his Epistle to Jeselius a Iew Me propter Unum Judaeum Crucifixum omnibus favere Judaeis we shall for the sake of one of the Roman-Catholick Communion who hath formerly suffer'd so much for his Conscience and since done so much for the freedom of ours shew all those of that Communion our favour to such a proportion as may compleat his and their Ioy. My Lord I am here obliged to acknowledge that tho while the several Parts of the following Work were written in the times the Government charged both Papists and Anti-Papists with Disloyalty and Plots I express'd my sense of the Non-advisableness to have the Penal Laws against them repeal'd pending such Charge and Plots I desire the Reader to look on me as very far from insisting on any thing of that nature in this Happy State of England now that the Corner Stone and that some of the Builders rejected hath thus successfully united the sides of the Fabrick of the Government in Loyalty My Lord It is near a year since I writ my Thoughts at large concerning the Subject of the Repealing those Laws and they are in the Fourth Part of my Work about The Dispensative Power of which the two first Parts conclude this Volume ready for the Press and reserving my poor Iudgment in this great Point till the Publication of the whole I think I shall then set forth my Opinion as founded on Medium's that have not appear'd in Print from other Writers and which I believe will not only not give offence to any Member of the Church of England but be of general use in allaying the ferment the Question hath occasion'd And if as they who were long fellow-Passengers in a Ship among violent Tempests and Hirricanes do usually from their being Participants together in the danger and horror take occasion to raise a friendly esteem and well-wishes for each other such of the Loyal whose belief I referr'd to as imbarqued with mine in that of the Plot during the late Stormy Conjuncture shall be the more favourable to what I write I shall be glad both for their sakes as well as mine but do further judge that what I have so largely in the following Discourse asserted and by Reasons taken from Nature concerning the Moral impossibility of the belief of the Tenets of the Church of Rome gaining ground here considerably on the belief of the Doctrine of the Church of England will tend to secure any one from fears of our losing our Religion by any loss of the Test that may happen a thing that none I think will fear who are of the Iudgment of the House of Commons in their Address to the late King on the 29 th of November 1680. that I have referr'd to in my Fourth Part and where they say that POPERY hath rather gain'd then lost Ground since the TEST ACT and make that Act to have had little effect I have in the following Discourse referr'd to that Act as represented to have had its rice in the year 1673. from the alledged petulant Insolence of Papists in that Conjuncture and I took notice of a learned Lord since deceas'd as vouching somewhat in Print of such temper among some of them And a Proclamation that year charging the Papists therewith I was implicitly guided thereby to take the thing for granted and as to the which considering since the publick Passages in that Conjuncture I have otherwise judged But as I think no loyal Roman-Catholick should in that Conjuncture have suffer'd any Prejudice for any ill Behaviour of any other of that Communion then much less ought any such thing be now and when there appears so noble and general a spirit of Emulation among all men of sense in the Diffusive Body of the People about who shall make the Head and all Members of that Body most easie and for the doing which we may well hope that the People representative and the other Estates of the Realm will come with all due Preparation of Mind when it shall please His Gracious Majesty to assemble them My Lord I have nothing further to add but my begging your Lordship's Pardon for this trouble and my owning the many Obligations I am under to be My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Earl of Anglesy having shewed me an Affidavit and Information against him delivered at the Barr
to such a high Prospect of thought from whence they might at once have a view of the past and present State of Popery here and abroad in former Ages and likewise of its probable future one a sight that might better entertain Curiosity than what the Traveller speaks of when from a high Mountain in the Isthmus of America he could view both the great North and South Sea not to have rendered himself an acceptable Perswader by his Discourse carrying with it Self-Evidence that he was no Papist had been a vain attempt And again for any one who would perswade the generality of Popish or Protestant Recusants that it is not their Interest by any Artifices to endeavour to make so great a Figure in the Internal Part of the Government as they have in some former Conjunctures without his Discourse carrying likewise Self-Evidence that his Advice was that of a Friend to their Persons as far as the publick Security would admit had been an attempt as insignificant as the former I have in this Discourse often took notice of this distinction of the Tenets of Popery and Presbytery viz. Such of them that properly are denominable by Religion and such that are not presuming in my private judgment to differ from the Measures took by the Government in King Iames his time when the printed Prayers for the Anniversary of the Gun powder Treason represented Papists Religion to be Rebellion and I under the Notion of Principles denominable by Religion have ranked Transubstantiation Purgatory Invocation of Saints and others and have judged none of their Principles Irreligionary but such as the late Learned Earl of Clarendon in his incomparable defence of Dr. Stilling fleet attributes to Popery as injurious to Princes and their Subjects and what King Iames in his Speech to both Houses hinted as such according to what is cited by me p. 172 viz. As it is not impossible but many honest men seduced with some Errors in Popery may yet remain good and faithful Subjects so on the other handâ—none that know and believe the Grounds and School-Conclusions of their Doctrine can ever prove good Christians or faithful Subjects and such as are apparently contrary to the Light and Law of Nature But there is nothing in this Discourse otherwise than en passant that impugns or confutes the old Religionary Points controverted formerly between the Church of England and that of Rome and all the passages throughout referring to those old points might I believe be comprized together in about a Page And if I were as in a Dictionary to express the sense of the words Popery and Irreligionary so often used in this Discourse I would say that generally by Poperâ— or as the Writers in Latin call it Papismus I mean the power of the Bishop of Rome in imposing Câ—eeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on Men and his Jurisdiction interloping in that of Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Ius Divinum and as he is Christs pretended Vicar and by the term of Irreligionary of often by me applied to Principles I sometimes mean such as are barely NOT religionary that is to say Principles that are not in truth and in the nature things parts of Religion whatever any Sanction of the Papacy or a Presbytery may term them and which do not religare or bind the Soul to God by Moral Obligations nor by any Band of Loyalty to our Prince or Charity to our Neighbour but do only tie men to a Party and to the owning with them several points of speculation and no more necessary to be believed in order to our improvement in Moral Offices that the Divine Law natural or positive enjoyns or conducing to the same than are the Hypotheses of the old or new Philosophy But I most commonly apply the word Irrâ—ligionary to Principles that are reverâ contrary to Religion and Justice and Morality and such as I would therefore dis-robe of the Name of Religion and under this term of Irreligionary not only all the Antimonarchical Principles of the Jesuites and Presbyterians are properly to be reckoned but those Principles of the Papacy that even in the times of our Roman Catholick Ancestors as I said were so injurious to our Princes and their Subjects and which were by them as Vsurpations on the Crown opposed and defied and especially by those of them who were in their tempers most Magnanimous and in this Case the Papal Principles that favoured those Vsurpations on the rights of our Princes might be said to be both Non-Religionary or things beside the matter of Religion and likewise Irreligionary or contrary to Religion as being unjust The Religio Officii as Tully calls the Conscience one hath to do his duty did bind those Princes of the Pope's Religion to impugne his Arbitrary Usurpations on their Realms and in the Case of the meanest Cottager of England the Pope's Excommunication was never allowed good in Westminister-Hall under our Roman Catholick Kings The latter end of the very Reign of Queen Mary was likely to have diverted our English World with the sight of as remarkable a Prize played between the two Swords I mean the Pope's Spiritual and her Temporal one as was ever played on its Stage and when Cardinal Pool her Kindsman who had reconciled our Nation to Rome was so far lost in the Pope's good Graces as that his Legantine Power was abrogated by the Pope and in affront to Pool given to Peito a poor Friar but whose red Hat by Queen Mary's opposition could get no further than Callis and She was so regardless of the Pope's Curses in the Case that his Bulls in favour of his new Legate were not permitted to Arrive here and the designed Legate was enforced to go up and down the Streets of London like a begging Friar without a red Hat. And more need not be here said to express the Principles that Usurp on Monarchs to be Irreligionary When I have in the former part of the Discourse once or twice mentioned the term of Apostates for some turning to the Church of Rome I did there speak Cum vulgo and likewise according to the Style of our Courts Christian which proceeding against some perverted to the Church of Rome impute to them the Crime of Apostacy but having observed in the Progress of this Discourse that that term was seditiously used by the Disciples of Iulian I have reprehended the further calling any men Apostates for the alteration of their judgments in some controvertible points of saith between Papists and Protestants and that may without absurdity be called Tenets of Religion As to the expression of the Extermination of Popery and likewise of Presbytery used in this Discourse sometimes and with allusion to the trite term of the Papacy viz. Exterminium haereticorum I have there in p. 283 sufficiently expressed my abhorrence of the Extermination of Persons and as is there said do only refer to the Extermination of Things
settlement of the same proving Abortive in several Parliaments ib. The French King in the last War did forbid the Importation of Sail-Cloath to England ib. A presage of the future happy State of England and the Authors Idea thereof at large ib. and p. 252. An account of the Rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-cloth and all other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax yearly brought into England and from what Countries deduced out of the Custom-house Books p. 254. All the Hemp and Flax sown in England is observed to be bought up by the years end p. 257. Almost as much Hemp and Flax yearly brought into Amsterdam as into the whole Kingdom of England ib. The Authors judgment of the effects of the necessity that will drive us on to the Linen Manufacture ib. An Account of the fine Linen lately made by the French Protestants at Ipswich and of the Flax by them sown ib. The Author's Censure of the excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery ib. His belief that the future State of England will make men ashamed of their pass'd fears of Popery ib. The Vote of the House of Commons for the recalling the Declaration of Indulgence carried by the Party of the Nonconformists p. 258. Most of the Papists of England in the Year 1610 computed to be under the guidance of the Jesuites p. 260. Many Popish Writers have inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decrets of the Canon Law ib. That Law never in gross received in England ib. Binds not English Papists in the Court of Conscience ib. A Tenet ridiculously and falsly in the Canon Law founded on Cyprian ib. Gratian's founding it on Cyprian gives it only the weight it could have in Cyprian's Works p. 261. Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith cited for Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claiming nothing of Faith and Bellarmine's acknowledging errors therein ib. One definition in the Canon Law and gloss held by all Papists ridiculous ib. The Author thinks he has said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope's Canon Law as they would wish said ib. He thinks himself morally obliged in any Theological Enquiry to say all that the matter will fairly bear on both sides ib. Heylin and Maimbourg cited about the firing of Heretical Villages in France p. 262. Parsons and Bellarmine cited by Donne for rendring some things obligatory that are said by Gratian p. 263. The Author expects that the growing populousness of England will have the effect of rendriâ—g men less censorious of any supposed Political Errors in the Ministers of our Princes p. 265. Mr. Fox cited for his Observation of many Excellent men falsly accused and judged in Parliament and his advice to Parliaments to be more circumspect ib. The Author minded by that passage out of Fox to reflect on the severity in a late Parliament in their Votes against the King's Ministers ib. The injustice of the Vote against the Earl of Hallifax p. 266. The Earl of Radnor occasionally mentioned with honour ib. The Constancy of the Earl of Anglesy to the Protestant Religion further asserted p. 267. Mention of his Lordships being injuriously reflected on in a Speech of Sir W. J. ib. The unreasonableness of the Reflections on the Lord Chief Justice North for advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions ib. The great deserved Character of that Lord Chief Justice p. 268. throughout A reflection on the popularity of Sir W. J. and on the â—â—â—essive Applause he had from the House of Commons after his Speech for the Exclusion-Bill p. 269. Sir Leolin Jenkins mentioned with honour ib. The Cabal of Sir W. J. observed to be full of fears of the Exclusion-Bill passing and their not knowing what steps in Politicks to make next ib. The Earl of Peterborough at large mentioned with honour ib. and p. 270. A further Account of the Authors prediction of England's future happy State ib. and p. 271. The Author observes that the most remarkable late Seditious Writers have published it in Print That they feared the next Heir to the Crown only as Chief Favourite to his Prince and that they judged that the Laws would sufficiently secure them from fears of his power if he should come to the Crown p. 271. An Assertion of his never having advised his Prince to incommode any one illegally and of his not having used his own power to any such purpose ib. The Author judgeth such Persons to write but in jest who amuse the People about being Lachrymists by that Princes Succession ib. The Author reflects on our Counterfeit Lachrymists for not affecting as quick a prevention of any future growth of Popery as was 〈◊〉 care of in Scotland p. 272. He observes that few or none in Scotland fear that Popery can ever in any Course of time there gain much ground ib. The Papists in that Kingdom estimated to be but 1000 ib. The Author believes that the fears of Poperies growth will be daily abated in England and in time be extinguished ib. More Popish Ecclesiasticks observed to be in Holland then Ministers in France and that yet none in Holland pretend to fear the Papists ib. The Authors judgment of the Dissenters Sayings being usefully published ib. Some Notes on the Geneva Bible seditious ib. The same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Popes Canon Law founded on the 13 th of Deuteronomy is chargeable on our late Presbyterians ib. The Assemblies Annotations cited to that purpose ib. The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine p. 274. Bishop Sanderson cited for that purpose ib. Calvin as to this point did blunder as shamefully as our Assembly-men p. 274. Several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines imbibed the error of Hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians ib. The Presbyterians here fired the Church and State with a Civil War ib. The Authors belief that there will never be any new Presbyterian Synod in England nor General Council beyond Sea ib. The Popes Pensions in the Council of Trent that sate for 18 years came to 750 l. Sterling per Month â—b The Author predicts the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty in England ib. The reason of such his Prediction p. 275. The Lord Hyde first Commissioner of the Treasury mentioned with honour ib. What the new Heaven and the new Earth is that the Author expects in England ib. The reason that induced false Prophets to foretel evil rather than good to States and Kingdoms p. 276. at large The same applied to our Augurs who by enlarging our fears and jealousies and their own fortunes thereby rendred the Genius of England less august ib. The Authors measures of the future State of England are taken only from Natural Causes and Natures Constancy to it self p. 277. A short account of several great Religionary Doctrines having naturally pierced through the sides and roots of one another p. 279. The
Religion of the Church of England hath naturally pierced through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy ib. The numbers of the Non Conformists are daily decaying ib. There were in the Year 1593 judged to be in England 20000 Brownists ib. The Gross of the Numbers of Non-Conformists always consisting chiefly of Artisans and Retail-Traders in Corporations p. 281. They were very numerous there before the King's Restoration ib. A new way by which their Numbers and Potency may easily there be diminished ib. The Author judgeth the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants to be necessary p. 282. The Lord Keeper Puckerings Speech of the ill behaviour of the Puritans in 88 referred to ib. The prudence and justice of the King's Measures asserted as to the not repealing the Statutes against Protestant Recusants ib. The Peace of Munster observed to have removed the popular fears abroad in Case of the Successions of lawful Princes differing in Iudgment from the Religion Established p. 283. The Author of the Catholick Apology with a Reply cited for there not being one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England in the year after the Declaration of Indulgence then in any year of trouble p. 284. The Author mentioneth the soft and gentle disposition of Bellarmine p. 284. The Authors reflecting on the Principles of the Iesuites with sharpness as the Pope and his Court of Inquisition have done ib. The Author disowneth all acerbity and rancour relating to the usage of any Papists ib. He observes that the putting Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion ib. The Author observes that an English Priest of the Church of Rome hath done him the honour to adopt as his own many passages of the Authors long since printed that were disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion p. 284. Observed that if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private judgment in matters of Religion 't is hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Church of Rome of the guilt of Schism ib. The Author not inclined to be severe to any Papist for being in any Tenets that may properly be called Religion guided by his private judgment to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome ib. The Custom of Authors of large Discourses publishing together with them a REVIEW ib. He promiseth to the Earl of Anglesy a REVIEW of this Discoursâ— p. 285. The Author will in a short REVIEW explain some passages on occasion and add others ib. If he doubts of any thing or shall alter his opinion of any thing therein he will in the REVIEW acquaint his Lordship why he doth so ib. The Author thinks that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunâ—es are positive ib. C2 R DIEV·ET·MON·DROIT HONI·SOIT·QVI·MAL·Y·PENSE Devon Jan. 27. 1680. My Lord AS to the Candour of the English Nation that was formerly so very extraordinary and the whiteness and sweetness of the temper of the People of England that did adde to the representing it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and to the making it like the Galaxy to have one brightness from thousands of fixt Stars placed so high by Nature that they could not suffer the least Eclipse by the shaddow of the whole Earth we may well since the Publishing of the horrid Affidavit of the Infamous Person and so many valuing themselves as the best of Men upon their believing what was sworn by the worst lament the temporary decay of so great a part of the Glory of the English good Nature And they who knew your Lordship and consequently knew you to be a steadfast approver of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England have reason more particularly to be sensible of what concern'd you in that calumnious Affidavit because the wretch presumed therein to fasten on your Lordship the Sanbenito of a Court of Rome Papist and to represent you as a favourer of Popery or the Papal Usurpations that were in Harry the 8th's time hence exterminated and as an endeavorer to stifle the Evidence about the Plot notify'd by the Government for the recalling that kind of Popery Altho I know no Christian more tenderly inclined then your Lordship to shew all Christian Indulgence to the Persons of Popish and Protestant Recusants and have sometimes observed your Lordship while you were wishing that none of the New Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Creed were by any believed yet out of tenderness to the Persons of Devout and Loyal Papists with great reason to wish likewise that no Odium might come to such from the Name of POPERY for their Profession of such Tenets as are held by the Greek and other Churches who yearly Curse the Pope and are so Curs'd by him yet none need doubt but that your Lordship will as much as any man account it the opus diei by all due means to oppose all plotted Designs whatsoever to retrive the Papal Power of Usurping over the Crown or Conscience My Lord there are some among us who would usurp on and appropriate to themselves the Name and Thing of Protestancy and would be thought the only true Protestants and would be Monopolists of all the heat and light against Popery But as I shall make bold to come in for my share with them so I shall yet acquaint your Lordship that if I may in any part of this Letter to you seem with any excess of Passion to reflect on Popery I shall before I take leave of you afford you such a Patriotly and Gentlemanly reason of my warmth against it as I think hath not by others been given nor particularly by some Pedantick Anti-Papists who render their Conversation nauseous by their eternal talking of nothing but Popery and while they are neglectful of all the due means to prevent its growth These things being therefore premised I shall in despite of the Affidavit say that I will be the last man in England who shall believe that my Lord Privy Seal can be such a Court of Rome-Papist I think it was St. Augustine who meaning well in a pang of Zeal cry'd out on one occasion Credo quia impossibile est But I shall both as to the truth of any deposing or imposing Doctrine and of your Lordships believing it ground my disbelief on the impossibility of either When I hear men say they look upon it as an exerting of a miraculous Power Divine that the Globe of the Earth hangs in the Air without falling I interrupt not their thoughts of devotion but know that the Earth which is ballanced by its own weight cannot fall but it must fall into Heaven Coelum undique sursum And should any one tell me of your Lordships falling into any gross erroneous doctrinal opinions I who have long observed the constant tendency of your understanding toward the Center of truth cannot apprehend any danger of your falling from it So likewise when I hear men impute it
appeared not able to contain above the Quantity of a Quart would easily have thence inferred had I heard him accused of being wont in his life-time to debauch by ingurgitating vast quantities of Liquor that there could be no such thing so shall I think it not possible that this sober Party of the Iesuites who are really devout can swallow such Irreligionary Principles as too many others of them have done We know that not many eminent Popish Writers but particularly Azorius the Iesuite hath writ against the Iesuites Doctrine of Equivocation and Mental Reservation and Crackanthorp and Ames and other Protestant Writers in their Writings impeaching that Doctrine of the Iesuites have quoted Azorius as on their side in that point I doubt not but many Pious Persons of that Order are glad of this Pope's having damned such Tenets which they never did or could believe and I will now upon the Popes having condemned them judge no particular Papist to believe them till I find cause so to do And notwithstanding the hard usage our Learned Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Book had from the Author of The Compendium saying That the Title of the Book confuted the whole because it mentioned the Principles approved by the Church of Rome pernicious when really believed and practised I shall still think the Pleonasm or exuberance of the Charity in so qualifying the danger of the Tenets he confutes to be worthy a Prelate of the Church of England and do think the like of the Charity of the Bishop of Winchester expressed in his printed Sermon of the 5th of November where having spoke of the Doctrines of Dissenters tending to Sedition and Rebellion that seem to be derived from the Church of Rome he saith if those Doctrines are believed and practised they must necessarily produce Confusion among us and do think that if the Papists could gain the point namely to be looked on by Protestants as not to believe several parts of the Tenets of Popery that are Irreligionary and particularly that about the Exterminium of Hereticks enjoyned by the Lateran Council to be not believed by them it would be a point very well gain'd and any one who could gain it for them would be a more useful friend to them than ever Bellarmin was To give a man the Lye is the greatest dishonour and therefore when any Papist shall tell me that he believes not the Lateran Council as obliging or other Tenets chargeable on the Papacy I shall not tell him that he doth but shall pass my judgment of Charity that he doth not believe the same and shall account him still a Roman Catholick tho perhaps erroneously denying that to be a General Council as I account Luther a Christian and Owner of the Authority of the Bible tho he erroneously denied the Divine Authority of the Epistle of St. Iames. The Learned Author of The Advocate of Conscience Liberty printed in the Year 1673. and said to be Mr. Brown a Franciscan in his 8th Chapter viz. Of Roman Catholicks being not guilty of Practices or Principles destructive to Government and reproaching the ENGLISH and Foreign Protestants with such Principles saith Was it from any of their Books meaning the Books of the Papists you have drawn those wild Maxims That the Authority of the Magistrate is of Humane Right That the People are above the King That the People can give Power to the Prince and take it away That if a King fail in performing his Oath at Coronation the People are loosened from their Allegiance That if Princes fall from the Grace of God the People are loosed from their Subjection Do not these Doctrines proceed from Wicliff Waldenses and other Sectaries And then mentioning Calvin for owning such Maxims saith That Calvin l. 4. c. 3. Instit. from his high Consistory giveth this Absolution to all Oaths of that Nature Quibuscunque Evangelâ—i hujus lux effulgeat ab omnibus laqueis juramentisque absolvitur But that Loyal Franciscan there happened to injure Calvin by a false quotation which I believe he had took up on the Credit of the Romanist Author of Monarcho-machia or Ierusalem and Babel who had cited the 4th Book of Calvin's Institutions for that purpose but very falsly for Calvin in all that Chapter hath not a word of such Oaths of Allegiance as Subjects take to their Sovereigns but treating only of Monastick Vows he saith Nunc postquam veritatis notitiâ sunt illuminati simul Christi gratiâ liberos esse dico c. i. e. from those Monkish unwarrantable Vows that they had made and out of Error and Ignorance held themselves obliged by But I doubt not if Parsons alià s Doleman and the Book of The Prelate and the Prince had been shewed to this Franciscan he would have answered to this effect viz. These men and many Roman Catholick Authors by them cited held those disloyal Trayterous Principles beforementioned but I fall will a Sacrifice rather than hold such I honour the spirit of Zeal against Disloyalty that runneth through his Book and in p. 204 205 206 207 208. he very learnedly endeavours to answer the objection about the Lateran Council and saith thereupon what the matter will bear and he and many other Roman Catholick Writers have disown'd the Authority of that Council as obligatory and therefore the judgment of Charity will incline any one to think that such Roman Catholicks would not disorder the World by it Moreover some Protestant Writers have judged that Council to be invalid and Dr. Donne who was very well studied in the Learning that relates to the Canon Law and General Councils doth particularly in his Pseudo-Martyr p. 377 378 379 380. take a great deal of pains to shew the invalidity of that Council and that it was never meant to oblige Sovereign Princes But the Author of The Prelate and the Prince doth in p. 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236. with much Learning statuminate the Authority of that Council and asserts it to have been a General one as the Cardinal Perron and the Bishop of Lincoln have done yet what I have mentioned of that Famous Cardinal 's not believing the Principle of the Church of Rome founded on that Council for Princes exterminating their Heretical Subjects as always Obligatory nor promoting the practice thereof in France where the Huguenots were then about a 7th part of the whole People hath justified the reasonableness of the Charity of our Bishops in qualifying the danger of some Papal Principles with the restriction of their being really believed and practised and the same Rule in my Notion of their danger shall always guide me that is to say when the Poyson of such Principles is really swallowed it must then be pernicious The poyson may lie in the Boxes of the Canon Law or a General Council and yet not poyson the minds of pious Catholicks nor foul their fingers I having found just cause so far to honour all the Roman Catholicks of my
Loyalty that any Christian who hath taken these Oaths shall think sufficient doth most certainly take the name of Loyalty and Protestancy and of Christianity and even of God in vain and as the Scripture implies that there is a Repentance to be repented of I shall say that such a mans Protestancy is to be protested against And when we consider that the Presbyterian Author of the EXERCITATION beforementioned hath in p. 41. with so much Loyalty and Reason told us in terms That Obedience is owing to Princes without condition of Religion or Iustice on their part performed and the Scripture is clear for an irrespective and in regard of the Rulers Demeanor absolute subjection Exod. 20. 12. 21. 25. Rom. 13. 1 2 c. Tit. 3. 1. 1 Pet. 2. 13. 1 Sam. 24. 6 7. 26. 9 10 11. Jer. 27. 12. 29. 7. Matth. 22. 21. and hath told us in p. 56. That our Oaths put no condition on the Prince but are all absolute and irrespective and run without ifs or ands in like manner as the Obligation of Subjects Allegiance to their Sovereign is irrespective according to Divine Institution methinks it should make any Son of the Church of England to start at the thought of his being out-done in Loyalty and sworn Allegiance by a Covenanting Presbyterian for such that Author was and at the thought of any ones having taken those Oaths relating to the King his Heirs and Successors and afterward interlining the interpretation of them with ifs and ands and at the thought of such an interlineation not appearing as ill in the Court of Conscience as any would do in a Court of Law. But the truth is the Church of England appearing in this late Religionary Fermentation to have so incorporated this Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty into its Constitution beyond any other Church in the World and likewise the Doctrine of Charity and Moderation toward all Christians whether Foreigners or Domesticks whether whole Churches or single Persons as Primate Bramhal's words are that the same doth now as I may say strike the Eyes of all indifferent men and enforce it self on the thoughts of any who do but for Curiosity walk about this Sion and go round about her and tell the Towers thereof I mean do consider its Prayers Homilies Articles Canons and Ecclesiastical Constitutions it hath hereby been necessarily made like the Eagle to renew its youth and to be invigorated as with a new Soul after its Enemies thought it dead or asleep and after Mr. Hooker's shrewd guessing that after the Year 1677. That what followed would be likely to be small joy to them who should behold it For the Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty being Essential to the Peace of Kingdoms and likely to be so more and more to the Worlds end and the Church of England appearing as by consent of Parties to be THE Church that overtowers all others in the Principles for THAT Sort of Loyalty as well as in the august Principles of Charity for all Christians according to the saying of Magnes amoris amor it must naturally attract the love of thoâ—e in other Churches and supposing that any Church or People love themselves and cannot be preserved but by Loyalty Nature will direct the World to a growing love for the Church of England and therefore I am no Visionaire in predicting from natural Causes That what shall follow to the Church of England will be great joy to those who shall behold it to the very end of time And nothing could possibly in my opinion have brought it to this firm State of its Glory but the disloyal Principles and Practices of some of its Competitors and particularly the just and dreadful apprehensions given to considerate men upon some Nominal Protestants and Nominal Property-men having founded Dominion in Grace and yet having reproached the Church of England and its Divines with Popery and invited the Protestant Mobile to make a Schism from it on such an account and printed many Seditious Pamphlets for the Establishing the IF or AND-Loyalty or indeed which is all one an absolute Disloyalty and in such a Conjuncture when it would have been not more pernicious to the particular Souls of the Disloyal than to the Body of the whole Nation and to the State of Christendom Thus through the Divine Omnipotence which can bring good out of evil hath our late Fermentation been made perfective to our Church as well as the Hereditary Monarchy and the Rule of God's governing the World by the Prayers of his Church and Lusts of his Enemies been here exemplified and as the Air that is the Steem of the dull Earth or the Textura halituum terrae as Gassendus calls it is made by nature to be the Vehicle of those Beams of the Sun that dazle our Eyes thus have the Fumes exhaled by such mens Lusts of Disloyalty and Malice that darken'd their own understandings and would have obscured the glory of the Church of England been made instrumental in dispersing its brightness through the World and even in the opening of the Eyes of many to behold it with amazement and that service hath been done our Church thereby which by all the Pens of its Iewel and Hooker and Sanderson could never be effected England that had so much the Carriage and the Trade of the World till the Munster Peace of 48 could bear the Civil War after 41 and breathe under it and flourish after it but as the State of the World abroad and at home now is and likely to be our ALL must depend upon the Principles and Practice of Loyalty and therefore this new Soul I spake of as now animating the Church of England must be immortal and it may well say to it self under any Prince that can come Soul take thy ease thou hast Loyalty and the Principles of it laid up for many years and England did not before 48 more excel other Realms in Trade than its Church doth now other Churches in absolute and irrespective Loyalty That great Iudge of Churches and their Principles Arch-Bishop Laud having in p. 36. of his famous Star-Chamber Speech remarked the dangerous Consequence of avowing That the Popish Religâ—ion is Rebellion saith That some Principles of theirs teach Rebellion is apparently true c. and I shall add that some Principles of our late Covenanting Dissenteâ—s have taught it is apparently true and for such of the latter who believed and practised these Principles to reproach any Papists with Disâ—oyalty is as apparently ridiculous as was Mr. Prynn's writing two Voluminous Tractates of The Disloyalty of Papists at the time when he was making so great a Figure in the late Rebellion But however suitably to the Moral Offices urged by Ames of not condemning whole Parties of men on the account of the guilt of some Persons I have under this Conclusion cited the loyal Principles of some Recusants of all sorts pertinent to my Scope and because the irrespective Loyalty
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
and a printed Devotional Office called The Office of the immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin our Lady approved by the Sovereign Pontiff Paul the 5th had been much in vogue in the Papal World yet the Pope by his Decree of February the 17th 78. damned that Office and as I may say threw it over board And of this the Author of Iulian the Apostate might have took notice if he had pleased when in his Comparison of Popery and Paganism he instanced in the transprosing of part of the Psalms to the Virgin Mary after the mode of this Office that had been suppressed about 4 years before The old stubbornness of Popes against the making any Reformation of Abuses and Errors in their Church hath been commonly observed but I believe that considering the great Figure England makes in the World it may not be unlikely that the brisk Spirit of Opposition against Popery that had displayed it self in England for about 8 years before the Plot-Epoche and the sharp and learned Books that were in that Conjuncture printed here against the Abuses of the Church of Rome might much contribute to the laudable Proceedings of this Pope in those Decrees I have mentioned And therefore when Nature had thus enforced the Papal Chair in so great a Measure upon Recantation and a great deal of pretended infallibity was thrown over-board and that even relating to some Principles that might be called Religionary it may reasonably be thought that the same operation of Nature will produce among our little Protestant Recusants a tacit renuntiation of the Irreligionary part of those very Principles that both the World and themselves must needs see they have transcribed from Popery The Complication of the Principles of Irreligion that hath joyned the Iesuites Popery with that of our former Presbyterians Popery hath long been as visible as the great Isthmus I spake of that joyns the Mexican and the Peruan parts of the new World and as I being to explain as in a Dictionary what I meant by Popery I would not expose my self to the Critical Religionary Controvertists by nicely defining Popery the Observation being no less than a Rule in the Civil Law that omnis definitio in jure Civili periculosa est parum est enim ut non subverti possit but gave the Description of my sense of it as before in this Preface so if I were to give a Description of our Scotch Presbytery as Covenanted to be here introduced I would take the said Description of Popery and only mutatis mutandis say that by Presbytery I mean the power of our Presbyters in imposing Creeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on men and the Presbyters jurisdiction interloping in that of our Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Jus Divinum and as they are Christs pretended Vicars and do account that its intended Arbitrariness here in England justly appeared as terrible as that of Popery and that our Consciences being enslaved to a Foreign Bishop is not more inglorious than their being so to our fellow Subjects and that a blush being divided among ten thousand Ecclesiasticks after they had out-raged our Laws and our Consciences would have here been no more seen by us than one at Rome on occasion of any Popes there blushing after they had so done I have observed in this Discourse how that part of Presbytery that may tho erroneous be called Religionary as practised in some Foreign Churches hath here decayed and must so naturally more and more and was glad to hear That since the putting the Laws in Execution against Protestant Recusants those of them who were called Presbyterians have on recollection of thought and after Conference had with our Divines forborn their former Schismatical Separation from our Churches and that particularly in our Metropolis they have in all things been ameinable to the Doctrine and Discipline of our Church except as to the submitting to have their Children baptized with the use of the Sign of the Cross there and their Superstition in not complying with which will I hope not be long lifed The gradual encrease of the Christenings in some Parishes in the Country that I have seen Accounts of and in which places the Dissenters formerly were very numerous hath been to a far greater Proportion than the gradual Encrease by me remarked as to London and within the same years And a Learned Divine who is Minister of a Parish not far from London hath acquainted me That the number of Communicants being there about the beginning of those years but a 100 hath since arisen to 400 and I believe that generally the numbers of Conformists may have much encreased in the Country beyond the proportion of their Encrease in the City and may probably do so for some years Tho there are several Merchants and rich Traders in our Metropolis who are Dissenters yet I have observed that the gross of their numbers consists there of ordinary Retail-traders and as these have been naturally Sufferers there by the Cities so much removing Westward and by the Retail-trade being so much gone to the other end of the Town and are likely so to be more and more so it hath been and will be natural to them to be more and more querulous according to the saying of Omne invalidum est Querulum And in this Case it will be natural to them both to support their decaying Trade by Religionary Combinations and perhaps to fancy Religion it self breaking together with their Bankrupsy and both for the Consoling one another as Socii doloris and likewise relieving one another thereby to endeavour to keep Heterodox Religionary Societies as long and as much as they can But Necessity the known Mother of Industry must naturally in time cure them of their Poverty and Temptation to Heterodoxy thereby Our Quakers are by many thought to be a kind of a Roma subterranea but whether justly or no I enquire not nor shall I give my opinion in it till the Principles of their Light within shall be exposed to that without many of which Principles have hitherto been by them kept as hid from the World as were the Subterraneous Lights preserved in the Roman Monuments and as to which Principles they are perhaps conscious that when they shall be exposed to the Air and Light of the Sun they will be as naturally extinguished as those Monumental Lights were when occasionally brought into the open Air. But one of their known Tenets being the unlawfulness of Oaths I account they have an advantage thereby beyond the Presbyterians or Independents in their Claim to Indulgence by demanding it in a Doctrinal point wherein there is Dâ—gnus vindice nodus by reason of some words in the 5th of St. Matthew and 5th of St. Iames seeming primâ facie very emphatically and vehemently to forbid all manner of swearing as the Commentators generally observe And in this point they are entituled to a very true and
of the entertaining our Curiosity tho we are past its danger and that is what occurs to me that I lately mentioned in a Discourse I had with an intelligent Person of the Church of England who saying to me that there was one part of the barbarous Out-rage of the Gun-powder Treason which was very scandalous to Humane Nature and which he thought could not be pretendedly legitimated by any Papal Principles namely that part of the Out-rage that related to the designed destruction of so many Magnificent Piles of Building and of the adjacent City of Westminster and the life 's of thousands of Men Women and Children with one Cruel Fatal Blow I gave him an account of the Tenet in the Canon Law grounded on the 13th of Deuteronomy so fairly and fully discussed in the following Discourse and whereby I satisfied him about the Principle that pretended to legitimate that part of the Out-rage and do assure any man that as arbitrary as the Papacy ever was it yet was so just as to inflict no kind of punishment on Persons or Communities that was not in its Sanctions intimated and for what Crimes I have in this Discourse render'd some of our late Fift-Monarchy men Principled for all Villany imaginable and justly Convicted and Executed for a design to fire our Metropolis and in which design they had subtilly contrived to have backed their Out-rage with the terror of Armed Forces nothing of which appeared in the Case of the two poor French Papists charged with the Odium of the Fact and beyond which least of numbers it is not in this Discourse extended and as to those two Persons there being then open War between the English and French it may be said that the Religion of Popery might be out of the Case of any thing done by such as were justi hostes as the Laws term them however I yet think that none concerned in the Government of that Nation would then be so barbarous as to design us such an Out-rage Moreover I have in this Discourse said that I will not charge the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists either at home or abroad and that no un-jesuited Papist nor perhaps some sober Party in that Order would think the worse of me for calling the Decretum of the Popes Canon Law by reason of its empowring him thus to burn Cities horrendum Decretum And because my knowing of this Papal Tenet as founded on the Iudicial Law made me after the beginning of this Discourse to surmize that more Papists might possibly be concerned in this Out-rage than really were and so in my balancing the actings of some Loyal Protestant Recusants in Ireland with some Dis-loyal ones of some Popish Recusants there and here I mentioned the Out-rage on the Metropolis as done by Papists i. e. by Papists and not by Protestants and as Sir W. Raleigh mentioned that Harry the 4th was murdered by the Papists that is not by the Huguenots I yet thought my self bound in Christianity and Moral Justice to shew my self so far from being in the least misled by the scandalous and incoherent Narratives that reflected on a great body of the Papists as concerned in such a horrid Fact and particularly by that whose Author in a Plot with Booksellers had stole his Fire of London out of old printed Examination before a Committee of Parliament that I have shewn the ridiculousness of the palmare argumentum of the Populace and cryed up as so unanswerable to prove that very many Papists designedly fired the City and which Argument I have not met with exposed to contempt by any other Person and which had so far happened to work on the understanding of an ingenious man who employed himself in writing the History of England since the King's Restoration that he had been likely but for my shewing him the Childishness of his Error to have sent it to Posterity with a Crown instead of a Fools Cap on its head And tho I have rendred the same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Pope's Canon Law founded on Deuteronomy chargeable on our late Presbyterians I have exempted the Persons of such our Protestant Recusants from any guilt of an Out-rage against our Metropolis as Idolatrous for whatever their Principles are there is yet another sort of Idolatry prevalent among them as all Religionaries and which I have referred to namely Covetousness that would secure them from firing their own Nests But here while I am troubling my self to do right to Papists and Presbyterians I cannot without all the horror and detestation imaginable call to mind how a vile traiterous Subject of his Majesties who presumed to call himself the Protestant Ioyner was so far transported with Madness and Fury as to the scandal of Religion and Loyalty and common Sense with the guilt or that Fire to reproach his Prince whose Reign had so long signalized it self with such a Father-like tenderness for all his Subjects And yet in the TRYAL of that Monster of Calumny his slandering his Prince thus with so much desperate and ridiculous Molice was in proof And ridicuâ—ous it may well be called for what could be more remote from the least shadow of possibility than a Prince of such Eminent Wisdom and known great Abilities firing his own Chamber and destroying his Revenue and vastly impoverishing the People and thereby weakening himself in the Flagrancy of War between England and France and the States of Holland It is absolute dotage and Bedlam-madness to imagine that any one interested in the Government of England and its being a Kingdom could be in the least a well wisher to such an Out-rage The very Fift-Monarchy men who designed it were abject Paupers and the two French-men were no better But Justice found out that Shimei who thus outragiously slandered the Lord 's Annointed and may all such his incorrigible Enemies be cloathed with shame and let them see that tho Heaven doth not think fit always to hide Princes from the scourge of the Tongues of men of Belial yet at the same time it sheweth some tender regard of the honour of Crown'd heads by abandoning the dis-loyal to reproach them with impossibilities It was observed by the late Bishop of Winchester in his printed Sermon before the King on the 5th of November p. 18. That the Doctrines among the Dissenters that tend to Sedition and Rebellion seem to be derived and borrowed from the Church of Rome but his Lordship in the same Page having before spoke of those Doctrines said That if they are believed and practised they must necessarily produce Confusion among us Yet having a regard to the Piety and Peaceableness of some Dissenters and considering how long many of them had been trained up to Principles of Loyalty before they went off from the Church of England we may reasonably have the better hopes of their not being able to believe the Doctrine of Resistance and Principles convulsive of Civil Society But
we have of late found cause to judge that that Doctrine and those Principles have been believed and practised by others of them and with such Artifice to amuse and divert the incautelous Loyal from the apprehension thereof as was practised by several of the Papists a little before the Gun-powder Treason for as at the end of the Papists supplication to the King and the States of the Parliament in the year 1604 they undertake that as to the Loyalty of their Priests they shall readily take their Corporal Oaths for continuing their true Allegiance to his Majesty or the State or in Case that be not thought assurance enough that they shall give in sufficient Sureties one or more who shall stand bound life for life for the performance of the said Allegiance and further that if any of their number be not able to put in such Security that then they will all joyn in such supplication to the Pope for recalling such Priests out of the Land and thus by the Offer of Security attempted to lull the State in a secure sleep and dream of their Loyalty so have many of our Protestant would-be's by the publication of their NO PROTESTANT PLOT so lately before their plotted Out-rage done what was tantamount to keep our Country from being awake to observe the March of their Principles till it should be surprized with the suddenness of Sampson's Alarm when it came to be said The true Protestants are upon thee I mean those who falsly call themselves so I know no true Son of the Church of England owning a greater propension to afford favour to Heterodox Religionaries in points denominable by Religion than what my natural temper and habitual inclination prompt me to And tho some men are apt to have a sharper regret against others for differing from them in judgment than for a material injury I am naturally so far from such an humour as to be more pleased with and to think my self better diverted by the Conversation of the Learned whose Sentiments differ from mine in most points Philosophical and in many Theological than by theirs who perfectly agree in opining with me therein and do fancy to my self that I have the fortune hereby for my hâ—mour to accord with that of the generality of men of the gayest temper in the Age how different soever their Religions are and do suppose that if such a captioâ—s fiery Bigot as Bishop Bonner were now living the ingenious Maimbourg would scorn to keep him Company But the present State of Christendom making Loyalty a Vertue of Necessity here in England as I have shewn in this Discourse I would abhor the Conversation of any Dissenter I thought Dis loyal as of a Person not only wicked but stupid and on this Rock as I may say of Loyalty being likely so long to continue Essential to our continuing a Nation have I built my Conjecture of the future happy State of England It is a possible thing that the serenity of its Future State may be for some little time over-cast by Clouds of Discontent if the Balance of Trade should long continue to be against us and that then forlorn Paupers instead of fearing Popery would for a while fear nothing at all for Nescit plebs jejuna timere But I have cited the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for accounting not above one in 4000 to have starved and I having in p. 185 cited the Author of Britannia languens for saying that he heard of no new improving Manufacture in England but that of Periwigs did give my Judgment that the Ebb of our Trade hath been at the lowest point and that Nature will necessarily hasten its improvement and having observed in p. 66 that after a long Age of Luxury a contrary humour reigns as long in the World again I have said that of that contrary humour I think we now see the Tide coming in and have assigned one late Woollen Manufacture by which England hath gained double as much as for 76 years it lately did by the Balance of Trade But if any one of our true Protestant Plotters should be supposed ever to inveigle any of the poorer Mobile to fly out into tumultuous Disorder or Commotion any such Commotion making an Exception from my general Rule of England's necessary future pacific State would both certainly firmare regulam and make the Odium of the Loyal Populace so keen against all Principles and Doctrines of Resistance as to exterminate the same from our Soyl for ever and to deter men as much from daring to propagate the same in England as in those two most Famous Receptacles of Heterodox Religionaries I mean Amsterdam and Constantinople Any one who will accord with me how necessary it was for the confounding of Dis-loyalty that I should point out the fatal time when our Trade was confounded viz. in Ianuary 1648 and any Reader of this Discourse will find the obvious way mentioned how a Child of ten years of Age may know when the Balance of Trade is against us and how long it hath been so tho not to what proportion and so whether I have been too sanguine in my fancy by predicting in effect that it will be for us and long so continue time will shew But if I am out in my Measures as to that point I am sure the Divines of the Church of England will gain Cento per Cento thereby as to the point of their absolute usefulness and necessary encouragement under a Prince of what resolution soever and upon a wanton supposition that they had all withdrawn themselves to the remotest parts of the Earth it would be any Princes interest to invite them back again at any rate and that for their persisting in the preaching up of Loyalty as they have done for several years and thereby so much helped to preserve us from weltring in one anothers blood It is excellently observed by Lucius Antistius Constans in his De jure Ecclesiasticorum that the CLERGY is necessary to console us with the World to come as to the hardships daily occurring to us in this as well as to direct us in our Course to that World. And if contrary to my expectation Heaven should think fit to punish the past Rebellions and present murmurings of so many of our Land by any future diminution of our Trade and when we should be enforced to work the harder for the necessary support of our Families and of the Government 10000 Preachers of Loyalty will be an useful Treasure both to the Prince and People Fuller in his Church-History mentions that in the year 1619 It was complained of that the Grantees of Papists forfeitures generally favoured them by Compositions for lâ—ght Sums But the famous Book of The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince printed A. D. 1617. saith in the Epistle Dedicatory to the English Catholicks You have this long time suffered as violent and furious a Persecution as ever the Jews did under an
Amsterdam to the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter ib. The number of the Inhabitants of Venice in the year 1555 ib. An Account of the Political Energy of the Reformation in England p. 107. The Revenue of the Kingdom of England quintuple in the year 1660 to what it was at the time of the Reformation p. 108. A Calculation of the Revenue of the Church holding in the year 1660 the same proportion of encrease ib. The Customs of England when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown made but 36000 l. per Annum and were since 1660 farmed at 400000 l. per Annum and have since then made about double that Sum p. 109. The yearly Revenue of the whole Kingdom of England computed ib. Queen Elizabeth wisely provided for the enlargement of the Trade and Customs of England ib. The Numbers of the People of Spain p. 111. The knowledge of the Numbers of People in a Kingdom is the Substratum of all Political measures ib. An Animadversion on the Author of la Politique Françoise ib. There were about 600,000 Souls in Paris shortly after the year 1660 p. 113. An Animadversion on the Calculation of Malynes in his Lex mercatoria ib. Animadversions on the Calculations of Campanella as to the numbers of the People of France p. 114. Lord Chief Iustice Hales his Observations of the gradual encrease of the People in Glocester shire corroborated by the Author p. 115. The Author believes the Total of the People of England to be very much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it p. 116. Observations on the Numbers of the People of England resulting from the returns on the late Pole-Bills and the Bishops Survey ib. and p. 117 118 119. An account of a Tax of Poll-Money in Holland in the year 1622 p. 117. Some illegal Proceedings in Queen Mary's Reign remarked p. 119 120. The Authors opinion that any Roman Catholick Prince that may come to inherit the Crown will use the Politics of Queen Mary as a Sea mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land-mark to go by p. 122. Eight hundred of the empty new built Houses of London have been filled with French Protestants ib. A high character given of Edward the 3 d a sharp Persecutor of the excesses of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and who saved the being of the Kingdoms Trade and Manufacture and patronized Wickliffe and the Authors opinion that any lawful Prince of the Roman Catholick Religion that can come here will uphold the falling Trade of the Kingdom as he did ib. Occasional Remarks on the Numbers of the People in the old Roman Empire p. 124. The vanity of the fear of any ones erecting another Universal Monarchy p. 125. Campanellas Courting Spain and afterwards France with that Monarchy remarked ib. Observations on the fate of the Spanish Armada in 88 and of the Numbers of its Ships and Seamen and likewise of the Numbers of the Ships and Seamen then in Queen Elizabeth's Fleet p. 127. She claimed no Empire of the Ocean either before 88 or afterward ib. The Shipping and Numbers of our Seamen in 12 years after 88 were decayed about a 3 d part p. 128. An account of the French Monarch's Receipts and Expences in the year 1673 ib. The Authors conjecture of the result of the Fermentation about the Regalia in France p. 129. The things predicted in the Apocalyps are with reference to exactness of number and measure p. 130. The Origine of the name Fanatick ib. The Author asserts this as a Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World as well as of a mans own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the Municipal Laws of their Countries ib. The Author gives his Iudgment of the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of Presbytery here being come p. 133. Of the illegality of the Scotch Covenant p. 134. The Assembly of Divines here would have been Arbitrary in Excommunication ib. The first Paragraph of the Covenant introduced Implicit Faith p. 135. The Author of the Book called The true English Interest computes that 300,000 were slain in the late Civil War in England p. 138. Observations on his Majesty's and Royal Brothers Exile into Popish Countries caused by our Presbyterians and even out of Holland into France and out of France into Spain p. 138 139. Presbyterians are obliged of all men to speak softly of the danger of Popery p 139. An account of the present Numbers of the Papists in England and some Historical Glances about the gradual decrease thereof in this Realm in several Conjunctures since the Reformation from p. 139 to p. 154. The late Earl of Clarendon occasionally mentioned with honour p. 147. The Authors judgment that the growth of Popery and of the fears thereof will abate under any Conjuncture of time here that can come from p. 153 to p. 157. In December 1672 the Protestants in Paris mere but as one to 65 p. 157. Observations on the late Conversions in France ib. The Author explains what he means by the expression of Religion-Trade ib. The Author's Assertion that the World can never be quiet and orderly till its State be such that men can neither get nor lose by Religion from p. 158 to 160. Animadversions on a Pamphlet aiming at the overthrow of the Clerical Revenue of England and called The great Question to be considered c. p. 160 161. The Author asserts the present Clerical Revenue of England to be reasonable and necessary and very far from excess in its proportion from p. 161 to p. 167. The Author's reason why he doth usually in this Discourse call Popery an Hypothesis or Supposition and not it or our former Presbytery in gross by the name of Religion from p. 168 to p. 170 and after The Author's Assertion That Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturbed worshipping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the blood of Christ p. 170. The Author distinguisheth Principles of Papists Socinians and Presbyterians into Religionary and Non-religionary and shews to what Principles the name of Religion is absurdly applied from p. 168 to p. 172. The Author observes it in many Papists who have deserted the Church of England that the rational Religion they were first educated in hath had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholly over-power p. 174. An Observation of three of the Nobility that went off from the Church of England to that of Rome but receded not from the Candour of their tempers and that neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and that the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and make great Figures in the State ib. Turen after his being a Papist as kind to his Protestant Friends as
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
Government admitted only to probation for three years and were no more hindered of the freedom of a Gentlemans Conversation thereby then by the Government of the foremention'd Presbyter Iohn in the East and England was then not only free from the charge of Peter-pence Legatine levys oblations contributions for the Holy Land and both charge and trouble from all the Papal Courts and Masses Anniversaries obits requiems dirges placebos Trentals lamps but from all contumacy fees in spiritual Courts and from those Courts themselves of which yet the yoke is very easie compared with either that of the Papists or Scotch Presbyters and our condition as to ecclesiastical discipline was like that time or conjuncture of liberty that Father Paul in the History of the Councel of Trent refers to speaking of the time when a certain custome prevailed saith il che come e un uso molto proprio diove si governa in liberta quale era all hora quando il mondo era senza Papa That it was a custome very proper where they governed with liberry which was when the world was without a Pope I never heard of any man that was gored with the horn of our Presbyters excommunication nor of any dissenter from them that was tyed up for them out of their horn of plenty of Church power to force a drench of Doctrine down his throat and much less of any dealt with in that way mentioned by Spotswood in his Observation that the Devil would not be feared but for his horn referring to the horning in Scotland that is the seisure of all a mans goods when the horn blew after he was excommunicated by the Presbytery There is no doubt but that some of the Divines of that persuasion were brib'd to it by an expectation of power to oppress when that the great Revenues of the Church were denied them And thus the Pope keeps his Guards in Rome only with the pay of priviledges but instead of their riding the People the Parliament rid them and with that caution as they of old did who rid on Elephants in battel which great animal being observed to be then unruely sometimes and to endanger both the riders and their camp and it being known that their receiving a Conâ—usion in one part about their head would presently dispatch them their riders had alwaies a hammer with them ready for that use on occasion He therefore that saith he loves popery better then the Government of Presbytery as it was de facto setled or rather permitted in England and when they that would have its maypole for them to dance about had it and those that would have none had none saith that he loves a fiery and tormenting furious Church-Government that would make Mount Sion to be still belching out fire like Aetna better then none at all that he loves a Hirricane better then being a while becalm'd that he loves the Church government that was like coloquintida in the pot rather then that of the Presbyter which was here but like Herb Iohn and that he fears a Mastiff who was not only hambled and whose jus divinum was lawd and whose spleen was cut out by the State Chirurgeons more then an incensed hungry Lion of Rome that he likes a Government better that at best is like a Peacock that is all Gaudery and damned Noise and nothing else except pede latro that is all Ceremony and devouring all with ceremony then a Government that with its looks can neither allure nor fright and which we could pinion as we pleased and play with till we could get a better in its Room Whether a Papist was to be loved better then a Puritan was a vex'd question in the time of Queen Elizabeth and 't was resolved then in the affirmative only by the Pensioners of Rome and their dependants The Learned Author of the Book called Certain considerations tending to promote Peace and good will among Protestants doth in p. 13. quote our famous Gataker for relating that Dr. Elmor Lord Bishop of London in Queen Elizabeths time when one in a Sermon at St. Pauls Cross inveighing against Puritans rendred them worse then Papists sharply contradicted that censure saying that the Preacher said not right therein for that the Puritans if they had me among them would only cut my rochet but the Papists would cut my throat and that his Successor Dr. Vaughan Lord Bishop of London when another in the same Pulpit too shew'd the same eagerness in representing the Puritans worse then Papists expressed the same sense with his predecessor concerning it and wished that he had had the Preachers Tongue that day in his Pocket It was it seems then the good fortune of London to be blest with Bishops renown'd for their great zeal for the Protestant Religion and with such a one it is at this time enriched and dignified I will not say Bishop of it only by divine permission but miseratione divinâ the Style I have seen of Bishops in some antient Instruments 't is out of the Divine Compassion that such an eminent Protestant City has such a Prelate Nor do I intend by the just praise paid to this great and good man to lessen the worth of others of the Fathers of our Church of which number I have the honour to be acquainted with others who endeavour the extermination of Popery with as couragious a zeal as can be wisht and no doubt but the text of Scripture in the Title of my Lord Bishop of Lincolns book namely Come out of her my People lest ye be partakers of her Sins and Plagues is by the whole Church of England lookt on as a seasonable alarm and no doubt many of this our Church who have writ with so much various learning and strong Reason against Popery know that if that ever be de facto and by law paramount the Church of England will be ipso facto crusht thereby out of all its visibility The thought of this brings that Scripture to my mind viz. Matthew 21 v. 44. and who soever shall fall on this Stone shall be broken but on whom soever it shall fall it will grind him to powder And if the Church of England by only falling super hanc Petram I mean heretofore by the Empty Project of some for the Uniting Rome to us was broken and disjointed therefore if ever it shall come under the Stone of the Roman Catholick Religion and it be thereby made possible for the Stone to fall on it the Church of Rome will then grind it to powder It s former falling on the Rock could only break it into the pieces of Presbyterian and Independent and other seperate Churches but that Rocks falling on it will not break it into pieces but grind it to powder as was said and perhaps Papists then from this place of Scripture would form as good a title by divine right to crush our Church as they did from the super hanc Petram in the 16 th of
by some accidents be made to cast Anchor or they may be sunk but they cannot be forced to go back When a man hath long been compell'd to creep with Chains on him through a toilsome dark Labyrinth and having extricated himself out of it and being come to enjoy his liberty in the light of the Sun the persuasion of words cannot make him go back again My Lord I lately mentioned the Motto of the Royal Society of England of which your Lordship is a Member and I look on the very constitution of that Society to be an inexpugnable Bulwark against Popery In which Society many of our choice English Witts have shew'd as much subtilty and curiosity in the Architecture of Real Science and such as tends to the edification of the world as any of our Countrey men heretofore did in those curious but useless Cobwebs of holy Church call'd School Divinity And the constitution of that Society hath not only been useful in encreasing the Trade of Knowledge among its members by a joyned stock but moreover hath tended to the raising in the Kingdom a general inclination to pursue Real science and to contemn all science falsly so call'd and the Raising of this inclination I will call a Spirit that can never be Conjur'd down nor can the knowledge that depends on number weight and local Motion be ever exterminated by Sophisms or Canting or terms of Art Nor will they who have from this Society learned to weigh Ayre give up their Souls to any Religion that is all Ayre without weighing it or notwithstanding any hard name that may come to be in vogue ever forget that bread is bread His Majesty by the founding of this great Conservatory of knowledge presently after his Restoration wherein his great Minister then the Earl of Clarendon was an honourable Member did convey real knowledge and a demonstration of his being an Abhorrer of Arbitrary Power to all that can understand Reason and affect not the ridiculous Treasonableness of Bradshaw's Court to say that they will not hear reason for had he like the Eastern King 's affected Arbitrary Power he would have used their artifice of endeavouring to cast mists before the understanding faculties of his Subjects and to detain them from knowledge by admiration and to deprive them of sight like horses that are still to drudge in the Mill of Government by blind obedience But to shew that he abhorr'd both such obedience and implicit Faith and that he intended to establish his Throne as well in the heads as in the hearts of his Subjects he presently setled this Great Store-house of Knowledge that shew'd it was his desire and ambition by the general Communication of Knowledge in his Dominions to Command Subjects whose heads were with the Rays of Science crown'd within And therefore I think His Majesties Munificence to the Royal Society in giving them Chelsey-Colledge at their first institution was very Consistent with the Primary Intention of the erecting that Colledge which was to be a Magazine for Polemical-Divinity wherewith to attaque the Writers for Popery for the very planting of a general disposition to believe nothing contrary to Reason is the cutting of the graâ—s under Poperies feet and His Majesty providing for the growth of reason did apparently check the growth of Popery as well as of Arbitrary Power without the prop of which Popery can never run up to any height more then the Sun-flower without a supporter and the setling in men an humour of Inquisition into the truth and nature of things is as I partly said before an everlasting barricade against the Popes darling Court of the Inquisition That great and noble notion of the Circulation of the blood took its first rise from the hints of a common persons enquiring what became of all the blood that issâ—â—d out of the heart seeing that the heart beats above Three Thousand times an hour thô but one drop should be pump'd out at every stroke and if any one shall tell me that he believes that Popery with its retinue of implicit faith and ignorance can over-run us I will ask him what will then become of all that knowledge the vital blood of the Soul that hath issued from the heads of inquisitive Protestants and been Circulating in the World for above a Hundred and Fifty years and I doubt not but it will be in mens Souls as long as blood shall have its Circular Course in their bodies and maugre all the Calumnies cast on the Divines of the Church of England for being fautors of Popery I shall expect that our learned Colledge of Physicians will as soon be brought to disbelieve the Circulation of the blood of our Royal Society to take down the Kings Standard that they have set up against implicit faith as our learned Convocation the learnedest that ever England had be brought to believe the principles of Popery I know My Lord ' tâ—s obvious against this my hypothesis of the unpracticableness of Popery being here the State-Religion to say that in little more then Twenty years time Four great changes in Religion happen'd in England and that the generality of the people then like dead Fishes went with the stream of the Times but I ask if the generality of the people had been throughly enlighten'd in the rationality of the Protestant Principles Twenty years together would they have return'd to the belief of the Popish Will they now do it after the establishment of a Rational Religion for above a Hundred years together Can Popery now find the way into most Mens brains here presently after the whole Nation almost were Preachers and when all our great and little unruly disagreeing Sects yet agreed in this as a fundamental that the Bishop of Rome is the Antichrist If Printing had been free in Turky for a Hundred years and a libera Philosophia and Theologia had been there in fashion for a Hundred years and every man had been allow'd his Judgment of discretion so long about the sense of the Alchoran or of the holy Scripture and of all Books of Religion could ignorance even there come into play again or if the Turkes had drank Wine for a Hundred years together could any one Conjure the glasses out of their hands by telling them there was a Devil in every grape If that Law in Muscovy that makes it death for any Subject to travel out of that Kingdom without the Emperors Licence lest his Subjects having seen the freedome of other Countreys should never again return to the Arbitrary Power in their own again I say if that Law had been repeal'd for a Hundred years and multitudes of oppress'd mankind had thence found the way to breath in the ayre of Liberty like men could they be persuaded to return to the Yokes of Beasts again When a floating Island has been a Hundred years fixt to the Continent can any teach it to swim again Consulitur de Religione is likely to be the eternal
business of England and in case of a Prohibition to any mans little Court of Conscience in that cause he will certainly give himself a consultation The very humour of the English Nation long hath and still doth run against what they think but like Popery or makes for it and that with such a rapid current of Antipathy as is never likely to be stem'd and nothing is more out of fashion then a kind of Sir-positive or Dictatorian humour in common discourse much less then will a dogmatical Popes infallibility ever be digested here while he makes himself a St. Positive The gentile humour of the Age here that abhorrs hard words as loathsom pedantry will never be reconcil'd to one certain long hard word in Popery namely Transubstantiation nor to another namely Incineration or burning men for not understanding the former word according to the style of the Historian Imperator aegrè tulit incinerationem Johannis Husse and people will account their Protestant Bibles more agreeable to them then the English one published by the Colledge of Doway where the Translator studied for hard words in the room of plain ones as for the Passeover phase for foreskin praepuce for unleaven'd bread azyms for high places excelses and other such words we have in the English Rhemish Testament viz. exinanite parasceue didragmes neophyt spiritualness of wickedness in the Celestials In our Busy English world while men are most yary after profit and pleasure and the study of things if very few or none can be brought to learn the universal real character and which would tend to the propagating Real Knowledge among the Nations of the World accordingâ—y as the excellent propounder of it in Print with great modesty saith in his Epistle dedicatory that he had slender expectation if its coming into common use our Ingeniosi or Witts which all men pretend to be now as they did in the Late times to be Saints tho yet as few are Witts now as were Saints then will not care for troubling their brains with the studying of the Religion whose pretended universality appears but a kind of universal character and not real and tending to obscure the knowledge of things in the World. If they should see here a Religion that was full of pageantry and seem'd to be wholly theatrical they would think it was as much their birthright to censure it as 't is to be eternal talking Critics in the Pit to damn Playes and would think two Supremes in a Kingdome to be of the low nature of two Kings of Branford and rather then part with their money and stake down their Souls for seing such a Moral Representation of an absolute spiritual and absolute temporal power on the stage of the Kingdom they would be too apt with Mr. Hobs to thrust the whole Nation of Spiritual Beings out of the world I mean rather then they would be to their faces cheated and harras'd by a spiritual power and our people inspir'd with witt as well as those with the zealous spirit of Religion would cry out conclusum est contra Manichaeos I and against the Schoolmen too I mean our Romanist Manichaei who make two summa Principia in every State. In this age where the lower or Sixth rate Witts do so over-value themselves on turning every thing into ridicule the Mass would have here a Reception according to what the gloss in the Canon Law observes that when a place had layen long under an interdict the people laughed at the Priests when they came to say Mass again Nor would any Papal interdiction unless it could interdict us from the use of Fire and Water be of any moment The World would now laugh at any Prize that should be play'd between the Two Swords the very glossator on the Clementines saying occasionly that resipiscente mundo the World being grown wiser there must be no longer striving for both Swords And any one that would obtrude on us gross exploded errors in Church or State will appear as ridiculous as St. Henry the Dane who as the Martyrology mentions when worms craul'd out of a corrupted Vlcer in his Knee put them in again My Lord I will further offer it to your Lordships consideration That if it be found so hard to keep up the external polity of the Church of England thô in it self so rational and so meriting the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the Twenty years discontinuance of it insomuch that Dr. Glanvile in the first page of his Book call'd the Zealous and impartial Protestant hath these words the first occasion of our further danger that I shall mention is the present diminution not to say extinction of Reverence to the authority of the Church of England c. and he p. 4. writes largely to that Effect what quarter can Popery expect here from an Age of sense and reason when it should break in upon both after the forementioned Hundred years discontinuance According to the foresaid Argument of the Bees for the Popes spiritual Monarchy we see it improbable for him ever to bring us to a Rendevouz in his Church again for the sad experience we have had of the Sects here that left the Hive of the Church of England not gathering together into any one new Hive but dividing into several swarms and hives and never returning to the old may shew the Hive of holy Church how little of our Company 't is to expect Having said all this about the mists of Popery being to contend with knowledge in its meridian I think I shall comply with the measures taken by our Philosophers in this Critical Age in founding their observations upon Experiments if I further add that the former Experiments England hath had of Poperies being pernicious to its external Polity and Grandeur will perpetuate and heighten the fermentation in the minds of our angry people against it All our Monkish Historians do attest the experience our Kings had in being bereav'd of great Sums of Money while they enrich'd the Pope here by giving him the Office to keep the Theological Thistle which he Rail'd in with so many censures and distinctions and non obstantes that our Kings could not pass to their Palaces but by his leave and on his terms An English King then was but the Popes Primier Ministre and yet paid great wages too for the being a Servant to the Servus Servorum King Iohn used to say That all his affairs in the World were unprosperous and went cross and untowardly after he had once subjected himself and his Kingdom to the Church of Rome His words were Postquam me mea Regna Romanae subjecâ— Ecclesiae nulla mihi prospera omnia contraria advenerunt And 't is obvious to consider on the other hand what a great figure Henry the Eighth made in the World after he had manumitted himself and his Kingdoms from the Papal Usurpation And how he held the Balance of the World in his hand and trod on
Populum on 1 Cor. 7. 24. pag. 195 and 196 speaking of the Monks saith It is well known in this our Land how both Church and Common-Wealth groan'd under the burden of these heavy Lubbers The Common-wealth while they becamâ— Lords of very little less by their computation who have travelled in the search â—hen one half of the temporalties of the Kingdom and the Church while they engrossed into their hands the fruits of the best Benefices of the Realm allowing scarce so much as the Chaff to those who tread out the Corn. This profession is God be thanked long since suppressed There is nothing of them now remains but the rubbish of their Nests and the stink of their memories unless it be the sting of their Devilish Sacriledge in â—â—bbing the Church by damnable Impropriations He had before said they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Slow-bellies Stall-fed Monks and Friars who liv'd mew'd up in their Cells like Boors in a Frank pining themselves into Lord and beating down their bodies till their Girdles crackt But though it hath been truly observ'd That the not providing for the augmentations of the poorer Livings in England was a scandal to our Reformation in that it made so many scandalous Livings and consequently so many such Ministers and it has been in one of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments notify'd by Dr. Iames as Townsend's Collections mention that of Eight Thousand and odd parish-Parish-Churches then in England but Six Hundred did afford a competent Living for a Minister And it has been publickly aver'd by Archbishop Whitgift That there were Four Thousand Five Hundred Benefices which are not worth above Ten Pound a Year in the King's Books yet the dispersing of so much of the Church Revenue among the Laity hath had this effect namely to engage the possessors of so great a proportion of the Land of England to be Champions against Popery and one other good effect within my own observation it produced in the late times when Tithes themselves were thought Delinquent namely that the Impropriate Tithes saved the others And the not augmenting the poorer sort of Livings the which mostly were in Cities and Corporations in the Countrey hath not however prov'd any augmentation to the interest of Popery For though the Reliques and Images and Shrines of Saints there that brought a concourse of Offerers and Offerings thither enrich'd those places and the Churches and had the effect of Staple Ecclesiastical Commodities and Harry the Eighth's abolishing them reduced the value of the Livings there almost to nothing they grew by occasion thereof afterward to be receptacles for heterodox Divines who seiz'd on the Livings there in a manner derelict and finding the Genius of Trading people averse from Ceremonies did represent the few and innocent and indeed decent ones of the Church of England as odious to them and therefore were sure of pleasing their auditors by constant declaiming against those of Popery that were so many and cumbersome and had caused so much blood-shed and were known to be Ceremonies both mortuae mortiferae And as Doleman alias Parsons observed in his time that the strength of the Puritans lay in those Corporate Towns and Cities there will the hatred of the Principles of the Papists probably for ever encrease I have for this purpose found it truly observed in a Discourse in octavo concerning Liberty of Conscience Printed for Nath. Brooks at the Angel in Cornhil That the Puritan Preachers by their disesteem of Ceremonies and external Pomp in the worship of God were the more endeared to Corporations and the greater part of persons engaged in Trade and Traffic who hate Ceremonies in general and what does unnecessarily take up time And that persons who nauseate Ceremonies in Civil things will loath them likewise in Religious as a man who has an antipathy against Muscadine in his Parlor cannot love it at the Sacrament And that if we reflect on those who did most love Ceremonies heretofore in our Nation we shall find them to have been persons of the greatest Rank and Quality who did effect Ceremonies in Civil things or of the poorest sort who did get their daily bread by the Charity of the other So natural is it for men to Paint God in Colors suitable to their own fancies that I do not wonder at Trading Persons who hate Ceremonies that they thus think God in respect of this hatred altogether such as themselves That Discourse had before set forth That 't is natural to Men who live by Trade and whose being rich or beggars depends much on the honesty of their Servants to be enamoâ—â—â—â— on that Preaching that is most passionate and loud against what looks like luxury and is apt to occasion unnecessary expences to them And therefore no humane Art will ever Reconcile them to one Casuistical Tenet that is so so branded in the Pope's said Decree of the second of March viz. Servants of either Sex may secretly steal from their Masters for the value of their service if it is greater than the Salary which they receive The Mystery of Iesuitism letter 6 pag. 80 cites for this Tenet Father Bauny's Summary p. 213 and 214 of the sixth Edition viz. May Servants who are not content with their Wages advance them of themselves by filching and purloining as much from their Masters as they imagine necessary to make their Wages proportionable to their services On some occasions they may as when they are so poor when they come into service that they are obliged to accept any proffer that 's made to them and that other servants of their quality get more elsewhere At the rate of this Moral Theology no Tradesman knows what Mony he has either in his Pocket or Compter or what Cash in his Closet nor indeed any King what Treasure he has in his Exchequer But notwithstanding the aversion of many persons of high Birth and Breeding and who are lovers of Pomp and Ceremony in matters Civil and likewise in Religious from the contrary humour of Trading Men yet is there one thing that hath and always will in spight of all differences in Religion occasion an entercourse of Civility between the former Class of Mankind here and the latter and 't is that necessity of nature that makes the Borrower a Servant to the Lender namely that the expensive former Classe taking up Mony at interest from the more frugal latter obligeth them to give the Lenders the respect of fair quarter And thus according to that Bull in Tacitus That in some parts of Scotland the Sun shines all night long there will still during the contrariety of their tenets and humours and which are as opposite as light and darkness occasionally arise a clear understanding between them And of the Redundance of Money the Puritans party had in the late times and of their designed employing it for the greatning the interest of their party the establishment of Feoffees by them for purchasing Impropriations is a great
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
and dangers 'T is true some few others have written something Mr. Baxter and Mr. Pool have laboured worthily Dr. Owen hath said somewhat to Fiat lux and there are some Sermons of the Presbyterians extant Morning Lectures against Popery these are the most and the chief of their performances I ever heard of The Conjuncture of the few and evil days of Popery would occasion another good effect a thing that is always to be wished but considering the general present ferment in Mens minds and pass'd mutual exasperations never else to be hoped for and that is this the common Calamity would cause such an Union between Protestants of several perswasions in Religion as would put a Period to that dreadful state of dissension among them which has so much horrour in it that all those subtle miscreants who have been able to cause it here and make so many of them almost ready with the ferity of the canes sepulchrales to devour one another can never in words express Nor can my imagination paint out to me any thing of the kind like it in the past course of time without my recollecting the description of the fears of the Doctor of the Gentiles given by himself concerning the State of the Church of Corinth to which he applies the words of debates envyings wraths strifes backbitings whisperings swellings tumults and without my considering the fermentation in the City of Ierusalem when near its fatal destruction But there will be a finalis concordia among the now implacable Protestants if ever Popery should set up to be the State-Religion And then any one who will give advice to a Painter to draw The present state of the Protestant Church of England may make a good Copy from the great Original of that Prophesie in Scripture The Wolf and the Lamb shall feed together c. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy Mountain c. And perhaps without going so far for a Mountain that may represent to ones fancy that State of English Protestants he may find one in England to do the work one that several of our Historians speak of telling us that in the Year 1607 When by the Irruption of the Severn Sea the Country in Somerset shire was overflown almost Twenty Miles in length and Four Miles in breadth it was then observ'd that Creatures of contrary natures as Dogs and Hares Foxes and Conies yea Cats and Mice getting up to the tops of some Hills dispensed at that time with their antipathies remaining peaceably together without sign of fear and without any violence used toward one another Nor do Men in great Towns supposed qualified only as the Children of light but as the Children of this World and as wise in their Generations and as projecting their own wealth and the encreasing of their Trade and of the value of their Rents by eminent Oblations provide for such Divines planting there and 't is obvious to every thinking Man that the erecting of Free-Schools and encouraging excellent Divines to live in any particular Town turns sufficiently to Mens account in this World as to the ends aforesaid by attracting inhabitants For it will be natural to Christians there when they do not barely hear of a Christ Transubstantiated into a dull Wafer but see one as I may say Transfigured and shining as the Sun in the Preaching of the Gospel to say Lord it is good for us to be here and for them there to make Tabernacles and provide Oblations not for dead but living Saints and as a living Dog is more valuable then a dead Lyon so I beâ—lieve that in any times of Popery here that can come any one Corporation and a holy learned Divine of the Church of England will get more by one another then all Towns where Shrines and Images of dead Saints shall be set up will mutually gain thereby Then will the Clergy and People being benefactors to each other be naturally ready to pray for each other and the former being believed from their hearts to say O Lord save thy people will find both an Oral and Cordial Response from the latter And bless thy Clergy But while I am thus accompanied by the Guide of Natural reason travelling in the Region of future time the time that only is the object of humane sollicitude and from which anxious minds are too apt to fear that every days birth may be a Monster I have by considering the former Revenue accruing to the Church by Oblations took occasion to Corroborate my great affirmation of it s not being naturally possible for Popery to exterminate the Protestant Religion in England a Religion that Popery can never take by assault or making of its professors Martyrs nor yet by Siege in starving its Pastors 'T is true that such a great impost as Popery may occasion to Protestants by Oblations may in one sense seem to have the nature of a punishment namely because 't will not be a burden to which all Subjects or indeed all Protestants will be equally liable and it will chiefly light on the devouter sort of Protestants And in like manner it may be said that the gain that arose from Oblations in the times of Popery to the Parish Priests of great Towns was in effect an unequal impost on the Popish Laity as being a Tax only on the more Ignorant and Superstitious of them But any one who has in the least considered matters of State cannot but know that any great inequality of Taxes that lights on the Subject as a mischief doth prove to the Prince an inconvenience to whom the Subjects pressure makes him unable to afford that Subsidium he otherwise could and perhaps would cheerfully for the Publick safety Thus may the great supposed charge to be incumbent on the more devout Protestants by Oblations probably tempt them to use all the means the Law will permit to render the Government of a Popish Prince uneasie to him and certainly disable them from paying in that proportion toward the public Levys upon emergent occasions they else might do It may therefore here be affirm'd that the gain of Popes arising from Indulgences which was so vast that Popes would boast That they could never want 〈◊〉 while they could command Pen and Ink and which Klockius in his Book de Contributionibus observes did yield the Pope in Common Years a hundred Tuns of Gold i. e. a Million of pounds Sterling and which being an unequal Tax on Papists and not pressing the debauchees of that Religion but only falling heavy on the more Pious and devout sort made them the less able to supply the holy See with mony on extraordinary occasions or to pay their Taxes due to the Popish Princes they lived under and particularly those due to the Pope as a Temporal Prince has since in a manner dyed a natural death the light of Learning having no sooner come into the World then that poor Hermit Fryer Martin Luther scourged the Popes Buyers and Sellers
be affirm'd That all Monkish hopes of our Ploughmen happening again to be over-run by Shepherds are very extravagant and Popery will grosly err if it shall think that Poverty will ever compel this sort of men to the turpitude of taking up illegal Arms for it or that it can eradicate their innate hatred against it The Subsistence that the Plough afforded our Husbandmen in their Trade made few of them in Comparison of those of other Trades become Souldiers in our late Civil Warrs Nor were they then observ'd to favour those hyhocritical Religion-Traders the Land was then pester'd with Nor indeed can they who really Till and Improve the Earth naturally affect those who pretend to Cultivate Heaven and by necessity of Nature it must still come to pass that they who acquire their own bread by rearing it for others with hard labour will have an aversion against those who can subsist luxuriously by cheating others of it with easie Tricks and against any attempts for a Resetled Monkery which would after the mode of the Pyed Piper demand an unconscionable rate for trying to rid us of a few haeretical Mice and which too tho our Land should pay would yet depopulate it of its Children And here I cannot forbear to Observe That there happen'd one thing so momentous that it can never be forgot while the English Nation has a Being and which did among our people in the Country Convey a fresh sense of the Pestilential nature of Popery and of the encreasing Danger of its infection and that is that the Body of our Clergy of the Church of England did generally from the Press and Pulpit for some Years together send so many strong Antidotes against Popery round the Kingdom Every Pulpit almost from one end of the Land to the other did resound as I may say with a Seasonable discourse against Popery It may be with Justice apply'd to those Discourses of our Divines That they alarmed more than our English World or perhaps the Roman and that the World elsewhere did ring with their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I here allude to those words in the Epistle to the Romans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Their sound went into all the Earth and their words to the ends of the World. There is no doubt but their Sound was heard to Rome by the help of the Iesuits intelligence and that our Divines knew when they so Preach'd and Writ they had pass'd the Rubicon and that 't was in vain like Cranmer to try to be reconciled to irreconcileable Rome and that 't would be as much in vain in any Course of future time to use politic whispers in Commendation of Popery after their former loudness against it as for one who told a Husband that he saw such an one strugling to ravish his Wife to say afterward that he was a very Civil Gentleman Our Fanaticks therefore do by nothing more deserve that Name then by nick-naming the Body of the Clergy of the Church of England as fautors of Popery since 't was but of yesterday that almost all our First and Second Rate Divines did like Capital Ships as I may say one after another attaque the Fleet of the Romanists and discharge their Thunder upon them but as my Lord Bacon hath observ'd That in great Sounds the Continuance is more than momentany and that the noyse of Great Ordnance of which the Sound is carry'd many miles on the Land and much further on the Sea will there come to the Ear not in the instant of the shooting off but an hour or more later the which must needs be the Continuance of the first Sound Thus too I hope that the aforesaid late 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of our Capital Divines against Popery which has been heard far and near among our Countery Inhabitants and will I believe Continue audible among them during the hour of life will in part of that hour sooner or later be heard with regard by our weaker Brethren But what a Daemon then in understanding or God of Eloquence had he need to think himself and to be thought too such by others who Imagines to talk England both out of its Manna of Religion and what is better then its Flesh-Pots too and to persuade us by bringing in Monkery again to have our Land ore-run with Flocks of Sheep and to want hands to Work their Fleeces or as I may say to fancy to have Manufacture without hands and for want thereof to make our Sheep almost useless but only to eat and in that way too to be chiefly appropriated to the Stomachs of Lubbers and who would allow our Land Flocks of Sheep but not Dogs to guard them I mean a sufficient growing Populacy in the Land to defend both it and the very Flocks in it and I may add too who would almost make the Wooll of our Sheep useless but only to send into Forrain Parts and who would abdicate from the Land that benefit of the continual passing of our Wooll here through so many hands busy'd in Trade and thence fill'd with Wealth in the way of Interest upon Interest intended by Nature for the maintenance and subsistance of our People so multiplying as aforesaid and preparing Tables for all new Guests here let them come into the World never so fast and would have us Consent to the diminution of the Number of our People when for want of our being fully stock'd with them so great a part of our Land lyes fallow every Year as doth not in Countreys sufficiently Populous and where the Lands value will quit the cost of the Manuring Alas when through the Divine Blessing England shall arrive at the state of being fully Peopled and being got beyond Pasture that first improvement of a thin Peopled Country shall likewise have Compleated that second of Tillage that our being better Peopled will occasion there will lie a third in our View to employ the Labours of our Consummate Populacy namely that of Gardening and to oblige us that the Earth shall produce nothing but what is exactly useful and instead of going back from Tillage to Pasture we must naturally go forward from Tillage to Gardening whereby one Acre may be made to maintain Twenty persons whereas now 't is observ'd that 20 Acres generally throughout England maintain but a fourth of that number viz. 5. persons And when we are thus furnished with as many People as by Tillage or Gardening can well live on the Land 't is then and not before that our encreasing Populousness will push on greater numbers of our Inhabitants to live on the Sea which none will choose to do that can live on the Shoare and 't is only such a state of populacy that can naturally make us Masters of the Fishing-Trade to compass which all our Projects before whether by Acts of Parliament or Companies and Stock will be but Chymerical Moreover 't is only such a state of Populacy that will exonerate us of those burdens of
their Guardian and account it a very preposterous thing that since our Saviour refused to divide an Inheritance his pretended Vicar should do nothing else Moreover Holy Churches resuming all its Lands out of Lay hands would appear the more strange in England when we see as my Lord Primate Bramhal saith in his vindication of the Church of England p. 212 that the very Kings of Spain impose Pensions usually on Ecclesiastical preferments to the 4th part of the value and particularly one Pension on the Arch-Bishoprick of Sivile in favour of an Infant of Castile of greater value then all the Pensions there imposed by the Pope and when we know that the French King doth for the behoof of so great a number of Lay-men impose so many and great Pensions on the Abbeys without saying to the Abbots more then Car tel est nostre plaisir Sir Edwyn Sands in his Europae Speculum writ in the Year 1599 and in the time of Harry the 4 th of France speaking of that Kingdom saith That there the Church Prelacies and other Governments of Souls are made the Fees and Charges of meer Courtiers and Soldiers and our excellent Animadverter on Monsieur Sorbier reflecting on that Country Intimates in effect how there the chiefest spiritual dignities are entailed upon Families and possest by Children They who unjustly cry out of the Constitution of the Church of England for interrupting the Trade of the Kingdom would be loud enough in their Complaints of Omnia comesta à Belo under Popery He who knows not that the Revenue of the King now depends in a manner solely upon Trade and that Trade depends on populousness and that the encouragement of people to live under any Government is that great thing call'd Property in their Estates Religion and Laws and that therefore any thing that calls it self Religion that goes to exterminate above a hundred and fifty persons for every one it leaves for so the Proportion between Non-Papists and Papists by the Bishops survey made about the Year 1676 was return'd to be and to call them Hereticks and which makes their Goods and life ipso facto a forfeit of the Law will not ipso facto exterminate Trade is fitter for the Galleys or a Trading Voyage to the Anticyrae then for any discourse of Trade and Commerce Your Lordship hath in your Travels sufficiently seen it long since exemplified that the Protestant Countries for the quantity of Ground exceed the Popish in Trade and numbers of People and that thus the Protestant Hanse Towns have eclipsed their Roman Catholick Neighbours and Amsterdam Antwerp and the Vnited Provinces Flanders and that in Flanders where the Ecclesiasticks are Proprietors of seven parts of ten of the whole Country Levies of Men and Money for the defence thereof have been made with so much slowness and difficulty and been so inconsiderable as not to have secured themselves against Invaders Nor did the Ecclesiasticks there think it worth their while to strain themselves in Contributions to resist an Invader who is of their own Religion the which made the French Kings Victories there flie like Lightning more then our over-rich English Regulars did to oppose William the Conqueror when he came here under the Popes Banner And thus were they here and in Flanders are like Wenns in the Body which draw to themselves much nourishment and are of great trouble and no use and thus ridiculous is it that so over great a part of the property of the Land should be linked to persons who are no way linked to the interest of the Country more then professed Gamesters and Empyrics and Soldiers of Fortune and are no more damnified by Popish Invaders then Fishes of the Sea are by Earth-Quakes But on the other hand in the United-Provinces how easily and soon are vast Taxes raised when their All is at Stake to what a prodigious encrease of the numbers of their People have they attain'd since the Reformation insomuch that the Author of a Political discourse of the Interest of Holland Printed in Dutch in the Year 1669 and Licensed by Iohn de Witt and by Van Beaumont makes the People in the Province of Holland to be 2 Millions and 400 thousand and so likewise doth Pellerus in his Learned Notes on Klockius de Aerario p. 300. and there cites that Book of the interest of Holland when as Gerard Malynes in his Lex mercatoria makes the People in Flanders in the Year 1622 to have consisted of a hundred and forty thousand Families and he reckoning each of them one with an other at 5 persons makes the Total of the people in Flanders to have then amounted but to seven hundred thousand Souls And yet as that Author of the interest of Holland saith the Province of Holland can hardly make 400 thousand profitable Acres or Morgens of Land Down and Heath not put in and that the 8 th part of the Inhabitants of Holland cannot be nourished with what is growing there but tells us what prodigious Granaries they there have and that Amsterdam that in the Year 1571 was about 200 Morgens or Acres of Land was in the year 1650 enlarged to 600 Morgens or Acres of Land in Circumference and to have in it three hundred thousand Souls And the defence of the Zelanders Choice Printed in the Year 1673 mentions Aitsmas Liere to have reckon'd the publick Incomes of Holland alone in the Year 1643 to have amounted to 1100 thousand pound Sterling and the Author of the Interest of Holland saith that in one Year in a time of Peace viz. In the Year 1664 the Inhabitants of Holland did over and above the Customes and other Domains of the Earls or States of Holland pay towards the publick Charge as follows viz. To the States of Holland 11 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Maze 472 898 Gilders To the Admiralty of Amsterdam 2 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter 200 thousand Guilders Which comes to in all about 14 hundred 87 thousand Pounds Sterling How meanly do the Atchievements of Venice and their Efforts to aggrandize their Republick compared with Hollands shew in story for the quantity of years many times doubled since the Dutch threw off the Yoke of the Papacy History hath recorded the longevity of the Venetian Government as it has of Methusalem of whom we read not 〈◊〉 great thing he said or did or attempted but a few days of the short life of Alexander in the Ballance of same weighs down the 999 years of the other The very Religion of Popery makes the Venetians more narrow in their principles and even in their Rules of Traffick then are the Inhabitants of Protestant Countries The Popish Religion doth hamper its devout Professors as to Trading with Hereticks and holding Communication with such as are ipso jure ipso facto excommunicated and giving any Quarentine to men said to be infected with Heresie insomuch that we are told in D'
countenanced and maintained by the same And I believe none will imagine that those Nonconforming Divines would take any Oath but in the imposers sence or Casuistically advise others so to do 'T is therefore no marvel if our later Presbytery being so unconformable to the Law of the Land and to the Tenets of the former Nonconformists soon grew weary of it self and did with its horrid Visage only face us and march off Your Lordship found that in another thing it resembled Popery namely in that it would be all or nothing and you helped it to the latter part of the Alternative Mr. Nye who made a great Figure in the Assembly of Divines hath in that Book of his forementioned p. 98 helped this Age to know how Arbitrary they would have been in delivering men to Satan for saith he there the exercise of Discipline in our Congregations was ordered by the Parliament but limited likewise to an enumeration of the Sins for which we might excommunicate exempting other Sinners that were as much under our charge This was looked on by the Assembly as a great Abridgment of their Ministerial Liberty and so great as they professed it could not with a good Conscience be submitted to as not being able to perform their trust which they receiv'd from Iesus Christ and must give an account of to him resolving to stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free So ridiculous were those Divines that tho no Pope ever arrogated a power to Excommunicate one but for the Crimes nominated in his Canon-Law and tho our Church of England never claim'd a power of excommunicating but for a Crime express'd in the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws yet those froward Disciplinarians would have been allow'd to shoot their Thunderbolts of Excommunication upon a Capricio But not only the Parliament but the whole Nation in a manner pronounced them Contumacious the people saw how Arbitrarily they would have interdicted the whole Land from the use of the Cup and Bread too in the Sacrament and have rail'd in the Communion-Table with fantastick Qualifications and they soon judged those Clergy-men guilty of Irregularity and the rather for that they had engaged so far in Causâ sanguinis and the same Sun of Reason and Knowledge that with the strength of its Beams had here put out the Popes Kitching Fire of Purgatory did soon without noise and insensibly confound their Dominions in the Kingdom of Darkness and those Divines themselves found that their destroying Episcopacy here had in effect by the Parliaments being their Superintendants enthroned Erastianisme that which indeed their Principles led them to hate more then Episcopacy it self Mr. Baxter in the Preface to his second part of the Nonconformists Plea speaking of Presbytery saith I do not hear of many out of London and Lancashire that did ever set up this Government and I know not of one Congregation now in London of Englishmen that exerciseth the Presbyterian Government nor ever did since the King came home c. And saith they have no National Assembly no Classes no Coalition of many Churches to make a Presbytery and I hear of none unless perhaps some Independants that I know not that have so much as ruling Lay-Elders Alluding to some expressions before applyed to Papists and Popery I may say that the Cato's of Presbytery came here on the Stage tantum ut exirent and that Government soon had its period here per simplicem desinentiam 'T was obvious that Presbytery as well as Popery directed men where to stand in a place divided from the Civil Government and so to shake the Earth and it appear'd very inauspicious to the Model of the Covenant that in its first Paragraph it should stumble upon implicit Faith by swearing to a Government and Reformation that shall be and to the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government the particulars whereof the Lay-Covenanters of England if not the Clerical also were far from understanding And tho in that Paragraph the Covenant binds its takers to endeavour to advance the Reformation of Religion according to the word of God a Clause that Sir Harry Vane declared to a very worthy Gentleman now living that he caus'd to be inserted into the Covenant after much debate about the same and opposition from the Scotch Commissioners with whom he was interested in the making of it and thereupon said That â—e was three days in getting the word of God into the Covenant yet that Covenant having almost extirpated Root and Branch those spiritual Guides from whom the people might expect a more Rational and Learned Interpretation of the Sense of the word of God then from the Presbyterian Divines they were soon sensible of their danger both as to the perverting of the Scripture and subverting of the Church from the new Correctors of Magnificat and found that such an Inundation of Vile Religionary Tenets was got into the Church that the Houses of Parliament ordered the 10 th of March 1646. To be set apart as a solemn day of humiliation to seek Gods Assistance for the suppressing and preventing of the growth and spreading of Errors Heresies and Blasphemies and that Mr. Vines on that day Preaching before the Commons p. the 4 th of his Sermon printed acknowledged That that day was the first that ever was in England on that sad occasion and p. 67 of that Sermon mentioned a most detestable thing then broach'd by the Press though yet in the way of Query namely what is meant by the word Scripture when it is asserted that the denying of the Scriptures to be the word of God should be holden worthy of death for saith the Author either the English Scriptures or Scriptures in English are meant by the word Scriptures or the Hebrew and Greek Copies or Originals the former cannot be meant with reason because God did not speak to his Prophets and Apostles in the English Tongue nor the latter for the greatest part of men in the Kingdom do not understand or know them Mr. Vines declared his just Abhorrence of that insinuation and saith If this dilemma be good what is become of the certain foundation of our hope or faith or comfort how can we search the Scriptures without going first to School to learn Hebrew and Greek And 't was obvious to every one to consider that if the English Scriptures are not the word of God there was an end not only of the Reformation according to it mentioned in the Covenant but the substantial one promoted by the Protestant Religion that help'd us to the Treasure of our English Bibles and that we should soon be stranded on the Shore of Implicit Faith. Nor could it long be hid from common observation that those Divines who exclaim'd so much against the Ceremonies of the Church of England as an oppressive Yoke would have imposed on us such a rigid observation of the Sabbath the great Scene
of Ceremonies among the Iews as would have made it forgot that it was ever made for man. The thinking sort of men found that tho the Principles of those Divines did not like the Jesuits make Calumny no mortal Sin that yet as the Adherents to Presbytery did calumniate the Constitution of the Church of England for bordring on Popery and the Royal Martyr for being a Fautor to it so they did by their Censorious tempers transfuse such an acid humour among the people that very much loosned the Nerves of the English good nature and distorted the English hospitality and therefore 't is but by a natural instinct that that old Pharisaical Leven is now so nauseous that probably any one suspected of an inclination to replant the old Presbytery here and its Arbitrary Power to excommunicate would too be staked down to a narrower tedder in Conversation and be it as it were excommunicated from Gentlemens Company as much as Make-bates or common Informers upon Penal Statutes The people heretofore found out that as Popery endangers men by the Priests not intending to make the Sacrament of the Eucharist when he administers it So that these as I said intended it should not be at all administred but to their own Sect and that the gesture of sitting at the Communion that they invited men to and thereby to their being rescued from the Popish Posture of Kneeling was but a sort of Sham in its way for that kneeling was the gesture used in the ancient times of the Church and the first that was ever observ'd to sit then was the Pope to express his State. The observing sort of Men then judged that as Sibthorpe and Manwaring had been exploded for going beyond their Credentials from Heaven as God's Ambassadors in straining the Prerogative of Princes these deserv'd to be so too for scruing the Power of Parliaments above Law and for thrusting down the King into the Class of The Three Estates and that as Sibthorpe was exposed to severe Animadversions from the Age for his Sermon of Apostolic Obedience shewing the Duty of Subjects to pay Tribute and Taxes to their Princes c. And p. 21. of that Sermon applying the words of Curse ye Meroz yea curse them bitterly c. to the promoting his illegal purpose they deserved to be censur'd for going on too with the Alarm of Curse ye Meroz thousands of times over when the Subjects were slack in paying Tribute to one another to dethrone their Prince They saw that those Divines in trying to salve the Phaenomena of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Covenant that they had taken were in the Course of their Theology continually put to it to deliberate of Rebellion and that their very deliberation of it was ipso facto one and a thing that included the horror of a mans deliberating to kill his Father and 't was but natural for the people representative and diffusive to fancy it lawful for them silently to resume the power given to those Church-men and abused by them who were always in the Pulpit and Press lowdly trumpeting forth the Iesuitical Notion of the lawfulness of the peoples resuming the Power given to Kings and as I shall never fear that the King of Spain will ever be able to take the World in a Ginne by Campanellas advise to him in Chap. 5. of the Spanish Monarchy to employ Divines to set up the Roar of unus Pastor and unum Ovile every where for the Pope so neither shall I that mens vociferating the Clause in the Covenant viz. That the Lord may be One and his Name One and in the three Kingdoms will ever again be able to embroyl them In short any one who shall consider that in Scotland Presbytery's former Kingdom of Darkness the people have been so of late illuminated as to find the way to be Latitudinarians need never have any fears and jealousies of that Governments jus Divinum again Marching hither In the first Session of the second Parliament of this King at Edenburgh November the 16th 1669. There passed an Act wherein 't was declared That his Majesty hath the Supreme Authority over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastical within this his Kingdom and that by vertue thereof the ordering and disposal of the external Government and Policy of the Church doth properly belong to his Majesty and his Successors as an Inherent Right to the Crown and that his Majesty and his Successors may settle Enact and Emit such Constitutions Acts and Orders concerning the Administration of the External Government of the Church and the Persons employed in the same and concerning all Ecclesiastical meeting and matters to be proposed and determined therein as they in their Royal Wisdom shall think fit c. And his Majesty with Advise and Consent aforesaid doth rescind and annual all Laws Acts and Clauses thereof and all Customs and Constitutions Civil or Ecclesiastick which are contrary to or inconsistent with his Majesties Supremacy as it is here asserted and declares the same void and null in all times coming This Act of Parliament is the more observable for that it declared the extent of the Regal Power in Ecclesiasticks after that in the Year 1663 An Act passed there for a National Synod under the Government of Bishops and for that Presbytery which was before like Hame the only body in Nature that doth not content it self to take in any other body but would either overcome and turn another body into it self as by victory or it self to dye and go out was then grown so amenable to the Course of Nature in all other bodies of which one is a glue to another that not satisfied with its own former consistence it did as suddenly and easily and quietly receive in the body of Episcopacy as I may say as Air takes in light and as readily as Metals themselves receive in strong waters and then it was that Episcopacy which in the Forms of Church Government seems by its weight as Gold among Metals and indeed all bodies to be the most close and solid did there greedily drink in the Quicksilver of Presbytery But tho Presbytery then was and now is considerable in the Internal part of the Government of the Church of Scotland and is likely so to be till Christ's second coming humanly speaking with a non obstante to any thing that time can cause and will be preserved in perpetuity by the means of what my Lord Bacon calls the drowning of Metals namely when the baser Metal is incorporated with the more rich as Silver with Gold yet so willing were they in Scotland to give to Caesar the real Supremacy that was Caesars that knowing the Protestant Religion can be no more there destroyed under any external form of Church Polity then as I said Gold can be destroyed in Nature they thought it more prudent to trust the Crown with a Power of melting down that on emergent occasions and altering the Superscription of its
not Published I think by a friend to the Papists for the Author there Names them and the respective Parishes they lived in and the total number of Men and Women there was 317 of which only one Man was there called Monsieur tho yet six others seem'd to me there to be of French Names and one there has a Dutch Name and only one person in there call'd an Italian so that notwithstanding the great Cry of Forraign Papists in and about London they did but little more then make a Number and the persons there reckoned for St. Martins in the Fields are but 22 and for Covent-Garden but 4 where yet the Bishops Survey makes 64 and for St. Margarets Westminster that Printed Paper makes but 4 of which the Number it seem'd in 41 proved so dreadful to Justice Howard St. Andrews Holborn has in that Paper but 6 which in the Bishops Survey has 13. St. Giles in the Fields has in that Paper but 23 which has in the Bishops Survey 126. The Savoy in that Paper has but 6 which in the Bishops Survey has just the same Number and St. Giles Cripplegate has there but 2 which in the Bishops Survey has 20. Of the care that was probably taken in those Parishes in London that made Returns in that Survey Covent-Garden-Parish and some others are Instances in one thing namely that there are near so many houses as Returns are made for or not many more Thus in Covent-Garden the Conformists return'd are 790 the Papists 64 the Nonconformists 6 and so Servants and Children and Lodgers being not return'd as Dr. Glanvile saith the persons of Men and their Wives return'd in all there are 860 which agrees pretty well with the number of houses there which are about 460. I suppose that Printed Paper by the Number of Inhabitants included only House-keepers as the Bishops Survey did and tho it is not to be doubted but that when that Survey was made there were in the respective Diocesses Deaneries and Parishes therein return'd at least the full Number of the Papists therein mention'd yet the Popish Plot about two years after occasioning the other Paper it may be supposed that what by many Popish Families removing out of the Realm and what by many of them coming to our Churches the Number of the Popish Recusants did there considerably decrease as it has from the beginning of the Reformation gradually done unless in some particular Intervals or Conjunctures and is likely so to do till the uncouthness and strangeness of their Principles and Scarcity of the persons that own them shall make them tolerable as Rarities I did before in this Letter thus far accord with Mr. Nye that Popery since the Reformation may have sometimes acquired a new vigour and that it hath not always since its first assaults against Popery gain'd ground of it proportionably but whatever the Fate of the Ejected Puritan Divines in Queen Elizabeth's days was and whether deserv'd or not and properly or not timed I enquire not tho yet in our days the plenty of Conformist Divines is such visibly that the supply of all our good Livings needs not crave Aid from Dissenters but do on all thoughts made persist in my opinion that Protestancy hath since its being first espous'd here as a Religion propagated it self by the great encrease of its followers except in some infectious Intervals of time as I may call them Thus tho the Obsarvator on the Bills of Mortality hath taught us as aforesaid that every Marriage with another produceth four Children yet in times of Pestilence we are told by him that the Christnings decrease and that a Disposition in the. Air toward the Plague doth also dispose Women to Abortion and considering this we may well infer when the Burials do much exceed the Births in any City reverà and not seemingly by the not Registring all the Births that tho the Bills of Mortality tell us that there dyed then none of the Plague and that there were then Parishes infected with the Plague none yet there is then a Pestilence there Reigning And thus is it a Pestilential time with a Church when more Apostatise from it then are born or as I may say regenerated into it or converted and therefore by such times we are not to estimate the encrease of the propagation of the Numbers of the Church of England There was a time in Queen Elizabeth's Reign that the Reformation was honour'd by all Englands populace being of a piece almost and worshiping God in the way prescribed with one heart and one mind and then as we are told by Sir Re. Cotton p. 42 and 43. Of his considerations for repressing the encrease of Papists till the 11th of her Reign a Recusants name was scarce known c. the name of a Papist smelt rank even in their own Nostrils and for pure shame to be accounted such they resorted duly to our Churches but when they saw their great Coriphaeus Sanders had slâ—ly pinn'd the Name of Puritans on the Sleeves of Protestants that encountred them with most courage and percâ—ived that the word was pleasing to some of our own side c. That saith he brought plenty of water to the Popes Mill and there will most Men grind where they see appearance to be well serv'd But the accidental encrease of their Numbers in any Conjuncture was carefully regarded by the State and to this purpose we are told it in Heywood Townsends Collections that Dr. Bennet acquainted the House of Commons that there were 1500 Râ—cusants in Yorkshire which he vouched upon his Credit were presented in the Ecclesiastical Court and before the Council at York Popery it seems then gain'd ground in the poor North having lest it in the warm South and to this day in the Northern parts of England where the Livings generally are poor the light of the Gospel hath not quite dissipated the Mists of Popery in somuch that if any one shall tell me that the Province of York which bears but a 6 th part of the Taxes and hath not in it much above a 6 th part of the people that the Province of Canterbury hath yet contains at least the half of the number of Papists that the Province of Canterbury doth I shall not contradict his Estimate It is the Observation of Dr. Fuller in his Church History of the part of England Trent North that 't is scarce a third of England in ground but almost the half thereof for the growth of Recusants therein And thus as the Observator on the Bills of Mortality hath observed that Northern as well as Southern Countries are infected with great Plagues altho in the Southern Countries they are more vehement and do begin and end more suddenly it may be said that the infection of Popery doth yet continue in our Northern parts But that the Papists valued themselves on their numbers throughout England toward the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign appears out of that Pestilential Book
Reign of the Royal Martyr their Numbers decreased faster in many active Conjunctures of time then they encreased in any lazy one The Author of the Regal Apology and supposed to be Doctor Bate the Physitian saith in p. 39. It is well known there are not 24000 Papists Convicted in all England and Wales And if we should suppose the Number of the Papists then not Convicted to be double to that of the Convicted yet would such their number appear considerably dwindled from what it was swoln to in any Conjuncture before in King Iames's Reign And I believe if our Civil Wars had not happen'd one Canon even of the Convacation of 1640 as ill as that Convocation heard among many I mean the third Canon would have effected the extermination of Popery from England in the Reign of the Royal Martyr The Title of the Canon is for Suppressing of the growth of Popery No doubt but a little before that time Popery did again lift up his head as if its Redemption were to draw nigh in Ireland and England and therefore the Convocation then with great conduct and skill did lead up our Ecclesiastical Hierarchy to confront its growth and I do not remember to have found that Phrase of the growth of Popery which has in later days so filled our Mouths used in any Author before the writing of that Canon and do think that all the Committees that have been appointed to prevent the growth of Popery or Books of that Subject have not produced to the World any means or expedient so likely to make Popery have done growing here as is the excellent Scheme for that purpose drawn in that Canon and which when ever it shall be with vigour executed will make our fears grow out of fashion either of the number of the Arguments of the Papists or of the Argument of their Numbers That since that Restoration of our King and Laws and of the discipline of our Church a Conjuncture hap'ned that made the barren Womb of Popery here fruitful of Numbers none will deny who consider how all our great Divines of the Church of England did so lately lift up their voices like a Trumpet against it as I before observed In the account of the Numbers of the perswasions in Religion in the Province of Canterbury that Dr. Glanvile said he had seen and which is contained in a Sheet of Paper among the nine Preliminary Observations the first is That many left the Church upon the late indulgence who before did frequent it I believe by the many there are meant those that veer'd toward Popery and I suppose that few had for several precedent years repaired thither from fear of the Penal Laws We have a Remark given us by that Learned States-man and Noble Confessor of the Church of England the Earl of Clarendon in his judicious Animadversions printed Anno 1673 on Cressy ' s Book against Dr. Stillingfleet That the rude and boisterous behaviour of some of the Roman Catholicks here disturbed the happy Calm they all enjoyed and the vanity and folly of others made that ill use of the Kings bounty and generosity toward them that they endeavoured to make it believ'd that it proceeded not from Charity and Compassion toward their persons but from affection to their Religion and took upon them to reproach the Church of England and all who adhered to it as if they had been in a condition as well as a disposition to oppress it and to affront and discountenance all who would adhere to it and so alienated the affections of those who desired they should not be disquieted and kindled a jealousie in others who had believed that they were willing to attempt it and had more power to compass it then was discerned c. and this mischief the wisest and soberest Catholicks of England have long foreseen would be the effect of that petulant and unruly Spirit that sway'd too much among them and did all they could to restrain it c. And afterward saith As if they could subdue the whole Kingdom and so care not whom they provoke A friend of mine in the Kings Loyal long Parliament wrote to me for News after one of their Sessions that the Speaker of the House of Commons Mr. Seymour opening according to the customary manner in a publick Speech to his Majesty in the House of Lords the nature of the Bills then ready for the Royal Assent spake thus concerning that sharp one that will forever here cut Popery to the quick viz. And for the severity of this Bill to the Papists they may thank their own petulant insolence The word petulant being very significant and importing sawcy malepert impudent reproachful ready to do wrong one would suppose that those two great observing persons would not apply it to any body of men without just occasion It seems the House of Commons at their next Session in an Address to the King October 31. 1673. had this Clause That for another age at the least this Kingdom will be under continual apprehensions of the growth of Popery and the danger of the Protestant Religion and in an Address to his Majesty November the 3 d 1673. Speaking of the Popish Recusants they have these words whose numbers and insolencies are greatly of late encreased c. It was then high time for that Great Minister of the King the Earl of Danby when he saw that of all Dissenters chiefly the Popish ones had sascinated so many with a belief of their Numbers to cause that great enquiry into them to be made and it was his fortune by the very enquiry to strip the Papists of many of their valued number for the very next observation to that I before mentioned is this The sending forth these Enquiries has caused many to frequent the Church Alsted in his Chronology ventures to say p. 112. David ex merâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 numerat populum and the thing perhaps done with an ill intent was punish'd with a Plague from God but the Fact of our Noble and Profound States-man did abate the Plague of the late Conjuncture of pragmatical insolence and too the Plague of the fear of Papists that was then so epidemical among Protestants and did in effect console us as with the words of Elisha viz. Fear not for they that be with us are more then they that be with them and indeed the numbering of people in the Bills of Mortality who dye of the Plague is not more necessary to the State then is the numbring of the Souls infected in any Conjuncture with destructive opinions and the omission thereof in a publick Minister when ever it should be as necessary as at that time it was would appear in him a Lethargy that would be as Penal as a Plague to a Kingdom That useful undertaking of his Lordship as it was worthy of his very great abilities and vigilance for the publick so was it of the great power he had in the Government and
used then by some of our well-meaning Church-men who thought that the use of some Ceremonies more than our Law required would have brought the Church of Rome over to us ' T is aut Caesar aut Nullus that the Pope would be and he will here keep as many Subjects as he can since not able to acquire as many as he would And the truth is as the attempt of an excellent Swimmer to save one totally inexpert therein usually proves fatal so likely will the generous and charitable design of a Church of a rational Discipline interposing to save one of an irrational and that can do nothing by vigour of reason to bear up it self and is therefore meer dead weight Since the Epoche of the Popish Plot that the Press has been to all writing Mankind so much unrestrain'd the World hath seen little of the Papists Learned Writings or scarce any thing writ with Art and Wit except the Compendium and instead of proving in Volumes that the Church of England is no true Church or that St. Peter was ever at Rome they have extended all the Nerves of their Wit in Pamphlets only to prove that Doctor Oates is no true Doctor and that he was never a â—alamanca And I believe that as the asserting of Popery here per viam Thomae or in the way of the Schools is in the Course of Nature Eternally over so will the adorning it by the way of Curiosity of Wit or Fancy grow obsolete But here it is proper to be observed that in all the Conjunctures before mention'd and in those wherein our former Protestant Princes for deep reason of State have been most favourable to their Popish Subjects by the Relaxation of the Penal Laws and when some Papists made great Figures in the Court and got the Ballance of Court-preferment a while by stealth into their hands and that Holy Church being anew Whiten'd over with some temporary Prosperity many Proselytes did Flock to it as Doves to their Windows yet the Ground that Popery got then was but Made Ground and not natural and was too chargeable to be kept And as the vulgar have falsly imagined that a great Plague has happen'd in the beginning of every Princes Reign so has it been obvious to the more refined observers that in the Reign of every new Protestant Prince Popery has made a fresh essay to augment it self in the Epocha of a new Conjuncture And that as in the most Pestilential times of Mortality even in our Metropolis almost only the poorer sort of People are swept away by it Thus was it too in in those Conjunctures here when Popery boasted of its many Converts But Nemo decipit lumbos and Popery when pamper'd did but Counterfeit a sound strength and as Quintilian's words are Verum robur inani saginâ mentiri and was but in bad travelling Case by that washy adventitious flesh and soon tired in its furious Race while Protestancy had that permanent Motion which Dr. Iackson on the Creed supposeth the Heavens would have if God should move them in an instant and which if he did were he saith more properly to be called A vigorous permanency alluding perhaps to things seeming to stand still when they move fastest Dr. Twisse in answer to him doth to the Expression of a Permanent Motion with a mirth and raillery unusual in him apply that Verse of a Poet whose Horse being tired and not moveable by the Spur said to his fellow Traveller who Rein'd in his Horse to go easily Your Horse stands still faster then mine will go And thus raillery apart I do believe that Protestancy will stand still faster than Popery can go let it be never so high mounted And we may properly resemble the course of Protestancy in any Conjuncture to the Sun which enjoys its Natural Motion at the same time it suffers its Forced and according to Mr. Cowley's Expression doth at the same time run the day and walk the year And we may as properly resemble the height and greatness of Popery in any former Conjuncture and the greatness of Peoples fears of its Growth and Continuance to the dreadful Entrance and dull Exit of a Comet Many Comets have hung over our heads and lasted some considerable time that were bigger than the Globe of the Earth which as they appear'd on a sudden so hath that great Mass of Matter of which they consisted and which threat'ned destruction to the Earth by little and little dwindled to nothing or disappear'd And this hath been the Event of the Growth of Popery and over-growth of its Fears here and I believe will be in any Conjuncture that can come I believe that if such an extremely improbable thing should ever happen as that the Legislative Power should allow the Papists a publick place for their Devotion in every great City in England the very sight of their Ceremonies would encrease and sharpen the Popular aversion against their Church Du Fresnes in his Learned Glossary in three Tomes as to the Scriptores mediae infimae Latinitatis mentions the origination of the use and name of the Surplice and quotes Durand in Ration lib. 3. c. 1. n. 10. 11. for it viz. Eo quod antiquitùs super tunicas pelliceas de pellibus mortuorum animalium factas induebatur quod adhuc in quibusdam Ecclesiis observatur And cites many Authorities about its being used by the Clergy and while the Antient Monks lived upon the labour of their hands and wore such Leathern Clothes as labouring Rusticks in the Towns with whom they wrought it was but a necessary piece of decency when they retired to their Oratories to Worship God together to have that covering of Linnen that might hide the sordidness of their Clothes and so probably that Linnen Surplice appearing in it self decent and carrying with it more respect from the just Reverence those Innocent Ancient Monks attracted it came by that means first in fashion in the Church to be worn by the better habited Priests and being here enjoyn'd by the Laws of our Sovereign and therein declared to be a thing not in its own nature necessary it seems to me to be an uncivil humour in our Dissenters so much to quarrel the use of it and do suppose that the Civility of the French Nation appearing in the Protestants of that Realm who are here and to whom it is natural not only to comply with Princes but even their fellow Subjects in the use of all Ceremonies they expect to be treated with may instill such a humour of Complaisance into some of those here who were aggrieved at our Churches or as I may say our Kings Ceremonies as all the Learned Books of our Divines have not yet done But if after the disuse of our Ceremonies in the late Usurpation the sight of a Surplice doth fright them so much from our Church how would they be disgusted to see one with a shaven Crown with his Amice Girdle Aube Maniple Stole
for the establishing to himself a firm Monarchy in the World and therefore ought to be guarded against and punished by the Magistrate not as errors in Religion but as destructive to the Government The Author of Omnia comesta à Belo as great a Calculator as he would go for was yet but a Blunderer in respect of the Author of this discourse in which there is so much smoothness of words and plausibleness of notion that if it were possible he would deceive some of the very Elect and that too of their Established Maintenance But whatever the Sentiments of that Author were I must affirm that as ample as the Revenue of the Church of England shews if compared with that of other Protestant Countries it is yet so far from excess in its proportion as to ward off all inconveniences from the State of mens getting by Religion The over ballance of Land here was so much on the Churches side in the times of Popery that it was then in our Provincial Constitutions sulminated as a Menace to the Layety that in case of some particular Contumacy none of their Children should be admitted into the Clerical Calling for three Generations But how Nugatory would such a threatning now be There are few or none of the inferiour Clergy but might have in inferiour Callings arrived at greater Incomes and with less charge of Education and the most envied of our dignified Clergy might in the other two of the great professions viz. in Law and Physick raised their Estates and Families on better and easier terms then they now can And that the Men of the most eminent natural parts would be losers by Religion I mean by the Clerical Profession but for the encouragement of these Dignities we have an indication from the quality of the Divines in the late times who were generally so unlearned that Learning it self then seemed to have retreated from our Vniversities to the Colledge of Physitians in London Notwithstanding the great Sums of Money by the Usurp'd Powers employ'd in the Augmentations of Livings one may well suppose that all of the 10000 Livings in England except 600 needed for that was the number of the Livings in England as beforesaid averr'd to have afforded a Competent maintenance for a Minister the dearth of Learning and Learned Men still continued insomuch that the teeming press then brought forth few Learned Discourses relating to the faculty of Theology but what was published by Dr. Hammond Dr. Taylor Dr. Sanderson and some other Divines born and bred in the Sunshine of the Church of England And I do believe that in Holland the Livelihoods for their Parochial Divines are better then those that our Livings at a Medium yield especially considering that the Dutch Ministers Widdows have 40 l. a year paid them during their Viduity but for want of such encouragement as our Dignities afford for the Educating their Natives in Learning they are constrained as Mr. Philip Nye observes in his Book called Beams of former light p. 152. To send to Forraign Parts to men to be their Professors in their Academies And I account that nothing less then the hopes of being Dignitaries could in the flourishing condition of the Church of England make so many of our Learned Divines take up with the poor generality of our Livings which are such that the Answer to the Abstract published by Authority in the Year 1588 mentions in p. 27 That surely if a Survey were taken of all Parish Churches and Parochial Chappels in England I dare affirm that it would fall out that there be double or treble as many more Livings allotted for Ministers under the true value of 30 l. a year ultra omnia onera reprisas as are above that Rate And that our Divines in the late Times look'd on such a yearly Sum as an uncomfortable pittance for a Minister we have an instance in the Story told in a History of the late Times in Print where a Patron desiring one to recommend to him a godly man for a Living of 50 l. a year he then had void was answered That a godly man could not be had to accept of a Living of so small a value It is moreover a lamentable thing to consider what an Excisum hath been put on the value even of our poor Livings by the Simoniacal Practices of Lay-Patrons and in their hands the greatest part of the Impropriations hath been computed to be Sir Benjamin Rudyard a Famous Parliament-man of the last Age in a Speech of his in behalf of the Clergy spoke in Parliament and Printed at Oxford Anno 1628 speaks there of the Scandalous Livings we have of 5 l. and 5 Mark a year and Cites Bishop Iewel for complaining in a Sermon before Queen Elizabeth That the Simony of our Lay-Patrons was general throughout England and that a Gentleman cannot keep his House unless he have a Parsonage or two in farm for his Provision And how generally a Simoniacal disposition hath continued to infect our Gentry appears by the vile Bonds that have been so much by Lay-Patrons imposed on the Ministers they presented viz. to resign their Livings again to them at pleasure and it is for the lasting Glory of the Lord Chancellor that he hath in Court declared that he will on occasion Null all Bonds of that sort and no doubt but the accidental encrease of the poverty of the Gentry which hath tempted them to sell the same Land twice and to sell the same Living once will tend to the encrease of Simony Moreover when it shall be considered that the Case of a Minister is such that tho Lay-men are secured by the Great Charter from being punished for Contempt of the King's Commands otherwise then with the saving of their Contenement and Free-hold yet that he holding Virtute Officii is lyable by the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws even for those things that in the Layety are no offences to be deprived of the Free-hold that the Law supposed him as Parson or Vicar to possess and that he by the Artifice of the said Bonds hath had the benefit of his Free-hold in effect during the Patrons leâ—eplacitum and further that every New Political Conjuncture threatens him with New Subscriptions from the Magistrate and New Nic-names from the Mobile and that on any change of Religion he is sure to be put in the forlorn hope and that he tho continually thinking of Divinity which is his profession hath not yet that freedom to speak all his Sentiments of the controverted part of it which a Lay-man enjoys and that he is still exposed by constant thinking to prey on the Membranes of his own Brain to find Notions for sensless people methinks after he has all his life before been constrain'd to take these bitter Pills as they are in themselves none should repine at their being gilded for him in his declining age and if among Ten thousand of these twenty six shall in their old Age have the Revenue of Bishops
a flame of Zeal reflected in these words on the Queen her self Our posterities shall rue that ever such Fathers went before them and Chronicles shall report this Contempt of learning among the Plagues and Murrains and other Punishments of God they shall leave it written in what time and under whose reign this was done If the good Bishop had considered the vastness of Queen Elizabeth's Expences before mention'd in desending the Protestant Cause contra gentes he would have given her day to have built and endowed some Churches and to those expences before mention'd it comes into my memory here to add what I then forgot which is related in the Travels of Mr. Fines Moryson who was Secretary then to the Chief Governor of Ireland in her Reign viz. That she expended in 4 years time on that Kingdom a Million and one Hundred Ninety Eight Thousand Pound Sterling which Sum so laid out then on Ireland will seem the more considerable when by a late Report of the Counsel of Trade in that Kingdom drawn by Sir W. P. The currant Cash of that Kingdom is made to be but Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pound Sterling But this by the way and to resume my discourse of our Clergies neither getting nor losing by Religion I shall say that as the acceptable free restoration of the Church as well as the Crown to its Lands shewed that there was no fear of its injuring the Ballance of the Kingdom or hurting Religion by its weight so hath the following acquiescence of all dis-interested men in the same evinced that weight to be no gravamen In a Pamphlet called a Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country Printed in the Year 1675 generally supposed to be writ by the Earl of Shaftsbury and which asserts the Justice of the Declaration of Indulgence the Author in p. 5. speaking of the Church of England becoming the head of the Protestants at home and abroad saith For that place is due to the Church of England being in favour and of nearest approach to the most powerful Prince of that Religion and so always had it in their hands to be the Intercessors and Procurers of the greatest good and protection that Party throughout all Christendom can receive And thus the Archbishop of Canterbury might become not only alterius orbis but alterius Religionis Papa and all this Addition of Honour and Power attain'd without the least loss or diminution of the Church it not being intended that one Dignity or Preferment should be given to any but those that were strictly conformable The natural inclination in all ingenious Men not to cast an evil Eye on the Church Revenue appears in Mr. Marvel 's Second Part of the Rehersal transpos'd p. 146. where he saith I am so far from thinking enviously of the Revenue of the Church of England c. That I think in my Conscience it is all but too little and wish with all my heart that there could be some way found out to augment it And our ingenious and great Lord Chancellor Bacon in his certain Considerations touching the pacification of the Church of England hath with great equity decreed our Parliaments to be in some sort indebted to the Church Moreover that Gentlemanly way of writing used by our great Divines in a late Conjuncture against Popery and so suitable to the refinement of Wit and Reason in the Age and wherein without the Pedantry of unnecessary Words or Quotations or raising a dust out of the Learned Rubbish of the Schoolmen they generally with a manly Style and clear reason and skill at that weapon got the Sword out of their Enemies hand by the Argumentum ad hominem and shewed us that Popery and Implicit Faith were not Calculated for the Meridian of this Age hath I think made all ingenious Men Conformists in this opinion that if their Genius had been cramp'd with the res angust a domi their thoughts had not in their Books appeared so great and therefore I hope that all the well writ works of their hands and seasonable discourses against Popery at that time when it was ready to curse us and to rise up against our Religion will make all thinking Protestants to say Amen to that Prayer of Moses Bless O Lord Levi 's substance accept the work of his hands smite through the Loyns of them that hate him that they rise not again It will I doubt not appear to rational and thinking men that our little interloping Churches or Congregations that set up with their precarious Power and small stock of Learning or Revenue will no more be able to break the great Compacted Body of the Papal Church that hath the Monopoly of the Religion-Trade in so many parts of the World then a few interloping Merchant-men to break the Opulent Dutch East-India Company who have engross'd so much of the Spices of the World that sometimes they cause several Ships loadings of them to be at once consumed as knowing what quantity and no more will be useful to the World. And somewhat like that thing too the Polity of the Anglican Church in Harry the 8 th's time perform'd while it drove a Religion-Trade with Rome and yet consumed a great quantity of its superfluous Merchandize and the same thing hath been done by our National Church as to remaining parts of the Romish Superstition in succeeding times and indeed Superstition which is a kind of Nimiety of Religion is so incident to Humane Nature and is so destructive to the Polity of Churches and the substantial Commerce of Nations that it is worthy the Power and Care of Nations to consume it And considering that the Church of Rome hath still valued it self for being terribilis sicut castrorum acies ordinata it is a vain thing to contend with such a Regular Church Militant without our having of general Officers and as exact a Conduct or to think to have such Officers without Honourable Maintenance from the Publick For none doth go a Warfare at any time at his own charge When I think how in the Primitive times while a Cloud of Persecution was always over the head of the Christians that yet they strain'd themselves so much in Contributions for the Pastorage of their Souls that all the Pastors then were so far from losing by Religion that some were tempted to that Office for filthy Lucre as we may see out of Peter Ep. 1. Ch 5. Vers. 2. tho yet too so little comparatively was to be gain'd by all thereby that others probably undertook that Office by constraint as the same place intimates and that therein the Apostolick Prudence was conspicuous in ordering it upon the whole matter that the generality of Pastors then should not get or lose by Religion I may reasonably conclude that we who live in the flourishing and prosperous State of Christianity ought to provide that the meanest Pastor of Souls in England may live competently and decently by that
to be walked on in a Frost after a Thaw We are told by the Conformist in the Friendly Debate in p. 112. That he has heard some of the Nonconformist Divines acknowledge that they did not scruple what the Conformists do but thought it unhandsome for them to do it c. And the meaning was in plain English that they were ashamed to confess their error But if some of those Divines whose low Education conducted them perhaps from being Servitors in the University to domineer in their Cures and who through the Track of their Lives might be traced by the slime of their Pedantry and whose Trade was or should have been the Study of Divinity the Precepts of which and their fragments collected out of Augustinus and Aquinas as well as the example of the former obliged them to retract those Errors publickly that they had so utter'd I say that if they were yet so Picquez d' Honneur that they would not let their fallibility appear in Villages and even the falsity of those Principles of theirs by which as many Hundreds of Thousands here were slain as were bare hundreds murder'd in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary they have true Cause to think it dishonourable for them to restrain their Compassion from any high born Prince the brightness of whose great Martial Atchievements has dazel'd the Universe and will continue to do it when he is in the shades below and one who may say as the Pope did to the Iansenists that he had never studyed Divinity and they are very unfit to Cashiere him from the Church Militant if he doth not in the view of Mankind appear to make a Retreat at the Call of their Trumpet which has been known to give so uncertain a sound and such may be ashamed to dispair of his finding out any false Notions he may have received in Religion and to conclude that he hath not privately discovered them because he doth not openly recant them and to expect that after perhaps he hath erred in the Tenet of Confession he should yet presently make the World his Confessor about it and grant him nothing of the Guard of Honour in the Case but Monopolize the temptations from honour to their sinful obscure selves But as no man can take the measures of anothers Sins without taking those of his temptations so none but a Prince can know the temptations of a Prince Dic mihi si fueris tu Leo c. The like Pedantry therefore in the great St. Ierom was inexcusable as to that sharp saying of his Miror si aliquis Rex salvabitur and that Satyrical fancy of his hath since met with its Match by some that have sent St. Ierom to the Devil as fantastically for so I find it said in Dr. Donnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After so many Ages of a Devout and Religious Celebrating the Memory of St. Jerom Causaeus hath spoken so dangerously that Ratio 5. Campian says he pronounceth him to be as deep in Hell as the Devil Moreover I think it great injustice to any Prince who has changed his Religion of Protestancy for Popery that Protestants should at the same time be jealous of his retaining no tincture of his former Principles that the Bigotted and Jesuited Papists are jealous of his scarce retaining a tincture of his new ones and by jealousie too as cruel as the Grave as appeared by the fate of Harry the 4 th who because he did not and indeed could not devest himself of that humanity toward his Protestant Subjects that was riveted in his nature after he was absolv'd by the Chair of Infalibility and reconciled to the very Scorners Chair of the Iesuites yer merely because he had not a window to his breast through which every capricious Priest might look in at and might thereby put in what Principles he pleased they were resolved to cut one there and after Iohn Chastel had begun to practice his incision an execrable Apology for it was Published in which Apology Printed in Latin at Lyons Anno 1611. the Assertion or Head of Chapter 3d Part 2d is Chastel had no purpose to kill a King and of Chapter 4th there Henry of Burbon cannot be called a King by reason of his pretended Conversion and of Chapter 8th there Neither can he be King tho absolved by the Pope and of Chapter 9th Neither can he be called a King by the Right of Succession and of Chapter 11th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones are Juâ—e Divino Humano to be put to death and of Chapter 12th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones may be killed by private Persons if it cannot be done otherwise The Assassination of Harry the 3 d of France bears with it a Memento mori to any Roman Catholick Prince who will not be thorow paâ—ed in obeying the Precepts of Bigotted Priests against Hereticks and to this effect runs the Clamour of the Actions of such Bigots either you must go our pace to Heaven and Travel by our Mapp see with our Eyes and let us ride you when we will and make you ride over your Heretical Subjects or we will precipitate you to the Devil I mention'd it before out of D' Ossat that it was known at Rome that Queen Anne the Wife to King Iames had some inclination to the Roman Catholick Religion and no doubt but she was perverted to it in some measure by some of the Romish Priests who were then as since insolently over officious to tempt Princes to change their Faith and tho none of our Histories mentions any thing of her being a Papist or inclining to be so yet D' Ossat as I said relates how Villeroy supposed her to have turn'd Papist but our Historians unanimously mention one thing that she was designed as well as the King and Prince and others to be blown up by the Gun-Powder-Treason a thing that may give one who turns Son of the Church of Rome cause to say Mallem esse Herodis porcum quam filium No doubt but the mind of any Popish Prince coming out of the cool and sweet Air of a benign and rational Religion to that of such a torrid Zone and Shambles of mans flesh as the Doctrine of Popery presents will be oftener in his thoughts travelling back to that Religion then the prying World can know But the Gentleman my friend is not any way tempted in point of honour to delay his Return to the Church of England and he lately mentioning to me his wishes of the speedy Arrival of your Lordships Papers told me that possibly he and I should be both gainers thereby and that I should gain the Victory and he the Truth and that he would never account those Priests of Rome to be the Missionaries of Christ who if their Doctrine be refused shall instead of shaking off the dust of their feet in any house reduce it to Ashes and further affirmed that it were less absurd and extravagant to wish there were no Religion
man certainly apprehended no reason of an additional Commandment Thou shalt not fire thy Neighbours house and had he been convinced that the Pope in his decrepit Age had made a Commandment for the firing of it and whole Cities and had so pronounced è Cathedrâ would probably have imputed the lingua dolosa and the caâ—bones desolatorii to his Doctrine and the smoak from that fiery Doctrine would have had the effect of opening his Eyes But as for Mr. Cressy's Idea of the Massacring any Incendiaries tho they had been tooâ—â— in flagranti if he had staid in his old Church I mean that of England he would have found any such thing sufficiently stigmatised by its Doctrine which makes the King to bear the Sword and that not in vain and allows not the Rabble to be a Terror to Evil Doers nor Hell to break loose for the support of Heaven and which inculcates Obedience to the Law of the Land for Conscience sake and even that Law permits none to Assemble in Arms against a declared Enemy but by the Kings particular Commission and he must therefore go to China or to Rome that will have a Street or a Town or the Vniversitas or Community therein punish'd for the pretended or real faults of particular persons Moreover the English Genius hath not in Story that I know of been tainted with Infamy for penetrating any thing of that horrid Nature except in the old days of Popery in relation to the Iews and the Lay-Rabble was then put upon it by the Rabble of Fryars and Monks who owing Money to the Iews were that way willing to confute their Creditors And since the time that that Great and High Judg of Reason as well as Equity and to whom the Custody of the King's Conscience was Committed and who hath held the Scale of Equity with as steady an hand and tender heart and as discerning and watchful an Eye as any of his Predecessors did place the dreadful Guilt of the Firing of London where he did at the Condemnation of the Lord Stofford and probably had satisfied his Judgment for the doing of it by Observations or Examinations of Passages that occured elsewhere rather then at that Tryal for there the Evidence did not rise clear and high enough for the occasioning that part of his Sentence and since the time that the People of England by their Representatives threw the Guilt of that Fire on the Papists and the Magistrates of our Metropolis inscribed it on the Monument the populace have been as calm and temperate in their judging of it and as perfectly free from resentments of Revenge against all the Papists in general or any one Papist in particular as if none but that poor angry Antiquary Mr. Prynn had censured them for it and whose Thunder the World being so long used to did so much despise that his popularity could scarce have obtain'd an out-cry for the killing of a single Mad Dog. I must confess tho by the reiterated Confession and by the Execution of Hubert a Papist it appear'd that he did set Fire to the House in London from whence its rage began and tho his Confessing of Peidelow to be one of his Accomplices in the Fact exempts it from being doubted that Papists burn'd London and tho after I had heard of that judgment of the Lord Chancellor and of the House of Commons and of the Magistrates aforesaid and was shewn that Papal Tenet by your Lordship I doubted not of the Justice of attributing in my thâ—â—ghts one part of the Guilt of the Fire to some Jesuited Papists and that it might be said with the same propriety of Speech that London was Fired by the Papists as 't was by Sir Walter Raleigh that Harry the 4 th of France was kill'd by the Papists yet I never thought any considerable number of the Gentry among our Lay-Papists would have practised any thing of that kind tho the Pope himself should have Commanded it There was a Book containing Observations on our late Affairs of Church and State Printed in the Year 1680 called the Arts and Pernicious Designs of Rome wherein is shewed what are the Aims of the Iesuites and Fryars c. by a person of their own Communion who turn'd Romanist about thirty years since and throughout that Book as he in general fortifies my observation of a Protestant when turn'd Papist not being able to abandon all Candour his mind was first nourished in so he doth it particularly p. 25. where having in Proposition 4th spoke of the Mischiefs we havâ— received from some Popish Orders and particularly that of the Iesuites he saith as followeth in Proposition 41 viz. Amongst which the late sad disaster happening to the City of London not to mention divers others of like nature happening in divers other places since if it were a Practice of any Humane Contrivance and not a meer judgment of God from Heaven upon us cannot reasonably be thought to have been the Project or Practice of any other Men then these and to have come originally from Rome and the Consistory there who beside the bad Principles already mentioned which legitimate such doings at all times that they judge it convenient for their ends were without doubt willing to signalize that year 1666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some in that Party who have had the confidence to affirm and as it were to predict that in this year Rome and their pretended Antichrist the Pope should be utterly destroyed That it appear'd a Practice of Humane Contrivance by the very Confession of the Incendiary is plain and that it was by the People in the City then suspected so I have said but so far were our plain English natures from charging it on any Lay English Papist that Mr. Marvel in his Growth of Popery Printed Anno 1677 having said That we may reckon the Reigns of our late English Princes by a Succession of the Popish Treasons against them adds And if under his Majesty we have yet seen no more visible effects of the same Spirit then the Firing of London acted by Hubert hired by Peidelow two French Men which remains a Controversie it is not to be attributed to the good Nature or better Principles of that Sect but to the wisdom of his Holyness who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special Mark of his Indignation I presume not to charge or discharge any sort of men about this Fact further then the Law hath done whether Papists or Priests or Fifth Monarchy-men for of a Conspiracy to Fire the City on the day it was fired on several of that latter Sect had been before Convicted and deservedly Executed for it as we must either Grant or Arraign the Justice of the Nation and therefore Mr. Cressy had reason to blame Mr. Prynn in some measure for concluding that the Papists were the only Incendiaries of the City
busie Anti-Papists then others have been immediately admitted to the good Graces of the People and cried up by them as Patriots and Hero's and by their afterward espousing the true Interest of the Kingdom as to the point of Popery all their former spurious Actions have been not only pardoned but almost according to the Canon Law legitimated and as the Popes in any Croysad for the Exterminium of Hereticks were wont to give plenary Indulgences for all Sins past and to come for many years so have the People heaped such Indulgences on such Persons that in any Conjuncture shewed their zeal in the extermination of Popery And though to an ordinary view these mens Title to their Fame may appear by some of their former Actings much incumbered yet who ever pryes into it is as much generaly hated as are those Projectors who rake for their Bread among the weak Titles of other Mens Estates and cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when they have found out a flaw there 'T is observable that S. Iames C. 2. in his Assertion of Justification by works gives two Instances of Persons so justified and that one is of Abraham and the other of Rahab the Harlot in v. 25. likewise also was not Rahab the Harlot justified by workt when she had received the Messengers and had sent them another way and yet too that senâ—â—â— the Spies another way as the Fact is Historically mentioned in Ioshua the 2 d would to some Scruplers seem unjustifiable Thus do the People in their way justifie all that they believe are assistful to them in the attaquing of the Romish Babylon and look on them as their Saviours and as captious as they are against others yet think of nothing but saving them and all that they have as was in the case of Rahab Nor is it to be wonder'd at that Men who have so much to account for to the Public should be thus discharged by the populace tho many of them are Gallios in Religion and were no more concern'd for the Eclipse of Protestancy or the light of the Gospel in the year 1678. or 1680. then they were for the four Eclipses of the Luminaries viz. two of the Sun and two of the Moon that will be in the year 1701. and particularly of that of the Sun which will be in Ianuary then and not seen by us but only by our Antipodes but there is that adherent to Popery that if it could rivet it self into our Law here it would make the light of the Sun not worth the looking on namely the Confiscation of the Goods and Estates of those that Holy Church calls Heretics and the throwing them into such forlorn Prisons where they could see neither Sun or Moon and therefore as the Devils those Seducers in Chains are hated by Men because they know those Fiends would destroy their lifes if they could for the same reason all that lye open to the Name of Heretics will be animated with a brisk hatred against Popery and magnify those as their tutelar Angels that shall pretend to defend them from it tho such did before conspire against them But therefore because a Zeal against Popery is a remedy so cheap and so easie to be had and yet so infallible a one against the Peoples being discontented with Men who did before so much by their Principles poison the Realm 't is the common interest of us all both Protestants and Papists out of love to our Country to wish that no Men may be tempted so fatally to injure it hereafter by being beforehand sure of purchasing both Pardon and Adoration from the People on such easie terms The strong currents of Inclination I find in my self and observe in others not only to Pardon but to extol and magnifie nay to bless all Men that help their Country as it is contesting with Popery or Presbytery or either of those or any Religion-trade and to say to them as the Expression is in the Psalms We bless you in the name of the Lord will I hope be accompany'd with such an Extirpation of it as will not leave any Fibre behind it in our English World. As it need not be told to our Divines of the Church of England that they are under no obligation to strain any point of Courtesie whereby to render the Papists generally not worse than Puritans and that their Character hath been by the Papists all along render'd more vile than that of the Puritans and that Doleman in his Book of the Succession weighing the Parties in England and having first spoke of the Protestants of the Church of England afterward p. 242. saith That the Puritan party is more generally favour'd throughout the whole Realm with all those which are not of the Roman Religion then is the Protestant upon a certain general persuasion that the profession of the Puritan Party is the more perfect especially in great Towns where Preachers have made more impression in the Artificers and Burgesses than in the Common People And among the Protestants themselves all those that are less interested in Ecclesiastical Livings or other Preferments depending on the State are more affected commonly to the Puritans c. And p. 244. The Puritan Party at home in England is thought to be most vigorous of any other that is to say most ardent quick bold resolute and to have a great part of the best Captains and Soldiers on their side which is a point of no small moment and that Weston Lib. 3. de Trip. Hom. Offic. Cap. 16. p. 226. in a very janty manner crying up the Puritans beyond the Prrotestants of the Church of England saith Protestantibus inâ—â— Sacrâ praestabiliores puritanos Qui enim estis Protestantes hominum judicamini ignavissimi omnium religionis etiam fuco destituti impiissimi aeruscatores parati jurare in cujusvis verba modò inde emolumentum rebus vestris accrescat and in p. 227. Puritani sane multò solidius ac syncerius sua dogmata profitentur So neither need it be told the Papists that the Divines of the Church of England did never prefer the Tenets of Popery or Professors thereof to those of Puritanism or Presbytery as such and that they never complain'd of the Protection the Dutch and French Churches have long here enjoy'd with Liberty to worship God according to their peculiar Rites and Church Discipline and that upon the late great migration of many French Protestants from their own Country hither under great Circumstances of want our Divines and particularly those in and near London shew'd all the efforts of their Art of Persuasion from their Pulpits to move their Hearers to liberal Contributions to them that they could have possibly done in the case of their own Countrimen or Kindred and that one of those Divines in one of the greatest Cures there being for his Learning and Life and Endowments proper to his Function a great Ornament to the Gospel when he with great Eloquence so pathetically bespoke
know that neither the Decrets nor Decretals were ever as such received as Law in England yet the Pope and Jesuites saying that they ought so to have been and that they were and are obligatory upon us it will follow that by reason of an unlucky Proverb of Ben Syrah Quantulus ignis quantam materiam accendit and which is used by the Apostle St. Iames saying Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth and for that there are some little People ready to apply that little fire when the Pope or Jesuites would have them the Majority of the Papists here being Jesuited as was observed and that part of them not being of the Gentry would not be byassed by generous education and temper against the Commands of the mercenary Pope or Jesuites and for that even in the Jesuited Gentry here there were Bigots found to plot and to prepare to execute the Gun-powder Treason it is apparent that the Pope may if he will be very troublesome to our Cities with his Writ de Civitate comburendâ and that he or the Jesuites can command numbers of instruments to execute that his Writ as I may call it who will think that therein that they do as lawful an Act as if the four first General Councils had expresly warranted the same He said that the Popes Decrets and Decretals are in several Popish Countries so much regarded that to encourage men to study the same Academick Degrees are conferred namely of Doctores decretorum and Doctores decretalium That in France where the Canon Law was never in gross received as Minier the President of the Council of Aix did set fire on the Heretical Villages as such so he hath heard that Boerius an eminent Lawyer of France and President of a Parliament there and who has published a Volume of Decisions hath in Tractatu de seditiosis asserted this Tenet of the Pope's power to burn Heretical Cities That the Christians of old when they groaned under the heaviest weight of the Pagan Persecution abhorred this revenge against their idolatrous Enemies as appeared by Tertullian's Apology and their sense of the ease with which this revenge might have been executed Quando vel una nox pauculis faculis largitatem ultionis posset operari si malum malo dispungi penes nos liceret sed absit ut aut igni humano vindicetur Divina secta i. e. One night with a few Fire-brands would yield us sufficient Revenge if it were lawful for us to discount evil with evil but God forbid that the followers of the Divine Religion should either revenge themselves with Humane Fire c. That the very Heathens of old accounted there was turpitude in promoting not only their own profit but that of their Country in firing the Fleet of proclaimed Enemies as appeared in Athens when Themistocles by order from the Senate had privately Communicated to Aristides how he could destroy the Lacedemonians by privately burning their Fleet and Aristides had reported to the Senate that the project of Themistocles communicated to him was profitable for the State but was not honest they unanimously resolved against hearing it as Tully tells us in his Offices and much less would they have deliberated of its turpitude That the Athenians in the time of open War with King Philip and when their Priests offering their most solemn religious Sacrifices to the Gods for the prosperity of their Country did Philippum liberos terrestres navalésque copias atque omnem Macedoniam exitiali carmine diris imprecationibus detestari yet intercepting some Letters writ by him they returned them to him unopen'd That the Pope and his Trent Council having never disown'd this power nor branded this Canon nor yet by any index expurgatorius damned the Writings of Gratian or Gundissalvus or the Famous Canonists by him cited for this opinion it was plain that they might therefore be said to approve of the same that Qui non prohibet cum potest jubet That the Trent Council had gone far in the Confirmation of the Canon Law and that the saying used by the Fathers in that Council was here applicable viz. Omnia nostra facimus quibus authoritatem nostram impertimur In fine he saying that every one ought to withdraw from a Church while it in effect approved Doctrines in the Faith erroneous and in practice impious and asking me if some of the Great Writers of the Church of England as namely Bishop Iewel Bishop Andrews Arch-Bishop Laâ—d Bishop Sanderson or any of them had industriously published it in Print that we might lawfully employ Emissaries to burn Rome or any City where all or the Majority were Papists and that such Writing of theirs was never censured by Authority and impugned by any of our Divines tho yet by occasion thereof no Anti-Papists had ever been the Incendiaries of Popish Cities I would not however withdraw from the Communion of the Church of England till I saw such Tenet of those Divines publickly branded and till such Writing had received the usage that the Canon Law had from Luther when he cast it into the Flames I plainly told him that I would and the like he said he was inclined to as to Communion with the Church of Rome if he found that the Fact of that fiery Tenet against Heretical Cities was chargeable on the Pope in his Law and in the Writers thereupon as aforesaid And as little Credit as I wish all Mushroom Prophets and Prophecies may find I am of opinion if ever any clear discovery should happen in time to be made of that Fires having proceeded from the Councils of great numbers of Iesuites Friars or other Papists a thing I never Expect that Popery would thereby be loaded with such a lasting general Odium here and in Forraign Countries both Popish and Protestant as it would hardly breath under the weight of and the Prophets of the effects of the Year 1666 would cry that their predictions did hit right and boldly say to us their upbraiders that 66 in its effects is not yet past just like the Sooth-sayer who being rallied by Caesar going to the Senate-House and saying the Ides of March were come replied to him that they were not passed There is another happy effect I expect from the grown and growing numbers of our populous Nation and all mens errors being necessarily the more visible to each other by their close Vicinage namely that men will be ashamed to aggravate the supposed Political Errors of the Ministers of our Princes as formerly and much more not to take it patiently when their Princes pardon them How shameful a thing was it that the Kings Pardon was not allowed as good by the Lords and Commons to Arch-Bishop Laud when nothing but that could save them from the danger of the Laws for taking away any mans life by Ordinance of Parliament But so sharp and perfect a haâ—er is your Lordship of all Cruel and Arbitrary Practices that I think I have
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
it as well as made it a Nose of Wax yet is the reverence of others of that Church for those inspired Writings sufficiently known and as may appear by that great saying of Panormitâ—n so often cited by the Protestant Writers viz. Laico verum dicenti cum Evangelio magis credendum quam Concilio falsum dicenti contra Evangelium It is so easie a thing for every man of ordinary reading and observation to expatiate on the common place of the disagreements of the Writers of the Church of Rome in various important Religionary Doctrines that I need not here do it 'T is a common Observation that in Spain and Italy it is the common opinion that Latreia is due to the Cross which in France and Germany is not so and that at Rome no man may say that the Council is above the Pope nor at Paris that the Pope is above the Council and as to the great Doctrine of Iustification every one hath heard of Bellarmin's Tutissimum and of Stephen Gardners laying his dead grasp on Christ's Merits as he was sinking and as to some Papists not believing the School Conclusions in that Church there is a famous instance cited by Crackanthorp in his Logick concerning a great Roman Catholick Writer who said Sic dicerem in scholis sed tamen maneat inter nos diversum sentio Sic dicimus in scholis sed tamen maneat inter nos non potest probari ex sacris literis And therefore since as was said every man hath a right to his good name till he hath justly forfeited it I will honour such a Roman Catholick as before described with the reputation of his being a good Christian and shall think that I am Morally bound to esteem all Papists so qualified to be better Christians than any Orthodox Protestants that want those Moral Endowments and according to my Obligation to honour all men and love the Brotherhood and consequently to be readier to do good Caeteris paribus to Christians than to those who are strangers to Christianity will thus love such a Papist as a part of that Brotherhood and by our Saviours measures in those words of the same being his Brother Sister and Mother whosever shall do the will of God will take notice of and honour and love such a Roman Catholick as much as if the closest Iura sanguinis united me to him and with respect to not only the ONE Blood that all Nations were made of but the ONE Blood they were redeemed with and by virtue of those other words of our Saviour viz. That if any man will do his Will he shall know of the Doctrine c. will account that in points necessary and essential to such a mans salvation our blessed Lord hath been as ready to make his Doctrine known to him as effectually as he could be supposed to make it known to such near Relations They are expressions worthy of a Divine of the Church of England in an excellent Sermon that goeth under the name of Dr. Tillotson viz. I had rather perswade any one to be a good man than to be of any party or denomination of Christians whatsoever For I doubt not but the belief of the ancient Creed without the addition of any other Articles together with a good life will certainly save a man. And since Iustin Martyr when Trypho the Iew demanded his thoughts of the Salvation of the Iews then living and expected that he would pronounce them damned the Martyr answered That he hoped they might be saved if with their Ceremonials they did also observe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The Eternal and Natural Rules of indispensable Holyness and since he notwithstanding the barbarous uncharitableness of the stiff-necked and narrow souled Iews who would not shew a Traveller the way that was not of their Religion did yet shew the invincible Charity of a Christian to them being ready as he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. To receive them friendly and to communicate all things to them as BRETHREN or affectionate friends it may well be esteemed an uncouth sight see some peevish Nominal Protestants who observe none of those Rules yet to exclude Papists out of the Christian Brotherhood and even to damn them who with the Ceremonies of the Church of Rome do most religiously observe those Great and Noble Rules And therefore tho the reconciling of Churches is by some good men hoped for and by all good men wished yet since it can by no rational men be supposed possible without a previous reconciliation of Persons first had and that this latter is no Project but a Moral Duty and Vital part of Christianity and that 't is an empty Project for any one to think to deserve the name of a Christian without being reconciled to the whole Creation of God and being first reconciled to his Brother as the Expression is in St. Matthew I shall with that this Duty of honouring all men and as inclusive of our internal affection and testifying before God the worth and excellence that is in any Roman Catholicks and of the interpreting all doubtful matters relating to them in the better part as was before explicated out of Ames may more and more be thought of by Protestants as Essential to their Christianity Any one who will consider that Canon of our Church viz. It was far from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy France Spain and Germany or any such like Churches in all things that they held and practised c. that it only departed from them in those particular points wherein they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integrity and from the Apostolical Churches which were their first Founders may see the great perfection of the Principles of the Church of England in honouring all men and loving the whole Brotherhood of Christianity and our Duty wherein as necessary to Salvation is very excellently inculcated by a great Father of that Church I mean My Lord Primate Bramhal in his just Vindication of the Church of England p. 15. where having said That the Communion of the Christian Church Catholick is partly internal partly external and made it part of this Internal Communion to â—udge charitably one of another to exclude none from the Catholick Communion either Eastern or Western Southern or Northern Christians c. to rejoyce at their well-doing to sorrow for their Sins to condole with them in their sufferings to pray for their constant perseverance in the true Christian Faith for their reduction from all their respective Errors and their re-union to the Church in Case they be divided from it c. and lastly to hold an actual external Communion with them in votis in our desires and to endeavour it by all those means that are in our Power he tells us in plain terms that this internal Communion is of absolute necessity among all Catholicks And in p. 26 th he declareth to the
to belong to the Pope's Authority and their own School Doctors are at irreconcileable odds and jarrs about them He had then his Eye on the Lateran Council as appears by the other words there in the Margent viz. Touching the PRETENDED Council of LATERAN See Plat. in vitâ Innocen 3. and by which Council the King knew that all except two or three of those Conclusions were concluded and defined If therefore many of the poor petty School-Doctors were so searless of the Papal Thunder as in Cases when they were perhaps unconcerned to impeach the Papal Usurpation there was no cause of apprehension in that our wise Monarch that any of his High-born Heirs and Successors would ever favour the Usurpations of that Authority When Queen Elizabeth was so firmly satisfied concerning the Loyalty of the Roman Catholick Lords Temporal and of their great Quota in the balance of the Kingdom securing their abhorrence of all Papal Usurpations as not to impose the Oath of Supremacy on them tho yet She took care to have it imposed on the Popish Bishops can we imagine that the great Interest of an Heir of the Crown in the Hereditary Monarchy did not give a Plerophoâ—y of satisfaction to that Great Monarch that such an Heir would never permit any Usurpation to prejudice his Crown Imperial Moreover if in the Case of the device of an Inheritance by Will on the Condition of the Legatees not holding this or that Philosophical or Religionary Tenet the absurdity of such Condition would not frustrate the device but would be taken as Pro non adjectâ and that thus in that known Case in the Digest viz. Of an Heir made on an absurd Condition namely On Condition he should throw the Testators ashes into the Sea the Heir was rather to be commended than any way questioned who forbore to do so how can we think in the Inheritance of the Crown which is from God and by inherent Birth-right any such supposed absurd Condition of a Prince's not believing this or that Speculative Religionary Tenet and for his professing of which he hath a dear bought Liberty by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the New Testament of Iesus Christ should be intended to operate to his prejudice But that I may in a word perimere litem about that Kings never intending the least prejudice to the Succession by any of his Successors being Roman Catholicks I shall observe that that Kâ—ng who was so great and skillful an Agonist for the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England did yet in the Articles of the proposed Match with Spain and afterwards with that of France agree that the Children of such Marriage should no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience or Religion and that their Title to the Crown should not be prejudiced in Case it should please God they should prove Roman Catholicks and that the Laws against Catholicks should not in the least touch them And that the sense of the Government then was likewise to that effect avowedly declared is manifest from the Passages of those times and the needless quarrel therefore that our late Excluders would have exposed us to with France was a thing worthy their considering But enough of this Conclusion if not too much for where the Tide of the Words of any Oath runs strong and clear we need not to regard the Wind of any Law-givers intention however yet I have made it appear for the redundant satisfaction of the scrupulous that while they have embarqued their Consciences in thâ—se Oaths they have had such Wind and Tide both together on their side and that therefore any Storms which the Takers of these Oaths relating to the Lineal Succession of the Crown may have raised either in their Consciences or the State must be supposed to be very unnatural Having thus in the foregoing Conclusions asserted and proved the Obligation relating to the Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I shall briefly answer such objections thereunto or rather Scruples for they deserve not the name of Objections as some noisy Nominal Protestants have troubled themselves and others with and so end this Casuistical Discussion The first Objection or Scruple then I shall take notice of that some have raised against the Obligation of these Oaths as above asserted is that they were made in relation to Papists only and were enjoyned to be taken for the discovery of those that were suspected to be so As to which it will be sufficient to say that it is most plain that all Persons who have taken these or any other lawful Oaths are bound by Deeds to fullfil what they have sworn in Words and it is an absurd thing to doubt whether the Law intended that those Persons should observe the Oaths whom it hath enjoyned to take them And to this purpose we are well taught by Bishop Sanderson in his 6th Lecture of Oaths That tho Papal Vsurpation was the cause of the Oath of Supremacy the arrogating to himself the exercise of Supreme Iurisdiction in spiritualibus throughout this Kingdom yet the Oath is Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude the reà son is that the intention of a Law is general to provide against all Future inconveniences of the like kind or nature c. I refer the Reader to him there at large By the Measures of that Bishop as to the Oath of Supremacy we likewise may direct our selves in the Oath of Allegiance being Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude tho that Oath was made by occasion of the Gun-powder Treason And as to the intent of the Oath of Supremacy King Iames tells us in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 108. That it was to prop up the Power of Christian Kings as Custodes utrâ—usque tabâ—ae by commanding Obedience to be given to the word of God and by reforming Religion according to his prescribed Will by assisting the spiritual Power with the Temporal Sword c. by procuring due Obedience to the Church by judging and cutting off all frivolous Questions and Schisms as Constantine did and finally by making Decorum to be observed in every thing and Estaâ—lishing Orders to be observed in all indifferent things c. whereby his Majesty doth clearly denote the intention of that Oath to have been to extend against any Non-Conformists continuing their Schism in the Church And as to the Oath of Allegiance being intended against Protestants as well as Papists making a Faction in the State the Book called God and the King compiled and printed by King Iames's Authority sufficiently shews throughout by the Notification of the particular Moral Offices required by the Oath of Allegiance and likewise by his Subjects natural Allegiance and which Moral Offices are there strengthened with passages out of the Scriptures and Fathers and the Doctrine of absolute Loyalty is there well Established and likewise the Doctrine of Resistance
thoughts of their worship to the Consecrated Bread. But I believe there are others who do not intentionally direct their adoration to any Creature in that Sacrament and only to the Person of Christ our Lord and as when Abimelâ—â—h mistook Sara from her Husband being informed by Abraham that She was his Sister God was pleased to acknowledge That he did it in the simplicity of his heart so I shall leave such to their Master and without particular ground charge no particular Person of them with the guilt of Formal Idolatry and should much rather choose to absolve a Church from approving Idolatry than to render the Persons in it liable as Idolaters to be in a Christian State dealt with according to the rigor or as some Calvinsts call it the Equity of the Iewish Law. As we justly remember the Bigottish Cruelty of the Marian days so we must be so just to our selves as not to forget how some Nominal Protestants and such too as were magni nominis did long ago and as they do still accuâ—e the Discipline of the Church of England and its decent Ceremonies with the guilt of Idolatry and how fatal both to our Church and State so false and base and spightful an Accusation hath proved Mr. Hobs in his History of our late Civil Wars attributes somewhat of the success of the disloyal Enemies of our Church to the natural Cause of their fighting with spight We know that not only Mr. H. Iacob in his Exposition of the 2d Commandment printed in the Year 1610. hath thus charged our Church with Idolatry in express words but that Ames himself did so in effect in his Puritanismus Anglicanus that Year printed and as Learned and Pious a Man as he was his Cases of Conscience shewing him tainted with the Tenet of Monk Gratian and Calvin and our Assembly-men about the Iudicial Law for he saith there That that Law tho not appertaining to Christistians Sub ratione legis sperialiter obligantis yet is so sub ratione doctrinae quatenus vel generali suâ naturâ vel proportionis aequitâ—te exhibet sempeâ— nobis optimam juris noturalis determinationem one might easily gueâ—s from such a Principle when believed and practised what quarter the Church of England or any Church accused of Idolatry could expect The truth is that on the Division of the World by some into 30 parts and rendring 19 thereof to be down-right Idolaters and 6 Mahumetans and 5 Christians it may well seem a deplorable absurdity that the Christian Quota should be so much addicted both to call one another Idolaters and to Sacrifice one another as such beyond the superstitious rage of the Heathen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mr. Iacob in his said Exposition calls the Lutherans Idolaters for having Images in their Churches and what may well seem strange is that when Cromwel the Vsurper being inclined to tolerate the Iews and appointing a Meeting of his Ministers of State and his Divines to debate the lawfulness of it at that time Fiennes his Lord-Keeper declared it then unlawful for that the Iews were Idolaters as worshipping God out of Christ and whereby he implied in effect that Adam was an Idolater Thus apt have Enthusiasts been to play with Idolatry but a shameful thing it is to our English understandings not to have a just general apprehension of the aim of some factious Anti-Papists to set up new real Idolatry in the State while they are vexing us with their old Nominal Idolatry in the Church I here refer to all that would outrage the Hereditary Monarchy and I call any Crime of that Nature by the name of Idolatry as our judicious Sanderson hath done in his Learned Lecture De legum humanarum causâ efficiente § 15. where having shewn how Kings are called Gods Psalm 82. 6. Quod ipsius Dei in terris vices gerant idque Deo ipsis Conferente hanc potestatem non populi suffragiis EGO dixi Dii estis he thus goes on to ask very properly Poteritne populus aliquis sine turpis idololatriae crimine sibi Deos constituere cum sit uniuscujusque hominis ei qui ipsius vicem gerat potestatem vicariam suâ authoritate demandare non alieno arbitratu Audebitne quisquam mortalium id Iuris sibi arrâ—gare ut qui Dei in terris Minister Vice-Deus futurus sit omnem illam suam authoritatem potestatem ab ipso sibi collatam agnoscat Let all such then who did AVDERE thus in the Affair of our Hereditary Monarchy and to have the Vice-Deus futurus moulded by their fancies consider how great a Casuist hath loaded them with Idolatry and moreover remember how the inspired Prophet did make Rebellion as the Sin of Witchcraft and contumacy or stubborness as Idolatry I was contented with finding one thing asked by the ingenious Author of the Compendium because I supposed and that then even by Calculation I might resolve the doubt and which I have held my self obliged to do viz. Can it be said that the Monarchy of England hath gotten by the Reformation and what desperate Enemies that hath created us may be easily imagined that nothing but Popery or at least its Principles can make it again emerge or lasting but was sorry and ashamed to find that Authors had cause to cite the disloyal Pamphlet of Pereat Papa as asserting the lawfulness of proceeding against Idolaters as is there mentioned and that he likewise had so much reason to make so great a Remark on the Exclusion in the foregoing Page viz. He who believes he can disinherit a lawful Successor on the account of Religion will hardly find Arguments of force to keep the Prince in being on his Throne whenever this happens to be imputed to him Moreover I was ashamed after the effort of the Idolatry in the Exclusion and of the Mobile's worshipping a Plot-Witness with the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Non-Conformist Author of the Book called The peaceable Design printed in the year 1675. speaking so tenderly of the Papists then in the words of The Papist in our account is but one sort of Recusants and the conscientious and peaceable among them must be held in the same predicament with those among our selves that likewise refuse to come to Common-Prayer yet reprinting his Book in the year 1680. doth thus alter the former passage and say The Papist is one whose worship to us is Idolatry and we cannot therefore allow them the liberty of publick assembling themselves as others of the Separation When the Non-Conformists had a while after the Declaration of Indulgence idolized both it and the Papists for being supposed to have had some hand in the procuring it and were as soon weary of it as Children of their Images yet it seems that presently after the noise of the Popish Plot the Non-Conformists Censure of Transubstantiation was transubstantiated and their Religion grew to be Idolatry as if the ill actings or shams of either
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will
more and more And it was natural for our Divines in this Conjuncture thus to do when so many factious counterfeit Protestants were by their outcries making Papists of them and publishing infamous Pamphlets that expressly shook the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and of the Church by Law Established and with an intent to shake the same in that time when the Exclusion was designed and as appeared particularly by the reprinting for that purpose the Pamphlet of the Rights of the Kingdom and in which the Author did endeavour to prove the Peoples Right to choose their Bishops The Clergy therefore seeing such Nominal Protestants by that real part of Popery of founding Dominion in Grace thus bent on the ruine of Church and State were concerned to bend all their forces of reason in permonishing People of their danger from that part of Popery Thus as when a Light-house is set up to warn Navigators of a Bank of Sand if yet by the force of the Sea and Wind such Bank happens to be removed the Light-house must be removed likewise the same thing was accordingly done by the Justice and Prudence of our Divines giving us a notification of the Sands of Popery having shifted their place The late Experience that our Church had of its usage under the Great Vsurper and of his putting it out of his Protection as knowing the born and sworn Allegiance of its Church-men and likewise its Doctrine must necessarily make them true Adherents to the King's Heirs and Successors hath necessarily taught them that they cannot externally flourish under any Vsurper whatsoever They know that the Oath that Cromwel's Parliament Enacted to be taken by him was a Canting Oath and to which he was sworn to the uttermost of his Power to uphold and maintain the true reformed Protestant Christian Religion in the Purity thereof as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament to the uttermost of his Power and his understanding The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England was not to expect to be upheld and maintained by him nor can it be upheld or maintained by any Vsurper Dr. Gibbon the Author of the Theological SCHEME averred to me that Mr. Nye and he attending a Committee of Parliament in the times of the Vsurpation that Mr. Nye being desired by the Committee to give them a definition or description of a Minister of the Gospel then answered A Minister of the Gospel is one sent forth by the State to preach the Gospel receiving protection from them and maintenance under them and all others restrained and we know that he and others then treated the Church of England in words and things like an Ecclesia maligrantium and how they were then RESTRAINED ab Officio c. and just as the Faction and Schism of many Nominal Protestants began about 41 to call our Divines Names as I have observed so lately the Popish Plot was made the Vehicle of the Poyson of some Mens Calumny and neither Machiavel nor Iesuit did ever more sledfastly practise the Divide Impera than such men in that Conjuncture did that by weakening us with our Divisions they might at once destroy the Lineal Succession of our Hereditary Monarchs in the Realm and the Succession of Bishops in the Church and our Kings in their Coronation Oaths swearing to keep Peace and Agreement to the Holy Church the Clergy and People Factious and Schismatical Persons having broke their own Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy may be said to have endeavoured to break the King's Oath according to the old known form of the Indictment of some of our Iudges for Bribery in which it was said that our Kings being bound by their Oath to do Iustice to their People such Judges did Violare Sacramentum Domini Regis It hath pleased God by the fierce Zeal of several Non-Conformists for the Exclusion to open the Eyes of many Conscientious and Loyal People among them and to bring them thereby to the Bosom of the Holy Church of England for they seeing such Doubts and Objections as some had raised against the Obligations of our Oaths to be but Scruples and that considerate serious and devout Persons of the Church of England had soon thrown the Scruples away were naturally thereby induced to throw off other Scruples and it was likewise but natural to them to think that their very Doubts and Objections for their having separated from the Church of England were but Scruples And as to doubts tho the Rule is Quod dubitas ne feceris yet not only Sanderson but Ames hath told us that Scruples are not to be regarded for Ames in his Cases of Conscience l. 1. c. 16. viz. Of a scrupulous Conscience having said That a Scruple is a fear of the Mind about what one is to do which vexeth the Conscience as a little Stone in ones shooe troubles the foot he wisely concludes That Multi scrupuli cum non possint commodè tolli contrariâ ratione deponi debent quasi violentiâ quadam dum excluduntur ab omni consultatione and that Scrupulus est formido temeraria sine fundamento atque adeo non potest obligare He there mentions A man being said to be scrupulous in discussing his past Actions or in ordering his futuâ—e ones and I am confident that many of the Loyal late Non-Conformists when they consider their past Actings will now accord to say that many of the clamorous pretences they were tempted to urge for Liberty of Conscience ought to have been as Ames's words are laid aside with violence and I do likewise believe that many of the Pious Members of the Church of England who while the Formido temeraria and sine fundamento carried them to incline to think it lawful to shake the Foundation of the Hereditary Monarchy and the super-structures of their Oaths by new interpretations do with a pious horror think of the poor Vapours pent in their Imaginations that made such Temporary Earthquakes in their Moral Offices of Loyalty and might have made perpetual ones in the Kingdom And that because some of our English Princes long ago whose Titles were cloudy did de facto make use of the Legislative Power to render them clear to the People for any to think that therefore the Monarchy was not then de jure and jure Câ—ronae Hereditary and that therefore after the Liquid Oath of Allegiance made to statuminate the most clear Title of a Crown that can be supposed it could since be lawful for any Parliamentary Power to disturb the Succession and dispense with our Oaths can appear to the Considerate to be nothing but a Scruple unworthy their thoughts And moreover because some of our Princes heretofore desired their Parliaments to intermeddle in setling the Succession for any therefore after the Oaths to think it might be lawful to disturb their Prince with renewed importunities again and again to alter the Course of the Descent after his various Declarations
THE HAPPY Future State of England OR A DISCOURSE by way of LETTER to the late EARL of ANGLESEY Vindicating Him from the Reflections of an AFFIDAVIT Published by the HOUSE of COMMONS Ao 1680. by occasion whereof Observations are made concerning Infamous WITNESSES The said Discourse likewise contains various Political Remarks and CALCULATIONS referring to many Parts of Christendom with Observations of the Number of the People of ENGLAND and of its Growth in Populousness and Trade The Vanity of the late Fears and Iealousies being shewn the Author doth on Grounds of Nature Predict the Happy future State of the Realm At the End of the Discourse There is a Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation of the KING His Heirs and Successors wherein many of the Moral Offices of Absolute and Vnconditional Loyalty are Asserted Before the Discourse is A large PREFACE giving an Account of the whole WORK with an Index of the Principal Matters ALSO The Obligation resulting from the Oath of SUPREMACY to Assist and Defend the Preheminence or Prerogative OF THE Dispensative Power Belonging to the KING His Heirs and Successors In the Asserting of that Power various Historical Passages occurring in the Vsurpation after the Year 1641. are mentioned and an Account is given of the Progress of the Power of Dispensing as to Acts of Parliament about Religion since the Reformation and of diverse Judgments of Parliaments declaring their Approbation of the Exercise of such Power and particularly in what concerns Punishment by Disability or Incapacity LONDON Printed MDCLXXXVIII To the Right Honorable the Earl of Sunderland Lord President of His Majesty's most Honorable Privy-Council and Principal Secretary of State and Knight of the most Noble Order of the GARTER MY LORD FOR one who is sensible how little he knows of things past or present to Dedicate a Discourse of the future State of his Country to your Lordship who are by the Age allow'd to be as Critical a Iudge of Men and Things as any it affords may seem to have in it somewhat of Presumption But when your Lordship shall have had leisure to consider the plain Grounds of Nature on which my Prediction in the following Papers hath gone I will not so much hope that what I have attempted may appear to have been no Presuming as I will expect that your Censure will cast the Presumption on the other side namely on such who were Predictors with a continuando of the Unhappy State of their Country and especially on the account of the Religion of our most Gracious Prince And were I now to have my Iudgment tryed only by that of the Mobile who measure all things by the Events I account I should be out of the Gunshot of Censure since the course of Providence after my writing of the following Work having Conducted His Majesty to fill the Throne of his Ancestors with so many Royal Virtues it has been Conspicuous to them that the Glories of his Reign have transcended the highest flights of my mentioned Expectation And indeed as I remember to have long ago heard one of the Fathers cited for a Passage to this purpose namely that on a Supposal that God recounting to him the Perfections of the Creation should ask him what he could name wanting and that he could wish he would answer Unum Laudatorem Domine so it might till of late be said that in this new Creation or Restoration of England under His Majesty's Reign the only thing we had with anxiety to wish and desire from God next to the ennabling us to Praise his divine Goodness was one whose Talent of noble thoughts and words might be adequate to the celebrating the many Talents of our Prince and their successful Improvement both for the Honour and Security and Ease of his People But neither is such one Praiser now wanting for he who shall read the many late Loyal Addresses from all Parts of the Kingdom will find the People of England to be the Unus Laudator My Lord as I in the following Discourse almost wholly Printed long ago in the last Reign during the freedom of the Press adventured on Grounds of Nature to predict such a growth of Loyalty as would make all England become one sober Party of Mankind and that the more ingenious sort of Iesuits would by natural Instinct throw off those Principles condemned in this Pope's Decree and with Iustice then acknowledged a Sober Party in that order and have at large in p. 322. particularly shew'd my Abhorrence of charging the belief or practice of those Principles on all Persons in that Order So I have likewise in p. 238. given my Iudgment that all Seditious Principles own'd by any who call'd themselves Protestants must naturally decay and have at large in my Preface opposed my measures of futurity to those of a late Father of the Church of England concerning the two Plots that he thought the Papists and Dissenters would be ever carrying on and without his Lordships excepting the Loyal in those religionary Parties But having said this I must likewise say that these happy births of Fate having been but as it were the Births of a Day under the Powerful Influences of His Majesty's Government or as I may say a Nation 's being thus born in a Day are beyond what I did expect and I did little think that with the suddenness of the motion of Lightning when it melts the Sword and spares the Scabbard His Majesty's Declaration of Indulgence to Dissenters would at the same time melt so many hearts and all hostile Principles of the Doctrine of Resistance wrapp'd therein as it spared the Persons of the deluded Opiners I account that any indifferent Observer of the extraordinary sweetness of the way of painting their Loyalty in their Addresses and which resembleth the way of Corregio and is as excellent in its kind as that of the Sons of the Church of England after the way of the bolder touches of Titian in their former Addresses with the Style of LIVES AND FORTUNES was in its must be very hard-hearted if he likewise be not melted into a new kind of Compassion toward such his Brethren and into a noble sense of a great and good Prince having made his Subjects of all Religionary Perswasions Lachrymists for Joy and turned all their hearts to invoke Heaven in wishing for him according to that old Style a long Life a secure Kingdom a safe House valiant Armies a faithful Senate loyal Subjects the world at Peace c. The comparatively narrow Idea's of Charity and Beneficence that Subjects Minds are capable of toward one another do incline them to think chiefly of particular Toleration and such as we call Dispensation and that too with the nicety of Caution and upon Persons making the notification of their Principles and their particular disclaiming of all Disloyal ones previous to their Toleration and beyond this pitch the flights of my poor thoughts have not gone in the following Work. But His Majesty having
of the House of Commons on the 20 th of October 1680. and printed by Order of that House and in which Affidavit and Information he was Charged with Endeavours to stifle some Evidence of the Popish Plot and to promote the belief of a Presbyterian one and with encouraging Dugdale to recant what he had sworn and promising to harbour him in his House and that his Lordships Priest should there be his Companion and likewise watch him his Lordship being thereupon desirous that right should be done him by a printed Vindication was pleased to Command my Pen therein and I was the less unwilling to disobey his Commands because in that Conjuncture wherein so many Loyal and Noble Persons were sufferes by the humour of Accusation then regnant I held it a Patriotly thing to withstand its Arbitrariness Sir W. P. in an Excellent Manuscript of his called The Political Anatomy of Ireland hath one Chapter there Of the Government of Ireland apparent or external and the Government internal and he describes the apparent Government there to be by the King and Three Estates and with the Conduct of Courts of Iustice but makes the internal Government there to depend much on the Potent Influence of the many Secular Priests and Fryars on the numerous Irish Roman Catholicks and on those Priests and Fryars being governed by their Bishops and Superiors and on the Ministers of Foreign States governing and directing such Superiors and thus while England was blest with the best external Government namely of Monarchy and with the best Monarch and a Loyal Nobility and Commons yet after the detection of a Popish Plot several Persons under the Notion of Witnesses about the same made so great a Figure in the Government and were so Enthroned in the Minds of the Populace that the Office of the King's Witnesses was as powerful as ever was that of the high Constable of England and the internal Government of the Kingdom was then very much as I may say a Martyrocracy and by that hard name the Noisy part of Protestants Endeavoured to gain Ground as much as ever any peaceable ones did by the old known Name of Martyrology But as all external Forms of Government have some peculiar defects as well as Conveniences so did this internal Government appear to have and those too so dreadful that the Air of Testimony having sometimes got into the wrong place was likely to have made Earth-Quakes in the external Government and as the Militia that after the Epoche of 41 was called the Parliaments Army did before the fatal time of 48 produce the Revolution of the Army's Parliament so were we endangered after the Plot-Epoche of 78 to have heard of the Office of the King's Witnesses changed into another namely of the Witnesses Kings And whoever shall write the English History of that part of time wherein that Martyrocracy was so powerful and domineering will if he shall think fit to give a denomination to that Interval of Time and to found the same on most of the Narratives he shall read or the Sham-Papers that many Papists and Protestants after the Plot Attaqued each other with be thought not absurd if he gives the old Style of Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incertum or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulosum It was in the time of the most Triumphant State of this Internal Government that I undertook to weigh its Empire as I have done in p. 33 34 35. discussing the points of Infamous Witnesses and their Infamy and of their Credibility after pardon of Perjury or Crimes and Infany incurred and a bolder man than my self would hardly have dared in that Conjuncture to have sifted their Prerogative and as I may say to have put hungry Wolves into Scales and to have taken the dimensions of the Paws of Lions or to have handled the stings of Serpents without expressing against some of the Romanists Principles he thought Irreligionary all the zeal he thought consistent with Charity and Candour to the Persons of Papists which is so much done in the Body of this Discourse and without the expressing of which my Vindicating a Noble Person from being a Papist had been an absurdity However I have been careful in any Moot-points of Witnesses not to disturb in the least the Measures of the External Government about them and out of the tender regard due to the safety of Monarchs from all Subjects have in p. 205 asserted the Obligation of doing every thing that is fairly to be done to support the Credits of Witnesses produced in the Case of Treason and have there given a particular reason for it and have in p. 36. with a Competent respect mentioned Dugdale on the occasion of the Shamm sworn against the Earl of Anglesy as if his Lordship had undertook to have unjustly patronized him and have shewed my self inclined enough to belief credible Witnesses by the Concurrence of my thoughts with the Iustice of the Nation in Godfrey's Case and the fate of which Person and the Casuistical Principles that allowed it I had perhaps not mentioned but out of a just indignation against the infamous Shamms about it spread by some ill Papists to the dishonour of that Excellent Lord the Earl of Danby But there was another consideration that induced me to write with such a Zeal as aforesaid against such Romanists Principles and their effects and but for which the following Discourse had not swollen to a large Volume I observed that since the late Fermentation in England such a Panique Fear of the Growth of Popery and the numbers of Papists had been by Knaves propagated among Fools that made the English Nation appear somewhat ridiculous abroad and that during its Course many considerable Protestants were so far mis-led as to think the State of the Nation could never be restored to it self but by disturbing the Succession of the Crown in its lawful Course of Descent and therefore resolving to do my utmost to free the Land from the Burthen of another guess Perjury by the general Violence done to our Oaths Promissory I mean to those of Allegiance and Supremacy then that of any Witnesses in their Oaths Assertory I thought fit at large to shew the Vanity of any Mens fearing that Popery can ever humanly speaking be the National Religion of England and to direct them that they may not by the imaginary danger of Popery to come run with all their swelling Sails on the Rock of it at present by founding Dominion in Grace and out-rage those Oaths that do at present bind us without reserve to pay Allegiance to the King's Heirs after his demise And for any one who being concerned to see so many of his Country-men lying as it were on the Ground and dejected with unaccountable fears of the extermination of their Religion and themselves and besmearing themselves with the dreadful guilt of their great Oaths was resolved to endeavour to help them up and by perswasion gently to lead them
with a Person of so great Morality and Vertue as the present Pope is and a Pope that would brand the sicarious Principles of those Ianizaries of former Popes the Jesuites and that he would be by so many Roman Catholicks called the Lutheran Pope and that the Papists numbers would be here so comparatively small long before this time as to render it absurd to think that without the Execution of Heavens Peanal Law of an infatuation upon them they will ever attempt any such desperate design against such vast Numbers protected by the best of Princes under the best of Governments Whatever Principles of Irreligion any particular dissolute Papists might by any be supposed to retain it is not to be supposed but that they who shew respect enough to Numbers and their weight in spiritual Matters and particularly in the Divine Concourse with the Majority of Numbers in the Election of the head of their Church and in the determinations of a General Council and in their valuation of their Church by its Universality will not contemn the power of Numbers in Matters Political and I believe it will never among their innumerable Miracles and Revelations be Revealed to them that numbers are by them in things Political to be dis-regarded But as I observed of Mr. Hooker's Prophecy in this Discourse viz. That he guessed shrewdly so one thing hath happened that may partly salve the Credit of this Prelate's Conjecture And that is that some Nominal Protestants but too justly to be thought Popishly affected having robbed the Jesuites of their Doctrine of Resistance and of their Principle of Dominion being founded in Grace Endeavoured to robb them of their Massacre and as his Majesty's Declaration of Iuly the 28th 1683 mentioned did plot an execrable Out-rage of that kind and some of the Dissenters that appeared to me for sometime after I began this Discourse only as Sheep straying from the Flock as they did to that Great Minister of the State who bestowed on them that expression were afterward turned ravenous Animals and as the effect of Nycippus's Sheep according to Aelian bringing forth a Lion in one of the Greek States was resented as portending a Change of the Government these mens producing the Principles of the Iesuites was to be much more regarded as an Omen of our Future Mischief than what any former predictions could import and it was shortly accompanied with a real design to have effected it and as I hope it will be with such a sense of shame in others of them when they shall survey the Circumstances of that bloody design notified in the King's Declaration as Mr. Iohn Geree an Eminent and Learned Presbyterian Minister of S. Faiths in London did express in a Dedicatory Epistle before a Book of his called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 published some Weeks before the Fate of the Royal Martyr and in which Epistle he importunes the Lady Fairfax to shew the Book to her Husband then Lord General to prevent his participating in the guilt of the Regicide then feared and saith O Madam let us fit down and weep over our Religion and we whither shall we cause her shame to go How shall we now look Papists in the Face whom we have so reviled and abhorred for their Derogatory Doctrine and Damnable Practices against Kings or any in Supreme Authority O study that it may never be said that any Person of Honour and of the Protestant Religion had any hand in so unworthy worthy an Action as the deposing and destroying of a King whose preservation they stand bound to endeavour by so many Sacred Bonds I have accorded with our timid Protestants that Popery may gain ground perhaps in some turbid Interval and how by the Divine Omnipotence and Iustice the Course of Nature in its continuing the Protestant Religion may be over-ruled and that on the account of our having justly deserved the Visitation of Popery we may reasonably apprehend the dangers of it p. 140. but have never recurred from shewing them the Future prosperous Estate of Protestants and Protestancy in England but to advance the more forward into the following Representations thereof But having thus with Compassion to the timid endeavoured to discharge my duty as to the Moral Obligation of Complaisance an Obligation that Mr. Hobbs hath so well shewn to be most clearly rising from the Law of Nature and which the Christian Doctrine so strongly inculcates and by vertue of which we are to bear one anothers Burthens and sometimes to the weak to become as weak I thought it afterward proper by the strength of Argument desumed from the nature of things to fortifie the minds of the Loyal against Un-Christian and Un-manly Fears But as to the Dis-loyal and Factious let them by my consent fear on I shall not trouble my self to bear the burthens of them who resolve to be Burthens to the Government and who would if they could load it with Presbyteries dead-weight while they give that term to our Bishops Let those who would have both Protestant Princes and their other Subjects fear them be laughed at for fearing of Papists and for not having a better understanding with the Persons of Papists when there is so good an understanding and coincidence between the Principles of such Nominal Protestants and that very part of the Principles of some Papists that is Irreligionary and subversive of the Rights of Princes and their Governments and when yet they seem not to understand that and let Papists by my consent afford themselves recreative smiles if ever in any Conjuncture of time that may come they shall behold the Factious Revilers of the Church of England to come under its Wing for shelter after their so long endeavouring to deplume it But because I have observed some well meaning and loyal Dissenters frighted both by Cholerick and Melancholy Expositions of the Apocalypse a good Book in which some ill men have found the obscurest passages to be the clearest for their ill purposes and in the dark places of which Book many having long lain in Ambush have thence sallied out to cut Throats and subvert Governments I have here rear'd up a Bull-wark of Nature that may secure them from the imaginary dangers of Castles in the Air or Visionary Armies in the Clouds of any Mens fancies and in compassion to the Loyal Protestants of the Church of England whose Melancholy Suppositions I had a while closed with both as a Friend and Wrestler that I might give them a fair and soft fall I thought it then proper to warn them of the danger of extravagant Suppositions and acquainted them that most Bedlams were founded on Suppositions and the thought of Quid si caelum ruat and of Peoples imagining Earth-quakes to happen in the State from falling Skies and have shewn them how irrational a thing it is to suppose that a lawful Prince how unlawful or heterodox any of his Tenets in Religion may be will injure his Laws and the Religion by
Advenae from the Country and to which it may be added that the Burials from what they were in the Year 79 viz. 21730 falling back about 700 in the Year 80 yet in the Year 1681 were in all 23971 and so for every Thousand gradually dying more in those Years referred to 29000 were supposed to have in the same gradually lived more than in the former and all which years before mentioned were of ordinary health But the Year 1681 having produced that Pacific Royal Declaration and the Congratulatory Addresses thereupon and likewise that encrease of the Burials before mentioned that might be supposed to happen partly by the Advenae from the Country being for some time necessarily detained in the Metropolis in making preparations there to leave it and by some of them in the mean time dying and partly from some new Pâ—upers then coming from the Country to hide their heads in obscure places in London and which they durst not shew in the Sun-shine that Declaration had made in the Country and partly by the deaths of many Loyal Persons in London whom the Addresses and expectations of Preferment for their Loyalty brought thither yet the Burials in the following year viz. 1682 being but 20690 was a considerable indication of the abatement of the popular fears which led so many timid Persons from the Country with hopes to find our Metropolâ—s to be the most quiet part of the Nation as the most quiet part of a Ship is naturally that which is nearest the Main-mast and the Burials in the year 83 being but 20587 gave an indication of the Advenae from the Country not then encreasing and although the Total of the Burials for this year 84 was 23202 yet it being most probable that there dyed above 3000 of Infants and of Aged and infirm and indigent People by the Accidents of the extraordinary Frost it may be well accounted that the popular fears have not been in this year augmented Altho during the so long continuance of the general ferment in the Kingdom after the Plot-Epoche and in which interâ—al so great a part of the following Discourse was printed Sheet by Sheet I could not after the King and Pope had both of them by written Edicts as it were denounced War against the Tenets of the Iesuites that included so much Hostility to the Church of Rome as well as of England but participate in the general heat against those Tenets and improve the occasion of writing polemically about the same yet I think none could more carefully observe the Laws of Military Discipline than I have those of Loyalty in not going beyond the Measures of the Government and in following the Standard of the Royal Pen set up in the Proclamations and likewise in the Declaration aforesaid Dr. Donne dedicating his Pseudo-Martyr to King Iames begins his Epistle by saying that as Temporal Armies consist of pressed men and voluntaries so do they also in this War-fare in which your Majesty hath appeared by your Books and not only your strong and full Garrisons which are your Clergy and your Vniversities but also obscure Villages can Minister Souldiers c. Besides since in the Battel your Majesty by your Books is gone in person out of the Kingdom who can be exempt from waiting on you in such an expedition That Learned Monarch in his printed Premonition to all Crowned Heads free Princes and States doth Magno Conatu go about to prove the Pope to be Anti-Christ and very subtilly discusseth the Moot-points out of the Apocalypse that refer to it and from that one word of Anti-Christ the Papacy hath since the Reformation received much more prejudice than hath the Reformation from that other famous word of Heresy and the Compellation of Anti-Christ is especially a more terrible weapon against the Pope when used by the hand of a King. But I must frankly say should my Prince Combat the Pope with this name in Print and descend to Command my poor Service in that Warfare I should humbly apply to him to excuse me therein and as it was observed concerning Aretine that he left God untouched in his Satyrs giving this reason for it Ille inquit non mihi notus erat so I shall say the same thing of Anti-Christ But when the Thunder of the Royal Power was in so great a number of Proclamations heard all over Christendom against particular persons and their known Principles and Designs his Subjects might well think it a part of Loyalty during that time to wear Clouds in their Brows and to be tributary to the Royal Cares by endeavouring in their several Capacities to support the Throne and to concur with the constant Practice of Nations in receiving the beliefs of Matter of Fact as stated by Soveraign Power according to the common saying of Imperatori seu Regi aliquid attestanti plenè creditur It is this Teste of the Sovereign as I may say with allusion to the words in our Writs of teste me ipso that will be the Clew to the Historians to guide them in that dark and intricate Labyrinth of time I before spoke of and will probably be helpful to any ingenious Protestants or Papists who shall write its History when they shall from the many Collections of the Pamphlets relating to that time treasured up by the curious see so many bold and contradictory Shamms and Affidavits fighting with each other for that belief in a Future Conjuncture that they could not obtain in the past and 't is nothing but the declared Sense of the Government that in such odiosa materia will qualifie a judicious Historian to do right to himself or his Reader or even to his History and keep it from being thrust down among Narratives It may be rationally supposed that when Princes and their Ministers do think fit to notifie their judgments of some matter of Fact wherein they might receive the first Information from Persons lyable to exception that there were many concurrent Circumstances lay in the Balance before them and which perhaps they might not think convenient to divulge and moreover it is a thing commonly observable that Divine Providence doth influence the understandings of Princes who are its instruments in the Government of the World more signally than of other men and that Crowned Heads are still blessed in some measure as of old by another Spirit coming on them than what animated them while private persons and that therefore their asserting of Facts of State is more to be revered than that of other men I therefore in the Case of the shamm of throwing the Odium of a Plot upon Protestants in one particular Conjuncture have not come short of or gone beyond the Measures of the Government nor do I believe that any Historian of it will. And when I did read the various Pamphlets and did confer Notes with some of the Curious about the last mentioned Shamm and participated with the Loyal Protestants in their Concern and Sollicitude for
the honour of their Religion thereby attacqued yet I gave no Rule about the Merits of the matter in my private thoughts till I saw in the Prints the Copy of the Order of Council of November 2d 1679. reflecting on the Treasonable Papers thrown into a Gentleman's Chamber by which divers Noblemen and other Protestants were to be brought under a suspicion of carrying on a Plot against his Majesty and which Order was after a Person was sent to Newgate by the Council for forging of Letters importing High-Treason and fixing the same in a Gentlemans Chamber and oâ— which Forgery I yet thought none but some few of the faex Romuli who believed and practised the Jesuites Doctrine of Calumny could possibly be guilty But I presently accordâ—d in my thoughts with the many Loyal Protestants and Papists who judged another Effort that pretended to be of the same Nature with the former and referred to a Plot of Protestants to be a poor vile Artifice or Shamm projected by some Calumnious Anti-Papists a shamm too despicable to be here named and obvious enough to detection from the Trite saying That they who can hide can find But the many pitiful Shamms whose humming noise did a while please our Mobile and were below the notice of the Government have had their triduum insecti and are not to expect to live in Story or to be there Entombed like the Fly in Amber The powerful Effects of the Royal Declaration freeing our Land from the Plague of Fears and Jealousies and the Annoyance of the Swarms of these Flies as Moses his intercession prevailed to deliver a Realm from the Judgments of other ones will be a more adequate Subject to a great Writers thoughts and especially when he shall consider that in the Course of Nature and without Miracle those great Effects could not but rise from so great an Efficient and as to which any one will perhaps be of opinion with me who shall consider that the most terrible of terribles in so many mens apprehension of Popery is its arbitrariness and that therefore the publication of the Royal Resolution to govern according to the Laws would effectually secure us against all Arbitrary Power whatsoever Mr. Hobbs saith in his Behemoth I confess I know very few Controversies among Christians of Points necessary to Salvation They are the Questions of Authority and Power over the Church or of Profit or of Honour to Church-men that for the most part raise all the Controversy For what man is he that will trouble himself or fall out with his Neighbours for the saving of my Soul or the saving of the Soul of any other than himself And no doubt it is not barely any mens believing the Doctrines of Purgatory or Trasubstantiation or Merit or Works of Super-Errogation that hath made the past ferment among us but the Arbitrariness of the Papal Power and the Complication of the Tenet of the Plenitude of that Power with those Religionary Tenets and the making of it Penal not to receive those or other Tenets from Rome and the making men Tenants in capite to a Foreign Head for their Brains and Estates and an outlandish Bishop who lives a Thousand Miles off with new Non obstantes outraging their old Laws and whom they can never see blush after it But his Majesty having declared That he would use his Royal Endeavours both in and out of Parliaments to Extirpate Popery of which its Arbitrariness was its great dreaded part and in all things to Govern according to the Laws of the Realm the People knew that the Laws had sufficiently provided against Appeals to Rome as well as against Appeals from the Country to the City and that Declaration naturally fortified the minds of the People as a Praemunimentum guarding them before hand as I may say with allusion to our Statutes of Praemunire against the Arbitrary Power either of Rome or Geneva and did in effect set up an Ensurance Office in each of his Majestie 's Courts of Iustice to secure them against Arbitrary Power as such in whomsoever and that they might in in utramvis aurem dormire as to any danger from the same and 't is therefore no wonder that the Reflux of People from the Metropolis to the Country ensued thereupon as I have remarked out of the Bills of Mortality and from which Bills perhaps we may divert our selves with the sight of the Burial of that Plot which some feared and others hoped would have been immortal who would have had it Entailed too on their Heirs and Successors tho they would not allow the Crown to be so to the Royal Line The Political uses that the Bills of Mortality may be put to being more various than the profound Observator on them took the pains to mention as I have thence by a glancing view of the gradual Encrease of the People coming out of the Country for several years to dwell within the Compass of those Bills and likewise of the gradual decrease thence deduced given an account of what I thought might in some measure deserve the name of an Indication of the diminution of the popular fears resulting from the Burials after the great auspicious year of the Royal Declaration so I could in order to the lessening of the fears of the encrease of Dissentership within the Circuit of those Bills from the Total of the Christenings in the respective years since that of 81 give what I might without Vanity call more than Indicium and which perhaps would be by Critical Persons allowed for somewhat like a Demonstration of the Encrease of the Numbers there as I may say born into the Church of England and to what proportion and that very particularly and make it out thence that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the Year 81 there were Christened 1084 in the year 82 and that the disposition of People for baptizing their Children in the way of the Church of England did encrease near a 13th part in the year 82 and that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the year 82 there were in the year 83 Christen'd 2146 which is near a 6th part that the Baptizing of Children in the way of the Church of England hath gained and Dissentership hath lost ground in that year Nor do I find cause to alter my opinion of such baptizing in the way of the Church of England having lost but rather on the contrary gained ground in this year 84 tho to what proportion I cannot positively judge by reason of what I before hinted namely of the extraordinary proportion of the Burials this year arising from the Accidents of the great Frost and which Physicians by comparing the encrease of the particular Diseases by which so many died this year more than in the former happening from those Accidents have judged to be considerably above 3000 and likewise by reason of the Births having this year been reverâ considerably
fewer according to the Rule of the Observator on those Bills That the more sickly the year is it is the less fertile of Births All who have been in the least conversant with those Observations of his know that the Births in ordinary years are equal to the Burials or rather more and I have observed the same from the Paris Bills where the Christenings do generally much exceed the Burials and as particularly appeared by the Total of the Burials in the year 1683 being 17764 and the Total of the Christenings being 19717 but by the Christenings among us registred and reckoned in our Bills we know thence when the disposition of the People to baptize their Children in the way of the Church began to encrease and Dissentership consequently to decrease and accordingly the ground gained by the Church of England and lost by Dissentership within the Compass of those Bills after the year 81 hath been by me sufficiently proved Quod erat demonstrandum I have in this Discourse given somewhat like a little Historical Account of the Numbers of the Papists since the Reformation to our late Conjuâ—ctures and have with honour mentioned the Vigilance of his Majesty's late Minister the Earl of Danby in directing a Survey of the Numbers of the People of several Religionary Perswasions in the Province of Canterbury and which was returned in the year 76 and whereby the Comparative Paucity of the number of Papists there is apparent as it is by themselves agreed on so to be as I have cited out of the Compendium But tho the Copy of that Survey is in the hands of so many Persons I would not have mentioned any thing thereof as to the Number of the Papists but that Dr. Glanvill had first published the same and whose Book I have referred to for the same Nor shall I therefore give any particular account of the numbers of the Non-Conformists resulting from the same But tho I think that the Number of the Non-Conformists was not returned perhaps in that Survey so justly and near the matter as was that of the Papists yet I am fully of opinion that if the number of Non-Conformists were thrice as great as that returned which I believe no man will reckon it to be their proportion with that of the Total of this great Populous Nation would be very inconsiderable But as to all the Writers or Discoursers of their proportion to that Total that I have conversed with and who have rendered the Quota of the Dissenters so vast with much positiveness I am able to say That I have easily perswaded them to desist from any positive magisterial determination therein by shewing them that their measures of the Total of the People of England have been but conjectural and depending perhaps on some Calculations too fine and subtle or others too course and gross and that no man can be a competent Judge of this Total who hath not seen the Returns on the Bishops Survey and likewise the Returns on the late Pole-Bills and of which latter under the Patronage of a powerful Minister of the Kings I obtained Copies and have thence in the following Discourse shewed the Total of the People of England and Wales to be probably much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it and some whereof made the Total to be 5 others 6 others 7 Millions I thought the doing of this an acceptable service to my Prince and Country and the rather for that several Authors among the Magna nomina have published it in Print that the People of England and Wales are but 2 Millions and which number if they did not exceed we might allow our Dissenters a considerable proportion therein tho yet nothing near so great even as to such a Total as some would have it But the Ebb of their Numbers is at this time so apparent if we respect the State of them in the whole Kingdom that their Out-cry of Implevimus omnia and The Nation and its Trade cannot subsist without us is very ridiculous and they are not in my opinion their friends who writing for them do so customarily magnify their Numbers and as if they were half the People of England as some have done and I believe the Gentleman whom I have cited for saying in a late Parliament that he observed That in the Choice of Knights of the Shire for the County he lived in that they could not bring one in twenty to the Field would if he had been at Elections in some other Counties have found they could not there bring in so great a number And tho the Puritans of old were very numerous in the House of Commons and our Dissenters in the King 's long Parliament made so great a Figure as to be able by their weight to crush the Declaration for Indulgence yet in the succeeding Houses of Commons the Dissenters were far from valuing themselves an their weight or numbers but of the Dissenters in that Loyal Long Parliament I believe there were not any who wished for the Yoke of Presbytery or thought its Platform practicable in this Realm I have in this Discourse mentioned one thing that made the most Eminent Presbyterian Divines after 41 think their bringing of the Yoke of Presbytery upon the English Necks practicable and that is their accounting according to the Pacta conventa between Them and the Parliament they should have the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands settled on their Church whereby their Discipline how defective soever in weight as to Principles of Divinity and Humanity would have made it self â—ormidable by its Balance of Land and 't is probable that in Scotland the Livings of the inferiour Clergy weighing more in value than the Estates or Livelihoods of the ordinary inferiour Layety hath supported that Clergy there in their pretences to expect somewhat of Power and which they yet enjoy in the Figure of the Church Government there Established under Bishops and altho King Iames in his planting so many Benefices throughout that Kingdom worth 30 l. per Annum with a House and some Glebe Land belonging to them never intended any advantage to Presbytery thereby he yet occasioned some by making so many Divines there more considerable in wealth but our Presbyterian Divines here having been so fatally disappointed about the Bishops Lands promised them all ingenious men must necessarily thereby be made apprehensive that they are never to hope to bring the terror of that Church Government upon us by that means It is moreover observable that most of the Race of our old Presbyterian and Independant Divines having been extinct some few of whom were Learned Men and gave some Ornament to their Tenets by their Learning scarce any new ones and who appeared not in the Church before the King's Restoration have since by the publication of any Theological or DevotionalWritings propp'd up the Credit of their Party and that of the Ecclesiasticks of those perswasions none have published any thing valuable against
Popery but some of their old stock Tho some Presbyterians have not hitherto learned that Modesty and Policy from the Papists as to leave off their unjust valuing themselves on their Numbers yet as I know not of any number of Gentlemen that would choose to live in any Parish in England under the severity of that Church Government and who would not rather desire to be exterminated from their Native Country than to live in it with Presbytery Paramount so neither do I believe that Presbytery would be endured by many of our illiterate Mechanicks now more than heretofore if they were taught its rigour And tho likewise another Sect of Dissenters more Gentlemanly than that of the Presbyterians I mean the Independants do in the little Pamphlets they write trouble us much with proclaiming their Numbers and as if they were not only the sober but the major part of the Nation they are very ridiculous in trying to make themselves that way dreadful contrary to what is in Fact true I believe that the number of those who in the late times listed themselves in the particular gathered Churches and subjected themselves to their Laws and Contribution to their Pastorage was always inconsiderable and as an Argument of that 't is in this Discourse mentioned that the Pastors of the most Opulent of those Churches in London did most readily quit their Posts when they could obtain Head-ships of Colleges and that in a Conjuncture when Independancy was in a manner the form of Church Government owned by the State. These Churches were always very few in the Country and are now fewer and scarce visible unless we will call the Bands of Quakers by the name of Churches and a name I do not hear they think fit to use I am of opinion that under the Christian Religion so much â—uller of Mystery than the Pagan Iewish and Turkish its Divine Planter did necessarily make Christians loving one another the Characteristical Mark of their being such and under the noble freedom allowed by the Protestaâ—ts Religion to try all things and to trust no Religionary Tenets but what they have tryed a Heterodoxy as to some speculative supposed Tenets of the Church of England may among some inquisitive persons have long gained ground and still do so There was in London an Independant Church under Cromwel's Government and Mr. Biddell was their Pastor and among other Tenets denominable as those of Religion they owned these following viz. That the Fathers under the old Covenant had only Tempâ—ral Promises and That the Vniversal Obedience performed to the Commands of God and Christ was the saving Faith and That Christ rose again only by the Power of the Father and not his own and That justifying Faith is not the pure gift of God but may be acquired by mens natural Abilities and That Faith cannot believe any thing contrary to or above reason and That there is no Original Sin and That Christ hath not the same body now in glory in which he suffered and rose again and That the Saints shall not have the same body in Heaven that they had on Earth and That Christ was not Lord or King before his Resurrection or Priest before his Ascension and That the Sainâ—s shall not before the day of Iudgment enjoy the Bliss of Heaven and That God doth not certainly know Future Contingences and That there is not any Authority of Fathers or General Councils in determining Matters of Faith and That Christ before his death had not any Dominioâ— over the Angels and That Christ by dying made not satisfaction for us and 't is possible that such Religionary Tenets as these which are far from being de lanâ caprinâ and are contrary to the Articles of our Church may not be extirpated tho yet I believe there will never be any Fermentation in our Church or State produced here by them if in course of time any of them should happen to be the Sentiments of any of our Princes and much less that any Prince if so opining would consute others as Hereticks with Fire and Sword and as Calvin coâ—futed Servetus There was likewise in our Metropolis another Independant Church of which Mr. Iohn Goodwin was the Pastor and by which Church the Tenets of Arminiâ—s were received and which tho they have ceased to ferment the State yet the opinions of men equally pious and learned will in all likelihood be always different about the same and as to these Tenets the Questions are not such as are called Questiones Domitianae or of catching of Flies But there is a sort of Questions that is little better and that in our busie World will not usurp the time they have done and that is such as are of the Nature of that I have spoke of toward the Close of this Discourse that made the fermentation in a Church of Separatists that went hence to Amsterdam namely Whether Aron's Ephod were blew or Sea-green and tho I have asserted it That mens liberty of professing Religionary Tenets may be reckoned as a part of their Purchace by Christ's Blood yet methinks to make the Son of God leave the Bosom of his â—ather and take a Journey from Heaven to Earth to impress on it right Notions about the lawfulness of signing Children with the Cross or of mens kneeling at the Sacrament or standing at the Creed or bowing at the name of Iesus or of placing the Communion Table in the East or of wearing Surplices Tippets Lawn-sleeves or square Caps or of keeping of Holy-days or singing Psalms to Organs and to resolve the World in some plain points as namely Whether the Soveraign Power may not lawfully enjoyn the observance of the external Circumstances of Divine Worship which every man doth in his own Family or Whether it be not as lawful for the Sovereign Power to enjoyn kneeling at the Sacrament as 't is for private Persons to command their Flocks not to kneel and the resolving who doth most hurt by Christian Liberty either the Magistrate who commanding me to kneel telâ—s me the thing is in its own nature indifferent and that he doth not and cannot change the nature of things in themselves or my private Pastor who shall tell me That my not kneeling is necessary to salvation and the resolving the Question Whether I may lawfully â—oyn in a set form of Prayer with a Congregation when 't is plain that another man 's conceived or extempore Prayer is as much a form to me or to another as any printed Prayer can be or the resolving what Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots calls a frivolous Question as made by some Separatists viz. What Warrant have you to use this or that Form of Prayer or to pray upon a Book and to which he answers That it is Warrant sufficient that we are enjoyned to use Prayer Confession of Sin and Supplication for Pardon c. No set Form thereof determined therefore any fit Form warrantable this Form that we
Opiners as light it self can be with heat is a sufficient Guarranty to all Protestant â—eâ—usants of their finding from our Church all the favour I will not say that they have deserved from it but all that they will or can and I believe the Charity of our Church-men is so great for them as almost to tempt them to wish That there were some dignus vindice nodus in the Religionary part of Dissenters Principles that might give our Câ—ergy a signal occasion to display the before mentioned Characteristical mark of Christianity in loving the Persons of Men dissenting from them in any matters of moment They have experimented this temper of our Divines in Dr. Stillingfleet's Book of the Vnreasonableness of the Separation after so many of their Waspish Pamphlets had attacqued his Excellent Sermon of the mischief of separation and the soft insinuations of reason in which having produced from them so much unmanly passion may serve as an indication that the present Dissenteâ—ship is languishing under its old Age when the gentlest weight and even when the Grass-hopper is a burden to it They have seen this happy temper appearing in some of our most Celebrated Divines not being exasperated against the persons of one another tho owning Sentiments different from our Articles and Homilies And indeed 't is natural to any man of a great Genius and of such illustrious Abilities that all the several Religionary Parties thinks of with the wish of Vtinam noster esset in some Notions peculiar to himself to soar above the common â—light of the ordinary Observers of their Rules and Prescriptions and not to be fled out of the hearts of those of their Sect when some times he towres out of their sight and above the reach of their understandings I have in the Learned Theological Writings of Mr. Baxter concerning Iustifications contemplated his great parts and abilities and have likewise observed the great Learning of Doctor Tully appearing in his Iustificatio Paulina and where he saith That in the point of Iustification the Controversy is not de muris sed de Palladio Christiano and have moreover read Dr. Tully's printed Letter to Mr. Baxter wherein he chargeth him whether justly or no I enquire not for seeming to place most if not all the differences that are in the point of Iustification between us and the Church of Rome among Logomachies p 16th and useth to him these words in p. 17. But seeing you are so busie in turning our greatest Controversies with the Papists into a Childish Contest of words and in p. 21. he desires him That he would consider the great affinity his Tenet of Justification hath contracted with the Roman and in the same Page desires him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see only the very small odds between his justification and the Council of Trent ' s. That great Adorner of the Church of England both with his Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond thought it not so acceptable service to the World to fill it with more Volumes against the Idolatry of the Church of Rome as to diminish it by distinction and when in his Tract of Idolatry § 64. p. 41. he makes the worshipping of the Host to be only material Idolatry tho he knew as well as any the Articles of our Church and that without the formale peccati as well as the materiale there can be no sin of Commission and that in all things forma dat esse Our Famous Dr. Ieremy Taylor likewise in his liberty of Prophesying p. 258 doth free the Papists from Formal Idolatry Thus likewise tho our Homilies and our Iewel Raynold Whitaker Vsher c. and the Translators of our Bible into English in King Iames's time did place the Name of Anti-Christ and the Man of Sin on the Bishop of Rome yet Dr. Hammond as well as others of our Church have publickly avowed their Sentiments of the Popes not being so I have not mentioned this as if I thought that any of our excellent Divines of the Church of England would ever occasion the least umbrage of jealousie in any Future Conjuncture about any design of uniting our Church to Rome or Rome's to ours the common Rule in Politicks of minor pars unita majori censetur facta illius appendix and which is exemplified by the Church of Rome not having been united to all the Aâ—iatick African Graecian Russian and Protestant Churches as containing three times more Christian Souls than doth the Church of Rome with all its Dependents and Adherents and the ineffectual Project of some well meaning Divines in a former Conjuncture here will I believe effectually avert all future jealousies of any thing of that Nature or the danger of any in the Vessel by trying to pull the Rock to it bringing it super hanc Petram From various grounds of natural reason I may venture to predict that the best Evangelical Church and the best Clergy the World can shew will direct their measures suitably to those Words of the great Evangelical Prophet Isaiah Their strength is to â—it still and without any faith to remove the seven Hills or Mountains of Rome hither or on their sullen Contumacy resolving like Mahomet to go to the Mountains Among the various Considerations urged in this Discourse to fortifie the minds of the Loyal timid against their unaccountable fears of Heterodoxy in any Prince as to the Religion by Law Established rendring him a meer natural Agent or one without freedom of will as to the point of freedom of their Consciences and depriving him of the Brains as well as Bowels of a Man and against impressions of trouble from what so many Writers have insinuated namely that a Roman Catholick Prince must by virtue of the Authority of the Lateran Council exterminate his Heretical Subjects I have in p. 283 mentioned that the Munster Peace hath in Germany cured the timid Lutheran and Calvinist Subjects of any fears and jealousies as of their Religion and Property upon any Prince by the Lineal Course of Descent coming to be their Ruler who may profess any Religionary Sentiments different from theirs And because the factum of that Peace hath not by any Writers since our late fermentation that I know of been insisted on for the illumination of Peoples understandings in the firm Provision made there for mens being secure in their Religion by Law Established whatever the Religion of their lawful Princes may be I shall here give some Cursory Account of the great Fact of that Peace and wherein some Popish Princes made so great a Figure and who sufficiently understood how far the Later an Council obliged them that may not only shew it a kind of Pedantry to imagine that Roman Catholick Princes are still by their Religion bound after all the Revolutions of time and its incursions made on their former measures as to Heterodox Religion and Religionaries to use the same Methods as formerly and to move in the same
formerly observed to do upon the Worlds minding how much the Principles of the Iesuites had shook the Thrones of Kings and as particularly Father Caron in his Remonstrantia Hybernorum hath done and there citing 250 Popish Authors who deny the Pope's Power to depose Kings And no doubt but Dissenters late Omissions in this kind and Commissions in another will awaken the Magistracy to require from all Protestant Recusants such an exact Inventory of their Tenets as hath not yet been given it and the rather for that it is not by any Dissenters denied that the Sovereign is so far Custos utriusque tabulae as to be allowed to require all Religionary Parties to give him an account of their Principles and to live according to the Rule of them Thus in the Dutch States the Magistrates of every place where any Sect of the Heterodox is tolerated are religiously careful first to inform themselves exactly of all their Tenets and Principles and to see that they hold no opinion prejudicial to the Constitutions of their Government and none doubts but that the entire Body of the Tenets or Principles of the Dissenters to the Gallican Church is as conspicuous to that Church and State and indeed to the World as can be desired the present agreement of which with the Measures of Loyalty I have shewn in this Discourse Who hath there read the Hugonots Sayings published with any stain to their Loyalty or hath seen any of their Tenets branded for Sedition by an Vniversity or College in France But our Protestant Recusants having had here the liberty by Act of Parliament to enjoy their peculiar ways of Religious Worship in their own Families with the toleration of four others of the same perswasion to be present before all their Principles and Tenets have been notified to the Government is an instance of greater Indulgence shewn by the Government here to such Heterodox than I believe can be parallel'd in any Country whatsoever All dangers are naturally multiplied in the dark and it is a diminution of our dread of the very Iesuites Principles that they are generally known but if the Body of their Principles were as much unknown as are those of Protestant Recusants yet would the publick be more immediately concerned in having first an accurate account of those of the latter as being more numerous It may be well thought a Bankrupt Church whose Principles are latitant and any mens begging from the Magistrate Indulgence to a Principle of Sedition would be as shameful as the Insolence of a Beggar not only begging twenty Pound as our Comaedian said but begging a Leg or an Arm and not like a mans asking me who stands in my way as I am travelling on the Road that I would not ride over him but that he may mount into the Saddle whose Principles direct him to ride over me It was well observed by Lipsius in his Notes in Seneca That Naturae quodam Instinctu ea maleficia coercent homines puniunt quae societatem convellunt But as to any Out-rages from any Religionaries which are either prejudicial to the Bodies of particular Persons or even Convulsive of the Bodies of States and Kingdoms and to which the Actors might be inclined by their particular heats and not the general light of their avowed Principles I account that Complaints against such will soon evaporate into Air or be buried in Earth and with some allusion to the words of Let the dead bury the dead I may say let Plots bury Plots and Shams Shams and let any Seditious Protestants and Seditious Papists on the Compensation of their Crimes forbear troubling others by calling one another Criminals and the Figure of the Body of their Parties can no more be altered by the unevenness and exorbitance of the actings of particular Persons than is the rotundity of the Earth by the ruggedness of Rocks or protuberance of Mountains And that where one Papist goeth out of the World at the back door of Justice for the Treason of Clipping and Coyning twenty of the more numerous body of the Protestants do so is not to be wondered at but the id ipsum to be regarded in any reflections made on a Religion by occasion of its Criminals is its Principles and if it could be proved that any Caetus of men were allowed by the Church of England to assert the lawfulness of that Treason as both Papists and Presbyterians have the lawfulness of the Doctrine of Resistance that indeed would have the weight of a just Reflection on our CHVRCH Tho several dissolute and nominal Protestants may possibly have invented and forged as many Shams and Calumnious Accusations against other Protestants and Papists as if they had believed the Practice of Calumny to be lawful yet hath any of them published in Print the Tenet of the lawfulness of it or its being a poor Peccadillo Who knoweth not that some particular Divines of the Church of England by the turbulence of their several dispositions have enflamed differences and divisions in our Church and State But who can charge them from doing this by Communication of Councils with their Superiors and by instruction from them Were any of them charged by Proclamations for doing any thing of that nature as some Popish Recusants were by his Majesty 's of Ian. 16. 1673. for chiefly occasioning the intestine divisions among us and by his Majesty's Proclamation of December 2d 1680. for fomenting of differences among his Loyal Protestant Subjects But yet this Fact tho thus by the Government charged on some ill men of that Religionary perswasion would not have moved me to reflect with the leaâ—t heat on the Order of Iesuites in this Discourse by whom so many of our Roman Catholicks are conducted but for their own Proclamations of their Principles in their Books and particularly as to the point of Calumny the only Engine by which Divisions could be wrought among Protestants and but for their setting up that Doctrine heretofore without leave from the Pope's Canon Law and backing it with another to fright any Fools or Knaves from disparaging or even calumniating them and for their making use and application of these Doctrines since the Pope had damned them by a Proclamation I mean his Edict of March 79 and but for Father Parsons having so scandalously exposed the narrowness of his Soul and the poor Ideas he had of Humane Nature and even of the Character of a Gentleman by saying what I have in p. 61. cited out of his Book of The Succession viz. That many Iealousies Accusations and Calumniations must needs â—â—ght on the Party that is of different Religion from the State and Prince under whom he lives As there is very little in this Discourse that reflects on any Principles of the Romanists that may be called Religionary so neither have I troubled my self to attacque the Tenets of the Society of the Iesuites and of other Casuists condemned by this Pope that do not hominum societatem
Guymenius shortly after in that year appearing in Print as a Champion for the Principles so damned the College of Sorbon shortly after that damned the Work of Guymenius in the 11th of May the same year and that in the latter end of Iune so shortly following in the same year the same Pope Alexander the 7th damned that very Sorbon Censure of Guymenius and that therefore 't is possible the great Scene of Vertue appearing in this Popes said Decree may with a short turn of Apostolical Power receive too the Fate of Pageantry and presently disappear and that the great Mountain which his Faith hath removed into the midst of the Sea may in little more than the twinkling of an Eye return to its old place But in Answer to which I shall do that right to the Papacy to clear the mistake in the objection and inform the Reader that tho Alexander the 7th did Ex Cathedra damn that Sorbon-Censure as aforesaid yet it appears out of the Condemnatory Bull it self that what that Pope there did was not out of favour to Guymenius or the Iesuites themselves or their Tenets and that to satisfie the World in that point he there gives the reason for his damning the Sorbonists Censure namely because it intermedled in Censuring some other Propositions or Principles of the Jesuites that concerned the Authority of the Pope the Iurisdiction of Bishops the Office of the Parish Priests and the Privileges granted by Popes and but for the Sorbons complicating which with their Censure of the other Scandalous Principles of the Iesuites no doubt but the Sorbon Censure had stood as a Rock unshaken Let therefore such who fear every thing fear that this great Pope will after his said Condemnatory Decree appear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Condemned while I observe it for the honour of his Iustice that he made that Decree and for the honour of his Prudence that before Nature had caused the detestable Principles therein censured silently to evaporate he gave the World this loud warming of them as it likewise may be for the honour of that great Seminary of the Divines of our Church of England our University of Oxford observed that before the Seditious Principles and Tenets of Iesuites and some Dissenters came to be naturally exterminated out of the English World by fear and shame they notified them to this Age and to Posterity There is no Subject that hath since the year 1641 more employed the English Press than that of Liberty of Conscience pro and con and the fiercest and sharpest of the Writings concerning it were what passed between the Independents and Presbyterians on the occasion of Presbytery's great Effort to make the English Nation by one short general turn Proselyted to its Model and when it pushed for the auspicious fate of former great Religionary Conversions happening as it were simul and semel and when Nations seemed to be like the Hyena which having but one Back-bone cannot turn except it turn all at once But the Independents observing the Kingdom and Presbytery frowning on one another thought they could do nothing more popular than to take the Arguments they found in the many Pamphlets of the Presbyterians lying on every Stall for toleration under the old Hierarchy and turn them upon Presbytery and every one then who had fears and jealousies of the Arbitrariness of Presbytery seem'd to be a well wisher to those Books for Liberty of Conscience and the destroying of the Credit of Presbytery by Books that had so much contentious fire in them was really an acceptable sweet-smelling Sacrifice to the Nation And after the King's Restoration tho some few Books were writ of that Subject and with much more Candour than the others yet the Yoke of the King 's Ecclesiastical Laws was so easie to the People as that the Writing of Books against it was not encouraged by Popular Applause The King's Declaration of Indulgence afterward appearing and as not gained by dint of Pen but ex mero motu was applauded by some few particular Writers among the Popish and Protestant Recusants discoursing in Print at their ease of Liberty of Conscience But as if Nature meant that Books of that Subject should no more here divert the curious World the Empire toleration had thereby gained did presently labour under its own weight and the Non-Conformists being jealous of that Declaration proving a President of the Prerogatives suspending Acts of Parliament in general and suspecting that the Popish Recusants would have the better of that Game as supposed to have many great Court-Cards here and abroad in the World and likely to have more while the Protestant Recusants had not so good in their hands tho yet they had here what amounted to the point in Picquet I mean the advantage of their Numbers did presently thereupon cause all the Cards to be thrown up but first had in Concert with the dealers provided for the packing them to their own advantage in a new Deal In plain English some Loyal Persons and firm Adherents to the Church of England in the House of Commons thinking that Declaration illegal and whether justly or no I here presume not in the least to question endeavoured tanquam pro aris focis to get that Declaration Cancell'd and knowing they could not effect the same without the help of the Dissenters Party in Parliament engaged their help therein by giving them hopes to carry an Act of Parliament for their Indulgence but what a little fore-sight would have made appear to them impossible to be gained for many Considerations too obvious to be named And the natural result of this Fact which is on all hands confessedly true cannot but be the making of the former fashion of Polemical writing for liberty of Conscience to pass away We have since seen some few Florid Sheets published by some of the Dissenting Clergy on that Subject but they have made no other Figure then that of the poor Resemblances of Flowers extracted by Chimical Art out of their Ashes and any little shaking them in the Glass of Time must make them presently fall in pieces I have in this Discourse expressly owned my having no regret against any due or Legal Relaxation of the Penal Laws against Recusants but what any due or legal way may be therein I enquire not The power of the King in dispensing with the Penalties in case of particular Persons was not that I hear of in the least Controverted in the Debates of the Commons about that Declaration And Fuller in his Church History relateth that when Bishop Williams was Lord-Keeper there was a Toleration granted under the Great Seal to Mr. Iohn Cotton a Famous Independent Divine for the free exercise of his Ministry notwithstanding his dissenting in Ceremonies so long as done without disturbance to the Church and the lawfulness of which particular Indulgence I suppose none in that Age controverted as I think none would any thing of that kind in this
well come under the account of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to those Opiners hath for the honour of the Church of England's Principles in his 8th Lecture and there de lege paenali well taught us in what Cases Penal Laws oblige in Conscience and shewed that they may so bind where the Legislator did intend to oblige the Subject Ad culpam etiam non solum ad paenam and in that Case saith he Certum est eos teneri ad observandum id quod lege praecipitur nec satisfacere officio si parati sint poenam lege constitutam subire and where he further saith That the mind and intention of the Legislator is chiefly seen in the Proeme of his Law in quo saith he there ut acceptior sit populo lex solet Legislator Consilii sui de eà lege ferendâ causas rationes expoâ—eâ—e quà m sit lex iusta quam fuerit tollendis incommodis abusibus necessaria quà m futura sit Reip. utilis There is a particular Principle of moment worthy of the Magistrates Survey that relates to the Gathered Churches and that is a Principle made a necessary ingredient in the Constitution of of those Churches by a Divine of the same Authority among them as Bishop Saâ—â—erson is in the Church of England and whom I occasionally beforementioned and that is Mr. Iohn Cotton B. D. who in a Pamphlet of his printed at London in the year 1642 Entâ—tuled The true Constitution of a particular visible Church proved by Scripture wherein is briefly demonstrated by Questions and Answers what Officers Worship and Government Christ hath ordained in his Church and in the Title-page whereof is this place of Scripture viz. Jer. 50. 5. They shall ask the way to Sion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual COVENANT that shall not be forgotten in p. 1st makes his first Question what is a Church And the Answer is The Church is a mystical Body whereof Christ is the head the Members and Saints called out of the World and united together in one Congregation by an holy COVENANT to Worship the Lord and to Edifie one another in all his holy Ordinances And in another Book of his printed at London in the year 1645 called The way of the Churches of Christ in New England his third Proposition is this viz. For the joyning of faithful Christians into the Fellowship and Estate of a Church we find not in Scripture that God hath done it any other way than by entring of them all together as one man into an holy COVENANT with himself to take the Lord as the head of the Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People which implies their submitting of themselves to him and one to another in his fear and their walking in professed subjection to all his Ordinances their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness unto Mutual Edification He there partly props up the Obligation of this Church Covenant on the Iewish Oeconomy mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy and other places of the Old Testament The reasonableness of Subjects not entring into Religionary Covenants without the Consent of the Pater patriae may be inferred from the old Testament where in Numbers c. 30 the Parent hath a power given for the controuling of the Childrens Vows not enter'd into by his consent but since these Principles of a new Church Covenant may seem to introduce a new Ecclesiastical Law without the King's privity and consent a thing that if our very Convocation should presume to do would bring them within a Praemunire and since the whole power of reforming and ordering of all matters Ecclesiastical is by the Laws in express words annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and particularly by the 1st of Elizabeth and since that it hath been said that even without an Act of Parliament a new Oath or Covenant cannot be introduced among the King's Subjects and moreover since all the famous Religionary Confessions of the Protestant Churches abroad assert nothing of any such Church Covenant and since Covenants and Associations have lately heard so ill in the Kingdom I think the nature and terms of this Independent Covenant ought to be laid as plain before the Eye of the Government as was the Scotch Presbyterian one Those words of Mr. Cotton of the entring them all together as one man into an holy Covenant carry some thing like the same sound of one and all and tho their thus entring into it to take the Lord as the head of his Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People may be a plausible beginning of this new Church Covenant in nomine Domini yet the following words of submitting themselves to him and to one another in his fear and their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness are words that I think the Magistracy ought to watch and to see that Dissenters have a very sound form of words prescribed to them in this Case if it shall think fit to have the same continued I have found the Assertion of a Church Covenant as Essential to the Form of a true Independent Church in many other of their Books and do suppose that this Covenant being laid as Corner-stone in the building of their Churches by Divine Right it must last as long as Independency it self and of its lasting still I met with an Indication from a Loyal and Learned Official of the Court-Christian who told me that tho several of the Dissenters called Presbyterians have been easily perswaded to repair to the Divines of the Church of England that they were admonished to confer with and had upon Conference with them come to Church and took the Sacrament yet he thought that some of another Class of Dissenters were possessed with a Spirit of incurable Contumacy by reason of their Principles having tied them together to one another by a Covenant And if it shall therefore appear to the Magistrates that they are thus Conference-proof and as I may say Reason-proof by vertue of their Covenant it will then be found that no one Mâ—mber of a gathered Church can turn to ours without the whole Hyena-like turning and perhaps some of the Lords the Bishops may think it hereupon proper humbly to advise his Majesty to null by a Declaration the Obligation of this Covenant as his Royal Father did that of the Presbyterian Covenant In the mean time the Consideration of the Principles of Independecy thus seeming to have cramp'd the Consciences of its followers with a Covenant that is at least unnecessary and must naturally be a troublesom imposition to men of thought and generous Education who love to perform Moral Offices without entring into Covenant or giving Bond so to do may serve to
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any Intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the municipal Laws of their Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
the exhalations of which may cast such Mists before Mens understanding Faculties as to hinder them from seeing their way in the observance of the Oaths they took and therefore as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or premuniment as I call'd it against our being future Enemies to our selves and against poor little Mortals as it were standing for the Office of Conservators of Gods glory while they are losing their own Souls by Perjury and against some Loyal Timid People troubling themselves with falling Skies and fears of Gods not upholding his Church just as Galen tells us of a Melancholy Man who by often reading it in the Poets how Atlas supported Heaven with his Shoulders was often in a Panic fear least Atlas should faint and let Heaven fall on mens heads instead of taking pains to uphold and maintain their Oaths which they swore to God in Truth and Righteousness it may perhaps be always of importance to our English World to have right Notions of the Obligation of those Oaths left behind in it When I have read many of the late Pamphlets against the Succession the Venom of which was stolen out of Doleman's alias Parson's Book and have often considered that the Government in King Iames's time might we ll be apprehensive of the mischief that Book might do with its Poyson and perhaps with its Sting in following Ages I have then wondered why none was employed to Answer it throughly a thing that I do not find was ever done unless it may be said that an Answer to the 1st part of it was in the year 1603 published by Sir Iohn Haward and that its 2d part hath been confuted by some Loyal and Learned Persons since the late Conjuncture of our Fermentation and in which time that Book of Parsons was Reprinted I am sorry that that Book and some others of Father Parsons were in some part of King Iames's time Answered as they were by the real Characters of severity that then fell on some innocent Papists and who I believe were Abhorrers of the Sedition his Books contained and on whom Dr. Donne's Pseudo-Martyr printed in the year 1610 reflects in The Advertisement to the Reader saying That his continual Libels and incitatory Books have occasioned more afflictions and drawn more of that Blood which they call Catholick than all our Acts of Parliament have done And with a just respect to the Learning in Sir Iohn Haward's Answer to the first part of that Book and by him Dedicated to King Iames it may yet be wished that with less Pomp of Words and greater closeness of Argument referring to the Principles of internal Justice and natural Allegiance and the lex terrae he had shewn the perfect unlawfulness of defeating the Title of Proximity of Blood in the Case and instead of so much impugning the Book by References to the Civil Law and old Greek and Latin Authors making for Monarchy in general or even by the places cited out of the old Testament favouring primogeniture and indeed I do not find among all our late Writers for the Succession that so much as one of them by so much as once quoting this Book of Sir Iohn Haward tho so common hath thence brought any Aid to their Noble Cause But however the Oath of Allegiance having been enjoyned since the writing of Sir Iohn Haward's Book hath given an ordinary Writer the advantage of bringing the Cause of the unlawfulness of disturbing the Course of Succession to a quicker hearing and speedier issue in the Court of Conscience which is the point I have endeavoured to carry after the end of this Discourse leaving it to Candid Men to judge of the sincerity of my performance therein and of my fair stating of the Question and the deducing genuine Propositions from it so stated and which shall yet be reviewed by me when I come to Review this Discourse The truth is when I began it I observed the generality of Men who writ against the Exclusion-Bill with a great deal of good Law History and State-policy did shew both their Learning and their Loyalty and did very usefully set forth the dreadful Confusions it would introduce and perpetuate in the State and the Illegality and indeed Nullity of any Exclusion tho by Act of Parliament was by them likewise usefully shewn but yet I think it would have been some scandal to the present Age if it had passed away without transmitting to the next some instances of Protestants who had leisure to write writing of the unlawfulness of such a Bill with relation to our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and I was sorry to find that when the late Loyal and Learned Bishop of Winchester had afterward appear'd as the first Dâ—vine who in Print asserted That the Exclusion of the Right Heir was contrary to the Law of God both Natural and Positive and that such Exclusion was against the Law of the Land also his judgment in his Book called the Bishop of Winchester ' s Vindication given so Learnedly in the point seemed to so many of our new pretenders to Loyalty and to Conformity to the Church of England to be a kind of a Novelty But yet I observed that that Learned Prelate thought not fit there to strengthen his Assertion of the unlawfulness of such Exclusion by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Nor did I observe that among all the Loyal Writers for the Succession I had met with from first to last any one had surveyed the Question of the unlawfulness of the Exclusion resulting from our Obligation by the Oaths of Allâ—giance and Supremacy tho yet some few of them hinted the thing in general and were still answered with the haeres viventis till at last another Divine namely Dr. Hicks Vicar of All hallows Barking and Dean of Worcester honoured both himself and the Question by taking notice of it in his Iovian and in the Preface to a Sermon of his printed in the year 1684 and Entituled The harmony of Divinity and Law in a Discourse about not resisting Sovereign Princes and he in the 3d p. of that Preface observes That some men did pervert the meaning of the word Heirs in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy from its common and usual acceptation to another more special on purpose to elude the force and obligation of them which otherwise they must have had upon the Consciences of the Excluders themselves The Doctor had made himself Master of Law enough to Master the true notion of the point and did in his Preface exorcise the Fantom of haeres viventis a Noon-day Spright raised by one who was thought a great Conjurer and which had before haunted the Question and had affrighted so many from lodging their thoughts in it And tho no other of our Divines that I have heard of writ of the same nor any of the Layety otherwise than starting the Notion of it in Print yet considering the great weight of his Learning and Reason with which in
Treaty cited in the Margent of the Author of The Reasonable Defence as I have mentioned the thing with Historical Truth Arch-Bishop Brambal in p. 178 of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of that Peace and how thereby freedom of Religion was secured to Protestants and Bishopricks and other Ecclesiastical Dignities conferred on them and that many Lands and other Hereditaments of great value were alienated from the Church in Perpetuity and yet the Popes Nuntio protested against it and having there in his Margent referred to the aforesaid Bull of Pope Innocent saith yet the Emperor and the Princes of Germany stand to their Contracts assert the Municipal Laws and Customs of the Empire and assume to themselves to be the only Iudges of their own Privileges and Necessities And moreover Sir William Temple in his said Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire writ in 1671 mentioning The Domestick Interest of the Empire to be the limited Constitution of the Imperial Power and the Balance of the several free Princes and States of the Empire among themselves saith that those Interests have raised no doubt since the Peace of Munster While the Iesuites make the Pope infallible and some Anti-Papists generally make him a meer natural Agent that must always Act Ad extremum virium I fear not to take a middle way and to suppose him to be a rational Animal and one that knows when the Papacy is not to exert its former Principles against the Power of Kings and lives of Hereticks and for this reason namely Quia deerant vires and one who will not do it for the Future in all places Quia deerunt vires He is not to learn the reasonableness of that Gloss in his Canon Law that Canes propter pacem tolerantur in ecclesiâ and especially when the Heretical Dogs are there the most numerous nor needed he or the Popish or Protestant Princes of the Empire to have been minded of the Dutch Proverb so well known there viz. Veel Honden Zyn de' haez dâ—ot i. e. Many Dogs are the Hares death and that the old sport of hunting down Hereticks with Crusado's was hardly practicable when both Popish as well as Protestant Princes were weary of it and that therefore according to the saying Difficile est ire venatum invitis Canibus Nor was either the Pope or the Popish Princes of Germany to be taught that if ever there was to be that wild thing of a Crusado against Hereticks again better use might be made of them then by killing them and that it would turn to better Account to deal with them as Mathew Paris tells us on the year 1250 the time about which Crusado's were most in fashion and when Popes that had a mind to ravish the Regal Rights of Princes would take an opportunity to do it by sending them on Fools Errands to the Holy Land that the Pope dealt with the many Pilgrims who were Cruce signati in an Adventure for that Land namely that he very fairly sold those crossed Pilgrims for ready Money as the Iews did their Doves and their Sheep in the Temple And if the 100,000 Hereticks that I mentioned out of Bellarmine as slain by one Crusado had been sold but for 20 l. Sterling each a fond might have been thereby provided for the incommoding the Turk very much more than by the taking from him the Holy Land. But the Pope and those Popish Princes are sufficiently sensible of their want of Power for any such Nonsensical Outrage and I wish that our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance and who with Bellarmine have agreed in that being the Cause of the Primitive Christians not attempting to shake the Empire namely because they had not strength to do it were but as sensible as the Papacy is of their wanting strength to do it in England No marvel therefore that the Iupiter Capitolinus in his Bull of Nullity did not discharge the old Artillery of the Lightning and Thunder of Anathemas and the greater Excommunications against the Emperor and Roman-Catholick Crown'd Heads and Princes concerned in the Munster Peace as I have shewn nor according to the Expression in the Reasonable Defence damned them to the Pitt of Hell for it No both the World and the Papacy were so Metamorphosed and their old fashions so far passed away that those Popish Crown'd Heads found that there was in this Bull only what partly resembled that which Ovid tells us of in his Metamorphosis viz. Est aliud levius sulmen cui dextra Cyclopum Saevitiae flammaeque minus minus addidit irae Tela secunda vocant superi c. But as I just now expressed my wishes that some of our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance were as sensible of their wanting strength to subvert the Rights of the Monarchy in England as the Pope was of his wanting it to break the Measures of the Crown'd Heads relating to the Munster Peace I have in this Discourse expressed not only my hopes but belief that nature it self which is thus always Acting to the extremity of its Power will overpower the Arts by which they have been seduced to Principles for endeavouring it and will render the Principles of many of our Protestant Recusants coincident with those of the Primitive Christians instead of those of the Jesuites and that this Storm which the World hath brought on the Irreligionary part of their Principles as well as of the Iesuites both of which have brought so many dismal Storms on the World will make them come to an Avarage and to submit to the casting many of their Principles over-board as well as the Iesuites have been obliged so to do by the Pope as Master of the Vessel commanding the same And as in a Storm the very Victuals of the Mariners are often according to the Maritime Law cast into the Sea to lighten the Vessel it may resemblingly be expected that many of our Dissenting Religionaries will now part with some of those Principles that have in their Religion-Trade afforded them a Subsistance and that when they shall consider how this present Pope notwithstanding the Privilege of a Master of a Ship by which he may refuse to begin the Iactus by throwing out first his own Wares and Goods did about a year before he threw out the Lumber of the Iesuites and Casuists throw over-board a vast Treasure of Papal Indulgences and by which the Ship of the Papacy was formerly victualled It was by the Popes Decree of the 7th of March 1678 that a Multitude of Indulgences was suppressed and the Names of 14 Famous Popes are there mentioned as having granted some thereof and great numbers of others are by him quashed without mentioning the Popes by whom granted and there was a particular Clause in the Decree that did shake the whole Body of Indulgences And tho the Virgin Mary hath been by many of the Vulgus of Papists oftner pray'd to in Storms than the Trinity
same thing almost the same words used in a Prophecy of the times of the Gospel Zech. 13. 3. He saith indeed that by those words in Deut. the meaning is not that his Father or Mother should presently run a Knife into him but that they should be the means to bring him to condign punishment even the taking away his life Calvin likewise in giving his sense of that place of Zechary foresaw the Odium of having any killed without going to the Iudge and there saith Multò hoc durius est propriis manibus filium interficere quam si ad Iudicem deferrent But here Mr. Burroughs and Calvin have Categorically enough asserted what the Iudges duty is in the Case and I have said what Calvin effected by going to the Iudge about Servetus Gundissalvus doth not determine the lawfulness of burning an Heretical City without going to the Iudge and the lawfulness of Protestant Princes judging the Persons or Cities of Idolaters to be destroyed by the pretended Obligation of the Mosaic Law is chargeable on the Anti Papists I have mentioned and I believe there are few of our Presbyterian or Independent Enthusiasts but who think it as lawful to burn Rome as to roast an Egg. But the Church of England abhorreth this flammeum sulphureum evangelium and Dr. Hicks in the Preface to his Iovian taking notice of the Reasons which the Papists urge for putting Heretick and the scotising Presbyterians for putting Popish Princes to death saith thereupon I desire Mr. J. to tell me Whether he thinks in his Conscience the Bishops of the Church of England could argue so falsly upon the Principles of the Iewish Theocracy to the like proceedings in Christian States And saith if this way of arguing be true then the Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth was bound to burn many Popish Towns in her Kingdom and smite the Inhabitants with the Sword c. I have therefore thought it Essential to the advancement and preservation of Loyalty to endeavour to have the Papal and Presbyterian Error as to the Iewish Laws exterminated And the setling of this point is the more important to the Measures of Loyalty because the same Chapter in Deuteronomy viz. the 13 th that hath been the Popes Palladium for his power of firing Heretical Cities hath likewise been made use of by our deluded Excluders as theirs to recur to in a practice so scandalous to Loyalty and to the Protestant Religion and which hath too much appeared in the many Factious Pamphlets for the Exclusion and as I hinted that that Chapter of Deuteronomy was impiously applied in a former Conjuncture for putting the Queen of Scots to death so the pretended lawfulness of the Exclusion by arguing from the greater to the less was by the deluded generally inferred from that Chapter and the place I just now referred too in the Preface of Iovian mentions Mr. I's arguing from Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother c. in citing of which saith the Dr. it is evident on whom our Author did reflect The very exposing the absurdity of the Papal power of destroying Heretical Persons and Cities on the account of the Mosaic Law will I believe as by Consent of the sober of all Parties much help to exterminate the aforesaid Error which hath cost the Papacy so dear and naturally tempted so many Calvinists to own the same Error partly by way of retaliation and not altogether through defect of Judgment and I doubt not but if the Papacy were now to begin to claim the allowance of exercising the Jurisdiction over all Christians in the World as the High Priest did over all proselyted to the Iewish Religion and as appears by not only the Inhabitants of Palestine but others of the most remote Countries and particularly by the Aethiopian in the Acts of the Apostles owning subjection to the Iewish Priesthood it would stop at the Conquest of that Oecumenical Power and Tenths of the Levites thereby without demanding the Power to destroy Hereticks Towns and to exterminate the Persons of Hereticks by Crusado's as other dependencies on it But the Papacy hath long ago passed that bloody Rubicon of the Iudicial Law and cannot in Honour or Politicks go back nor will any Pope expressly renounce the Power of compelling Princes to exterminate their Heretical Subjects tho yet the Fashion of the exercise of this Power be thus as I have shewed tacitly passed away and as a thing necessarily impracticable in the more populous World. And no Iesuited Papist dares disclaim this Power in the Pope's behalf or impugn the same however it was a thing that the Pope could not but foreâ—ee that his quashing the Iesuites Power to kill men by retail would render the Iesuites averse from writing for his Power to kill Hereticks by whole-sale and by Crusado's or for the power to fire Heretical Cities if there were occasion to have any such power asserted in behalf of the Papacy as I believe there neither is nor ever will be But partly according to my Conjecture of the Result of the Fermentation about the Regale in France I suppose that tho the Papacy will no more be brought to disclaim its pretended Monarchy over other parts of the World in ordine ad spiritualia than the Dukes of Savoy will the Title of their being Kings of Cyprus yet it will be neither able or studious to prosecute its Claim of such power by disordering the World as formerly All the personal Vertue and Probity of any Popes will never incline them to pronounce against their Iurisdiction however they may thereby and by want of strength to execute it be kept from the old injurious ampliating it and on this slippery Precipice the Papacy still remains and from whence through the natural Jealousie of Crown'd Heads and States in the point of Power it will probably fall down to its tame principium unitatis and its Patriarchal Figure and in time to nothing But by many of the Anti-papal Sects and such as call themselves The only true Protestants still owning the Obligation of the Iewish forinsec Laws a Necessity is by God and Nature put on the Protestants of the Church of England to Combat such pretended Obligations by dint of Reason and thereby to support the Rights of their Princes without Condition and Reserve and which no Jesuited Papists or Protestants either can or will do Nor is it safe for other Papists to own Principles that touch the Pope's imaginary Monarchal Power For Power how fantastick soever would seem a serious thing and will endure no raillery and the honest Father Caron whom I have mentioned as citing 250 Popish Authors who denied the Pope's Power to depose Princes doth tell us that the Pope's Nuntio and 4 Popes condemned his Doctrine and the Inquisitors damned his Book and his Superiours his Soul I mean they very fairly excommunicated him for it There is another thing that may render the knowledge of this Papal Tenet worthy
Antiochus or the Primitive Christians did under a Nero Domitian Dioclesian Maximinian or Julian and yet you see no end of this fury c. I would ask any Loyal Roman Catholick if a Clergy that could console such Lachrymists and preach Loyalty to them was not then necessary And I am sure he will say it was for that the Doctrine preached by the Author of that Book appeareth thus in the Contents of the Chapters after the end of that Epistle viz. Regal Power proceeds immediately from the Peoples Election and Donation c. By the Spiritual Power which Christ gave the Pope in his Predecessor St. Peter he may dispose of Temporal Things and even of Kingdoms for the good of the Church and the many Republican and Seditious Assertions in that Book are such that any Asserters thereof would in the judgment of our Loyal Populace be thought to merit what the Iews or Primitive Christians suffered as aforesaid And that no man dares now partly so fear of the Popular displeasure and being thought absurd say that the English Monarchy is otherwise than from God and not from Mens Election just as for fear of the People the chief Priests and Scribes and Elders durst not say that the baptism of Iohn was not from Heaven but of men is most eminently to be attributed to the late Loyal Sermons made expressly of Loyalty by the Divines of the Church of England But that I may draw toward an end of this long INTRODVCTION or PREFACE wherein yet if I have happened to acquaint any Reader with any valuable point of Truth it will be the same thing to him as the payment of a Bill of Exchange in the Portico or in the House I am necessarily to say that by the inadvertence of an Amanuensis employed in writing somewhat of this Discourse for the Press there happened to be several mistakes of words and names and one of them I shall mention here and not trust to its being regarded among the Errata viz. that whereas 't is said in p. 39 that Creswel a Iesuite writ for King Iames his Succession when Parsons writ against it it should have been said that Chricton a Iesuite then did so and so the latter part of the Volume of the Mystery of Iesuitism relates it and any indifferent man would think that Chricton writ not in earnest and that his Book appeared not on the Stage of the World but only to go off it since so necessary a Counterpoyson to Parsons his Book could never yet be heard of in any Library Some little Omissions and Errors about Letters and Pointing easily appearing by their grossness are not put into the Errata and some the Reader will find amended with the Pen. Moreover I am to Apologize for the carelesness of the Style and to acquaint the Reader that the Rule of any ones writing in any thing that is called a Letter being the way of the same Persons speaking I do thereby justify the freedom I have taken in not polishing any Notions or delivering them out with the care employed on curious Pictures and that require twice or thrice sitting and in using that colouring of words and such bold careless Touches as are to be used in the finishing up any piece at once and which the Nature of Discourse necessarily implies and in sometimes using significant expressions in this or the other Language for any thing as I do in my common Conversation with those who understand those Languages and by the same Rule I have exempted my self from the trouble of that nice weighing of things as well as of words that a Professed History or Discourse otherwise then in the way of a Letter would have required and the same excuse may serve for the Style of this Preface If the Date of this Discourse had not at the writing of the first Sheet been there inserted a later one had been assigned it but I thought it not â—â—nti on the occasion thereof to have that Sheet reprinted I hope to be able in my Review to gratifie the Readers Curiosity with somewhat more of satisfaction as to the Monastic Revenue and which in p. 92 I mentioned as not adequate to the maintenance of 50000 Regulars by my not considering how plentifully it was supported by Oblations of various kinds and other ways not necessary to be here enumerated In p. 1. I say I think it was St. Austin who said Credo quia impossibile est and have since thought it was Tertullian I care not who said it as long as I did not I have in p. 13 mentioned the Order of Iesuites as invented by the Pope in the year 1540 wherein I had respect to the time of its Confirmation from the Papacy and not of its founding by Ignatius There are other omissions and faults in the Press that the Reader is referred to the Errata for without his consulting which I am not accountable for them I am farther to say that there is one thing in this Preface that I need not apologize for and wherein I have done an Act of common Justice namely in Celebrating the Heroical Vertue and Morality of this present Pope that were signalized as I have mentioned Almighty God can make the Chair of Pestilence convey health to the World and can preserve any Person in it from its mortal Contagion But the truth is I was the more concerned to do the Pope the right I have done because I observed that after that Credit of the Popish Plot began to die that depended on the Credit of the Witnesses several Persons attempted to put new Life into it by their renewed impotent Calumnies cast on the Character of the Pope and as appeared by a bound 8 o printed in the year 1683 called The Devils Patriarch or a full and impartial Account of the Notorious Life of this present Pope of Rome Innocent the 11th c. Written by an EMINENT Pen to revive the remembrance of the aâ—most forgotten PLOT against the life of his Sacred Majesty and the Protestant Religion What AVTHOR was meant by that EMINENT PEN I know not in the least The Preface to the Reader concludes with the Letters of T. O. The vain Author having throughout his Book ridiculously accused the Pope of immorality and scandal and of being a friend to Indulgences and of favouring the loose Principles of the Iesuites and of contriving the Popish Plot and carrying it on in concert with the Iesuites concludes by saying in p. 133. This Pope had great hopes of re-entry into England by his hopeful Plot hereupon Cottington 's bones were brought to be buried here c. It was high time then for People to be weary of the Martyrocracy when the Plot came to be staruminated by Cottington's bones and the pretended immorality of so great an Example of severe Vertue as this Pope and when the belief of the Testimony against some men as Popish Ruffians was endeavoured to be supported by the Childish Artifice of
making a Ruffian of the Pope himself But indeed long before the Edition of that trifling Book many things had occurred so far to shake the testimony of the Witnesses as that it grew generally the Concordant voice of the Populace that on a supposal of several of the same Persons being again alive to be tryed on the Testimony of the same Witnesses before the same Judges it would not have prejudiced a hair of the heads that were destroyed by it and particularly in the unfortunate Lord Stafford's Case I have in two or three places of this Discourse speaking of the Papal Hierarchy called it Holy Church its old known term and by which I meant no reflection of scorn nor would I laugh at any Principle of Religion found among any Heterodox Religionaries that the dying groans of the holy Iesus purchased them a liberty to profess But 't is no Raillery to say that the Artifices of any dis-loyal Popish and Protestant Recusants that have so long made Templum Domini usurp on the Lord of the Temple and his Vice Gerents that is Kings and Princes will support no Church and that as it hath been observed of some Free Stones that when they are laid in a Building in that proper posture which they had naturally in their Quarries they grow very hard and durable and if that be changed they moulder away in a short time a long duration may likewise be predicted to the Arts and Principles of reason applied to support a Church as they lay in the Quarry of Nature and where the God of Nature laid them for the support of Princes and their People and è contrà In fine therefore since the Principles of the Church of England are thus laid in it as they were in that Quarry none need fear that they will be defaced by time or that a lawful Prince of any Religion here will accost it otherwise than with those words of the Royal Psalmist viz. Peace be within thy Walls and Prosperity within thy Palaces AN INDEX Of some of the Principal Matters Contained in the following DISCOURSE IN ALETTER TO THE Earl of ANGLESY HIS Lordship is vindicated from mis-reports of being a Papist and an account given of his Birth and Education and time spent in the University and Inns of Court and afterward in his Travels abroad Page 1 2 3. An account of his first eminent publick employment as Governor of Ulster by Authority under the Great Seal of England p. 4. An account of his successful Negotiation with the then Marquess of Ormond Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands p. 5. An account of his being a Member of the House of Commons in England and of the great Figure he afterward made in the King's Restoration ib. Reflections on the Popular Envy against the Power of a Primier Ministre ib. and p. 6 7 8. Remarks on the Saying applied in a Speech of one of the House of Commons against the Earl of Strafford viz. That Beasts of Prey are to have no Law ib. Reflections on the rigour and injustice of the House of Commons in their Proceedings against the Earl of Strafford p 9. The Usurpers declared that tho they judged the Rebellion in Ireland almost national that it was not their intention to extirpate the whole Irish Nation p. 10. The Author owneth his having observed the Piety and Charity of several Papists p. 11. The Author supposeth that since all Religions have a Priesthood that some Priests were allowed by the Vsurpers to the transplanted Irish p. 13. An account of the Privileges the Papists enjoyed in Ireland before the beginning of the Rebellion there and of the favour they enjoyed in England before the Gun-powder Treason p. 14. Observations on the Pope's Decree March the 2d 1679. Condemning some opinions of the Jesuites and other Casuists in Pages 15 41 50 51 52 53 201. The great goodness of the Earl of Anglesy's nature observed and particularly his often running hazard to save those who were sinking in the favour of the Court p. 16. The Authors observation of the effects of the hot Statutes against Popery and Papists in Queen Elizabeth 's and King Iames his time shortly ceasing ib. The Authors Iudgment that a perfect hatred to Popery may consist with a perfect love to Papists p. 19. He expresseth his having no regret against any due relaxation of any Penal Laws against Popish Recusants p. 20. An account of the Earl of Anglesy and others of the Long Parliament crushing the Jure-Divinity of Presbytery in the Egg p. 29 30. The out-rage of the Scots Presbyterian Government observed p. 29 The People of England did hate and scorn its Yoke in the time of our late Civil Wars ib. Remarks concerning infamous Witnesses and their credibility after Pardon of Perjury or after Crimes and Infamy incurred p. 33 34 35. at large and p. 204 205. The incredibility of the things sworn in an Affidavit by such a Witness against his Lordship p. 35 36. The Principle in Guymenius p. 190. Ex tractatu de justitiâ jure censured viz. licitum est Clerico vel Religioso calumniatorem gravia crimina de se vel de suâ Religione spargere minantem occidere c. p. 37. Cardinal D' Ossats Letters very falsly and ridicâ—lously cited by an English Priest of the Church of Rome for relating that the Gunpowder Treason Plot was a sham of Cecils contrivance p 38. Father Parsons one of the greatest Men the Jesuites Order hath produced p. 40. D' Ossat in his Letters observed to have given a more perfect Scheme of the whole design to hinder King Iames his Succession then all other Writers have done ib. Observations on the Author of the Catholick Apology with a reply c speaking of his not believing that Doleman's Book of the Succession was writ by Father Parsons and that Parsons at his death denied that he was the Author of it and on Cardinal D' Ossat in his Letters averring that Parsons was Reverâ the Author of it and that Parsons made application to him in order to the defeating King James his Succession unless he would turn Catholick p. 41. D' Ossat's observing that Parsons in that Book doth often and grossly contradict himself ib. D' Ossat's commending our English Understandings for so soon receiving King Jame and so peaceably after the death of Queen Elizabeth ib. The Author grants that Papists may be sound parts of the State here as they are by Sir William Temple in his Book observed to be in Holland p. 44. The vanity of some Papists designing to raise their Interest by Calumny and Shamm ib. The Pope's said Decree of the 2d of March accuseth the Jesuites and other Casuists of making Calumny a Venial sin p. 45. The nature of a Venial sin explained ib. The Jesuites Moral Divinity patronizing Calumny is likely to be fatal to their Order p. 47. 49. The
part of its Patrimony Queen Elizabeth alienated to secure the Protestant Religion ib. The fears of Popery further Censured p. 198. Ridly and Latimer Prophesied at the Stake that Protestancy would never be extinguished in England p. 198. Roger Holland prophesied at the Stake at Smithfield that he should be the last that should there suffer Martyrdom ib. Observations on the Natural Prophesying of dying men and its effects p. 199. The Vanity of Mens troubling the World by Suppositions ib. and p. 200. 'T is a degree of madness to trouble it by putting wanton impossible cases p. 200. The Author without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only by the light of reason presageth that the excessive fear of Popery as weâ—l as its danger will here be exterminated ib. The justice of the Claim of King Charles the first to the Title of Martyr asserted p. 201 202 203. The Author judgeth that some vile Nominal Protestants by the publication of many Seditious Pamphlets have given the Government a just Alarm of their designs against it p. 203. Of Papists and Protestants being Antagonists in Shamms p. 204. Mr. Nye cited for representing the Dissenters acted by the Jesuites in thinking it unlawful to hear the Sermons of the Divines of the Church of England p. 204. False Witnesses among the Jews allowed against false Prophets p. 205. The Earl of Anglesy's Courage and Iustice asserted in the professing in the House of Lords his disbelief of such an Irish Plot as was sworn by the Witnesses tho the belief of the reallity of such a Plot had obtained the Vote of every one else in both Houses ib. Above 2000 Irish Papists in the Barony of Enishoan demean'd themselves civilly to the English during the whole Course of the Rebellion ib. Several eminent ingenious Papists in England and Foreign parts celebrated for their avowed Candour to Protestants p. 206 207 208 c. D' Ossat's acquainting the Pope That if his Holyness were King of France he would show the same kindness to the Huguenots that Harry the 4th did p. 208. Cromwel being necessitated to keep the Interest of the Kingdom divided was likewise necessitated to keep up all Religions according to the Politicks of Julian p. 211. Of the Papists calling King James Julian ib. The Author inveigheth against the Calumny of any Protestants who call any one Apostate for the alteration of his Iudgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants ib. The Author's Reason why 't is foolish to fear that any Rightful Prince of the Roman Catholick perswasion that can come here will follow the Politicks of Julian ib. 'T is shewn that any Protestant Vsurper here must act à la Julian ib. The Vsurper Cromwel shewn to be a Fautor of Priests and Jesuites by the Attestations of Mr. Prynn and the Lord Hollis p. 212 213. The danger of Popery that would have ensued Lambert's Vsurpation p. 213 214. How true soever any Vsurpers Religion is he must be false to the Interest of the Kingdom p. 214. Observed that the Kings long Parliament by the Act for the Test did enjoyn the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to be taken ib. Those Oaths lay on the Takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors ib. Mr. Prynn's Book called Concordia discors printed Anno 1659 to prove the Obligation by those Oâ—hs to the King's Heirs and Successors commended ib. The Author mentions the Reasons that induced him to write Casuistically concerning such Obligation and promiseth to send that his Writing to his Lordship ib. The Author judgeth that he ought not to be severe to any Papist before he hath a Moral certainty of such Papists having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Pâ—pery that is unmoral or inhumane ib. The Author observes that few or no Writers of the Church of Rome have lately thought fit by their Pens to assert the Inheritable Right of Princes without respect to any Religionary Tenets they may hold p. 215. The Author thinks that for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Roman Catholick Prince of his Property and Right of Succession when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope employ their Pens for the preservation of such his property and right without respect to to any Religionary Tenets he may hold is like drawing against a naked man ib. D' Ossat affirms That the Pope and the whole Court of Rome hold it lawful to deprive a Prince of any Country to preserve it from Heresie ib. An Animadversion on a late Pamphlet concerning the Succession ib. Reflections on the House of Commons Proceedings in the Exclusion Bill ib. and p. 216. The Author gives an explanatory account of the tempus acceptabile he in p. 25 mentions p. 216. His Majesty's constant contending for the Protestant Faith celebrated and likewise his Iustice in preserving the property of the Succession in the Legal Course by all his Messages to the Parliament p. 217. The unhappy State of that Prince who shall for fear of the Populace do any Act of the Iustice whereof he doubts and much more of the injustice whereof he is fully convinced p. 217. at large The Caution to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia applied to such a Prince viz. Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take away thy Crown ib. at large 'T is not only Popery but Atheism in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion p. 218. King James disavowed the Act of his Son-in Laws accepting the Title of King of Bohemia ib. An Observation that in the Common-Prayer in King Charles the 1 sts time relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runneth for Frederick Prince Palatâ—ine Elector of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife ib. The Author observes that in the Assembly's Directory the Lady Elizabeth is styled Queen of Bohemia p. 219. An Account of the Governments avowed sence in King James's time that any of the Princes of England ought not by becoming Roman Catholick to be prejudiced in their Right of Succession to the Crown ib. The same sense of the Government in the time of King Charles the 1 st ib. The Parliament during the Civil War projected not any prejudice to the right of Succession on the account of any Religionary Tenets p. 220. Mention of somewhat more to confirm the claim of King Charles the 1 st to the Title of Martyr beside his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue ib. An account of the Protestation of the Nonconforming Ministers in the year 1605 relating to the King's Supremacy wherein they assert the Royal Authority inseparably fixt to the true Line whatever Religion any Prince thereof may profess p. 221. The Author peâ—stringeth the Protestant would be 's and new Statists of the Age that would for Religionary Tenets barr any of the
I think that an eximious man impeacht in Parliament and there acquitted will need no Herald to proclaim his worth nor his deserving to be restored in integrum to the Royal Protection and Favour when that his own works have praised him in the gates that is in the Jurisdiction where they were so strictly scann'd My Lord if any could prove your Lordship to be a Papist he need not call that accumulative Treason in you nor need he go about by torturing the Law to make it confess many Felonies to be one Treason many Rapes to be one false coming But Popery in you would be plain down-right palpable and rank Treason by vertue of the Statute of 23 of Elizabeth Ch. 1. which makes it High Treason for any person in the Dominions of the Crown of England to be withdrawn from the Religion then established to the Romish Religion That your Lordship hath been bred a Protestant and been so as it were ex traduce there needs no other evidence then the contents of this Letter and that you have not been withdrawn to the Romish Religion you have declared by the Series of your actings against it that shew your Mind beyond the power of words and 't is by the help of that great Wisdom God has given you that our English World expects that a way may be found how to make it more clearly appear to the eye of the Law when any others have been or are withdrawn to the Romish Religion a thing perhaps at present of somewhat difficult proof For without supposing that the Pope can or will give them dispensations to take all Oaths and Tests that can be devised doth not a reserving some fantastic sense to themselves make nonsense of all Oaths and that one word Equivocation make them proof against all other words Doth not that with them sanctify or at least justify all other words they can use May they not on these terms safely swear there is neither God nor Man nor Hell nor Devil that is meaning not in a Mathematical point or in Vtopia and that they saw not such a Man such a day that is not with the eyes of a Whale And have not the late dying Speeches of some of these Imposters and particularly Father Irelands shewn us that in the points of mental reservation and equivocation they persevere in the impudent owning of that which would unhinge the World and turn humane Society into a dissolute multitude And do we not believe many to be Papists who we know have taken the Oaths and Tests Hath not a Papist some Years since writ of the lawfulness of the taking of the Oath of Supremacy I speak not this my Lord to derogate from the Wisdom of our Ancestors that appointed these discriminations nations and do think that when we have used all the lawful means we can to know who among us are Papists as certainly as we do what is Popery and to keep Papists from hurting us and themselves we ought to acquiesce in the Results of the Providence of God. But what all those means are tho I know not yet I am apt to believe that your Lordships comprehensive knowledg of men and things and of the true interest of the Kingdom hath qualified you to tell your Royal Master and His Houses of Parliament nor do I believe that the difficulty of either finding out such means and making practicable things be practised will blunt but rather whet the edg of your Industry in this case as being of Quintilians mind who Judged that there was Turpitude in despairing of any thing that could be done I think his words are Turpiter desperatur quicquid fieri potest â—Tis certainly the interest of the King and Kingdom that the numbers of the Papists here and especially of those withdrawn from Protestancy to the Church of Rome should be known in the case of which Apostates tho it be impossible without seizing on the Papers and Archives of one certain Priest to see the Original Acts of their Recantation of Protestancy yet is it most certain and on all hands confessedly true that Eminent Overt-Acts of abhorrency of Protestantisme are alwayes required at the admitting one who was of that Religion into the bosome of the Roman Catholic Church which any one will be convinced of who reads the Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Villeroy of the 20 th of Octob. 1603. from Rome where he gives his Opinion against the Queen of England being made Godmother at the Baptism of Madam That Cardinal who had incomparable skill in the Canon Law and the knowledg of all the Customs of the Papal See and who had lived at Rome above 20 Years saith in that Letter I account it my duty to write to you freely that that cannot be done without very great Scandal to good Catholicks nor without the extream displeasure and offence of the Pope You presuppose that the Queen of England is a Catholic but Here we know the contrary tho some believe that she is not of the worser sort of Heretics and that she has some inclination to the Catholic Religion And I will tell you moreover that tho she were in her heart of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion as much as the Pope himself so it is that she having been bred up in Heresie and outwardly persisting in it as she doth she cannot according to the Canons be held for a Catholic in public acts of Religion till she hath first both viva voce and by writing under her hand abjured all Heresie and made profession of the Catholic Faith. Nor was it ever known that in the case of any Protestants Apostacy to the Church of Rome any Pope ever dispensed with those Canons and therefore it may well hence be inferr'd That if evidence just so much as the Law requires as to such Apostacy be given that no superpondium or proof of overt-acts more then necessary ought to be expected for that overt Acts almost impossible to be proved may yet necessarily be presumed but this by the way And therefore now further my Lord if fas est ab hoste doceri be adviseable in the case as strict Circumstances may be required in the conversion of Papists to our Church as are in the withdrawing of any from our Church to theirs Indeed if I were a Member of Parliament and any one there should be so happy as to invent a way and propound it whereby the present Lay-Papists in England might let us have a Moral Certainty that they neither consented to nor concealed the late Plot and likewise that they did really detest all those desperate Popish Principles that are fundamentally destructive to the Safety of the King and Kingdom and that they would harbour no Priests born in the Kings Dominions nor send any of their Children to be bred in Forrain Seminaries and on the contrary that on occasion they would discover to a Magistrate any such Priest or one who sent his Children to such Seminary
the City of London was burnt in the Year 1666 by the Papists designing thereby to introduce Arbitrary Power and Popery into this Kingdom they will not think it strange that they should not be permitted to live in any of our Cities again till they have shew'd how orderly they can live in one of their own And therefore I think we may without breach of Civility or at least violation of justice apply to them some part of the words which I find quoted by Dr. Bramhall Lord Bishop of Derry in his just vindication of the Church of England out of Gers. part 4. Ser. de pace unit Graec. as the farewell Speech to the Bishop of Rome when the Graecian and all other Eastern Churches parted from him whom they acknowledged only as a Patriarch Namely We acknowledg your Power we cannot satisfie your Covetousness live by your selves How it is in the case of the People of Switzerland Papists and Protestants living apart by themselves in several Cantons cannot be unknown to your Lordship Nor that the Protestants and Papists when they there made their League at first joyntly to maintain their Liberties against the House of Austria then agreed upon this also That if any of the Natives living in the Cantons of either side should change their Religion that then they should be permitted respectively to sell their goods and transplant themselves to the Canton whose Religion they embraced But I shall tell your Lordship That of late the Popish Canton Switz did break this agreement and would not suffer some of their Native Inhabitants to partake of this freedom and did confiscate the goods of some Families that changed their Religion and at the instigation of the Fryars and Iesuits they condemned some of them to death and others to the Gallyes which was the cause of a Commotion among them The Gentleman of Ireland who discourst somewhat to me of the Transplantation of the Irish Papists told me it was into the Province of Connaught and think into the In-land parts of that Countrey for to have trusted them to live in Maritine Towns there whereby they might have let in an invading Popish or other Forrainer were to have trusted them with the power of the Keys of the Kingdom And he further told me That the transplantation was managed with much satisfactory tenderness to those Papists and that as to English and Irish it had partly the nature of a bargain that gave content on both sides and secured them against each other after all the mutual exasperations that had passed and when 't was fresh in the memory of both English and Irish that 't was the promiscuous and scatter'd dwelling of the English among the Irish before the Rebellion that tempted the Irish to butcher them and made the English Sheep for the Slaughter and when it was not likewise forgot that in former Wars the partition or distinction of the English Pale did secure the English inhabiting within its district I askt the Gentleman if they were not stinted to a certain number of Priests and care taken that none of them should be Iesuits and that the chief Governour of the Countrey should know their Names and whether any Priests Natives of that Country were allow'd them as to which enquiries he did not fully satisfie me but I supposed that since all Religions have a Priest-hood that somewhat of that kind was allowed them and that since the Order of the Iesuits was invented in the Year 1540. by the Pope as a Poysonous Stumm to put a new fermentation into the Romish Ecclesiastical Rites and Discipline which were almost dead with age and like vina vetustate edentula and quite dispirited with the Thunder of the Doctrine of Luther and the lightning of Learning and Knowledg then flying through the World and that that Order of the Iesuits was as it were a Court erected to begin with execution and to confute gainsayers by cutting their Throats No Iesuits were permitted to officiate among those transplanted Papists and considering that the Priests Natives of Ireland were the known fomenters of that Rebellion that both English and Irish might rather consent to some Secular Priests bred in Holland or France being employed in the New Irish Colony and who had no knowledg of the Intrigues of the several Interests in that Country and would not by kindred or relation to any of the great Families there perhaps be tempted into Factions I have heard from that Gentleman of Mr. Peter Walsh a Fryar in Ireland and of his endeavours in the Art of Cicuration of some of the Romish Clergy Layety who there were Wolfes and that without Sheeps cloathing and reclaiming them to Principles and Practices consistent with civil society and what proficiency his Disciples have made therein I being a stranger to that Kingdom know not but according to that saying bonus est quem Nero odit have the better opinion of him for those endeavours of his having been Crown'd with the Popes Excommunications It was a noble saying I have heard of one of the House of Peers this last Parliament I hate not the persons of any Papists but I am an enemy to Popery In like manner I should be glad that all the Mercy were shewn them that were not Cruelty to the Public but they are to excuse any one that will not forget that when they begun the last outragious Rebellion in Ireland which no words need or can aggravate they enjoy'd there equal Priviledges with the English if not greater the Lawyers were Irish most of the Judges Irish and the Major part of the Parliament Irish and in all disputes between English and Irish the Irish were sure of the Favour and any one would be inexcusable to this Kingdom who forgot that King Iames's unparalel'd kindness to his Popish Subjects in suspending the execution of Penal Laws against them in sparing their purses in remitting the arrears of what they owed Queen Elizabeth for pecuniary penalties nay giving into their hands what money of theirs as his due was in the Exchequer was but the â—rologue to their intended Tragedy on the Fifth of November And what provocations they had to be ill wishers to the Life and Crown of the last King as appeared by the detection forementioned presented to His Majesty by Arch-Bishop Laud and a Charge given against them in Print by the Reverend Dr. Peter Du Moulin which he offer'd to make good and ad quod non fuit responsum let any one Judg who further does look on the Parliaments Addresses in Rushworths Collections And unless some of them had loved ingratitude for ingratitudes sake they would never have enter'd into that Conspiracy against his now Majesty whose Life is the delight of all Mankind but theirs And yet since according to that expression that God is not the God of the Iews only but also of the Gentiles so it being true that the King is King of the Papists as well as Protestants King of
to every Member of that great Body wishing his happiness as your own extending the arm of your beneficence as far as it can reach to the remotest object without hurting your self by the straining it with a pitying Eye and a tender Hand and forgiving Heart guiding unhappy men out of the very Labyrinths they had brought themselves into by injuring you accounting your mercy to be justice to Humane Nature adorning greatness both in your self and others with goodness in the case of the injur'd poor and weak making oft the great and the mighty asham'd of their oppression by your reason and alwayes with Language as soft as the yoke they intended was hard when you could not make them afraid of it by your power and blushing your self for the degeneration of Mans Nature when you saw any that shame could not divert from the turpitude of injuring their brethren of mankind and by your compassion alleviating that burthen of the miserable that they had sunk under but by your Fellowship in their grief and never dispensing either the Kings reproof or your own to offenders without moderation and respect to the frail state of Humanity and without that mixture of benign advice that gave the Malheurevs a plank after the Shipwrack of their Fame and very often running the hazard of drowning your self by helping to save those that were sinking in the Favour of the King and Court and when their fate was such that all the rest of the herd avoided them as a wounded Deer In a word they that know your Lordship know that by arguments hard to be answered and a softness of words and Temper almost inimitable you have Proselyted several Papists out of their pernicious Principles and have taught them goodness by your example and by your having that happy inclination that Hillel a Famous Jewish Doctor who lived a little before our Saviours Incarnation so well advised Namely Be of the Disciples of Aaron who loved Peace and followed Peace and who loved Men and brought them near to the Law. Your Lordship by your being so well vers'd in our Statute Laws and Histories is able to acquaint them with the Justice of our Ancestors in the making of many fresh additional capital Laws for sanguinary they ought not to be called since just against Papists upon the detection of several fresh horrid Treasons particularly those against Queen Elizabeth and King Iames and that our Ancestors then having a great and violent indignation against Popery and Papists made Laws with the dread of the Vltimum supplicium therein and further the anger of Man could not go But it cannot scape your Lordships observation that the violence of Passion not being capable of lasting long in its highest rage how just soever and especially in the brest of an English Man and a Protestant those hot Statutes made only as I may say a hizzing like a little fire thrown into Water and as to their Execution went out presently Nor have I ever heard of any one that apostatiz'd from the Church of England to that of Rome who was as those Statutes ordain punisht as a Traytor merely for so doing And indeed since no Stratagems are to be used twice and especially such as did not succeed once I am highly pleased that on the Discovery of the late detestable Plot there was so great a calmness in the minds so general a smoothness in the brows of the people such an universal Spirit of Patience forbearance and meekness every where visible in their Faces even greater then that which shone in the Minds and Faces of the Londoners when with composed looks they saw their City newly made ashes and had smelt the Incendiaries almost as soon as the Fire that none can imagine but who as eye witnesses observed And even on the fifth of November ensuing the Discovery of the Plot the two excellent Preachers desired to preach before the House of Lords and the House of Commons on that day when both an Old and a New Plot were staring the Nation in the Face happen'd to be with the Peaceable Genius of the Christian Religion and of the People in that Conjuncture inspired in the choice of that same part of Scripture that was their Text and contain'd the calm yet severe reproof given by the Founder of Christianity to some of his Disciples that would have been Commission'd to call for Fire from Heaven to consume the inhospitable Samaritans in one of which Sermons namely that of the Dean of Canterbury's 't is for the Honour of our Nation and Religion by him observed p. 31. of the Sermon that after the Treason of this day nay at this very time since the Discovery of so barbarous a design and the highest provocation in the World by the Treacherous murder of one of His Majesties Iustices of the Peace a very good man and a most excellent Magistrate who had been active in the Discovery of this Plot I say after all this and notwithstanding the continued and insupportable insolence of their carriage and behaviour even upon this occasion no violence nay not so much as any incivility that I have heard of has been offer'd to any of them Thus for the words of this good and learned man. He that loves not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen And the Religion that prompts them to destroy our bodies that they see makes them fearless in the damming of our Souls that they have not seen and even without giving us a minutes warning to make up our accounts with God and that too perhaps for extravagant lenity shew'd to some incorrigibles among them which was poor Godfreys case But the calm temper of the Protestants to them upon the Discovery of the Plot not breathing out any Cruelty or new Severity against their Bodies or Souls shall alwayes endear to me the Protestant Religion And though those two great Votes of the House of Commons may seem severe to the Papists yet are they warning pieces only if they please and not murdring ones and like the Arrows of Ionathan to warn David and not to hurt him And indeed only to warn them not to kill David and not to hurt themselves and in effect a reasonable request or petition of â—wo Parliaments to them only to make much of themselves and like the lenity that accompanied the Divine threatning of moriendo morieris restrain'd to their eating of one tree so that no Flaming Swords need fence up their way from the Tree of Life unless they please But though the Spirit of the people hath not on the occasion of the late Plot shew'd its angry resentments against the persons of the Papists by any outrage or rudeness and though our Parliaments have not on that occasion as those in the times of Queen Elizabeth and King Iames made the Anger of the Statute Book to swell with many Acts of Parliament against them they are not to infer that therefore
only attacked and whereby you have that fastness where one-a-brest can keep down a Multitude is power Your affability and good Nature that endear you to so many is power and makes the hearts of men to be your Pyramids And all these sorts of power in you which make every party wish you to be theirs make up so bright a beauty in your mind as may well cause jealousie in that party that by loving you think they have Right to be again beloved by you I mean the English Protestants who court you and to whom you have so long engaged your self and especially when they shall find their Rivals boast of the kindness you have for them and that too at such a time as this when the Protestants seem to have the concern of one that is playing his last stake and which only can make him fetch back all he has lost a time when any one who pretends to a cold harmless neutrality doth really intend an exulcerated hatred a time wherein he that is not with us is against us however it may have hapned that in some lazy conjunctures when Papists and Protestants were half asleep both here and in the Neighbouring Continent that then he that was not against us was with us a time cum non de terminis sed de totâ possessione agitur A time wherein as in that of the tempest that happen'd to the Ship that carried Iona among the heathen Mariners we see almost all namely the Papists calling on their God and the Church of England likewise and the dissenters in the several persuasions on theirs with this difference that no man is now asleep but all in it are waking some at work to save the Ship and others to bore holes in it as if they were concerned to have it cast away as being not owners in it and as if they had secured their own merchandize in it which they purchased by the money they took up at Bottomry from Rome or its agents and knew how to secure themselves in the Cock-boat We have had dull and lazy conjunctures of timeâ—heretofore insomuch that many years ago a Divine seemed to begin a Sermon on the Gun-powder Treason day before a great Academick audience as it were yawning and in his sleep with these words Conspiracies if not prevented are rather dangerous then otherwise And thus the ingenious Comedy tells us of a Hero that as he was in the height of his passion with the greatest zeal making Love instantly dropt down into a deep sleep but 't is no time for yawning when the Earth begins to yawn under us And tho times have been heretofore influencing the Protestant cause like the Sun in March that could only raise the vapors of Popery in the body of the Nation and not dissipate them 't is now supposed to be otherwise and as I have heard that the Earl of Hallifax in his Speech in the house of Lords having spoken of his hatred to Popery excellently well added somewhat to this effect And we may now exterminate it if we will. And therefore with that now I think the ecce nunc tempus acceptabile festina salvare may be applyed to the Kingdom And if as the School-men tell us Angels may dance upon the point of a Needle we may imagine many both good and bad ones dancing on this point of time 't is on this moment the Nations eternity depends Every one now is as good a Conjurer as Friar Bacon and can make a Brazen head say time is by which words I believe the learned Roger Bacon meant only that in the vessel of Brass wherein the exquisite chymical preparations for the birth of gold were laboured the nick of opportunity was to be watched under pain of the loss of all the fire and Materials and art and labour according to that of Petrus Bongus Ibi est operis perfectio aut annihilatio quoniam ipsa die immò horâ oriuntur elementa simplicia depurata quae egent statim compositione antequam volent abigne as I find him cited by Brown for it in his vulgar errors where he further saith Now letting slip this critical opportunity he missed the intended Treasure which had he obtained he might have made out the tradition of making a brazen wall about England that is the most powerful defence and strongest fortification which Gold could have effected My Lord my opinion was askt in a letter from a very honest Gentleman and much your Lordships Servant Whether you should not do your self and your Religion a greatdeal of Right by printing in this juncture some of the excellent and large discourses you have formerly writ against Popery and the substance of the answer I gave him was to this effect That tho I would not diswade your Lordships now publishing any thing relating to the tenets of that pretended Religion that might import Protestants to understand more cleerly then they did in which way they have been advantaged by the Bishop of Lincoln's Book against Popery yet that I thought the great bulk of Popery could no more be destroyed by notions and arguments then a capital Ship could be sunk with bullets for that supposing they did all light between wind and water the Papists have thousands of Plugs ready to be clapt in there and thousands of men in that great vessel ready to apply them and tho I thought there was a time for writing of Books it was when there was a time for reading them that is when people had time to read them but that now the most curious works of Whiteakers and Iewels and Rainoldses would be no more regarded then attempts of shewing the longitude would be to Navigators while under the attack of a Fire-ship as I said or while they were making their way through the body of an Enemies Fleet. I know that 't is said to be an old Sybilline Prophecy that Antichrist shall be destroyed by paper viz. Antichristum lino periturum but alas that way is now as insignificant in the case as to think that the dominion of the Sea can be built up by Seldens Mare Clausum or destroyed by Grotius his Mare Liberum or any way but by thundring Legions in powerful fleers Indeed our paper pellets that the press since its licence hath shot against Popery I mean the innumerable little sheet-pamphlets that have come out against it may find time to be read and to give us diversion but the Papists looking on their Church as a great First-Rate Mann'd with Popes and Emperors and Princes and Fathers and Councels and innumerable Souls there embarqued in the Sea of time for the great Voyage of Eternity do account our little Protestant honest Sheet-authors firing at them daily to be only like the Yacht-Fan Fan's attacking De Ruyter But my Lord there is another Reason why a person of your Lordships great Power and Abilities should not at this time embarrase your self with writing No not those defences of your
Matthew for the building of theirs But this by the way And now putting the Question who are to be loved best either the Popish Priest and Levite that help'd to wound Ireland formerly when it fell among Thieves and Rebels or those compassionate Samaritans who put it on their own Beast and poured Oyl into its Wounds and took care of it till it was restored to its true Owner I suppose a Protestant will say the latter and will account that no fire should be called to fall on the heads of such hospitable Samaritans and that others should be spared who instead of powring Oyl into our Wounds did it into our flames when they burnt our Citie Your Lordship hath shewn your self a compassionate Samaritan to Two Kingdoms to which your healiâ—g principles and practices have been beneficial and in this you have out done him in the Parable who did not stay to see the effects of the gentle Medicaments of Oyl and Wine he bestowed on his Patient's Wounds but your Lordships long attendance on the affairs of the Public brought you to see the Languishing Kingdom revived and to have at once both its Head and Senses restored when Providence made our Sovereign to be his repenting Peoples choice But my Lord these Kingdoms have not yet done with your Skill and may have Wounds that require your Wine and Oyl the Lyons Heart and Ladies Hand I mean such Tenderness and such Courage and so great Judgment as you have formerly shewn A Raging Acute Disease that hath been long not only besieging but storming a mans vital parts and with extream difficulty at the long run repell'd by Nature doth yet commonly leave such dregs in his spirits that depress and enfeeble them in the remainder of Life and a man come to himself after a long madness labours still under a dejection of his spirits both by grief and shame thinking of the arrear that he is in to God the World and himself by his former madness and this is the present state of England after its former state of distraction and men with shame now look on their former Physitians and some are apt with that Merry Mad-man in the Poet to be angry with those that took pains about their being cured 'T is true indeed the Kings Restoration cured us of our Civil Wars yet may a man be cured of his Wounds and afterward dye of the Feaver his Wound put him into and our condition is such that 't is some degree of Heavens Mercy to us that our Feaver is continuing for no man can dye in a Feaver as no man can dye without one And our spirits are so sunk under the weight of the Disease we have long languisht under that our Stomach cannot endure any Cordials or especially the same long certainly that strong Physic that would at first have cured us would now kill us Yet now in this conjuncture several of our Political Physitians seem by their retirement to have given us over as if they were of Hippocrates his mind who said that a Physitian should not discredit his generous Medicaments by employing them on a desperate Patient Methinks 't is pity that any of our Pilots should quit the Helm in a Storm and that they should not as Cicero's expression is Sententiam tanquam aliquod navigium ex Reip. tempestate moderari Those words in Prov. 1. A man of understanding shall attain to wise Councels some read Vir saepiens gubernacula possidebit I presume not to Censure any man but I hope that no cross Winds will ever make your Lordship leave the Helm but rather invite the continuance of your Skill in beating and tiding it out as the Sea phrase is and in not overshooting the Port. Your pacific Genius and great Wisdom have in several angry conjunctures produced an unexpected calm by your offering unexpected Expedients a Talent that is indeed very rare and conducive to the quiet of the World as leading Potent Parties from their declared Opinions without the shame of a seeming retreat It happens still in Navigation that what makes the Passenger merriest makes the Steers-man most thoughtful Namely the sight of Land And therefore tho I and others who make no figures in the government of the Kingdom seem to be glad at our sight of land that is the extermination of Popery from England after we have been so long nauseated and Sea-sick with it yet 't is now our occasion for the skill of such a Pilot as your Lordship is greatest when we are endanger'd by some Protestants of narrow Spirits and Principles as by Shelfes or brevia syrtes shallow waters and by little Rocks or breaker's just covered with water and which are only to be discovered by the swelling roughness of the water they occasion It has pleased Divine providence to cast your Lordships whole life of Action into difficult times such as are called in the New Testament 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and translated perilous times And such as Cicero calls Maxima Reipublicae tempora and difficillima Reip tempora Your life hath been a continual contestation with principles pernicious to man-kind and you have been under your Prince a Nutritius pater for the most part to men who have like froward and unquiet Children been crying for each others properly in things civil and in Religion and have thought themselves persecuted when they could not persecute others Nor have you been too much a Latitudinarian as to Church discipline Nor of too narrow a Spirit or principles as to any Protestant Dissenters And I think Envy never charged you for giving any advice that tended to the injuring the ballance of Christendom or the power of England in setling it or the persuading us to love some of our Neighbours better then our selves You who are so far from offending any weak brother That you are ready with the Apostle rather to abstain from eating flesh while the World stands and therefore will much less kill or devour him and lest of all will you offend a weak Brother-Protestant Country or help any else to devour it and will not injure any of those Countreys that you visited abroad when the world and you saw one another by projecting their Mischief And therefore as I find in the Prolegomena of Grotius de jure belli pacis that Themistius speaking to Valens the Roman Emperor he told him that Kings if they would be guided by the Rule of true wisdom they must non unius sibi creditae Gentis habere rationem sed totius humani generis esse non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tantum aut 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it may be justly said that the Counsellors of Kings should alwaies advise them not to take care only of the concern of their own people but of the happiness and quiet of all man-kind and not only to be lovers of the Macedonians or lovers of the Romans but to be lovers of Men. I never
3. dub 2. for asserting that per modum defensae ad infringendam contumeliosi authoritatem potest secundum quosdam absque lethali crimen falsum illi objici and that 't is only a venial Sin to object a false crime to an unjust witness and twenty Doctors are there mentioned for the making this a probable opinion And therefore if it be lawful for a man to make shamm-accusations where he hath only a private concern 't is meritorious to do it in the case of holy Church therefore he said very right according to the Popish hypothesis gaudeo sâ—ve per veritatem sive per occasionem Romanae ecclesiae dignitatem extolli Ioseph Stephanus de Osc. pr. in epist. ad lect Guymenius p. 190. extactatu de justitia Iure Propositio 1. Cites both Fathers Schoolmen Divines and Casuists of several orders and even holy Scripture for the asserting this proposition viz. Licitum est clerico vel religioso Calumniatorem gravia crimina de se vel de sua Religione spargere minantem occidere quando alius defendendi modus non suppetit A principle of Religion calculated only for Ballies Hectors therefore no marvel that such were observed to flock from so many parts of most Countries in England to London in and since the year 1678. like Ravens in expectation of the Carcases of Protestants and such miscreants are to the Jesuits their Triarian bands upon occasion and who in the Out skirts of London are a noysome Pestilence and not enduring nor being endured to live in the Countrey But from the said last Cited proposition of Guymenius the proposition that contained the enacting Law Sir Edmund Godfrey fell by I infer that since there is a par or proportion between a good name and life that such who account it lawful for a particular Clergy-man to Murder even a Popish Lay-man who shall but threaten to caluminate him will account it meritorious by Shammes to Murder the fames of those who shall threaten to accuse holy Church And it seems as men try experiments on Creatures they account vile they experimented both these propositions on Godfrey for after they had basely killed him they would have shammed off his blood and the guilt of it upon himself when they pierced his dead body with his own Sword a barbarous and infamous sort of cruelty and which brings to my mind what Dr. Donne in the preface to his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 referres to in the Notae Mallon in Paleot Part. 1. cap. 2. viz. that the Church in her Hymnes and Antiphones doth often salute the Nayles and Cross but the Spear which pierced Christ when he was dead it ever calles dirum mucronem And here because some of them drive an eternal trade of butchering and shamming and then in effect Stabbing their own Shamms of Plots I shall Entertain your Lordship with one egregious instance of a Priest of theirs being abandon'd to a reprobate or injudicious sence of shamming in making by a ridiculous Lye a famous Cardinal and profound States-man perhaps as the World has bred and one of singular Piety and great modesty to render the Gun-Powder-Treason a Sham Plot and thereby wounding the Fame of both the understanding and morals of their great dead Church Hero as barbarously as they did the Corps of Godfry And this instance I refer to is in a Book called The Advocate of Conscience liberty or an Apology for Toleration rightly stated and writ with Learning and Wit and Artifice enough ad faciendum populum by a Priest of Romes Church an English man and printed in the year 1673. In pag. 325. He represents the Gunpowder-Treason to be a Sham Plot contrived by Cecil and to prove this Cites D'Ossats Letters Book 2d Letter 43. And the date of that Letter was from Rome March the 29. 1596. And the date of the last Letter there is from Rome in December that year The Gunpowder-Treason Plot was to have been on the 5 th of November 1605. And on D'Ossats marble Tomb in Rome his Epitaph mentions that he dyed Anno 1604. so then he is made by that Author to have known that Treason to have been a Sham-Plot Eight years before it was to be executed and to have permitted many Papists for want of his sending a line of News of the Shamm to be shamm'd out of their lives and the Roman Church to be shammed and anniversaried out of its credit in England But if they reproach any as they did Cecil on the pretence of the persuading some of their wild principles into the decoy of a plot a thing I think detestable as what implies a tempting or inviting of a Man to degenerate from himself they have no reason to be angry with but only to pitty men that receive infection from their principles and from this particular one That 't is lawful for a good end to ensnare men into acts of Sin. Many Casuists and Divines are brought by Guymenius for this purpose p. 184. in the 9th proposition ex tractatu de Charitate and under which proposition he quotes Sotus de Sec. memb 2. quaest 2. a little before the fifth conclusion where he enquires an liceat expediat aliquando perditum hominem permittere in pejora prolabi crimina ut ignominiâ peccatorum confusus facilius resipiscat emendetur And he answers licet nobis aliquando permittere peccatorem ad tempus in pejus cadere ut cautius resurgat The 9th proposition there is Maritus qui uxorem adulteram suspicatur potest eâ— occasionem offerre ut in adulterio deprehensam corrigat Lay man. Iesuita lib. 2. tract 3. Cap. 13. num 5. But in p. 205. extractatu de justitia Iure Propositio 4. The correction that may be lawfully used is assigned it being there said that non peccat maritus occidens propria authoritate uxorem in adulterio deprehensam the which he saith Sa the Iesuit represents as a probable opinion And which Hurtado he saith positively defends Tom. 1. resol moral tr ulti res 5. § 7. n. 204. so that if a Protestant States-man had inveigled them into a plot and then hang'd them for it his politicks had squared exactly with their Morals And even as the calling of a Rat-catcher is a lawful calling tho some of that profession have had no certain way to take Rats but by the use of one experiment namely first to provoke them to fly in the Artists face according to the said principles is the calling of a States-man both lawful and laudable who deals so with such as he judgeth to nibble at Treason But this by the way And now to let your Lordship see how some of their Divinity is particularly but a laboured Sham in the case of Treason and even but a mocking at Sin I shall divert you with a known Author among them making men play with the bait of Regicide as he is hooking them into it And 't is Mariana the Iesuit
giving decent burial to any of their undecent Plotts and for the exasperating any Protestants by despising them and endeavouring to impose on their Understandings as some did on a raw young Country Gentleman whom one day treating at a Puppet-shew they persuaded that the Puppets were living Creatures and after he had found out his gross ridiculous misconceit therein they on the following day attending him to the Theatre engaged him to believe that the Actors were Puppets I mean their endeavoring to make us believe that Sham-Plots were real ones and that a real one was Shamme I shall never wonder at the encrease of the passion of anger incident to humane Nature even in great and generous Souls on the occasion of gross Calumnies invented against them about a matter of weight when I consider the Example of the Great Royal Prophet a Person of a great Understanding and of so great Courage that he was not afraid of Ten thousands of men who set themselves against him round about and tho an Host should encamp ogainst him his heart would not fear and a Man that had in his Nature and temper the Gentleness of a Lamb mixt with the stoutness of a Lyon and one to whom the Divine Promise had ensured a Kingdom and yet was he by the Sycophancies and little Shammes rais'd against him by Saul's great Courtiers wrought to so high a pitch of anger that he did with exquisite forms of imprecation and such as perhaps are not to be found in any other Story frequently devote those Calumniators to the most dire Miseries his fancy could lead him to express But the Cause of his being so highly provoked by those that would turn his glory into shame and did seek after leasing and whose deceitful tongues used all-devouring words as he saith to Doeg the Edomite in one of his Psalms and whose tongue he there sayes did devise mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully may be ascribed to the Shammes of his Enemies wounding him in the most sensible Part namely the Reputation of his Loyalty to his Prince whose Life he spared when 't was in his power to destroy him and who was so far from the use of Shammes against him that he doom'd the Amalekite to dy that shamm'd himself the author of Saul's death And therefore No marvel if the Calumnies of Jesuited Papists attaquing Protestants in that Case too of their Fidelity to their King render the passion of anger in them against those Shams so intense and vehement And tho the English Courage or a very little Philosophy would help them to bestow only a generous neglect on other Calumnies they can never forget those that strike at the heart of their allegiance and consequently of their Religion that so strictly enjoyns it Nor if according to the Example of that great man after Gods heart who said Away from me all ye that work vanity and who would have No lyer tarry in his sight is it to be admired if every true English Protestant shall say too odi Ecclesiam malignantium and shall feclude all dictators of Calumny from his company and banish them home to their own And tho the abuse of Excommunication by the Papal Church and Presbyterian hath been so horrid that the primitive use of it is in a manner lost and grown obsolete yet will that which includes somewhat of the Nature of it be still kept alive in the World by private persons who practice the Christian Religion they profess and to whom tho the Precepts of the New Testament have not given that hateful thing to humane Nature in charge namely to be Informers or Promoters or judicial accusers of any of Mankind accordingly as under the Mosaic oeconomy 't was said Tu non eris criminator yet have they obliged them to withdraw themselves from men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth and not to eat with any one who is call'd a Brother and is a railer and to turn away from men that are truce-breakers and to mark those who cause divisions and to avoid them and to reject a Heretic who is subverted and self-condemned and by men of Cultivated educations and tempers who value themselves on the Company they keep and on it are valued by the World and will therefore abandon or excommunicate from their Conversation such Monsters of men who have renounced the obligations of humane society and who are guilty of Notorious Contumacy in matters that concern the very Salvation of Souls and the Safety of Kingdoms The being staked down therefore to a Narrower Tedder in Conversation or being Civilly Excommunicated from Protestants Company must by necessity of Nature in my opinion be the fate of our Jesuited make-bates and criminators of Protestants that have been so unweary'd in raising Jealousies between the King and his People and between Protestant and Protestant and all such that go to part whom God and Nature and Interest have joyn'd will probably come at last to be the derelicts of humane Society when they shall Come to be understood and especially when there shall be that good understanding between Protestants here of several persuasions that may be expected to arise from their having found out the authors of their divisions and seen how ridiculous Protestants have been in the view of the World while they have appear'd like the Cat to draw one another through the Pool and the Jesuits and their Pensioners stood behind undiscern'd and pull'd the Rope My Lord I know we may justly fear that Popery may during some turbid intervals gain ground in England and as the Renowned Historian of our Reformation hath in a public Sermon Judiciously observed that Sure none believed themselves when they say we are not in danger of Popery and none can think it but they who desire it But without presuming to make my self one of Heavens Privy Councellors and without pretending to a spirit of Prophecy I shall on the basis of the Course of Nature ground this affirmation That whatever alterations Time can Cause yet while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Forraign Conquest the Protestant Religion Can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom nor the public profession of it suffer any long interruption therein I will grant it possible that hereafter under a Prince of the Popish Religion Popery may like the vibration of a pendulum among Certain persons have the greater extent in the return of it as Becket's Image was by Gardiner set up in London 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much pomp in Queen Mary's time after its being pull'd down in Harry the Eighth's and himself unsainted and some people may undertake devout Pilgrimages hereafter to some such Images and Reliques as my Lord Herbert saith were in Harry the Eighth's time exploded and we may again hear of our Lady's Girdle shewn in eleven several places and her Milk in eight the Bell of St. Guthlac and the Felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster both Remedies for
the head-ake the Pen-knife and Books of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a piece of his Shirt much reverenc'd by great belly'd women the coals that roasted St. Laurence two or three heads of St. Ursula Malchus his Ear and the paring of St. Edmund ' s Nails and likewise the trumperies of the Rood of Grace at Boxly in Kent and in Hales in Glocestershire things name◠as trumperies in p. 495 and 496 by Herbert in that History and as adjudged to be such by H. the 8 th And no doubt but the Number of such would be very great who having great Summs of Money given them would be content to offer small ones in Devotion to such Images and many Candidates for preferment among some that now look big for and among Dissenters that look big against the Church of England would produce Certificates of their Constant good affection and Zeal for the Roman Catholic Church and any Legate that came to reconcile us to the Church of Rome would be thought by many to have brought the Holy-Ghost in his Sumpters thô we know what the Inside of Campegius his was made of It is moreover possible that Protestant writers may come not to have that freedom of the Press that Popish now have and all the luxury and wantonness and humor of the Press in sending forth innumerable Pamphlets against Popery in this Conjuncture may perhaps prove but like the jollity of a Carnival to usher in a long melancholly Lent. I will grant that 't is possible the Writ de haeretico Comburendo being now Abolished that destroyed so many Protestants by retail certain bloody men may find some Invention to destroy them by wholesale and to something of that nature Bishop Vshers Prophecy referred of the Raging Persecution of Protestants yet to come and not lasting and when their enemies will ipsam saevitiam fatigare and in the violence of such predicted cruelty not being long lasting that great Prelate erred not from the Nature of things more then he did when he Prophecy'd of an Irish Rebellion Forty years before it hapned for that usually happens once in so many years through the force and numbers of the Irish within that time outgrowing the English and their allowing themselves the repossession of their Estates by that time as a Iubile I will further grant that the discipline of our Church of which I think the Constitution is the best that the world can shew may be Crusht as I said before and our Dissenters then in vain wish that they had the tolerabiles ineptiae as your Lordship knows who imperiously call'd them in the Room of the intollerable abominations of the Mass and 't is possible that divine Iustice and Power may permit the doctrine as well as discipline of our Church to be supprest totally and finally in this Realm and that the prediction of that Great Man of God whô since his death has been as generally styl'd the Iudicious as Lewis the Iust was elsewhere so vogued I mean Mr. Hooker may impress a deep horror and a too late repentance on us who in his 5th Book of Ecclesiastical Polity in the end of the 79th Paragraph p. 432. of the old Edition speaking of the ill affected to our Church saith By these or the like suggestions receiv'd with all Ioy and with all sedulity practiced in Certain parts of the Christian World they have brought to pass that as David doth say of Man so it is in hazard to be verify'd concerning the whole Religion and Service of God the time thereof peradventure may fall out to be Threescore and Ten years or if strength do serve unto Fourscore what follows is likely to be small joy to them whatsoever they shall be that behold it Mr. Hooker did first print his 5th Book in the year 1597. the first four of his Polity being before printed in the year 1594 and so the period of Fourscore Years in his prediction was in the Year 1677. Thô that good man pretended not to be a Prophet yet according to the old saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. he is the best Prophet who can guess well both our Church of England and the Dissenters and Papists too have found that Mr. Hookers prudence had so much divination and his divination so much prudence that the small joy with which they have beheld the external face of Religion here since 1677. hath shew'd us that he guess'd shrewdly I have only affirm'd that humanly speaking and according to the common course of nature Popery cannot be the overgrown National Religion of England but am not ignorant that the sacred Code hath given us instances of Omnipotent power punishing even Heavens peculiar people by the Course of Political and Ecclesiastical Power running out of the common Channel of the Nature of things and particularly by a succession of Ten evil Kings one after another For thô humane Nature is so inconstant and men generally so apt to reel from one extream to another that the World growes as weary of the prevalence of Vice as of Virtue and after a long age of Dissoluteness and Luxury a Contrary humour reigns as long in the World again a humour that then excludes all Voluptuaries from Public Trusts for an Age together and a humour of which I think we now see the Tide Coming in and thus ordinarily scarce any Kingdom hath more than two or three good or bad Princes successively for any considerable space of time Yet after the Ten Tribes had made their defection from the Line of the House of David they were punish't by a Succession of Ten Kings and not one good one in the whole number thô some of them were less ill than others so that no Marvel if the weight of the impiety of so many successive ill Princes sunk them into the power of the Assyrians and to this their doom that passage in the Prophecy of Hosea refers which the vulgus of the Scriblers against Monarchy so Miserably detort and wracke as I may say to their own destruction namely I gave thee a King in mine anger and took him away in my wrath for the Prophet there had not his Eye on Saul or on a particular Person but on the whole succession of Kings after their Rent from Iuda from Ieroboam to the Last under whom the Catastrophe of their Captivity was Such Kings were given them by Heaven as were proper Instruments of Divine wrath and when they were took away from the Stage 't was that other worse might enter and make their Condition more Tragical But secret things belonging to God I pry not into the Book of Fate but Confine my sentiments alone to the Book of Nature In an Excellent Sermon of the Dean of St. Pauls 't is with great Piety and Prudence said We have liv'd in an Age that has beheld strange Revolutions astonishing Iudgments and wonderful Deliverances What all the Fermentations that are still among us may end in God alone knowes I
only as a Philosopher Considering that the Properties of humane Passions have as Necessary effects in Minds as gravity or lightness have in Bodies and that let men intend what male administration they will things will not be ill administred do think that the fermentation now in the Kingdome will not end but with Popery it self here ending And that I may not seem to stand alone in this my opinion I shall entertain your Lordship with that of An Excellent Philosopher and Divine the Author of the History of the Royal Society who there having said that experimental Philosophy will enable us to provide before-hand against any alteration in Religious affairs which this Age may produce he goes on thus If we Compare the changes to which Religion has been alwayes subject with the present face of things we may safely conclude that whatever Vicissitude shall happen about it in our time it will probably be neither to the advantage of implicit Faith nor of Enthusiasme but of Reason the fierceness of violent inspiration is in good Measure departed the Remains of it will be soon chaced out of the World by the Remembrance of its terrible footsteps it has every where left behind it And although the Church of Rome still preserves its Pomp yet the Real authority of that too is apparently decaying It first got by degrees to the Temporal Power by means of its Spiritual but now it upholds some shadow of the Spiritual by the strength of the Temporal dominion it has obtain'd This is the present state of Christendome It is impossible to spread the same Cloud over the World again The Vniversal disposition of this Age is bent upon a Rational Religion And therefore I Renew my affectionate request That the Church of England would Provide to have the chief share in its first adventure that it would persist as it has begun to encourage Experiments which will be to our Church as the Brittish Oake is to our Empire an Ornament and Defence to the Soil wherein 't is planted This Author therefore with such Vigour of Reason passing his sentence concerning any Vicissitudes here not happening that will probably Conduce to the advantage of Popery or Enthusiasme I hope your Lordship will acquit me both of Singularity and Enthusiasme as to the opinion I have given especially since I only profess it to be founded on Natural Reason and do only Consider the God of Nature when I think that a Religion that is of God will stand 'T is not unknown to Your Lordship that Columbus being in chace of the New World and Cast among some barbarous Ilanders that deny'd him the hospitality of their Port and freedom of Commerce he Knowing that they worshipt the Moon and that it would shortly be Eclips'd thô he was neither Prophet nor Prophet's Son aw'd them out of their inhumanity by foretelling that the Moons deity would be shortly obscur'd and when ever I acquaint any Roman Catholics with my Judgment of the Nearness of their Religion to an Eclipse I intend no more enthusiasme in my prediction then Columbus did in his and design nothing worse neither by mine then he by his namely the reconciling them to humanity and a fair entercourse with Mankind 'T was in the middle of the Worlds long night of barbarisme and ignorance that Popery was in its Meridian and for hundreds of years all the Learning that busy'd the World referr'd to Iudicial Astrology Rabinical Resveries School-Divinity Latine Rhimes in praise of the Saints Compiling of Legends to Monks Histories of Ecclesiastical affairs and the times they liv'd in but so partial and so full of ridiculous and incredible Stories that we have a better and truer account of the times when Alexander and Iulius Caesar liv'd then of the times of Constantine and Charlemain to gelding of the Fathers writings and purging away their Gold Regulating the Hoods and Hose and Shoo 's of Monks to inventing of Ceremonies and mystical vestments and fantastic geniculations to the making of the Popes brutish Canon Law and the Commenting thereon in barbarous Latine by Doctors of the Decrees and Decretals and to the Commenting on Aristotle by those that could not read his Text and the Commenting likewise on the New Testament by such as knew no Greek insomuch that 't was then a proverbial saying among those illiterate Writers Graecum est non potest legi to quiddity esseity entity and such titivilitium and to eus rationis that did as I may say destroy the being of Reason to the improvement of one sort of Mechanics Viz. by making Images in Churches with little engines and librations turn the eyes and move the lips like the forementioned Rood of Grace at Boxley in Kent and which was by Bishop Fisher exposed as a cheat at St. Pauls Cross at the time of its being there broke in pieces while their great Real Design was to make the Layety but the Churches automata as brute Animals may not improperly be said to be God Almighties to the Composing Paschal Epistles about the time of the Celebration of Easter a Controverâ—y as our great Mr. Hales saith that caused as great a Combustion as ever was in the Church and in which fantastical hurry all the World were Schismaâ—ics and about which Monk Austin was so quarrelsome with the Britains when the difference was not in doctrine but in Almanac Calculations and about which aâ—ter the infallibility of the General Councel of Nice had given a Rule in the Cause the World was yet so much in the dark that the Bishops of Rome from year to year were fain to address to the Church of Alexandrias's Mathematicians for directions as to the week Easter was to be kept in And during this long night Millions of mankind were brought into the World only to sleep out their span of time and to have day-dreams of Knowledge or rather a profound Docta Ignorantia and men were by dignities rewarded proportionably for their sleeping longest according to what the Chronicon Frideswidae mentions of Guimundus a Chaplain to our King Henry the First who in the Celebration of holy offices reading before the King that place of St. Iames non pluet super terram annos III menses VI thus ridiculously distinguished the Notes in his reading non pluet super terram annos unum unum unum menses quinque unâ—m and the King asking him afterward why he red so he answered quia vos in ita tantum legentes beneficia episcopatus Confertis No marvel then if during that long gross and palpable Darkness of the World the Pope travesty'd those words in Scripture about Gods making the two great lights to serve his turn against the Emperor thô yet the attempt to prove the Popes Supremacy out of the first Chapter of Genesis is as extravagant as his who would prove the Circulation of the blood out of the first Chapter of Litleton And as the Roman Breviary tell 's us of S. Thomas
very gravely that when once he was vehement in prayer before a Crucifix at Naples he heard this voice bene de me scripsisti Thoma none likewise in that age laught at the Pope for saying bene de me scripsisti Moses The world then brought no quo warranto against the Popes Charter derived thus in his Canon Law from Moses nor that gloss on it which says Since the Earth is seven times bigger then the Moon and the Sun eight times bigger then the Earth the Papal Power must Consequently be fifty seven times bigger then the Regal dignity Our English World will no more allow of the logical Consequence of that doughty argument of Bellarmine Lib. 1. de Pont. ca. 2. sect denique sect sed There is one King among Bees therefore there ought to be one Commander chief Teacher and visible Monarch in the Vniversal Church then they would allow that argument of the Bees to give our neighbour Monarch a right to an Vniversal Temporal Monarchy The Popes vociferating of that Text Behold two Swords and while their adherents held so many Thousands in their hands might then pass muster for as good an argument of his right to Spiritual and Civil power as the words that the Lillies spin not did for the Salic Law with the help of another Army then one of Commentators The Renewall of the Popes Charter by Pasce oves was not then disallowed either for the fleecing of many Millions of Christians or killing some hundreds of thousands in the German Empire according to what has been observed by the famous Erastus in his Theses p. 72. propter excommunicatos Imperatores Reges aliquot Centena millia hominum trucidata sunt in imperio Germanico And perhaps the Popes plea for making the World a great Slaughter-house might then be admitted by the authority of the Text Arise Peter kill and eat Conculcabis super aspidem basilicum then went for a claim of Divine Right to make the head of the World to be trampled on by the foot of a bald-pated Fryar But if the Papacy the light that was in the World then was darkness as the Scripture Expression is How great was that darkness And as the Popes continued art was then to Conceal Nature so 't was not then held tanti for art in others to be Curious in following Nature when an Opinion was imbibed that the Pope could change the very Nature of things according to that saying I have been shewn in the Canon Law glo in C. proposuit de Conc. praeb c. 5. de trans◠ep Papa mutare potest rerum substantialia de Iustitia injustitiam facere mutando Iura corrigendo adeóque quadrata aequare rotundis et rotundis quadrata And for my part I should not have repined at the Popes assuming to himself the honour of the light that rules by day if he could have illuminated the World with the demonstration of the quadrature of the Circle which that gloss pretends to a great Knowable thing as Aristotle said tho not known and which secret all the penetrating Mathematicians from Archimedes down to Mr. Hobbs have wooed with very great passion and could not enjoy But during the Egyptian plague of darkness that many Ages then lay under our famous Countreyman Wicliff alarm'd the Lethargic World and he assail'd several gross Errors of Popery with its own weapons of Metaphysics and School Divinity and by means of the noise his Two hundred Volumes made in the World he dispers'd a great terror in that dark Age and as one saith Sir Iohn Old-Castle Lord Cobham and the Lollards being awaken'd out of their first sleep were desirous to rise before it was day and before the appointed time was Come for the Reforming the abuses in the Church and between that time and morning most men fell asleep again as fast as ever but yet long before the dawn of the Reformation the doctrine of Wicliffe had made such a fermentation in our English World that in the Year of our Lord 1422 that great States-man Chichley Archbishop of Canterbury in a Letter to Pope Martine the Fifth Complain'd That there were then so many here in England infected with the heresies of Wicliff and Husse that without force of an Army they could not be supprest Whereupon the Pope sent two Cardinals to the Arch-Bishop to Cause a Tenth to be gather'd of all Spiritual and Religious men and the money to be Laid in the Chamber Apostolic and if that were not sufficient the residue to be made up of Chalices Candlestics and other implements of the Church as the Acts and Monuments Attest And it is not unknown that long before viz. in Harry the Fifth's time Chichley foreseeing that a Storm was coming from the Commons on Church-Lands diverted it by engaging England in its darling popular War with France and caus'd the Clergy to contribute very liberally to it But that fermentation that Chichley said could not in the Year 1422 be checkt in peoples Minds otherwise then as aforesaid soon out-grew the power of any Army to allay for in less than Thirty years afterward the Invention of Printing came into the World by which one man could transmit more notices of things in a Day then another could by writing in a Year and which did as much out-do the publication of notions by the Goosquill as the invention of Gun-powder did the killing Force of the gray-goose-wing and which did as it were revive the old Miracle of the Gift of Tongues and Cloven too I may Call them for their being divided from the Sentiments of the Papal Holy Church and made Learning begin to fly like lightning through the World to the Controuling and detecting of the Popes Excommunicating Thunder and which shew'd the World its true face in the stream of time and shew'd the greet Fisherman of Rome dancing in the Nett and which was the true speaking Trumpet whereby a single Author could preach to the diocess of the World. And that great birth of Fate the taking of Constantinople within three years after the Invention of Printing occasioning the World's acquiring the knowledge in the West that it lost in the East and dispersing the Learned Greeks Theodore Gaza Iohn Lascaris Manuel Chrysaloras and many others to teach the Greek Tongue where they went the Press was thereby furnished with Glad tidings for the Curious World and Erasmus and many learned Papists did soon imbibe the knowledge of that learned Language and he complained in a Letter to the Archbishop of Mentz That the Friars would fain have made it Heresy to speak Greek So pleasant was it then to consider that that barbarous Generation instead of knowing Heresy to be Greek voted Greek to be Heresy and that they who had murdered so many thousands for being Heretics knew not what the very word in its original language imported The Sagacity of Erasmus could not then but easily see through the Cobwebs of the School-Divines totam Theologiam a
Capite usque ad Calcem retexuerunt ex divina Sophisticam fecerunt aut Aristotelicam saith he in vitâ Hier. praefixâ ipsius operibus And Doctor Colet the Dean of St. Paules whom Erasmus often in his Epistles calls praeceptorem unicum optimum did as Erasmus saith in his life account the Scotists dull Fellows and any thing rather then ingenious and yet he had a worse opinion of Aquinas then of Scotus And tho Luther had angred Harry the 8th by speaking contemptibly of Thomas Aquinas whom that King so highly magnifyed that he was call'd Rex Thomisticus Collet was not afraid to Pronounce in that case as Luther did And here it may not by the way be unworthy of your Lordships observation as to the concert that is between the Genius of one great Witt and another that Erasmus and Mr. Hobbs had the same sense of School-Divinity and School-Divines For Mr. Hobbs in his Behemoth or History of the Civil-Wars speaking of Peter Lombard and Scotus saith That any ingenious Reader not knowing what was the designe of School-Divinity which he had before siad was with unintelligible distinctions to blind Men's eyes while it encroach'd on the Rights of Kings would judge them to have been two the most egregious blockheads in the World so obscure and sensless are their Writings The New Testament was no sooner open'd and read then in Erasmus his translation and in the English Tongue but the Popes Cards were by the Clergy that playd his game thrown up as to all claim of more Power here by the word of God then every other forreign Bishop had and both our Universities sent their judgments about the same to the King which methinks might make our Papists approach a little nearer to us without fear of infection for we allow the Bishop of Rome to have as much Power by the Word of God as any other Bishop and 't is pitty but that Judgment of our Universities were shewn the World in Print and sent to the French King and particularly the Rescript or Iudgment of the University of Oxford as not being any where in Print that I know of but in an old Book of Dr. Iames's against Popery Cromwel the Vicegerent to H. the 8th had as Fuller saith in his Church-history got the whole New-Testament of Erasmus his translation by heart but the sore Eyes of many of the Clergy were so offended with the glaring-Light the New-Testament in Print brought every where that instead of Studying it as that great Primier Ministre did they only study'd to suppress it and thus Buchanan in his Scotch History saith that in H. the 8 ths time â—antaque erat caecitas ut sacerdotum plerique novitatis nomine offensi eum librum a Martino Luthero nuper fuisse Scriptum affirmarent ac vetus testamentum reposcerent i. e. They look'd on the New-Testament as writ by Martin Luther and call'd for the Old Testament again And the truth is if Luther had then set himself to have invented and writ a model of Doctrines against Iustification by works and redeeming our vexation from wrath divine by Summs of Mony and against implicit Faith and many gross Papal Errors he could not possibly have writ against them in terminis terminantibus more expresly then the Writers of the New-Testament did But the New Testament was then newly opened and the legatees permitted to read the whole Will over translated into a language they understood after they had been long by fraud and force kept out of their legacies by the Bishops Court of Rome whose Artifice had formerly in effect suppressed that Will and that inestimable legacy of liberty from all impositions humane being particularly shewn to Mankind there was no taking their Eyes off from this Will nor taking it out of their hands nor suppressing the study of the Greek language it was originally writ in King Harry the 8 th had received his Legacy thereby who before was but a Royal Slave to the Pope and the triumph of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was eccho'd round his Kingdom like that of Archimedes when he had detected the Imposture that had mingled so much dross in the Sicilian Crown 'T is true he retained the profession of several Papal Errors and such as he being vers'd in School-Divinity knew would still keep themselves in play in the World with a videtur quod sic probatur quod non accordingly as the learned Dr. Iones has observ'd in his Book call'd the Heart and its Right Sovereign that Image-Worship Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended on each side to the World's end Harry the 8 th therefore did in his Contest with the Papacy Ferire faciem and did fight neither against small and great but the King of Rome as I may say He attaqued the Pope in his claim of authority over all Christians the authority that Bellâ—rmin calls Caput fidei the head of the Catholic Faith. ' T is therefore very well said in a Book call'd Considerations touching the true way to suppress Popery in England Printed for Mr. Broome in the Year 1677 Whatever notions we have of Popery in other things the Pope himself is not so fond of them but that to gain the point of authority he can either connive or abate or part with them wholy though no doubt he never doth it but insidiously as well knowing that whatever consession he makes for the establishing his authority he may afterward revoke c. And so the Author saith p. 12. That Harry the 8 th for having cast of his obedience to Rome was therefore judged a heretic and that was look't on by Rome as worse than if he had rejected all its errors together He was a thorough Papist in all points but only that of obedience in comparison of which all the rest are but talk I account therefore in Harry the 8 ths time Poperies most sensible and vital part viz. the Popes supremacy did end in England per simplicem desinentiam The radical heat and moisture it long before had was gone like a senex depontanus it was held useless in a wise Senate He establish't the doctrine of his own supremacy without a Battel fought nor did any Rebellion rise thereupon but what he confounded with a general Pardon Many of the Scholars of the University of Oxford did mutinously oppose the introducing the knowledge of the Greek Tongue there and were thereupon call'd Trojans and others of the Schollars were as rohust and loud for that Language who were therefore called Graecians but by a Letter wâ—it by Sir Thomas More to that University and by the Kings Command which Letter is extant in the Archives of the public Library there the Schollars being admonished to lay by those names of distinction and likewise all animosity against the Greek Tongue and to encourage the learning of the same it was there at last peaceably receiv'd The day-break of learning
instance Of their great progress wherein we have an account in Pryn's Compleat History of the Tryal of Arch-bishop Laud where he saith And had they not been interrupted in this good work they would probably in very few years have purchased in most of the great Towns and noted Parishes Impropriate in England in Lay-mens Lands And which had they effected they might have settled such a Bank of Land on the Fond whereof to have brought into their possession the greatest part perhaps of the mony Currant in England and that party without any but Silver weapons have acquired such an arbitrage of the interests of all others in England as to have usurped Harry the Eighth's Motto of Cui adhaereo praeest But though the Livings in these great Corporate Towns are so small and the value they had by oblations be evaporated every where but in the King's Books where it remains still to enhance their payment of first Fruits and Tenths the heterodox Divines there find Harvests of oblations rich enough and so will the Divines of the Church of England if ever a storm of Popish Persecution shall drive them there for shelter to be Pastors of the Monied Men and if the worst comes to the worst they will there find some â—at gathered Churches better then lean Bishopricks as perhaps some heterodox Pastors do now there experiment them and the ambient heat of State-favour that call'd out some of the inward one of Religion being abated they will probably grow more exemplary in austere vertue and thereby attract so much reverence from their flocks as to become Confessors as well as Preachers to them for so the Non-conformist Divines there now in a manner are and as Confession under Popery proved the only Guaranty to the Priests for their being paid their Personal Tithes and as then people at their deaths expiated their omissions in the payment of their Tithes by valuable Legacies thus too will it probably happen to the Ministers of Christ's New Testament and often to be Executors or at least Legatees in Christians Wills the very dust of whose feet is thought beautiful by all Men generally when their return to their own dust is approaching And the persecution design'd them will but reduce their state in the Eye of the World to look and be like that of the Primitive Christians who made the Apostles their Bankers and the depositaries of their wealth and whose Successors likewise in the administration of the Gospel during the following Ages of Persecution had good livelihoods on the Fond of Oblations And as for Tithes we hear nothing of them for many Ages in the Primitive Church In the Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Universae published by Iustellus the most authentick Book in the World next the Bible and which contains the Canons received by the Universal Church till the year 451 there is not one word of Tithes The Clergy were then liberally maintained by the free oblations of the people which were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And there was no such Proverb heard of in the World abroad as laâ—ci semper sunt infensi Clericis till there was another unlucky one Ecclesia peperit divitias c. and till the Goths and Vandals being Proselyted to Christianity exprest the natural zeal of new Converts by vastly endowing the Clergy 〈◊〉 Lands who had as I may say setled Heaven upon them and whoâ—e greâ—â— proportion in the balance of Land necessarily made them aâ—terward one of the Three Estates in the Christian World. And most worthy of Christian Princes care it was to endeavour to secure the profession of Christianity in future times as well as their own by providing that the Clergy should not be of the meanest of the people nor depend on benevolence which in the prosperous condition of Christianity might perhaps grow cold as under Popery the Charity of Oblations had done but for the Aâ—tifices before mentioned of Saints Shrines c. and Reliques and the fear of Purgatory Of the Oblations of the people here in England decreasing toward the Pastors of Independent Churches when Independency became the Darling Religion of the State we had an indication in the late times when some of the most eminent of them obtain'd the possession of great Livings and their Tithes and others of them retreated from their Churches to Headships of Colledges Nor has there been any failure of the return of the old Exuberance of Oblations from such Churches to such Divines who have again returned to them when they were dislodged from those preferments I find not that the Piety of our Ancestors had established any Revenue to the Church from Tithes in England till about the end of the Eighth or middle of the Ninth Century nor was the division of England into Parishes before the time of Honorius Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 636 till which time there could not be Parochial Tithes About that time as 't was said that the measure of donations to the Church was immensitas so was the modus of their Artifices to preserve them sine modo it being incident to humane Nature to be restless in the acquiring of riches for without the perpetual acquiring of more no Man is sure to preserve the Quota of what he hath 'T was thence that Sacriledge of the Monks arose that tore the Bread out of the Mouths of the Parish Priests by the Name of Appropriations which shewed the President to Wolseys alienation of Religious Houses that was the President to Harry the Eighth's And it may well be supposed that the Design of the Monks in robbing the Parochial incumbents by Appropriations was to propagate ignorance among the Laity thereby and to leave the Age as dark as they found it or rather to be able generally to let in or keep out what quantity of light they pleased Yet had those Appropriations been made in an Age of knowledge they would then have met with that Nick-name of Impropriations that was born many years afterward and it would then have appeared improper to all that the Monks should Muzzle the mouth of the Ox that did tread out the Corn and that old natural Zeal for Religion so anciently radicated in English minds that Popes have formerly complained they were addrest to with more questions about Religion from England than from all the World beside would have inclined the respective Parishioners according to their abilities to contribute a liberal maintenance to their Parish Priests and even in St. Paul's words To have plucked out their own Eyes and have given them but that they saw that devotion that brought the fore-mentioned concourse of Spectators and Offerers to the Images and Shrines and to the Altars there made the Vicars at least competently to live by the Altar And if that Classe of heterodox Pastors in Corporations who as to skill in Theology and the Encyclopaedy of Arts and Sciences requisite to Crown a Divine are generally but Images in comparison of the excellent
confesseth and that by God's own appointment three times the Annual Revenue of the greatest of the twelve Tribes Doctor Covel in his Modest and Reasonable examination of some things in use in the Church of England Printed Anno 1604 saith in Chapter the Eleventh Thatâ—the Levites were not the Thirteenth part of the Jews and yet had the Tenth Wherein that Doctor agreed with the sense of the Fathers of the Council of Trent who as 't is mention'd in the latter end of the History of that Council said That in the Mosaical Law God gave the Tenth to the Levites who were the Thirteenth part of the people prohibiting that any more should be given them But the Clergy now which is not the Fiftieth part hath gotten already not a Tenth only but a Fourth part But by exacter Calculations 't is apparent that the Levites though a small Tribe if a Tribe there being twelve beside scarce the sixtieth part of the House of Iacob had perhaps a Sixth of the whole profits of the Land They had the Tenth or Tith of the Land together with its Culture they had in Iudaea a small Country 48 Cities with their Suburbs 2000 Cubits from the Wall on every side and their first-fruits and a great part of the manifold Sacrifices and free-will-offerings of the Male Children of Israel which were to appear thrice yearly before the Lord with some Offering and whatsoever House Field Person Beast c. was by a singular Vow given to God which was to be valued by the Priest himself and all these duties were brought in to the Priest without charge or trouble and those Cities and Lands descended from them to their posterity from generation to generation as also did their Tithes and Offerings I shall here observe that that which hath probably induced so many to err in making the number of the Levites so great as aforesaid was their not considering what yet is really true in Nature namely That the number of people of any Nation from a month old and upwards for so the Levites were counted Numb 3. 39. is more then double their number from Twenty years old and upward and so the rest of the Tribes were numbred Exod. 33. 26. Numb 26. 62. And therefore I infer that the Levites were but about a sixtieth of the number of the other Tribes But during the Theocracy that the Iews sometimes lived under or while God was their King it being worthy of the Divine Empire to design and promote the wealth of its Subjects and consequently that they should encrease and multiply for that alone is real wealth there was no Celibate among the Levites or any degree of Ecclesiasticks to hinder the same Having thus in the way of Calculation glanced on the Ecclesiastical Polity of God's peculiar People or Subjects I suppose the rectitude of that Rule will shew the obliquity or warping of the practice of the Papal Clergy For if we do admit as I believe we well may that there are seven Millions of people in England of which 120000 is a sixtieth part this old Church Polity of the Popes Clergy doth Toto Caelo differ from that of the Israelites in that they spend double the proportion of the wealth of the Kingdom and yet live in Celibate or without multiplying And as Mr Fish in effect said in that his Book do hinder procreation by promiscuous coupling with other Mens Wives But 't is a known great truth that the great business of the Monks and the Ratio studiorum of the Papal Clergy was not to make the Kingdom populous but to depopulate We have for this the testimony of Walter Mappe Arch-deacon of Oxford who was bred up with Henry the Second that the Abbots and Monks in that time were very Criminous in the point of depopulation whence that Proverb arose Monachi desertum aut inveniunt aut faciunt wherever they seated themselves they either found the place a Desart or made it one 'T is said of them That they laid more places waste then ever William the Conqueror or his Son Ruâ—us did when they demolished and destroyed many Parishes to enlarge the bounds of the new Forrest In that Fleet of depopulators there was one first-rate one namely The Abbot of Osney who was for his Talent of depopulating so remarkable that 't was observed that he made all paupers that dwelt within the purlieus of his Possessions And of this Henry the Second took such notice that one day when he had not poor people enough for his Alms on some great Festival he said in a fit of anger That rather then his bounty should be unemployed he would make as many beggars as the Abbot of Osney had done One would think that the Monks should have been well willers to the encrease of the populousness of the Kingdom for that thereby the values of their Lands would have been encreased a thing no doubt that appeared visible to the Reasons of the more Sagacious among them But there was another thing they found palpable that is they found themselves well at ease even to envy in their vast share of the wealth of the Nation whereby they Lorded it over both God's inheritance and the Laity and therefore they did not fancy the sight of the Sea of the people increase by the coming in of the Tide of new generations that would have produced much more persons to maligne and perhaps contest with them they naturally therefore wished the sweet absence of such company from the World just as in Ireland and other thin peopled Countries the Natives living at their ease have sharp regrets against the accession of strangers though they know it would raise the value of their Lands and as in America the Natives wish no improvement to their Country from the Spaniards The Monks had got the Monopoly of Religion and near half the Land by it and not having any certain Issue to endear posterity to them and consequently to oblige them to promote the wealth of the Kingdom in general and to consult thereby the good of surviving parts of themselves for that figure Children make as to Parents they and the Abbots and Popish Bishops cared for no more then being warm in the Pyes Nest while they lived and 't was as natural to them to repel the thoughts of Colonies of people advancing the wealth of the Kingdom by new generations as 't is natural to present Trading persons to prevent the publick good of an Act of Naturalization And as this advancement of depopulation was therefore the interest of the present Monks and Priests so was it of the present Popes who knew they were sure of receiving Aids and Contributions from them as long as numbers of other fresh comers did not drive them off the Stage One would rather wonder that our Popish Monarchs saw it not sooner their Interest to crush the Politics of these holy Depopulators and Pastors that turned the Kingdom into Sheep-walks and who minding chiefly the encrease
Scene of Merchandizing was not open'd in Europe till about 6 or 7 hundred years ago and till then none were there worthy the names of Merchants except some few in the Republicks of Italy who lived in the Mediterranean parts trading with the Indian Caravans in the Levant or driving some inland Trade and then and some hundreds of years afterward the Nations in the worst Soil of Europe being the greatest breeders and having superfluity of nothing but people had no invention for living but by being Murderers and by the boysterous Trade of Fighting their way into better Quarters and during that dark and Iron Age that produced Herds of Men void of knowledge there was nothing in humane Conversation or discourse valuable and in our European World it was scarce worth Men a few steps to gain one anothers acquaintance but on the gradual encrease of knowledge there Men found a readier way at once with delight and profit to exchange Notions and Commodities of Traffick and the Protestant Religion at last drawing up the Curtain that kept all things obscure on that Stage of the World Men being better taught the knowledge of the God of Nature and of Nature it self were grown worth one anothers knowledge and were for the surprizing brightness of their intellectual Talents gazed on by the wondring World like in Machines Gods coming down out of Clouds and it was worthy of the bounty of Heaven then to spread on the Earth the Commerce of Men and the Medium of Commerce too and to allow them to converse together with more splendor by the Donative of the American Mines when the dawn of the knowledge a little before that of the Reformation had rendred them conversable Creatures and fit for the interviews of one another and shortly afterwards by a mighty encrease of Navigation many did pass to and fro and knowledge was more and more encreased Thus as I have some where read of a saying of one of the Fathers Deus ambit nos donis formâ suâ the Divine Goodness provided that the World should Espouse the beauty of the Reformation with a great Dowry and that it should appear particularly in England with the great Figure that Wisdom makes in the Proverbs Length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour And the truth is conspicuous in our English History that former intervals of some Efforts of Trade and of some of withstanding the Papal Encroachments were alway contemporary and liv'd and dy'd together and they were no sooner risen out of the Grave where the barbarity of former times depressed them but they were again found in one anothers Embraces That the Stock and Wealth of the Kingdom is vastly encreased since Harry the 8ths time is visible to any one who considers what Stow saith in his Annals on the Year 1523 the 15th Year of his Reign That when in a Parliament held at Black-Fryers and where Sir Thomas More was Speaker 800000 l. was required to be raised of the fifth part of every mans Goods and Lands that is 4 s of every Pound to be paid in 4 years but it was denyed and it was proved manifestly that if the fifth part of the substance of the Realm were but 800000 l and if Men should pay to the King the fifth part of their Goods in Money or Plate that there was not so much Money out of the Kings hands in all the Realm for the fifth part of every Mans Goods is not in Money or Plate c. And then consequently if all the Money were brought to the Kings hands then Men must barter Cloath for Victuals c. And there it was further Argued that the King had by way of Loan 2 s. in the Pound which is 400000 l. and if he had 4 s. more in the Pound 't would amount to 1200000 l which is almost the 3 d part of every Mans Goods which in Coyn cannot be had within the Realm That the Merchandizing Trade of England was before the Reformation and sometime after managed chiefly by Forraigners we Learn out of Heylin's Edward the 6 th p. 108 where he saith that Edward the 6 th Supprest the Corporation of Merchant Strangers the Merchants of the Stilyard concerning which we are to know that the English in the times foregoing being neither strong in Shipping nor much accustomed to the Sea received all such Commodities as were not of the growth of their own Country from the hands of Strangers resorting hither from all parts to upbraid our laziness namely Merchants known by the name of Easterlings who brought hither Wheat and Rye and Grain c. for their encouragement wherein they were amply priviledged and exempted from many impositions I shall here deduce a proof of the growth of the Revenue of the Nation from the growth of that of the Church and to prove that the Revenue of the Church Nation of England were in the year 1660 about Quintuple to what they were at the time of the Reformation I shall say first that Godwin in his Catalogue of Bishops makes the Revenue of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops to be valued at the time of the Reformation near 22000 l. per Annum and if we admit the Revenue of the Deans and Chapters to be double the Sum viz. 44000 l. then will the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy appear to have been then 66000 l. per Annum But Dr. Cornelius Burgess a Man vers'd in the speculative and practick part of Sacriledge doth in his Book concerning Sacriledge call'd Two Replies and Printed Anno 1660 affirm that the Bishops Deans and Chapters Lands were at the end of the late Civil War sold for two Million three hundred thousand pounds and he saith there was offer'd since his Majesties Restoration seven hundred thousand pounds more to confirm that Sale whereby the value of the said Land is made to be in the year 1660 3 Millions And Mr. Prynne in his Printed Speech in the House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the satisfactoriness of the Kings Answers to the Propositions of both Houses doth in Page 68 there affirm That near one half of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops Possessions and Revenues consists in Impropriations Tithes Pensions and the like and if we may suppose the like as to the Revenues of the Deans and Chapters then according to that Estimate will the value of the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy of our Church be about 6 Millions the twentieth part whereof viz. at twenty years Purchase is 300,000 l. per Annum and the 12 th part of the same viz. at 12 years purchase is 500,000 l. per Annum so that what at the time of the Reformation was worth but 66000 l. per Annum was in the Year 1660 worth between 300 and 500000 l. as aforesaid In the next place I shall prove the Remainder of my Position that the Revenue of the whole Nation is about Quintupled also for that the
under whom they be Born some for Heresie some for Murther Treason Robbery and are there further represented as such whose secret practices have not fail'd to stir her Highnesses Subjects to a Rebellion against God and her Grace c. But secret Traitors they were found by the Realm and secret they were left by it Two of them were Iohn a Lasco Uncle to the King of Poland and Peter Martyr that were thus sent out of the Realm with Sanbenitos on and so far were our Popish Ancestors from Hospitality to Strangers and thereby unawares entertaining Angels that they made Devils of them and as such used them and to make amends to the multitude of Forraign Artists for the Gold they brought here they had the Dirt of Shams thrown at them by a Proclamation And as if not only the Biting but the very Barking of Mad Doggs had power to make others Mad she grew so enraged by the Books of Heresie and Sedition Printed in Forraign Parts and here Imported that she Publish'd a Proclamation Printed likewise in Fox wherein she Declared to all her Subjects that Whoever shall after the Proclaiming hereof be found to have any of the said Wicked and Seditious Books or finding them do not forthwith Burn the same without shewing or reading the same shall in that Case be Reputed and taken for a Rebel and shall without delay be Executed for the Offence according to the order of Martial Law. But nothing can palliate the Arbitrariness of Queen Mary's Proclamation for the Exercising of Martial Law but that she thought her Reign a time of War and perhaps not altogether Improperly for that Hereticks have the Title of Hostes given them by Popish Masters of Ceremonies There was another reason that induced Queen Mary to use the Arbitrary Power that her Popish Predecessors did not and that is this The People of England in the days of Popery were like to the three Fools in Lipsius that being ty'd together by a twine Thread went Whining about the House and consenting that they who would unty the Knots of it should have what Money from them they pleas'd And thus were our Foolish Ancestors innodated with Papal Censures and the Priests did but Arbitrarily ask and have their rewards to Absolve them But that Queen finding that the Reformation begun had proved Physick to Cure those Idiots of their dull Stupidity she therefore supposed that the Fools who before were held by the twine Thread must then be bound to the good Behaviour with Chains In fine by these three Important Acts of Arbitrary Power the which presently occurred to my remembrance out of her Story and without my troubling my self to rake for more she gave the alarm to her Subjects newly after their Eyes had been opened and their Hands unty'd by the Reign of K. Edward that they were to expect no free Trading where there was no free Living and to hear nothing but the dying Groans of Liberty and Religion So very exact indeed is the Frame of our English Government and of the Soveraignes Power and Peoples Liberty therein that as in an Arched Building if one Stone be removed from it the whole is immediately endanger'd and nothing could probably have saved it from ruin but the Restoration of our Law as well as Gospel by such a Reign as Queen Elizabeths who was so far from the exercise of Arbitrary Power on her good Subjects and Friends that she did it not on the worst nor on her Enemies One would have thought that after the many attempts against her Life and after the forementioned threatning Letter of Campians which notifies that the Iesuits had entred into a Covenant or Association to Kill Heretical Princes c. that she might have been provoked to have declared that Order by a Proclamation to be Hostes a thing that she or any Protestant Crown'd Heads might do without Violating the Laws of Nations in reference to those Forraign Princes that were their Allies and to whom any of that Order were Subjects a thing not only Consonant to the jus gentium but to our Lex terrae as it was resolv'd in Cambden's Elizabeth by the Lord Chief Justice Catelin who being ask'd Whither the Subjects of another Prince Confederate with the Queen might be held for the Queens Enemies Answer'd That they might and that the Queen of England might make War with any Duke of France and yet in the mean time hold Peace with the French King and a thing that if done would have tended more to their Extermination out of this or any Country perhaps then all other Laws against them in regard that it would have more effectually bereav'd them of the benefit of Correspondence Aids and Assistance from thence all Subjects being every where by the Law rendred Traytors who Correspond with or give Aid and Assistance to declared Enemies Nor would the term of Hostes bestow'd on such be more then a Retaliation and to this purpose Mariana makes the people authoriz'd to Proclaime a King upon occasion to be a Publick Enemy and so likewise Lessius even in his Book de Iustitiâ jure saith That a Tyrant is to be declared an Enemy by the Common-welth and thus Parsons alias Doleman in his Book of the Succession Part 2. Cap. 4. terms an Evil King an Armed Enemy The term I mention'd before of inimicus homo is certainly proper enough for those that sow such Tares in the World as the Iesuites do and make not only Lollards of ordinary Hereticks but as the Commenter on the Epitome of Confessions otherwise the 7 th Book of Decretals tells us in Commendation of all the Iesuits in these words Tyrannos aggrediuntur lolium ab agro Dominico evellunt I shall here observe how in the year 1596. the Hollanders and others of the States of the Vnited Provinces did Publish an Edict That none of the Bloudy Sect of the Jesuits or any that gives himself to Study at this time among the Professors of that Sect whether he be Bâ—rn in any of the Provinces that are Confederate or be a Forraigner crept secretly into the same Province should longer remain there then the time prescribed under the pain of being accounted and kill'd for an Enemy But that Magnanimous Queen did as much think it Inglorious for her to employ her Anger in such a Proclamation on such firy pedants as I believe our potent Neighbouring Monarch whose Name will look as great in all â—uture Story for mighty dilligence and for exact prudence in the Conduct of his Affairs of State as for the Success of his Arms would to Honour with the Title of Enemies such little great talkers who here in the Coffee-Houses Arraign his Political Measures And the truth is as it is not worthy the Grandeur of Princes who are Heavens Vice-gerents to squander away its thunder in experiments on Shrubs and Mushrooms or on slight grounds to call any of slight mankind and who are of no Name by that dreadful one
English are observ'd to be the least addicted either to fear or jealousie The Pencil of Nature hath in English minds on the dull and vile colour of fear the which is said to be aversion with the opinion of hurt from any object laid on that more noble and bright one which is said to be the hope of avoiding that hurt by resistance and is called Courage and this Age which is so inquisitive into the Causes of things will be naturally apt to abominate that fear that is causeless or without the apprehension of why or what and which from the Fables of Pan as Mr. Hobbs saith is called Panic-fear and methinks the very English genius doth now begin to rouze it self up and call on us to weigh our fear and if we find it just to prevent our being surprized by danger and if causeless to abandon it according to the words of the Orator against Catiline Si verus ne opprimar sin fallus ut tandem aliquando timere desinam and not to contribute to the encreasing the numbers of the Papists which has in all times most fatally happen'd and that too according to the course of Nature by the fearing them according to the Instance of the encrease of the number of the Iews mentioned in the Book of Esther where 't is said And many of the people of the Land became Jews for the fear of the Jews fâ—ll upon them On the account of our having most justly deserved the Visitation of Popery we may very reasonably apprehend the danger of it but the immoderate fear of the Plague is so far from being an Antidote against it that we use to say it comes with a fear And as we have justly deserved to be punished by the rage of Popery so have we likewise to be tormented with those Epidemic fears to which we are abandon'd a Judgment mention'd by the Royal Prophet where he says Put them in fear O Lord c. and likewise one Concomitant of our fear namely the shame we are exposed to for it from the Papists themselves An instance of it occurr'd to me in the Reading a Pamphlet call'd the seasonallâ— Address of the Church of England to both Houses of Parliament Printed in the Tear 1677 but writ by a Papist and in the way of Sarcasme where in p. 30. the Author saith And here I cannot omit to tell you that this partiality of our Rigor hath already given Protestants the consusion and Papists the comfort to imagine that our fears and jealousies of Popery which at present disturb and distract the Nation are but the self same sprights that haunted Caiphas his house lay under the Jews Council-Table and scared them with the Romans coming and overrunning their Countrey There have been men of so weak a judgment that they have dyed only with the fear of death and it is not without all ground that our Adversaries now hope that we shall at length turn Papists with the fear of Popery But that I am not heterodox in my Notion of Poperies not being now so formidable by the strength of its numbers as the timid Protestants make it is sufficiently manifest from the Conditional Vote of two Houses of Commons relating to the being revenged on the Papists Part of the entertainment I just now promised your Lordship I shall borrow from Dr. Glanvile and for it do refer you to his Zealous and Impartial Protestant p. 46 47. where he saith in the year 1676 Orders came from the Archbishop to the several Bishops and from them to the respective Ministers and Church-wardens in the Province of Canterbury to enquire carefully and to return an Account of the distinct Numbers of Conformists Nonconformists and Papists in their several Parishes viz. Of all such men and women that were of Age to Communicate c. The number of Papists there returned was but eleven thousand eight hundred and seventy Now tho in this Account Conformists and Nonconformists were not so distinctly could not so justly be reckon'd yet for the Papists they being so few in each Parish and so notoriously distinguished as generally they are the Ministers and Church-wardens could easily give account of them and there is no reason to suspect their partiality c. In St. Martins alone I have heard of twenty or thirty thousand but the Account was taken there and as exact a one as could be and I am assured by some that should know and had no reason to misinform me that the number return'd upon the most careful Scrutiny was about 600. I have found the like fallings short of the reputed Number in divers other noted places In one City talked of for Papists as if half the Inhabitants were such I am assured there are not twenty Men and Women In another large and popular one a Person of Quality living in it told me there were at least 600 but when the enquiry was made by the Ministers and Church-wardens in each Parish the Number was not found to be 60 and 't is very probable such a disproportion would be met between the reputed and real Numbers in all other places if Scrutiny were made In all the West and most Populous part of England they are very inconsiderable I hear frequently from Inhabitants of those places that in Bristol the second or third City of England there is but one and in the City of Glocester one or two at most in the other great Towns and Cities Westward scarce any and those that are in the Counties at large are extremely few thinly scatter'd here one and at the distance of many Miles it may be another c. We hear of the vast Numbers in the North and there are more no doubt in those parts then in the Western but I believe they are much fewer then we hear and no way able by their Numbers to make any kind of ballance for the exceeding disproportion in the West The truth is People are mightily given and generally so to multiply the Numbers of Papists and they do it in common talk at least ten-fold c. And after saith thereupon God forbid I should diminish the real force of our Enemies or endeavour to render us secure in dangers The Malignity and Principles of Papists their unwearied zeal and diligence to overthrow our Religion I very well know and thank God that the whole Kingdom is awakened to apprehend but I think we shall encourage them and dishearten our selves if we over magnifie their strength c. There came out in Print in London in the year 1680. a Sheet of Paper called a Catalogue of the Names of such Persons as are or are reputed to be of the Romish Religion not as yet Convicted being Inhabitants within the County of Middlesex Cities of London and Westminster and Weekly Bills of Mortality exactly as they are ordered to be inserted in the several Commissions appointed for the more speedy Convicting of such as shall be found of that Religion a Paper that was
of Father Parsons about the Succession part 2 d where he weighs the several parties of England in the Ballance of State and saith It is well known that in the Realm of England at this day there are three different and opposite Bodies of Religion that are of most bulk and do carry most sway and power which three Bodies are commonly known by the Names of Protestant Puritants and Papists and afterward speaking of the Great Power of the Protestant Party for wealth and force He saith p. 140. A chief Member of the Protestant Body is the Clergy of England especially the Bishops and the other Men in Ecclesiastical Dignities which are like to be a great back to this Party at that day c. meaning the time after the death of Queen Elizabeth when her Successor should enter on the Stage and then having weighed the Puritan Party and its interest he saith The third Body of Religion which are those of the Roman who call themselves Catholicks which is the least in shew at this present by reason of the Laws and Tides of the time that run against them yet are they of no small consideration in this Affair to him that weighs things indifferently and this in respect as well of their Party at home as their friends abroad for at home they being of two sorts as the World knows the one more upâ—n that discover themselves which are the Recusants and the other more close and privy that accommodate themselves to all external preceedings of the time and State so as they cannot be known or at leastwise not much touch'd we may imagine that their Number is not small throughout the Realm c. The Vigour of the hopes that Popery had in that Conjuncture appears out of that great Historical Letter of D'Ossat to his King Anno 1601 where he makes such a judicious abstract of this goodly Book of Parsons for so he calls it Ce beau livre and Animadversions on it and saith 'T is about four years ago that the Pope did Create in England a certain Arciprestre to the end that all Ecclesiasticks and Catholicks of the Realm should have one to whom to go and have recourse about the things relating to the Catholick Religion and by means thereof to be united among themselves and to understand what shall be good to be done for their preservation and the re-establishment of the Catholick Religion and some have given his Holiness to understand that by that means he would make a great Party of the Catholicks in England for what he would effect and then acquaints the King That the Pope had sent three Briefs to his Nuntio in the Low-Countreys for him to keep till the death of Queen Elizabeth and after that to send them to England one to the Ecclesiasticks another to the Nobility and another to the third Estate by which the said three Estates are admonished and exhorted by his Holiness to remain united together to receive a Catholick King that his Holiness shall name and such a one who shall appear acceptable to them and honourable and all this for the Honour and Glory of God and for the restoring the Catholick Religion c. Here was it seems one Brief more sent to England then Mr. Marvel mentions in his Growth of Popery where he saith That the Pope sent two Briefs in order to exclude King James from the Succession to the Crown In fine Popery was in a Storm during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and in it the Papists were sometimes carried up to the Skyes and then down again and in their Enterprizes with variety of success in some conjunctures their fortune was to reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and as in a Storm many hands are necessary so on the whole matter they found need of the numbers of more hands then they could command and their Numbers decreased in the ballance of the people here as much by the King of Spains Ambition as did the numbers of the Papists in the United Provinces thereby And as they look'd big on the account of their numbers in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign so they did in the beginning of King Iames's and as D'Ossat said in that Letter to Villeroy of April 2d 1603. You will find that the Spaniards who are most troubled about this Event meaning of the Succession will be the first to Congratulate the King of Scotland so it happen'd here with the Papists as appears by a Book in 4 to Printed for Ioseph Barnes at Oxford Anno 1604 called A Consideration of the Papists Reasons of State and Religion for toleration of Popery in England intimated in their supplication to the Kings Majesty and the States of the present Parliament where in their Supplication at large Printed they in the beginning thereof in a profession too as inauspicious as was possibly say that His Majesties direct Title to the Imperial Crown of the Realm both by Lineal Descent and Priority of Blood and your Highness most quiet access to the same do exceedingly possess and englad our hearts The Tide of the Succession against which they had striven was made by Fate to run smooth and clear and they were resolved to appear on the Surface of it with a nos poma natamus Gabriel Powel of St. Maryhall in Oxford the Publisher of that Book saith in his Animadversion on the said beginning of that supplication How can Papists without blushing acknowledge his Majesties Title to the Crown of England to be direct seeing they have heretofore most indirectly and most unjustly oppugned the same which Traiteâ—ous Parsons confesseth albeit for excuse he assureth himself that whatsoever hath been said writ or done by any Catholick against his Majesty which with some others might breed disgust hath been directed to this end to make his Majesty first a Catholick and then our King as if Treason and Treachery against his Highness could make him a Catholick and impugning of his direct and just Title tended to make him King. Rob. Parsons in his Treatise of three Conversions in the dedicat Addition to the Catholicks But tho they gave themselves as it were an Act of Oblivion as to the many Treasons of Parsons his Book of the Succession yet in this supplication they forgot not again in effect to use Parsons his division of the people of England into three parts and so to shape the Estimates of their Numbers and they say in their first reason of State the World knows that there are three Kinds of Subjects in the Realm the Protestant the Puritan and the Catholicks affected and by general report the subject Catholickly affected is not inferiour to the Protestant or Puritan either in number or alliance c. And saith Powel in his Notes on that Clause If by Catholickly affected you mean plainly Papists the World knows that in comparison of the Protestants they are but as it were a handful of Thieves among honest Subjects however
you are bold to brag that at this present there are within the Realm more Catholicks and Catholick Priests then there were forty years since Math. Kellison in his Survey in the Epist. dedic almost at the latter end They afterward in their Supplication use the word Catholickly affected to make it comprehensive of both parts of Parsons his distinction of Papists more open and close and therein have the honour of the Invention of the Phrase of Popishly affected that hath so much gall'd them since and at this day continues to do and I shall accord with them that the Number of Papists or of Popishly affected was apparently grown great in the juncture of time after King Iames came here to the Crown but 't is not deniable that after the Epoche of the Gun-powder-Treason it did more sensibly decrease for they cannot say that by the intended blow from the Gun powder they designed to make him Catholick in order to make him continue a King. The Dean of Bangor in his excellent Sermon in Print and Preached at St. Martins on the 5 th of November 1678. Speaking p. 29 of the Conspirators in the Gun-powder-Treason saith judiciously For the Number I believe the design it self was known to few but that there was a design was known to many more King James himself tells us so in his works p. 291. A great number of my Popish Subjects of all Ranks and Sorts both Men and Women as well within as without the Country had a confused Notion and obscure knowledge that some great thing was to be done in that Parliament for the Weal of the Church tho for Secresies sake they were not to be acquainted with the particulars And no doubt but that great Number took occasion to slip their Necks out of the Collar of Misprision of Religion as well as of Treason thereupon and a vast encrease of the Numbers of the Protestants was thereby occasioned But there afterward appeared another Conjuncture of time in which the Catholickly affected did in his Reign multiply in the which however implicit faith could never come so much in fashion but that as Gondomar observed in the Kings Chappel when ever the Preacher quoted Texts of Scripture the Auditors would immediately turn to their Bibles to find them Mr. Pryn saith in his Introduction to the Archbishop of Canterbury ' s Tryal p. 13. That the number of Priests and Popish Recusants enlarged out of Duress by King James if we may believe Gondomars Letter from hence to the King of Spain or the Letter of Serica that Kings Secretary Dated from Madrid July 7 th 1622 to Mr. Cottington was no less then 4000. He had before in p. 10. and 12. set down the Petition and Remonstrance intended to be sent to King James by the House of Commons in December 1621 where among other things 't is said That the Popish Recusants were then dangerously encreas'd in their Numbers and complaint is made of the swarm of Priests and Iesuites dispersed in all parts of the Kingdom 'T is probable that not many Papists except Priests were then imprison'd and it may be conceived that the Number of Priests who escaped the Net of Imprisonment was more then double to that which was took therein and that the Number of Lay-Papists was very growing in that Conjuncture Mr. Iohn Gee's Book of the Foot out of the Snare of 4th Edition Printed in London 1624. mentions the Names of many Romish Priests and Jesuites resident about London in that year and begins with the Bishop of Chalcedon and shortly after him mentions Collington the Titular Arch-Deacon of London and Wright Treasurer for the Iesuites and Smith Vicar-General for the South parts of England and Broughton Vicar-General for the North parts of England and Bennet Vicar-General for the West parts of England and the whole Number of them there named together with the places of their Lodging is two hundred sixty one and the number of the Iesuites out of that Total is 72. Moreover out of that Total he mentions only 3 as having been formerly in Prison in England and but one who was at that time in Prison At the end of the Catalogue of the Priests there he saith These be all the Birds of this feather which have come to my Eye or Knowledge by Name c. yet above four times so many there are that overspread our Thickets through England as appears by the empty Nests beyond Sea from whence they have flown by Shoals of late I mean the Seminary Colledges which have deeply disgorged by several Missions of them as also is gathered by particular Computation of their divided Troâ—ps when as in one Shire where I have abode sometime they are reputed to nestle almost three hundred of this Brood In the following Pages he there Prints a Catalogue of Popish Physitians in and about the City of London and makes the Number of them 27 and no doubt but that in that Conjuncture of time the number of Papists encreasing there were enow Patients of that persuasion to afford Livelyhoods to so many Physitians In that Book immediately after p. 116. he Prints a Catalogue of such English Books that he knew of to have been Printed reprinted or dispers'd by the Priests and their Agents in England within two years last past or thereabout viz. 156. So fortunate was that Conjuncture to the Papists then that the odious Name of Puritan was bestowed on any of the Magistrates that went to put any Laws in execution against Popery as we find it from Sir R. Cotton in his serious Considerations for repressing of the encrease of Iesuites Priests and Papists without shedding of blood p. 33. his words there are There is no small Number that stand doubtful whether it be a gratful work to cross Popery or that it may be done safely without a foul aspersion of Puritanisme or a shrew'd turn for their labour at some times or other c. In the Petition and Remonstrance of the House of Commons in December 1621 before mentioned among the Causes of the growing mischiefs here the fifth Paragraph assignes one what would make Popery very prolific with Proselytes here viz. The strange Confederacy of the Princes of the Popish Religion aiming maiâ—ly at the advancement of theirs and subverting ours c. and another is assigned in the 6 th Paragraph viz. The great and many Armies raised and maintained at the Charge of the King of Spain the chief of that League and another in § 8th The interposing of Forraign Princes and their Agents in the behalf of Popish Recusants for Connivance and Favours to them But in fine in King Iames his Reign the gross of the Number of the Protestants was generally reckoned to be ten times greater then the Papists the which is hinted in the Posthuma of Cotton who then said To what purpose shews it to muster the Names of the Protestants and to vaunt them to be ten for one of the Roman Faction In the
could not have been conducted so far as it was by any private persons the Book called Popery absolutely destructive to Monarchy printed in London in the year 1673. shews the danger of ordinary Magistrates intermedling with the numbers of Papists in particular Parishes by instancing p. 115. how when the long Parliament was first call'd Iustice Howard was ordered to deliver up a Catalogue of all Recusants within the Liberties of Westminster to prevent which Mr. John James a Zealous Popist stabb'd the Iustice in Westminster-hall and Sir George Wharton in his Gesta Britannorum saith Anno 1640. November 21. Iustice Howard assaulted and stabb'd in Westminster-hall It seems that Iustice of Peace as well as Iustice Godfry found what it was to anger St. Peter and so has that Noble Earl done I believe by some Papists murdering his reputation and shamming the Blood of Godfry on him in vallanous Pamphlets of which I hear that 32000 were dispersed in one Week and that it appeared at an Honourable Committee that no inconsiderable quantity of them was dispers'd by Celier 'T is probable that the time that was taken for discovering the number both of Papists and other Dissenters was most proper in regard that the Declaration of Indulgence visiting them as with a Sun-shine after the Rain invited them out of their Recesses to appear abroad visibly and as the words of the Scripture in another sence are To move out of their holes like Worms of the Earth And as if any man would give himself the trouble to essay the numbring of the Worms that are in the Earth the properest time for that his affected Curiosity would be after the Rain making the earth soft and the Sun then warming it had invited those Animals to come out of the Earth the which lye within a few Foot of the Surface of it so for the above reason was the investigation of the numbers of the Papists most properly timed I am therefore of opinion with the aforesaid Dr. That the number of the Papists was near the matter retain'd with truth and that their number is still waining and will be so more and more but in some accidental Conjunctures of time A late Author hath publish't it That in England in these twenty years last past 250 Families of the Gentry and 12 of the Nobility have quitted the profession of Popery And if any one shall affirm as some considerate Papists have done that the number here of secret Papists and who go not to Mass is as great as the number of the professed ones I shall say that the number of the people of England having been in this Discourse represented so much greater then it was in former Estimates the number of secret Papists cast into that of the known ones will perhaps signifie little more then the dust in the Ballance of the Nation Their Numbers that did somewhat encrease in the beginning of the Conjuncture of their petulant Insolence that went before the time of the Popish Plot as the Purples Small-pox and other Malignant Diseases fore-run the Plague did sensibly and suddenly decay by the change of the Air that the Loyal long Parliament and its Act of the Test made just as the Observator of the Bills of Mortality hath let us see that by the reason of the changes and dispositions in the Air the Plague doth by sudden Jumps start back in a very few days time from vast numbers to very small ones insomuch that presently after the breaking out of the Plot they took the advantage of the detection of the paucity of their Numbers that the Earl of Danby's aforesaid Prudence had made as thence to raise an Argument ab impossibili that they should design a Plot to turn the Tide of Nature in the Nation And thus as Men once pass'd the valuing themselves on the Charmes and Vigour of Youth do it for the Reverence of their Old Age and hope to be the better treated as Guests in the World for the shortness of the time they are to stay in it they did resemblingly too look big upon the smallness of their Numâ—eâ—s The Author therefore of the Compendium printed Anno 1679 tells us à propos p. 85 That there are not 50000 of the Roman Catholick Religion in England Men Women and Children and that agrees well enough with the Surveys of the Numbers of those of that Religion in the Province of Canterbury of the Age of Communicants and admitting the Total of such to be doubled on the account of Papists below the Age of Sixteen an account that ought to be admitted the Observator on the Bills of Mortality having taught us as aforesaid that there are in nature about as many under the Age of 16 as above it and with the making the Total of all the Papists in the Province of York according to Fuller equal to that in the Province of Canterbury the number of the Papists throughout England will appear to be probably near what the Author of the Compendium hath estimated That their Numbers did considerably decrease after the fermentation in peoples minds relating to Religion followed the Declaration of Indulgence and after the severity of the Parliament to Papists thereby occasion'd a convincing Argument may be had from the Letters of Mr. Coleman the which did confute several impâ—tations of it in Mr. Marvel's Growth of Popery to the King's Ministers better than any Apologies could have done and has enabled Fame to Trumpet them forth to Posterity as Confessors whom Envy here whisper'd to be Traditors and let the present Age see that their alledged Closing with Popery was but in the way of contending Wrestlers and not of friendly Embracers And no doubt then but the many Dependants and Followers those Ministers had and the Candidates for their favour and expectants of Offices thereby were then Enemies to all implicit Faith but only for what they thought the Religion of their Chiefs In his Letter to le Cheese of September 29 1675 He saith That the Lord Treasurer Lord Keeper and Duke of Lauderdale were become as fierce Apostles and as Zealous for Protestant Religion and against Popery as ever my Lord Arlington was before them and in pursuance thereof perswaded the King to issue out those severe Orders and Proclamations against Catholicks which came out in February last by which they did as much as in them lay to extirpate all Catholicks and Catholick Religion out of the Kingdom And he in his Letter to the Internuntio of the 5th of February 1674 5 tells him That the King had sign'd a Proclamation last Wednesday to banish all the Priests Natives of this Kingdom to forbid all Subjects to hear Mass in the Queens Chappel and at the Houses of Ambassadors to bring home all the Youth that is now out of the Kingdom in any Popish Colledges to prosecute all Persons as to their Estates according to the Laws which are so insupportable that 't is impossible for any that is reach'd by them
to have wherewithal to eat Bread if they be executed according to the said Proclamation It was but about October 1673 that the House of Commons in an Address to the King took occasion to say It is now more then one Age that the Subjects have lived in continual apprehensions of the encrease of Popery and the decay of the Protestant Religion but what Mr. Coleman's apprehensions were of the Growth of Popery on the 5th of February 1674 I have shewn before and am of opinion That though possibly in the following course of time to the birth of the Popish Plot the coming of many Romish Missionaries here might make some accession to the Number of the Papists that however the Laity of them here Inhabitants hath in its Numbers sensibly decreased and will do so more and more till the most timid Protestants shall be no more aggrieved at their Number then of that of the Muggletonians or of the Sweet Singers of Israel That the discovery of the Popish Plot hath had a natural Tendency to the abating the Number of their perswasion must be granted by all who believe there was one and who know that the blustring attempts of the Conspirators to subvert the Protestant Religion and which have therein failed must end in the better settlement of it as all Storms that do not overthrow a Tree confirm its growth Mr. Care in his History of the Popish Plot mentions That the Iesuites and Seminary Priests in England at the time of the Plot were about 1800 a Number far inferior to that in the Conjuncture in King Iames ' s time before mention'd And short of the Number mention'd by Prynne in a Book of his Printed Anno 1659 called A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done spoken by and between Mr. Prynne the old and new forcibly Secluded Members and those now sitting c. where he saith p. 44 That an English Lord return'd from Rome about four years since averr'd that the Provincial of the English Iesuites when he went to see the Colledge in Rome assured him That they had then above 1500 of their Society of Iesuites in England able to work in several Professions and Trades which they had there taken upon them the better to Support and Secure themselves from being discovered and infuse their Principles into the vulgar People Mr. Coleman complains of a Conjuncture as to Popery that he writ in that tho the Harvest was great the Labourers were very few but Mr. Prynne supposeth the Labouring Jesuites who wrought in the Trade of Religion and in other Trades too were here after the year 50 above 1500 and it may therefore be well conceived that there were many Jesuites here beside who could only manage their Tools in the former Trade and perhaps as many Seminary Priests as Jesuites And no doubt without some hint of notification from some one of the Iesuits Provincials their Number in any Protestant State can hardly be conjectured in regard of their Proteus-like varying their Shapes accordingly as a Description of them is given in the Book called The Emperor and the Empire betray'd where 't is said There are in the Society of Iesus Men of several sorts some of which are dispens'd with not only to lay aside the Habit but to marry and bear all sorts of Dignities and he further presumes to say That the Emperor was thus in this Order in his younger days Mr. Prynne in p. 42. of that Book averrs That Oliver Cromwel declared to his Parliament Anno 1654 That the Emissaries of the Iesuites then came over in great swarms and that they had then fixed in England an Episcopal Power with Arch-Deacons and other Persons to pervert the People a thing they never since the Reformation I think attempted in any Conjuncture till Quarto Caroli and then as appears out of Rushworth ' s Collections in a Conference between the Lords and Commons and managed by Secretary Cook he said There was at that time a Popish Hierarchy established in England that they had a Bishop Consecrated by the Pope and that Bishop had his subalternate Officers of all kinds as Vicars General Arch-Deacons Rural Deans Apparitors and that they were not Nominal or Titular Officers only but they all Executed their Iurisdictions and made their ordinary Visitations throughout the Kingdom kept Courts and determin'd Ecclesiastical Causes But it appears not that they had any such Hierarchy here at the time of the Plot or that they have any thing like it at this time in this Realm Mr. Prynne tells us in p. 49. of that Book That in that Conjuncture in Cromwel's time above 30000 Popish Pamphlets were permitted to be Printed and Vended in England and that of this the London Stationers complain'd in Print But 't is very little that they have Printed here since the King's Restauration and the same private Presses which gave Birth to the few Pamphlets they printed would have done it to as many Volumes as ever Tostatus as Mr. Prynne writ if they had pleased The great Number of the Protestants must still be naturally attractive of the lesser to it for the preservation of their Persons tho at the price of the diminution of their Numbers as a drop is best preserved in the Sea tho it be there swallowed up This Notion is well confirm'd by Edmund Spencer in his Observations of the History of Ireland in former times where he shews in what course of time a handful of English planted among the Numerous Irish must of necessity become Irish as indeed his own Family there did as I am told and that Cromwel speaking to the Grand-child of Spencer in English that on the account of the Fame of his Ancestor he should enjoy his Estate was not by him understood And there is no doubt but time will illuminate the Papists as to the Pope's Politicks being inconvenient to them and only convenient to himself For the same Principle in Politicks that makes every lesser State have a regret against being United to a greater namely for fear of its being absorbed thereby a Notion lately in vogue when the Union of England and Scotland was agitated engageth the Pope to keep the Papists from a Coalition with the Protestants here that would drown the visibility of their Numbers and consequently the appearance of the Numbers of his Subjects in this Realm for so in effect they are The true Cause therefore in Nature that made the Pope by his Bull in Queen Elizabeth's time prohibit the Papists from continuing to come to our Churches and to our Common-Prayer a thing they would else still have done was the Pope's being enabled by such Prohibitions to put Marks on his Sheep whereby to know them and their Numbers And which had he forborn there had probably been no Number of them returnable in the Bishops Survey 'T is therefore not to be wondred that our Church got nothing but the destruction of its Hierarchy in the last Age by the Policy
makes the remaining part of the Adherents to their former Religion to be really the more strong powerful and united The Wine that was at first in colder weather preserved by the Lees in it yet in the hotter season improves best by being rack'd off the Lee and thus it is with the Adherents to a Religion when in the heat of Persecution they are defecated from the viler part of its Numbers But yet on the other hand the Mercenary Religionists and Religion-traders do grow impoverished with their very Gifts and the vigour of their minds and natural disposition to industry is thereby emasculated I shall here once for all say that by the word Religion-Trade I intend no prophane reflection on Religion as 't is in the Scripture sense the calling of a Christian but 't is they that prophane it who by prostituting that high Calling as St. Paul styles it to low and vile ends do indeed miscall it and occasion others to do so too And indeed we are out of the Sacred Writ advertised of the Religion-Trade and Religion-Traders St. Peter gives the Alarm of False Teachers that shall through Covetousness with feigned words make Merchandise of them And one Chapter in the Apocalypse as generally interpreted by Protestants makes his pretended Successor to deal in the Merchandise of Gold and Silver and Precious Stones and Pearls c. and Slaves and Souls of Men. And as in Rome at present and long since the only considerable Trade that is driven is that of Religion there being scarce any Secular Merchants there but Iews and those too chiefly dealing in Frippery so is the great Trade thence forced upon the World from the Apostles See relating to the Souls of Men. 'T is there the great Bank of Souls is kept and the security of Rome is expos'd for that Bank as that of the whole City of Amsterdam for its Bank the which doth not more enrich the Merchants that deal with it by saving to them the expence of their time and preventing their receiving of bad Money then the other Bank of Souls doth impoverish its Merchants by defrauding some of their good Money and others of their pretious Souls by it and by the lavish wasting of the time of others and making them who embanked their Talents of good Natural Parts and Wit there but in effect to wrap them up in a Napkin and both by believing some of the Papal Tenets and by being paid so much and no more for the same and not providing for their Families as they might have better done by substantial and even Mechanical Trades to be worse then Infidels 'T is but Natural to Suppose that a Man of two Trades will neither to any high Degree improve them or his Estate by them suitably to him who minds wholly one Trade And the adventitious gain of a Man in any Profession who is a Religion-Trader doth but entice him to the idleness whose effects render him unfortunate in both and therefore I account that the See of Rome unless it could pretend to infinity of Treasure as well as Infallibility of Judgment and whereby it might plentifully by Pensions tye all its Devoti only to the Religion Trade loseth its Oyl and Labour in the largesses it affords Men of other Trades The prying People of England next to their Algebraing out as I may say the Authors of Murder have that Curiosity too to discover the ways by which any of their Neighbourhood do subsist and when they knew them to have no Paternal Estates nor to have acquired any by Marriages or by Skill and Industry and Success in their particular Professions yet see them live with Equipage and Splendor they often with Justice resolve the Cause of their Living so into the Contributions they receive from the Religion-Trade But yet 't is a Familiar thing to observe that other Artists in the same Secular Calling with them are therein more diligent and more dextrous and more thriving and too more frugal as having that only to depend on for their Maintenance then such Journey-men of Rome as are aided in their Expences by Contributions from Holy Church by which the births of their Fortunes are thus in a manner over-laid Of trading Persons and Companies being undone by Donatives and being diverted from necessity compelling them to an excellence therein by their being provided with Golden Bridges to retreat from want and hard labour by we have a remarkable instance in Stâ—w's Survey of London where he inserts the famous Will of Mr. Iohn Kendrick Citizen and Draper of London who dy'd in the year 1624 wherein he for the advancement of the Woollen Manufacture in certain Country Corporations that were then and before Eminent for and by that Manufacture bequeath'd great Sums of Mony to them as for Example to Redding 7500 l. and 4000 l. to Newbery and moreover ordered 500 l. to be lent gratis to the Clothiers of Newbery and Redding but under the weight of that Charity of his their Trade was in the event really depressed and many Merchants of London occasionally broke by that means And sutably to the Operation of the Religionary Trade and the other Secular one impoverishing several of our Iesuited and other Lay-Papists the late times gave us the Experience of several Tradesmen who being of a slothful disposition thought it for their ease to get some little Salaries from the State or voluntary Contributions from some of the Sectarian Populace to eek out their Maintenance and that particularly under that great Idol Oliver Cromwel who so fatally ruin'd the Trade of England and resembling the Pope in being a Cape Merchant of Souls was not undeservedly in the time of his Reign greeted in print by the Title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a Reverend Divine of the Church of England the which was applyed to Oliver in the Title of the Book and he it was that begger'd the Nation and then taught it to Cant and then did that Pharoah otherwise then in a Dream make the lean Cattle of Canting Words and Phrases devour the Fat of the Land and much of solid improvement even in Mechanical Arts and Sciences and then it was that various Clanns or Corporations of Canters only by being such Monopolis'd the Preferments of Church and State and few were admitted to prattique there but such who had the Plague and were as idlers pests to the Kingdom and who had Embanked their Souls in that great Religionary Bank of his setting up And yet then those adherents of his that sold the Wind of inspiration were in comparison of the substantial other Traders who soly depended on excelling in their particular Trade as poor almost as the Lap-landers who sell other Winds But that which is much more Momentous than the impoverishing of all these Particular Religion-Traders and even the diminution of Trade in general ensuing the profusion of profit by donations on the account of Religion is that Religion it self is hereby impoverished and its
most vital part Sincerity hereby in danger to be exterminated For as 't is a thing well known to Merchants and Goldsmiths and Mint-Masters that if the Par as they call it or exact Proportion between Gold and Silver be not observ'd in any Country either the Gold will carry all the Silver out of it or the Silver all the Gold so it may be affirm'd too That if there be not a Par or Proportion observ'd as to Religion and Profit or Wealth either the Religion of a Country will carry out all the profit or Proventus of it or the profit will carry out or exterminate Religion I will not therefore here Prophecy that the World will never but say that it can never be fixed in a quiet and orderly State and free from the Importunity and Sedition of Hypocrites till its Present State be such that Men can neither get nor lose by Religion And till the World recovers this Golden Age namely that Gold cannot carry out our Religion and People us with Hypocrites or our Religion Gold the World will be but a great disorderly House and scarce worth any Mans being Monarch over it As the Irish call their last Rebellion by the name of the Commotion so some have happen'd to call the Present State of Peoples Minds in England which is so disorderly by the name of a Fermentation and this Fermentation can never be over in our English World till there shall here be neither profit or loss by Religion and that no Man shall be more or less Rich by more or less Combining with any Party to cry up or decry any Religionary Tenets or Propositions One would wonder that since Religion and particularly the Christian with its Credenda doth Crown the reason of Man and likewise annex by the exuberance of the Divine benignity a Crown of Glory hereafter to the Believers that any Men should for their belief of Propositions not contrary to reason and wherein the credit of the propounder was supported by Miracles expect to be rewarded in this World a humour that hath been regnant even among Christians from the time of our Saviour's being on Earth to the present Age and a humour that so poyson'd the Iews of old that they thought it not Tanti to have their minds freed from the slavery to Error unless the Messias would have deliver'd them from the servitude of the Romans and because he did not and did decline the being made an Earthly King when the Iews with their Hosannas were tempting him to it they Accused him Capitally for saying That he was a King whenas it was not he but they that said it and they put him to Death reverà because his Kingdom was not of this World and a humour that would not quit the Stage when the first Christians did but boldly still faced the World as appears by the notion of the Millennium having been so much applauded by all the Fathers of the Church and the Christians before the first Nicene Council But methinks from the Example of the Christians of old who did Ambire Martyrium to such a degree that St. Gregory saith Let God number our Martyrs for to us they are more in number then the Sands as if the work had been too hard for another Archimedes with his Arenarius to Calculate the number of the Martyr'd Christians and one Author accounts that excepting on the first of Ianuary there is no day for which Records do not allow 500 Martyrs at least and that for most days they allow 900 and who did ennoble the Christian Religion by shewing to the World an Example of Contempt of Death and even of Life beyond that of the Ancient Romans I say from the Example of those Christians who did in shoals dye daily for their Religion Ours may if they please be taught the modesty not to expect daily livelihoods from it and to account they have very fair play if they do not lose their livelihoods by it 'T is moreover observable that under the Iewish Theocracy Providence had then so ordered things that no Man should get or lose by Religon The Tribes had then their shares of the good Land by lott and the Levites only had that affluent proportion of the Proventus of the other Tribes that I have before Calculated and which would have tempted many of the other Tribes to have march'd over to the Officium and Beneficium of the Priesthood had not God their Monarch provided against that by the confinement of the Administration of the Priesthood to one Tribe and its descendents by natural generation But as to the notion of getting or losing by Religion I shall recommend to your Lordships reading a small Pamphlet printed in two sheets of Paper in Folio and call'd The great Question to be consider'd by the King and this Parliament c. to wit How far Religion is concern'd in Policy or Civil Government and Policy in Religion c. On the disquisition of which a sufficient Basis is proposed for the firm settlement of these Nations to the most probable satisfaction of the several Parties and Interests therein and subscribed by the name of Philo-Britanicus Who the Author of it was I cannot learn but do easily find by the Book that he is a Man of great Acumen of thought and that Matters of Religion and State especially relating to this Kingdom have been very much thought of by him and that the Author was certainly neither Papist nor Presbyterian and so far from being a favourer of the Church of England that he doth interminis make the publick Maintenance of the Clergy to have been the Bone of Contention in these Nations p. 8. and there saith It will be found to stand on the same foot with Abbies and Nâ—â—neries and their Lands and there further as a propounder would give all the Church-Lands to the Crown and the Tithes to the People and then tells us That all Fears and Iealousies and Animosities on the account of Religion will be pluck'd up by the Roots That Author in p. the 5th doth very acutely observe That Popery hath two Parts the one is that which is meerly Religious that is which relates properly to Religion or Conscience and which is peculiar to them such as the believing of Transubstantiation Purgatory Adoration of Saints and Images yea and the superiority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churchmen all which and those of this kind may be believed and professed without prejudice to Civil Society and as being matters relating to Conscience come not properly under the Magistrates Cognizance the other part is the opinion of the Pope's Power over Princes and States his obsolving the people from their Obedience his giving them dispensations to kill Princes and destroy them and allowing them not to keep faith to Hereticks and such like which as they are destructive to Government are truly no part of Religion but a politick contrivance long hatch'd by the Bishop of Rome and his dependants
and five hundred of Prebends after so many shall have drawn Blanks in the Lottery of Preferment those few that shall draw those Prizes need not be envyed for what they have acquired by the Theological Profession It was both with Justice and Prudence by our Laws caution'd that so great a part of the Clerical Maintenance should arise from Tithes for by that means our Clergy are engaged to make the interest of their Country and its improvement their own and had they not had so much of their maintenance sounded on Tithes but on Money out of the Exchequer as they had before this time lost excessively by Religion so Religion would have lost their Calling for that the price of Silver falling by the plenty of it and the plenty or encrease of our people making all the Products of our Country dearer it hath been advantageous to our Clergy to receive their Tithes in kind as it hath been to Colleges to receive a Quota of their Rent in Corn. But that still the maintenance of the inferior Clergy was too mean will appear even by the late Enemies of our Hierarchy being Judges for Mr. Nye in that Book of his called Beams of former Light having spoke of the Ministers Calling being once a gainful one saith p. 123. It is vtterly otherwise now not but that there is a very liberal Maintenance appertaining to Ministers and greater by the bounty of the Honourable Parliament then the Preaching Ministry have formerly enjoyed The gradual encrease of our People and Trade hath proportionably encreased the Clerical Revenue which on the beginning of the Reformation was presently sunk so that Latimer in his Sermon before Edward the 6 th said We of the Clergy have had too much but that is taken away and now we have too little and what Iewel in his Sermon notified to Queen Elizabeth of that kind I have mention'd and so languid was the State of the maintenance of the Inferior Clergy in her time that She by one of her Printed Ecclesiastical Injunctions Anno 1599. did under great Penalties forbid all Priests and Deacons to Marry any Woman without the Advice and Allowance first had by the Bishop of the Diocess and two Iustices of Peace which I suppose was caution'd by the Queen that the many Ministers who had not competent Livings to maintain themselves might not marrying Wives without Dowries by new Births encrease the number of Paupers in Parishes It is observable that in the late times the Iesuites did publish many Pamphlets in Print against Tithes and did animate the people to make Tumultuary Addresses to the Usurpers to abolish that maintenance of the Ministers wherein as their Politicks were so unjust to our Monarch that had they succeeded they would have barricaded the way for his return in the minds of too many of the People for fear that the payment of Tithes should return too so likewise were they so ridiculous by cutting off all hopes of the return of Popery here in any Conjuncture of time that less then an Army of Bellarmines would never have perswaded the common People to hear with patience any talk of Holy Church's re-establishment here Tho as I have shewn that Tithes by reason of the equality in the Imposition of them and the diuturnity of time that hath habituated People to the payment thereof are a gentle part of the Yoke of our Ecclesiastical Government yet if the payment of them or any other Tax whether of Excise Customs or Chimny-money were for many years discontinued there would be no probability of bringing either the old Stagers or new Comers in the World to consent or hearken to their being re-established The Critical Observers of the Iewish State after Ten Tribes had made a Schism from the other two judge that there were two Conjunctures of time wherein their piecing together was fesable and that the great true Cause in Nature that hindred the Re-union of the Tribes was the aversion in the Ten Tribes to make three chargeable Journeys yearly to Ierusalem and to pay a double Tenth yearly out of their Estates besides Offrings and other Casualties to the Priests and Levites from which trouble and charge they had been relaxed by Ieroboam and by his Model of Idolatry and therefore the People having most inclination to that Religion that was cheapest and knowing that if they return'd to their old Religion they must likewise return to their old Payments to the Priests and Levites did venture to adhere to the cheaper Golden Calf and had the Iesuites here effected from the Usurpt Powers the Abolition of the Clergies Tithes which would have made the Return of the Church of England so difficult I may well argue that it would have made the Return of the Papal Religion and its chargeable Idolatry impossible whose Yoke of Payments neither we nor our Forefathers were able to fear But when senseless â—anaticks came with those Petitions against Tithes the more sagacious of the Usurpers knew that the hand of Joab was in them and they knew that hardly any Observation was more trite then that Popery gained ground chiefly in the poorer parts of the Kingdom where the despicable maintenance made the Ministry so too and where too the Pope would no more hunt for Converts then among the poor Norwegians but that it was of use to him to have the number of his Subjects increas'd in any poor places in a rich Kingdom where he tho a spiritual King might yet call his Subjects to Fight Sir Benjamin Rudyard takes notice of Popery's being an intruder among the poor Benefices of the North in the Speech before Cited and there saith p. 1. That to plant good Ministers in good Livings is the strongest and surest means to establish true Religion and will prevail more against Papistry then the making of new Laws and executing the old and there p. 3. relates what King Iames had done for the supporting of the Protestant Religion in Scotland where saith he within the space of one year he caused to be Planted Churches throughout that Kingdom the High-Lands and the Borders worth 30 l. a year a piece with a House and some glebe-Land belonging to them which 30 l. a year considering the cheapness of that Country is worth double as much as any where within an 100 Miles of London And p. 7. he mentions some Passages of Bishop Iewels Sermon before Queen Elizabeth where the Bishop having in general reflected on those that then caused the diminution of the maintenance of Ministers he further saith howsoever they seem to rejoyce at the prosperity of Sion and to seek the safety and preservation of the Lords Anointed yet needs must it be that by these means Forraign Power of which this Realm by the mercy of God is happily delivered shall again be brought in upon us Such things shall be done to us as we before suffer'd in the times of Popery c. 'T was there before mention'd how that Man of God with
an erroneous Proposition which he doth not know to be so and believes him he doth not sin but is bound to err because he is bound to believe him meretur volendo credere errorem And he who believes he shall merit by going out of his way I am sure deserves that I should not much trouble my self to go out of mine to put him in the right But this is not the temper of this Worthy Gentleman whom I have reason to esteem a lover of truth quatenus truth and for its own sake and one who doth not account falshood charming or rebelling against the Light meritorious and indeed I have observ'd it in some others as well as him that after they have deserted the Church of England their inquisitiveness in Religion has not been at its Journeys end but has still continued in its way and that so far that Holy Church and they have oft been apt secretly to be weary of one another The Rational Religion they were first educated in has had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholy overpower I have known three Earls one whereof was of the Kingdom of Ireland and the other two of England and all of them were men of great Wit and Parts and such who being brought up in the Religion of the Church of England went off from it to the Church of Rome but receded not from the candour of their tempers nor from the Society of their old Friends nor from the frank readiness to discourse with them about the controverted Points of both Churches and neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and do make considerable figures in the State. One of those three Earls is yet living and in him lives the great example of an English Nobleman adorning Nobility by his intellectual and Moral Endowments and by a Majesty mixt with incomparable sweetness in his familiar Converse and by a consummate Loyalty to his Prince that Envy it self never spotted and by such an exact Observation of his Faith given to any of Mankind that he would no more violate it with an Heretick then with a Patriarch or Apostle and by having been never suspected from using any Iesuite-Confessors to learn how to evade from solid Honour by subtle distinctions or once to allow the least Chicanery in God's Great Court of Conscience And if we cast our thoughts on France we shall there find that the great and the brave Turen after he had so unfortunately thrown himself at the Popes Feet had there his Arms as ready to embrace his Protestant Friends as ever I have heard of two Crown'd Heads of the Church of Rome who were very unkind to their Protestant Subjects after stipulations to the contrary the one was Ferdinand of Bohemia who when Cardinal Cleselius Bishop of Vienna told him that if he made War on the Bohemians the destruction of that flourishing Kingdom would certainly follow answered We would rather have the Kingdom destroyed then damned the other was Queen Mary of England who as the Acts and Monuments tells us being intent on the Restoring the Abby-Lands and discoursing with Four of her Privy-Counsellors about the same said perhaps you may object to me again that the State of my Kingdom the Dignity thereof and my Crown Imperial cannot be honourably maintain'd without the Possessions aforesaid yet notwithstanding I set more by the Salvation of my Soul then by Ten Kingdoms and the Reign of each of these was besmear'd with Blood but had they been born and bred Lambs I believe that no Transmutation of the Blood of Tygres into them would have made them such The Famous Iulian of whom 't was said Nunc Apostolicus Nunc Vilis Apostata factus had learned too much Christianity when he was a Reader to be a raging Blood-sucker and if when Emperor he had had e're a Name-sake that collected the Madrigals or Hymns against him he would perhaps have done him no harm The low birth and the Poverty and Mercenary disposition of Iudas tempted him to betray his Master with a kiss but he was so far wrought on by the good Company he had kept that he afterwards kill'd none else but himself and they are such perverted Protestants generally that are of the same rate with Iudas for Birth and Poverty and paultry Avarice that I should desire to stand out of the way from and to avoid the Vermine of such Renegadoes and they are only such Popish Princes as Ferdinand and Mary that in their Education were never imbued with better Principles then the bloody ones of Popery that I should fear as Monsters and account any Kingdom but a Den if I lived therein with them and when ever I happen to dispute about that Notion in vogue that Vertue it self in a Popish Successor will be a Nusance and make him a bloody Bigot I answer with a distinction and grant it is likely to be so in one who passed from the Breast in Infancy to suck in Sanguinary Principles but where in any Successor the Tenets of Popery when he is on the Borders of old Age are Successors to Principles of a Noble and Rational Religion that he has grown up into youth and manhood with I shall account my fears very wild and irrational if my hopes do not grow up with them as to my promising my self that he will at least answer Bocalines Character of the best Reformer of the World namely one that leaves it as he finds it and do suppose the practicableness of what is Savage in Nature being reclaim'd in one Animal toward another it was educated with will be allowed from the frequent and trivial spectacle of the Lion and the Lamb that were bred up together and who without the help of Miracle and Prophecy were taught by Nature to lye down together and shall account the same persons injurious to the World who fishing in troubled waters of the State say the worse the better and of such a Prince educated in Protestancy and then perhaps turning Papist the better the worse and especially when the Laws have espous'd us to his Line for better for worse Our acute and profound Mr. Chillingworth in Mature years went over to the Church of Rome and in his course there made a short turn and the Natale solum of the Church of England charm'd him soon back again and he by the culture of his reason made the Soil a hundred fold amends for his temporary deserting it But Princes and Potentates are under higher temptations then his low Station placed him in not to be seen to retreat especially after their having once done it before and may suppose that other Princes will look on them as more slippery and unsafe to be dealt with if the same Principles once congeal'd or hardened in them and afterward dissolv'd should be congeal'd again just as the Earth is more slippery and unsafe
at all in the World whether reveal'd or natural then that any such Hypothesis or Doctrine that Authorised a Practice of that nature should be universally receiv'd in it as its Religion For tho natural Religion acquaints me with the Divine Power and gives me hopes of my Creators not rendring me miserable by that Power and the rather when I have seen that many of the Contemners of Heavens Thunder lived prosperously on Earth yet if a Model of Religion pretended to be the only reveal'd one shall controuling all the Dictates of natural Religion enjoyn the firing of whole Cities and mankinds confused outraging one another I must abandon my further hopes of Bliss from such a Being as was it self miserable for so that would be whose nature was still in a fermentation of Anger and Passion and rear'd up Men as the Workmanship of its hands only to dash those curious but brittle Vessels against one another and that even for such a Being 't were more eligible to be then to be always so miserable as well as 't would prove so for my self too then to be always in Torment by Anger But we know that as God is the God of Order and not of Confusion so he is likewise an overflowing Fountain of Goodness and so infinitely benign that if his Nature were rightly represented to an ingenious Atheist if he did not at last believe he would ardently wish there were a God and I think if there be any number of that degenerate sort of Mankind called Atheists as was said that such degeneracy must needs be chiefly caused by the mis-representations of the Divine Being I have before mentioned how Tully in his de Natura Deorum shews great Wit in his Anger against the Epicureans for their representing the Deity as unconcern'd for Mankind and against the rendring God careless of the welfare of his Creature man he there exclaims Deinde si maxime talis est Deus ut nullâ gratiâ nullâ hominum charitate teneatur valeat How passionately then would he have upbraided any Mushroom Sect of Philosophers if such had sprung up in the World as in his time and before there never did that had represented the Nature of the Deity as solicitous and careful only of procuring the misery of Mankind and disorder of the World and enjoyning men to spit fire at one another exposing them to the sury of Wild Beasts if they lived in Desarts and of wilder Creatures that is themselves if they lived in Cities There was an Ingenious and Learned and Pious Divine I mean Cressy who in our days forsook the Communion of the Church of England and turned Roman Catholick and went beyond Sea and returned to England in the Conjuncture of the petulant Insolence and was so far infected therewith and likewise with the Chagrin incident to sickness that he writ very peevishly against our Church and one of our great Church Men and his Writings were justly censured by the Earl of Clarendon but according to my former Observation so much of the Character of the rationality of the Protestant Religion that he was long bred up in remain'd in him indelibile that I believe had he been made an Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity he would neither have took away a drop of Blood from any Protestant nor a hair from his head and in his Reply to that Noble Lord he is so candid as speaking of the Position charged on Roman Catholicks that no Salvation is to be had out of that Church to affirm that all Catholicks grant that this is not necessarily to be understood of an actual external Communion and that many Christians of vertuous devout lifes and having had a constant preparation of mind to prefer truth whensoever effectually discovered to them before all temporal advantages they dying in this disposition tho not externally joyned to the Church will be esteem'd by our merciful Lord as true Members of his Mystical Body the Church No Papist but one bred a Protestant could have had thoughts so large concerning the extent of the invisible Church or fancy that what is before mentioned is granted by all Catholicks and should I hear any Priest in a Fryars Cowle grant what is abovesaid I should fancy that he remain'd an invisible Protestant and that he continued so exuberantly good in his natural disposition as not to be able to frame an Idea in his mind of the damning of Mens Souls and making Coals of their Bodies and Bonefires of their Cities for mistaken Sentiments in Religion and had Mr. Cressy lived till this time 't is possible your Lordship by your Notification of that fiery Tenet of the Papal Church aforesaid might have been an instrument of his visible Return to our Church for his labour'd heating himself with Passion upon the mention of the Practice of that thing in his Church History shews sufficiently how he would have abhorr'd any Church that abhorr'd not that Tenet The Place I refer to in his Church History is in the 14th Book 4th Chapter where he doth strenuously endeavour to prove that Monk Austin was unjustly Accused of having killed 1200 Brittish Monks and having said there § 9th yet of late this poysonous humour of Calumniating God's Saints is become the Principal Character of the New Reformed Gospel he goes on thus I will add one example more of a Calumniator to wit Mr. William Prynn a late stigmatised Presbyterian c. But alas what repentance can be expected in such a person speaking of Prynn who is inveteratus malorum dierum when we see in his decrepit Age his rancorous Tongue against innocent Catholicks yet more violently set on Fire of Hell so far as to sollicit a general Messacre of them by publishing himself and tempting others to damn their Souls also by publishing through the whole Kingdom that in the last Fatal Calamity by Fire happening to London they were the only Incendiaries This he did tho himself at the same time confessed that not the least proof could be produced against them but said he it concerns us that this Report should be believed Complaints of this most execrable Attentat were made and several Oaths to Confirm this were offer'd but in vain But however surely there is a Reward for the innocent oppress'd and whatsoever Mr. Prynn may think doubtless there is a God that judgeth the World. Let him therefore remember what the Spirit of God saith quid detur tibi aut quid apponatur tibi ad linguam dolosam sagittae potentis acutae cum carbonibus desolatoriis is what must be given to thee and what must be assign'd to thee for thy Portion O deceitful Tongue sharp Darts cast by an Almighty Arm with devouring Coals of â—uniper And it follows § 10. With as good reason therefore St. Austin may be Accused of the slaughter of those Brittish Monks as St. Columban a holy Irish Monk c. might be charged with the most horrible death of Queen Brunecheld c. This good
Civil Wars observes well That there were at first in the Parliaments Army a great many London Apprentices who for want of experience in the War would have been fearful enough of death and wounds approaching visibly in glistering Swords but for want of judgement scarce thought of such death as comes invisibly in a Bullet and therefore were very hardly to be driven out of the Field And now therefore should any Great Person descend to ask my poor Opinion of the proportion of the danger we are in of a Relapse into the Plague of War I would give it by bringing the Doctrine of Dulce bellum c. into use and application thus namely I would Calculate the number of the inexperts now here living and who were not living in the time of the last War a thing not hard to do sufficiently for my purpose and thus I essayed to do it the last year when I fancied to employ my thoughts on that Subject diverting my self with these Queries 1. What part of the People of England now living are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. Of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War 2. What numbers of those who lived in 1641 about which time the War may be supposed to have begun are now dead 3. What proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War for it may be said that perhaps War may be sweet to such surviving experts 4. The War of Ireland ending about the year 1653 how many may the number of such inexperts there be supposed to be 5. The People of Scotland being now above a Million as are the People of Ireland and the Scotch War ending at Worcester Fight September the 3 d 1651. How many are now living in Scotland that lived there that day and what may be the number of the inexperts there In order to the satisfying my self in these Queries tho I know that many do make the Civil Wars of England to end with the surrender of Oxford in Mid-summer 1646 yet because several Acts of War in England were committed long after 1646 viz. in Lancashire Kent at Colchester Worcester I supposed not the English War to end till 1651 about the same time with that of Scotland both Kingdoms as they are but one Island so intermixing and bringing mutual Calamities on one another and besides a few years at that distance of time would not much alter the State of this Case so then as to the first and last Queries I thus concluded that the People of this Island in the year 1651 were and always are about one half of them under the age of 16 before which time as they are reckoned unfit for War so may they likewise be thought inexperts as to the miseries thereof and the other half above that age and that of this latter half more then one other Moyety are dead in these 28 or 29 years which have passed from 51 to near 80. For if we reckon only Arithmetically without any Consideration of Geomerrical proportion in the Case which with reason enough the Observator on the Bills of Mortality takes in yet 28 ½ the number of years in 51 in which the said half are supposed dead and 27 ½ for the years of the other half surviving and fifteen for the Age of the Inexperts from 1651 makes 72 the full Age of Man so that the surviving Experts are not a fourth of the whole And again at least one half of this fourth either through forgetfulness by Age or Dotage or for want of understanding all their whole life time may be very well counted among the Inexperts also And thus the Inexperts will be above seven eighth parts of the whole People And if in answer to the third Query we shall add the Number of the Gainers by the War which perhaps some will estimate but small and of those who lost by the Peace and Settlement on the Kings Restoration with the Heirs Executors and Principal Legatees of both and to these three last sorts the War was so very sweet that they may very well be reckoned for the Equivalent of three or four or perhaps many times more the number of the other common Inexperts we may on the whole matter judging modestly conclude the Inexperts of all the former sorts not to be less then 9 10 nine Tenths of the whole People and to these also they who have spent their Estates and cannot well live in Peace may be properly added I satisfied my self as to the fourth Query concerning Ireland that it may bear at least the same proportion with what was asserted in relation to Great Brittain and tho the War in the former lasted some years longer yet there are other Considerations obvious enough that would more then ballance that As for the Query about how many are now dead who were living in 41 the Principles I have variously discoursed of out of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality may easily satisfie Curiosity therein I account that of the Lords Temporal in the Kings Long Parliament that sate the 8 th of May 1661. there were dead 77 at the Dissolution of that Parliament in Ianuary the 25 th 1678. And of the 26 Bishops that sate on the 8th of May in that Parliament only 2 were alive in the 25 th of Ianuary 1678. And of the House of Commons which sate in the 8th of May 1661. And consisted of about 520 odd Members there died during their sitting viz. in 17 Years and 8 Months 307 Members viz. in each year about 1 17 th part which is one in about 30 of the whole of that House every year And these things considered we may well conclude that of the Parliament that sate on the 3 d of November 1640 there are few living and I think that of that turbulent House of Commons scarce 16 are now living and that of the Assembly of Divines that met the first of Iuly 1643. all the Divines except 2 are dead The Sculls of many of those hot Spurrs of Church and State that troubled us so much on the Stage of the World have perhaps since diverted us in the Scene in Hamlet and no doubt but of the poor handful of surviving Experts of them the most considerate are not now considering how by any Projects to put the World either in Tune or out of it but are tuning their fancies to the still Musick of the Grave We see that many of the Sons of the Divines of that Assembly and of other Presbyterians are true Sons of the Church of England and are of the Clergy in it But tho I am no Concurrer with their Estimates that make the number of those who gain'd by the War to be small for as the Judicious Author of the Regal Apology Printed in the Year 1648 and by the
Papal World must be surfeited with it at last And indeed the experience Popish Polititians have had of their success by dividing us formerly as was said would tempt them to omit other courses and to persist still in that if it were not now generally seen through 'T is in viridi observantiâ how our Famous great Usurper Cromwel who founded his Dominion in pretended Grace or Religion and was afraid of Thunder from every Cloud of Enthusiasme he saw over his head and was awed likewise by the Serene and Rational Religion of the Church of England had no other Game to play in order to the dividing the several Religionary Parties but by in some manner tolerating all according to the Mode of Iulians Politics The Papists were the first who miscalled any of our English Princes by the name of Iulian and that they did in the Case of King Iames as appears in his Learned Apology for the Oath of Allegiance printed Anno 1609. where being much concerned for his being so termed and that too by no meaner a man then Bellarmine he doth with great strength there largely prove that that name was congruous as his words are in no point save one that is that Julian was an Emperor and I a King and indeed 't is a very impotent humour of Calumny in any Protestant to call any one an Apostate or especially the Apostate merely for the alteration of his Judgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants and which are denominable by the name of Religion and 't is a great folly to cherish immoderate fears that any English Prince who possibly may happen in such Controvertible Points to change his perswasions in Religion will if a Papist attempt á la Iulian to plant Divisions among his Subjects by the Instrument of Religion for that their being kept undivided and all of a piece will be essential to the life of the Kingdom as the State of Christendom is likely to continue nor is it probable that any such Prince can ever think in the single course of his life to make this Nation all of a piece or united under the perswasion of Popery For if any one would suppose it possible that in the Reigns of three or four Successive Princes of that perswasion the nature of things might be so far forced as that Millions of men might by artifice be made to abandon a Rational Religion and one that is framed to support the Government for one that is not so such one Prince must be supposed to have acquired the gift of long life that Ante-diluvian Patriarchs had and to extend the Span of his life to that of three or four Princes It is a known Rule relating to Mathematics That there is no reconciling time and force and he who would have one man do as much as four must allow him to be as long a doing it as four one after another But the surviving Experts have seen too much of the effects of the shaking all Civil and Ecclesiastical Polity by a Protestant Usurper ever to wish for another in any Case and to have the ballance of Christendom again broken and the Kingdom be again divided to preserve his Families interest and to keep that entire which is notorious to have happen'd under the aforesaid Usurper both of Religion and the Kingdom and the name of Iulian is most properly applicable to him or any Protestant Usurper and who will be necessitated to follow him in his Track of Politics and the notion of which Ammianus Marcellinus lib. 22. set us right in where he shews that Iulian that he might weaken the Power of the Christian Religion which he feared knew no way so easie as to endeavour to do it by it self and therefore recall'd the Bishops banish'd by Constantius and gave them and the People leave to be Christians tho himself was a Heathen Nullas infestas hominibus bestias ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus i. e. because he had never found Beasts so cruel to one another as he had most Christians and therefore as he travelled through Palaestine cryed out O Marcomanni O Quadi O Sarmatae tandem alios vobis inquietiores inveni Thus did the Usurper promote the Animosities among Religionary Parties and was enforced thereby to weaken the Kingdom to strengthen himself some indulgence he shewed to Congregations where Divines of the Church of England worship God in the way of its Church yet permitting none to have Benefices but such as were of the Presbyterian perswasion generally and among such and the Independants he distributed his Donatives of preferment in the Universities and he took care that no form of Church Discipline or particular Church might preponderate by his being a Member therein He made some Lay-men and some Divines differing in Judgment about Presbytery and Independency to be Tryers of Ministers fitness for Livings and Commissioned many ignorant Lay-men in the several Counties to be Judges of the sufficiency of Ministers for their continuing in Livings The press was open to all unlearned Wranglers about Religion Many of his Military Preferments he placed on Anabaptists and did suffer many of the Fifth-Monarthy Religionaries to disturb the Apocolypse and the World thereby gave freedom to Muggleton the Impostor to set up for a Prophet and one of the two Witnesses and was a particular Patron to Manasseth ben Israel and in treaty with him here to introduce the Iews and tolerated Biddels Congregated Church of Socinians further likewise so far giving an occasion to Mr. Marvels Writing a Book then of the Growth of Popery that Mr. Pryn in his Book called A true and perfect Narrative of what was done c. Printed in the Year 1659. saith in p. 57th That Sir Kenelm Digby was his particular Favourite and lodged by him at White-hall that Maurice Conry Provincial of the Franciscans in England and other Priests had his Protections under Hand and Seal and that he suspended Penal Laws and Executions against Popish Priests and Iesuites tho sometimes taken in their Pontificalibus at Mass and were soon after released and that he endeavoured to stop the Bill against Papists the very Morning he was to pass it by his White-hall Instruments who moved its suspension for a time as not suting with the then present Forraign Correspondencies against whom it was carried by 88 Votes that it should be sent up with the rest then passed and that he writ to Mazarine to excuse his passing that Bill as being carried on by a violent Presbyterian Party much against his Will and that yet it should not hurt them tho passed c. And I suppose an Author more profound in his Observations than Mr. Pryn doth in a Loyal Pamphlet Printed in the Year 1656. Called a Letter from a true and lawful Member of Parliament c and generally conceived to be writ by the late Lord Hollis there in p. 58. and the following ones charge Cromwel home for the
hold that he still retaineth and ought to retain entirely and solidly all that aforesaid Supreme Power and Authority over the Churches of this Dominion in as ample a manner as if he were the most Christian Prince in the World. If therefore any shall think it reasonable to pronounce that the substantial Interest of Protestancy and of the Kingdom doth Stare moribus antiquis virisque I have pointed them to Arch-Bishop Abbot to Bishop Andrews the Antagonist to Bellarmine under the weight of whose Arguments Bellarmine fell in the Certamen and to others of our old Counsellors of State and particularly Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland your Lordships Noble God-Father in comparison of many of whom when we look on some of our great Politic and Protestant-would-be's of this Age and who would let none be Protestants but themselves we may well cry out In qualem paulatim fluximus urbem and have shewn how those great Confessors by their Overt Acts provided against the belief of the Doctrine of Popery without the barring any of the Royal Line from the inheriting the Crown And when I see some of our till of late unheard of Statists so eager to dispossess the Land of the Evil Spirit of Popery by illegal means and the use of the great Name of Protestancy as a Spell I fancy to my self that they may be call'd on by it as the Iewish Exorcits were in the Acts of the Apostles who taking on them to call over them which had evil Spirits the Name of the Lord Iesus saying we adjure you by Iesus whom Paul preacheth the evil Spirit answered and said Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are ye Thus to any who shall say that there is no way possible to secure English Mens continuing Protestants but by breaking in on the Succession in the Right Line may it be returned by Popery the old Protestants of the Church of England I know and the old Nonconformist Protestants and the old Covenanting Presbyterian Protestants I know who knew otherwise to secure Protestancy and likewise the French Protestants I know who never practised any Out-rage against the Great Harry the 4th of France's Government after he had left Protestancy but who are ye The truth is the Protestants in France so vastly numerous in his time which any one may imagine who considers that the most careful thinking men in that Realm make them now to be two Millions and that a judicious French Author hath writ that the Iesuites have lately computed them to be above a Million and a half have shewn the World a great example of their Protestant Loyalty in that they were ready as chearfully to obey their Prince when he was a Papist as when they served him in set Battles against the Power of the holy League and the majority of his Nobles and of his Metropolis and of the chief Cittadels in his Realm After they saw him go to Mass they never call'd him Iulian or Lampoon'd him in Hymns or demurred to his Beard or had any fears or jealousies of his touching a hair of their heads nor threatned him that the Galilean would foil him and no Language could have more truly expressed their Sentiments then that of the Famous Pierre du Moulin in his defence of the Faith Nous sommes prests d' exposer nos vies pour la defence de nos Rois contre qui que ce soit fust-il de nostre Religion Quiconque feroit autrement ne defendroit point la Religion mais serviroit son ambition attireroit un grand blame sur la verite de l' evangile i. e. We are ready to expose our lives for the defence of our Kings against whomsoever it be although of our own Religion And whosoever should do otherwise should not defend Religion but serve his own ambition and would draw a great reproach on the truth of the Gospel Considering the indeleble Character of Hary the 4 ths Protestant Good Nature his Subjects of that Religion did prepare their thoughts to be Lachrymists for him rather then themselves and knew that by his Coversion to Popery if in this life only he had hopes he was of all men most miserable and that his absolution left him only in the State of a Crown'd Victime I have before mentioned the Apology for that Scholar of the Jesuites Iohn Chastel which endeavours to prove that Harry the 4 th was by that Assassin not only wounded very fairly according to the Language of the Brothers of the Blade but in the Style of their Honour according to the Iesuites Morals very heroically and as the Contents of Cap. 1. Part. 3 d of the Apology expresses it Actus Castelli heroicus est in substantiâ suâ He moreover tells us in plain terms Part. 2. Cap. 7. that Excommunicatio quae â—b haeresim irrogatur remedium potius est ecclesiae quam excommunicato c. and that Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right And in Cap. 8. before mentioned viz. Neque etiam à Papa absolutus Rex esse potest he asketh Quod si quaeratur quid ergo absolutio praestet si jus amissum non redeat And it followeth Quòd si absolutus impaenitens existat effectus alius non foret quam is de quo supra ita si quod Deus velit paenitentia foret vera certe effectus propterea non exigâ—us esset futurus utpote in spiritualibus remittendo illum in ecclesiae gremium regni Caelorum Capacem reddendo temporalium vero respectu quicquid illa operari posset foret ad reddendum eum compotem novi juris per electionem auferendo impedimentum in foro fori quo durante is ille esse non posset And then he saith The Pope cannot confer such new Right to the same Kingdom on him for that it depends not simply on the power of the Keys so to do and in fine makes the Right to the Crown irrevocably devolv'd on the next person capable who has a right to it quum saith he ratum sit inter jurisconsultos incapacem haberi ut mortuum non impedire sequentes In the 3d Chapter of the 2d Part namely That Henry of Bourbon cannot be called King by reason of his pretended Conversion the vile Apologist derides the Conversion of this Great King and labours to prove by fifteen Instances That after his Conversion he did favour the Cause of Heresy more then ever and particularly by his observance of his Leagues and Agreements with the Queen of England and other Hereticks ut experientia saith he per novas ejus actiones locupletissime testatur Etenim primò faederum pacta cum haereticis sarta tectaque servat quibus ut hactenus nondum renunciavit ita neque dum renunciare cogitat Secundò ipsi haeritici in Germaniâ Genevae alibi ejus actiones comprobant Tertio contemnit Catholicos promovet haereticos illos repudiat atque rejicit hos
verò muneribus honorat amplissimis augustissimis in toto regno alibi tum bello tum pace c. Quartò consilium suum è puris putis haereticis stabilit c. So that after he had with St. Peter denied his Lord the followers of St. Peter's pretended Successor call'd him in effect a Galilean and said that the Speech of his Actions bewrayed him and after his absolution he continued in effect what the Pope styled him in his Bull of Excommunication filius â—rae and after as a Prodigal having fed among heretical Swine he returned to his Romish Ghostly Fathers house and had cryed peccavi and abjured and his Father had compassion on him he experimented the contrary to for this my Son was dead and is alive again and himself was the fatted Calf that was slain and so much wantonness was shewed by the contrivers of his dire fate that Gassendus in his life of Peiresk Book 2 d shews how in the beginning of the Year 1610. An Almanack or yearly Prognostication was brought out of Spain in which the Accidents of Harry the 4ths death were foretold and that it was sent to his Majesty to read who slighted it as Gassandus did likewise all judicial Astrology but yet supposed that the figure-flinger might possibly be acquainted with the Plot against that Kings Life and saith sure I am it could not be perfectly conceal'd either in Spain or Italy for even the Kings Ambassadors and particularly the most excellent Johannes Bochartus Lord of Champigny then Agent at Venice had already preadvertised his Majesty thereof and it was sufficiently proved that all the Sea-faring Men of Marseilles who for two Months before came from Spain brought word that there was a report spread abroad in Spain that the King of France was already or should be killed by a Sword or Knife Poor Harry the 4 th He who while a Protestant had Dominion over his own Stars and his Enemies Stars too for they were his Enemies who made him first be call'd Great and their designing to ruine him by embroiling France in Civil Wars tended to the advancement of his Interest and his Glory and the Artifices by which they thought to have chased him out of Guyen brought him into the heart of France and their former by unjustifiable practices urging the King his Predecessor to have prosecuted him with more violence then he had done were the causes of his being reconciled to that King and who then in the most dark and stormy night of his Affairs never wanted that Illumination from above which was like a Star to him and not only a sign of fairer weather but a mark of direction in the foul and which would have furnished his Portraiture in Story with another guess Star than that usually engraved on Coesars Image and which by its blazing seven days ore the Games consercrated to Coesar by Augustus did make him inter Divos and did awe the World as being thought his Soul which vouchsafed from Heaven to visit it with its lustre this Harry the 4 th was at last grown the ludibrium of Star-gazers And if any one shall say that Franciscus de Verona Constantinus the Author of the Apology for Chastel was not a Voucher good enough for the spreading the Belief of the Doctrine that Heretical Princes by their absolution from the Pope are not restored to their Regal Rights let him consult the Great Thuanus and he will find that in his Book 135 and on the Year 1605 where he gives an account of the Gun-powder Treason here he saith that the Conspirators therein Ante omnia conscientiam instruunt eâque instructâ ad facinus audendum obfirmant animum sic autem à Theologis suis disserebatur That Hereticks are yearly excommunicated by the Pope in the bulla coenae and are ipso facto fallen into the punishment of the Law and that thence it followeth that Christian Kings if they fall into Heresy may be deposed and their Subjects released immediately from their Princes Dominion nec jus illud recuperare posse etiamsi ecclesiae reconcilentur Ecclesiam communem omnium parentem cum nemini ad eam redeunti claudere gremium cum dicitur adhibitâ distinctione interpretandum esse modo non it ad damnum periculum ecclesiae Nam id verum esse quoad animam non quoad Regnum Nec solum ad Principes hac labe infectos paenam extendi sed etiam ad eorum filios qui à Regni successione ob vitium paternum pelluntur haeresim quippe lepram morbum haereditarium esse atque ut disertius res exprimatur Regnum amittere qui Romanam Religionem deserit diris illum devoveri nec unquam ipsum aut illius posteros in Regnum restitui quoad animam à solo Pontifice posse absolvi His se rationibus cum satis tutos intus existimarent munimenta externa conjurationi quaerere coeperunt c. ita ad facinus non solum licitum laudabile verum etiam meritorium à Theologis suis auctorati accesserunt They thought it seems that by the Authority of the Doctrines of those Divines they might blow up the King and three Estates with Gun-powder very fairly It is a thing that cannot have escaped your Lordships curious Observation that both the Nonconformists and Papists were sturdy Petitioners to King Iames in the beginning of his Reign that he would be a Fautor to them and their Hypotheses In April in the Year 1603 a Petition was presented to him call'd the humble Petition of the Ministers of the Church of England desiring reformation of certain Ceremonies and Abuses of the Church and there they particularly desire that Ministers may not be urged to subscribe but according to the Law to the Articles of Religion and the Kings Supremacy only and that none migat be excommunicated without the consent of his Pastor and therein they complain of Ministers being suspended silenced disgraced imprisoned for Mens traditions This Petition was commonly called the Millenary Petition the Petitioners averring themselves to be more then a thousand and an animadverting Answer was made to the same by the Vice-Chancellor and Doctors and Proctors and Heads of Houses in the Vniversity of Oxford and printed in the Year 1604. Methinks a Humble Petition with a thousand hands is a kind of Contradictio in adjecto But the Vniversity in their Animadversions on the Petition do observe that the two contrary Factions of Papists and Puritans did shew themselves by their Petitions discontented with the present State and Ecclesiastical Government They mention particulars as parallels wherein their Petitions agreed and resemble them to Samsons Foxes c. I had occasion before to mention to your Lordship the Supplication of the Papists to King James that was Contemporary with that of the Puritans and printed too in the same year and tho I remember not any of our Historians to have given the World an account of that memorable
Petition yet the Impartial Thuanus doth it and in Book 135. and on the Year 1605. going to relate the History of the Gun-powder Treason he saith Ad libellum supplicem pro libertate Conscientiarum à Majorum Religioni addictis i. e. the Papists in proximis Comitiis oblatum à Rege rejectum fama erat alium his proximis quae jam aliquoties dilata erant porrectum iri qui non repulsae ut prior periculum sed concessionis vel ab invito extâ—rquendae necessitatem adjunctam haberet Itaque qui regni negotia sub principe generoso ac minime suspicioso procurabant nihil pejus veriti in eo laborabant ut petitiones iis adjunctam necessitatem eluderent Verum non de gratiâ de quâ desperabatur decimò obtinendâ sed de repulsâ illà vel cum regni exitio quod minime rebantur illi inter conjuratos agebatur And as to the Puritans Petition to King Iames The Resolution of the Lords and likewise of the Iudges assembled in Star-Chamber shortly after doth I think refer to it in the 3d § viz. Whether it was an offence punishable and what punishment they deserved who framed Petitions and Collected a Multitude of Hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick Cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King that if he denied the Suit many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented where to all the Iustices answered that it was an offence finable at discretion and very near Treason and Felony in the punishment for they tended to the raising of Sedition and Rebellion and discontent among the People to which resolution all the Lords declared that some of the Puritans had raised a false rumour of the King how he intended to grant a toleration to Papists c. And the Lords severally declared how the King was discontented with the said false rumour and had made but the day before a Protestation to them that he never intended and would spend the last drop of Blood before he would do it I remember not in the Millenary Petition any such expression as the insolent intimation that thousands would be discontented if it were not granted but do on the occasion of this ruffianly way of petitioning by Papists and Puritans remember what Alexander ab Alexandro speaks of the Persians who worshipped Fire that they did once in their supplicating their God threaten him that if he would not grant their Request they would throw him into the water I was therefore no imprudent Act of the Nonconforming Divines who had been deprived of their Livings to publish voluntarily such a Protestation of their Tenets as aforesaid after the detection of the Papists Gun powder Treason Plot and by which Act the Government was diverted from putting such a Cautionary Test on their Party as was on the Papists by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Certain it is that both the Parties appeared very rude in the manner of their Petitioning In the Decrets where the Text saith that a thing is done Contra fidem Catholicam the gloss explains it to be Contra bonos more 's and so it may be said that both the Petitioners for the Roman Catholick Faith and for the others alledged Catholick Faith were injurious to each by their unmannerly Petitionings as well as to their Prince and their being both such frequent Aggressors against his quiet gave occasion for the Question to vex his Reign viz. Which were the worse of the two or whether they were not equally bad and so many may carelessly render them according to the saying Rustici res secant per medium What Bishop Elmore the Bishop of London thought in such a Case I have said and yet that Bishop as Fuller tells us in the Church History was a Learned Man and a strict and stout Champion for Disciplinâ— and on which account was more mock'd by Mar-Prelate and hated by the Nonconformists then any one And a great Son of the Church and Minister of the State hath judiciously in a publick Speech inculcated the different regard to be had to those who stray from the Flock and those who would destroy it Moreover a great Iustitiary of the Realm in the Tryal of one of the Popish Plotteâ—s took occasion to observe That Popery was ten times worse then the Heathen Idolatry And Dr. Burnet in a printed Sermon having said That in many places Lutherans are no less and in some tbey are more fierce against the Calvinists then against Papists adds like a strange sort of People among our selves that are not ashamed to own a greater aversion to any sort of Dissenters then to the Church of Rome I hope the Authority of that great Divine and excellent Person will in the point of this Comparison help to allay such a mistaken Aversion to some mistaken Dissenters I care not who knows the great deference I have to the judgment of that great Historian of our Reformation and whose History of which as the House of Commons has done right to by one of their Votes so likewise hath the highest Judicatory in England I mean the House of Lords by a late Order of theirs by which the Thanks of that House are given him for the great service done by him to this Kingdom and to the Protestant Religion in writing the History of the Reformation of the Church of England so truly and exactly and that he be desired to proceed to the perfecting what he further intends therein with all convenient speed c. As the words in the Iournal are My reading lately ten small printed Controversial Discourses between two Baronets of Cheshire near of kin to each other in which are many references to Historical Antiquities concerning the Illegitimacy of one Amicia Daughter to one of the Earls of Chester and my observing that one of those Authors blames the other for not better learning the duty to his deceased Grand-mother as his words are then by divulging the shame of her Illigitimacy and saith there is no Precedent in Scripture of any man that did divulge the shame of any person out of whose loyns he did descend except the wicked Ham and that the other Author thinks himself on the account of truth and for its sake to assert her Illegitimacy those many Tracts passed about that Controversy from the Year 1673 to 1676 occasioned my thinking that thus have some Writers that would take it ill perhaps not to be thought legitimate and true Sons of the Church of England took too much pains to prove the Birth of its Reformation to be illegitimate to the great Applause of the Papists and that our Reverend Historian of it did seasonably come in to Aid his Mother Church by publishing the very Records that would secure her from a blush on that account and leave that Mauvaise honte as the French call it to be Enemies and hath appear'd by his very laborious and judicious Writings to be a
Person as of very great Abilities so of a great and frank inclination to employ them even to the over-obliging a Country and which though naturally attended with envy from some must too be with acknowledgements from others of that Dignity and Authority that his mind is possessed of and such as Valerius Maximus speaking of as innate in Famous Men who have no extrinsic Authority saith of it Quam rectè quis dixerit longum beatum honorem esse sine honore And he who in the course of his History and his other Works hath appear'd so Impartial and Accurate in his Observations of Men and things may very well be supposed not to have been partial in his comparison of Papists and Dissenters nor do I think he receded from his usual close judging of things when in one of his Books he said that it is not to be denied that it were better there were no Revealed Religion in the World then that Mankind should by its influences be so vitiâ—ted as to become more barbarous and cruel then it would be if Acted by no higher Principles than those are with which Nature inspires Men. I will not with our Learned and Reverend Iudge undertake to compute how many times Popery is worse then the Religion of the Romans but this I will say that had I been in the Roman Senate and had there heard any one propound to them a removal of their minds out of that Coast of Religion which by the light of Nature lay open before them into the Region of the Iesuites Morals I would have said My Masters let us keep where we are and should have expected that the Reasons I would have urged for their so doing would have had the effect of the good Omen that happen'd in that remarkable Crisis when the Roman Senators were debating whether they should quâ—t Rome or remove to Veij and when a Souldier then coming on the Guard and his Captain being heard to cry out to him Signiser signum statue hic optimè manebimus occasioned their adhering to Rome I think that no Protestant who compares the Tenets of the Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time with the Tenets of Popery will prefer the latter before the former But it is not deniable that before King Iames's time and then and since many Puritans and Nonconformists have made great Schisms in the Church and disturbances in the State and that especially in some particular Conjunctures The great Epoche of 41 in England and likewise in Ireland will in our Histories preserve the Memory of the outragious Principles of many Presbyterian Divines in the one Kingdom and of Popish ones in the other but if any shall be so partial to the Papists as either to justify their Commotion in Ireland or to deny all part of the influence that Commotion had on ours here he will find himself a vain imposer on the World. A great inspector into our modern English Affairs I mean the late Earl of Clarendon hath in his Animadversions on Cressys 's Book against Dr. Stilling fleet said That nothing can be stranger then that Mr. Cressy should so magnify the general obedience of all Roman Catholicks that none of them was ever in Rebelâ—ion against the King or his Father when he knows very well and hath some marks of it that the whole Irish Nation very few Persons of Honour excepted joyn'd in Rebellion against the King but for that Rebellion neither Presbyterian Independant or Anabaptists had been able to have done any harm in England For the Scots Rebellion was totally suppressed and their Army disbanded before the Irish Rebellion begun It was that which produced all the mischief that succeeded in England and gave those Sects in Religion opportunity to bring in their Confusion to the destruction of Church and State c. But as to the Papists coming in for their share in the guilt of our Commoâ—ion here we have the incontestable Authority of the Royal Martyr who in one of his printed Declarations saith And we are confident that a greater number of that Religion meaning the Popish is in the Army of the Rebels then in our own and 't was there before said All men know the great number of Papists which serve in their Army Commanders and others The Author of the Regal Apology printed in the Year 48 in p. 36 answereth that part of the Declaration of the House of Commons that so unworthily râ—flects on his Majesty as to offering a toleration to the Papists in Ireland tontrary to his former resolutions which saith the Author was on great and pressing necessity which hath no Law and to that degree of necessity as the two Houses had driven him so the Consequences were to be set on their Score not his own yet even then in his Letters about that Affairs published by themselves he doth insist on it that the Bargain may be made as good as can be for him But I have seen other Letters from one of his Secretaries to the Irish which I am assured were true wherein where these expressions after expostulation of their delays in his Assistance He is inform'd that taking advantage of his low Condition you insist on something in Religion more then formerly you were contented with He hath therefore commanded me to let you know that were his Condition much lower you shall never force him to any further Concessions to the prejudice of his Conscience and of the true Protestant Religion in which he is resolved to live and for which he is ready to die and that he will joyn with any Protestant Prince nay with these Rebels themselves how odious soever meaning his two Houses rather then yield the least to you in this particular I should with extreme reluctance touch the Sores of these Sects who yet have both at several times given such deadly wounds to the peace of the Kingdom but that they are Nusances to the publick quiet in raking up the odious Comparisons of one anothers practices and that the Papists on the occasion of any of the worse sort of Protestants or Nonconformists being Convicted of Sedition or Treason a thing that may be expected from the degeneracy of Humane Nature to happen oftener from some of a Religion of so great Numbers then from a perswasion that has Comparatively but a handful of men for its Disciples just as accordingly perhaps where one Papist is hanged for Clipping or Coyning twenty Protestants are so â— are so apt to expect that the World should acquit the present Principles and former practises of that Sect from Disloyalty on their Out-cry that they are no Puritans or Presbyterians and as ridiculously as if a false Coyner Arraigned for the Fact should trouble the Court with a Plea and Noise that he was no House-breaker and but that on the detection of a Plot of Papists several persons that have in their publick Capacities done many Acts of Hostility to the Interest of the Kingdom yet entirely by being more
the Relief of his Great Auditory for those poor Hugonots did characterize them as such of whom none was ever suspected to have machinated any thing against their King's Person or Government or to have attempted the burning of his Metropolis I have granted that the Puritan and the Popish Petitioners did both in the beginning of King Iames his Reign offend Contra bonos more 's but if any should ask me which Sect was the more peccant by such incivility I will say that in one regard the Puritans were so for that they were bred to the Knowledge of better things but that in another regard the Papists most certainly were so if Thuanus may be believ'd who in the place I last cited out of him relating to the Gun-powder Plot by which it appears that their Petitioning was but a stalking-horse or as I may say a Trojan Horse to hide and enclose armed Men further shews That the Iesuites in England employ'd one privately into Spain in the Name of the Catholics with Letters of Commendation to Creswell the Iesuite there residing to negotiate with the Government there to send an Army into England in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth ' s Reign and that afterward one Wright was sent into Spain upon the same Errand and that then likewise Guy Faux was by some of the Iesuites sent thither to Creswel to hasten the Design and that Faux was instructed to take Care that it should be signify'd to the King of Spain that the Condition of the Roman Catholics would be worse here under King James than it was under Queen Elizabeth and that it might be effected that Spinola should then Land an Army in Milford Haven And then saith the great Historian they not being able to effect that proceeded to the Plot of the Gun-powder Treason The Popish Petitioners then did essay how they might flectere superos and Acheronta movere at the same time But in truth as in Whale-fishing 't is customary for Marriners apprehending Danger to the Vessel from the greatness of the Whale to throw out an empty Barrel into the Sea for the Whale to toss about on the Waters and to receive some diversion from it that while he is so diverted they may the more securely wound him with their dead-doing Irons thus did the Papists throw out their empty Petitions to that King only to divert and amuse him that they might surprize him with the â—ate they intended him Yet now if any one should put the Interrogatory to me which Person I had the least Kindness for namely a Non-Conformist that favour'd the Doctrine of Resistance or a Papist that believ'd the Grounds and School-Conclusions of the Doctrine of Popery as King Iames's before mention'd Expression was and which whoever did he said could neither be a good Christian or a faithful Subject I shall by way of Answer crave aid from a Judgment given by Philip of Macedon who having heard the Merits of a Cause or Complaint that happen'd between two lewd Persons gave the Decree That one of them should presently fly out of Macedon and that the other should run after him as fast as he could But against any Seditious Protestant I would wish more severity exercised than against such a Papist for the former doth not only rebel against his Prince as the latter but doth according to Iob's Expression more rebel against the light and is guilty of the Simulata Sanctitas and so according to the Expression before mention'd out of the Apocalypse Reward her as she has rewarded you and double unto her double c. deserves to be doubly punish'd for his duplex iniquitas and shall magnifie the Justice of the King's Ministers done to their Prince and Country and to themselves when in any Conjuncture they shall find any call'd Protestants turning Gods and the King's grace into wantonness and Religion into Rebellion they shall level their most solicitous endeavors with all the sharpness of the Law against such nominal Protestants for then the salus populi will engage them as the Physicians say to mind the Vrgentius Symptoma and for which they have a Rule that Cum diversae repugnantesque inter se committuntur indicationes parendum est omnino fortioribus 'T is fit I should recompence the trouble I have given your Lordship by what I have said of this Question by diverting you with the News of another Question that among some Company was lately bandy'd in Discourse here between a Papist and a Non-Conformist and 't was a much more termagant Question than the former namely Whether Popery or Mahumetanism be the woâ—st I was sorry to find the Non-Conformist to give his Judgment as he did in a gross and undistinguishing manner that the Impostures of Mahomet were fitter to be embraced than several Tenets he named in Popery which tho erroneous yet are denominable as Tenets of Religion but did for a while forbear giving my Opinion in the Case or relieving the Papist with any notion of mine tho I found the Non-Conformist as somewhat the better Disputant pressing too hard on him gave me occasion to have done it than if I would I calling to mind how the Papists of old have so often decided it that Heretics are woâ—se than Turks or Infidels and that they have ranked our Religion of the Church of England with Atheism since I allow not of works of super-erogation would not super-erogate in being too hasty in moderating in the Dispute Thus Maldonaâ—e on St. Iohn saith Qui Catholici sunt Majore odio Calvinistas caeterosque omnes Haereticos prosequuntur quam Gentiles And thus Stapleton in his Oration or Speech against the Politicians saith That the Heretics are worse than Turks And Mason in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae Lib. 1. Cap. 1. p. 8. cites Gulielm Reinold in his Calv. Turcis l. 1. c. 7. and l. 4. c. 11. for saying Religionem nostram meaning that of the Church of England ipsâ Turcicâ esse deteriorem Mason further brings in Bristo saying Religionem nostram nullam esse ipsâ Experientiâ probâ—ri And cites another Popish Author for saying Protestantes nullam habent fidem nullam Spem nullam Charitatem nullam Poenitentiam nullam Iustificationem nullam Ecclesiam nullum Altare nullum Sacrificium nullum Sacerdotium nullam Religionem Christum nullum and quotes Cardinal Alan for saying Nostram liturgiam sacramenta Conciones istiusmodi esse quae fine dulio aeternum afferunt exitium The well meant pains of the Compilers of our Liturgy in inserting there some good Prayers out of the Mass to render it more agreeable to the Papists was it seems all lost and that perhaps occasion'd that angry Exclamation of Mr. Cartwright of old That in Ceremonies we ought to comply with the Turk rather then the Pope I acquainted the Discoursers that Mr. Fox in the Edition of the Acts and Monuments printed together in one Volume in London in the Year 1596 doth Combat this mighty Question
which in so short a space have broach'd or entertain'd above 160 Errors many of them damnable And therefore I do not wonder that in a Pamphlet called The exact Collection of the Debates in the House of Commons in the last Parliament one Member is there brought in observing in his Speech concerning the Dissenters that 't is not probable that ever they will have a King of their opinion nor yet a Parliament by the best discoveries they had made of their strength at the last Election For according to the best Calculations that I can make they could not bring in above 1. in 20. The present Gentlemanly Temper appearing in the People of England as to the not having Aversion or Resentments of Anger against any Mens persons or their Converse by reason of their asserting controvertible points that are capable of the name of Religion must naturally make any ashamed to vex their patience and disturb their security by asserting Principles that really are Irreligion If any one did rake in the dust of Libraries for Names of absolete Heresies to render the Papists or any else the fouler thereby he would in effect but needlessly foul his own fingers as for example if any one should say the Papists have borrowed their Practice of extreme Unction from the Valentinians and Heracleonites their Notion of the Orders and Quires of Angels from the Archonticks the use and worshipping of Images from the Carpocratians the praying to the Virgin-Mary from the Colliridians the Veneration of the Cross from the Armenians the Baptism by Women from Marcion the Baptizing in an unknown Tongue from the Marcosians and the voluntary Poverty and single Life of Priests from the Apostolici the using of small Bells in Celebrating the Mysteries of Religion from the Meletians Nor would any be much concern'd whether any old or new unheard of Hereticks communicated the Disease of these Notions to the weak minds of the erring since it doth not infect Humane Society And there are several Traditions mentioned in some of the Ancient Fathers as Apostolical which tho the Papists do not observe yet the World would not make any angry Exclamations against them if it heard they did as namely the mixture of Milk and Honey given to them that are newly Baptized the abstaining from washing a whole Week after Oblations for the Birth-day yearly not to fast or kneel in Prayer or worshipping of God on the the Lords Day nor between Easter and Whitsuntide all which are mentioned in Tertullian Nor would any be now angry with another that held either part of the Question viz. If the Hallelujah may be sung in Lent The great Controversy about Easter that heretofore put all the World in a Rattle and almost shook it to pieces what a Toy is it self now reputed insomuch that our latest Ascertainers here of the time of its Celebration seemed not to think it tanti to be awake when they were about it and tho our lately having in our Almanacks two Easters in one year easily awakened the Non-Conformists to take notice of it and to say that therefore they could not give their unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained and prescribed in and by the Book intituled the Book of Common Prayer c. And tho thereupon a person of the Royal Society very profoundly knowing in all the Mathematical Sciences and likewise in the knowledge of Theology and of the Canon Law and the Ecclesiastical Law of England hath published an infallible way of fixing Easter for ever and that it may be no longer a Fugitive from the Rule of its Practice as it often is at present nor dance away from it self as I may say in allusion to the vulgar error of the Suns dancing on Easter day and fixing it so as perhaps none else could have done nor possibly himself any other way yet hath this great right done to that great day been by the generality of people not so much regarded as would an Advice to a Painter or such like Composure have been Any one that would design to make another fermentation in the World by the terms of Homo-ousios and Homoi-ousios would no more effect it than by the Criticks Controversy in Boccaline whether Consumptum should be spelled with a p or no to which purpose I heard one cite it out of Luther that he said anima mea odit terminum istum Homo-ousion tho yet he knew Homo-ousios was the right opinion and Homoi-ousios the wrong And that one word Heresy that hath produced such furious Tempests in the World that have torn up States and Kingdoms by the Roots how is it now generally among men of ingenuity and wit here reduced to its quiet and primitive signification viz. the taking of an opinion or a private opinion without reference to truth or falshood and to import nothing more of affront then when used by Tully as Non sum in eadem tecum haeresi I am not of your opinion and the common Vogue of Heretics amounts to opiniátre and Heresy to opiniátrete and as a Whirl-wind may be supposed to have blown some one thing into its place as each other thing out of it so have the Whirl-winds Heresy hath disturbed the World by happened at last to blow its signification into its right and original State. Our Courts Christian which in order to the Salus animae might still prosecute Men for Heresy as well as Vsury have given no Heretics or Vsurers any Cause of Complaint for molestation tho yet in the Articles of Visitation this is one is there any person a known or reputed Heretick or Schismatick But as in the Diocesess in the Country and even in the Cities there the Church-wardens having not troubled themselves to know what Animal a Heretick is so neither is our Layety in our Metropolis in the humour to mind the Genus and Differentia in the definition of a Heretick Nor will they be ever likely to make any such Presentment as Mr. Nath. Bacon said in one of his printed Discourses he hath seen made formerly by some of St. Mary Overies Item we saine that John Stephens is a man we cannot well tell what to make of him and that he hath Books we know not what they are Our English Genius is so improved by the excellent temper and discourses of that breed of rational Divines our Church of England hath been blest with since the King's Restoration that it generally abhors the thoughts of punishing a Heretick as such with death as a severity that hath in it the turpitude of injustice and cruelty And since the very Fathers and Schoolmen could never agree about the point who are formally Hereticks and that the acutest among them make the formality of Heresy to consist in Pertinacy or Contumacy which are inward Acts of the Mind and which none but the Scrutator renum can know it may well seem shameful for any to agree in punishing it with death What a shameful narrowness of
mind was there in the Divines that governed our Church in the times of the late Vsurpation when those Triers of Ministers would allow none to have a Living or Cure of Souls that asserted the Tenets of Arminius in Religion which yet carry a face of so much probability to be maintained that a man who having used his utmost care in the investigation of truth therein asserts them may claim it as his due by the purchase of Christs Blood that when he is required to deliver his opinion about the same his asserting it that way should not expose him to punishment And there is no Controverted Religionary Speculative Point of that Nature wherein there is among Learned Men probabilis causa litigandi and in some Cases too where it may touch too close upon our Articles and Homilies in which liberty of differing in Judgment is here either prejudicial to their Interest or common Esteem Thus tho all the Reformed Churches make the Pope to be Antichrist and particularly our Church of England in its Homilies hath done so our Famous Dr. Hammond adventured as he thought himself obliged in Conscience to publish it that Simon Magus was the man. The most judicious Comparers of times are sensible that there is now a more valuable libera theologia in England then was during the Usurpation How glad would many of the Independent and Presbyterian Divines then have been of the liberty to have taught their Flocks the Notions they then thought of importance as to the Divine Decrees tho they had been allowed to have so done only in Surplices or in Vests of Indian feathers or any habits imaginable The old way of arguing about speculative points in Religion with passion and loudness and being tedious therein is grown out of use and a Gentlemanly Candour in discourse of the same with that moderate temper that men use in debating natural Experiments has succeeded in its room and 't is accounted Pedantry for any one in good Company to pass for a Victor in Notions by having the last word and seeming a Baffler in dispute And the truth is our Divines and the Lay Literati having since the King's Restoration been more addicted to the Study of real Learning then formerly which requires quiet of thought in its pursuit hath brought noise out of Request I need not again mention the Obligation our Land hath received from the Royal Society in making so great a Plantation of real knowledge in it 'T was high time at last when the Kingdom was settled on its proper Basis to improve it with such strong and nervous knowledge that would be like the strong man keeping Possession in mens understandings during which either Poperies or Presbyteries Kingdom of Darkness cannot overthrow our Quiet There were in the Year 1599. reckoned in Christendom 2,25044 Monasteries and from whence all the great Revenue there bestowed on men to think sent not perhaps one Notion of real Learning into the World. But their professed business was to extinguish the light of Knowledge and not to increase it and that which they made their real Study was to find out Artifices to make Mankind fit still and quiet in the dark and to invent torments and punishments for those that would not do so and to ridicule those who pryed into nature and but looked toward Arithmetick and Geometry by the Name of Students of the black Art and Conjurers a humour that was not quite exterminated hence from the time of Fryer Bacon to my Lord Bacon for our pious Martyrologer mentioning occasionaly Dr. d ee the Mathematician called him Dr. Dee the Conjurer Thus Almighty God tho the first thing he made for the World in general was external light yet one of the last things he hath made or so much blessed the World with is real Learnings intellectual Light and even that whereby we so knowingly converse with his works of Nature and so careless was Mankind in considering the frame of their own bodies that Dr. Henshaw a late Ornament of the Royal Society hath truely observed it in his Book of Fermentation That within the Compass of this last Century the knowledge of Anatomy hath been enriched by a full third part at least Mankind was so busie in murthering one anothers bodies of old under the Notion of Christians and afterward as Hereticks that it had no leisure to dissect them and was wholly taken up by studying experiments of Cruelty equal to the making of live Anatomies of each other And tho the Holy Iesus came into the World not to destroy mens lives but to save them and for that purpose tho the Divine Philanthropy chose that time for his coming into the World when the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was arrived at a greater heighth then ever before yet by the depraved nature of man perverting and corrupting the use of Religion the fantastick vile sacrificing of men hath since encreased In the Infanticidium of Herod's that was presently after the Birth of the Holy Child Iesus Samuel Siderocrates saith that there were slain of Infants of 2 years old and under that Age 444000 and Paulus Volzius makes them to be a Million and 44 Thousand And afterward among the Heathens he was accounted the Magnus Apollo not who could find ways of saving but destroying Christian men No fewer than seven Books were writ by Vlpian to shew the several punishments that ought to be inflicted on Christians And tho Livy saith of the Romans in hoc gloriari licet nulli gentium mitiores placuisse paenas yet Tacitus tells us of the Christians in the 15th Book of his Annals Primo correpti qui fatebantur deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt Ea pereuntibus addita ludibria aut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent aut crucibus affixi aut flammandi aut ubi defecisset dies in usum nocturni luminis urerentur Several Authors relate it as a Decree of Nero ' s Quisquis Christianum se esse confitetur is tanquam generis humani convictus hostis sine ulteriori sui defensione capite plectitor Enough hath been already said to parallel the Cruelty of new Rome with that of old toward the Heterodox and how ingenious the Virtuosi of the Inquisition have been in finding out such torments for Heretics as can multiply one death into a thousand I with horrour think of How profound a submission and deference to the unaccountable Will of Heaven doth this Consideration require namely that Christs little Flock even in the Ark of his Church is not only endangered by a deluge from without but by one within and that of its own blood and that the Sheep of Christ appear to a common eye to be as it were made on purpose to feed the grievous Wolves that are entred in among them and as it may be supposed that thousands of harmless Sheep were in the Ark of Noah
ten times as many Females as in London that one half of this proportion of the London Crape-wearers may wear Crape in the Country viz. half a Million in all It may be supposed therefore that the Crape-wearers one with another wearing ten yards a piece that five Millions of Yards of Crape may be yearly worn in England and Wales and that one pound of Wooll making fifteen yards of Crape will occasion the Consumption of a third part of a Million of Pounds weight of Wooll per Annum viz. 333000 and 333 pounds weight of Wooll which accounting fine Wooll such as makes Crape to be worth one Shilling per Pound amounts to 16000 l. Sterling The labour of the People in Manufacturing the same amounts to about thirty times as much as the Wooll viz. half a Million of Pounds Sterling and this yearly gain England cannot miss of while the Women of the Court continue the fashion of wearing Crape whom the Women of the City and Country will imitate in their garb If any shall think that the allowance of 10 yards to be yearly worn by each Female Crape-wearer may seem too much he may consider that some Crape used by men about their Apparel and the great quantity thereof employed in shrouding the Dead pursuant to the late Act and which but for the invention and use of the Manufacture of Crape perhaps would not have been effectually put in Execution may probably incline him to be of an opinion that England gains more vastly by this new Manufacture of Crape then I have supposed The ridiculing humour of so many in the Age may perhaps move them to think observations of this kind to be unimportant But if any shall take a Prospect of the substantial and great wisdom of our Ancestors in our Statute-Book he may find there 11 Acts of Parliament about Thrums and Yarn and many about Fustians and 26 about Worsted and Worsted-Weavers and another Statute of Pouledavis but there is that of moment in my Account relating to England's Gain from Crape that after 145 Statutes made to advance our Wooll and Drapery and Dyers and our Woollen Manufactures so much decayed in spight of them all this seeming poor little thing hath without any Act of Parliament enriched us And many are the Foundations of Manufactures laid in our Country Cities and daily growing since the time that Dr. Williams Arch-Bishop of York in his Speech in the Parliament of 1640. in defence of the Bishops Votes observed that Tapsters Brewers Inn-keepers Taylors and Shoo-makers do integrate and make up the body of our Country Cities and Incorporations And tho the Northern Heretics are crasso sub aere nati yet have they as was said compensative Advantages from nature and as if nature meant them more then others for Lords of the Sea and Navigation the Pole of the Magnet which seateth it self North hath been observed to be always the most vigorous and strong Pole to all intents and purposes and the Magnetical Virtue impressed on the Earth is there more strong likewise I mean on the Church Land seized on from the Papal Idlers and Burthens of that Earth to support the necessary defence of the State and therefore will necessarily attract mens Iron and their understandings with Justice to keep it Dr. Heylin in his Geography in Folio tells us that 't is not so much the Authority of Calvin or the Malignant Zeal of Beza or the impetuous Clamors of their Disciples which made the Episcopal Order to grow out of Credit as the Avarice of some great Persons in Court and State who greedily gaped after the poor Remnant of their Possessions But tho nothing like an over-Balance of the Clergy in the wealth of the Kingdom ought to have sunk that Order and its Revenue in England where perhaps ten times as much is spent either on the Law or on Physick as is on the Clergy it need not be wondered at that in those Countries of the North where they are continually standing to their Arms at least of defence and Calculating their Provision for War that the Lutheran Princes as Heylin saith have divided the Episcopal Function from its Revenue assuming to themselves much of the latter and sometime giving part thereof to their Nobility with the Title of Administrators of such a Bishoprick and of super-intendent to those who have there the Pastoral Solicitude and with some proportion of the Revenue for their maintenance not much exceeding what is usually received by Calvinist Ministers And if my Lord Primate Bramhal may pass for a good Casuistical Judge of the Law of God who in p. 39. of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of an excessive Revenue of the Clergy and their over-balancing the Layety saith And if the excess be so exorbitant that it is absolutely and evidently destructive to the Constitution of the Common-wealth it is lawful upon some Conditions and Cautions not necessary to be here inserted to prune the superfluous Branches and to reduce them to a right temper and aequilibrium for the preservation and well being of the whole Body Politick and if any Credit ought to be given to the Account of Cardinal Pool shewed to me within these few hours relating to the over-Balance of the old Ecclesiastick Revenue here after he had used all his own diligence and that of others to prepare a Calculation of the same for the Pope and had sent 3 Reams of Paper of this to the Pope that are now in his Archives and had acquainted the Pope therein That it was visible that had not the Church here fallen into the Shipwrack of its Revenues the Ecclesiasticks had here in a short time insensibly rendred themselves Lords of the whole Kingdom and that there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England than in France which exceeds England by two thirds both in Lands and Numbers of People we may very well conclude that had any accidental force in Queen Mary's time renversed the alienation of the Church Lands that force would not have long continued and should any as wild Imaginers may suppose happen for the future here or perhaps in other Kingdoms of the North those Lands would soon appear to all to have such a Magnetical Vertue as is in the Globe of the Earth whereby as to its natural points it disposeth it self to the Poles being so framed and ordered to those points that those parts which are now at the Poles would not naturally abide under the Aequator nor Green-land remain in the place of Magellanica and thus it may be said that if the whole Earth were violently removed it would not forsake its Primitive Points nor pitch in the East or West but very soon return to its Polary position again and resemblingly in any new forced over-balance of those Church Lands the very dull Earth's Animus revertendi to the just libration of States and Kingdoms would soon be apparent and neither the Popes moving the Earth or even
it What a diminution was it to the honour of the Age that the Popularity of Sir W. I. a person who in the florid part of his youth appeared but an Entring Clerk or one who entred Judgments for Attorneys and in the greatest Figure he made in Parliament or the Court acquired no fame by various Learning and Skill in the Politicks or by having profoundly studied the great Book of the World should yet as with the Impetus of an Oracle run down the great Characters of this Lord and of your Lordship and the Earl of Hallifax that are known to the World to be so great for Loyalty and Learning and the Comprehensive Knowledge of the present and past State of Christendom and that after that Loyal and Learned Person and undefatigable assertor of our Laws and Religion Sir L. Ienkins had with great Reason and Courage in a Speech in the House of Commons against the Exclusion Bill affirmed that the passing the same would be contrary to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and Sir W. I. thereupon answering it with the Non est haeres viventis he had somewhat like a general humme of Applause from the House and almost as if his had been the voice of God and and not of Man But on this occasion I should be unjust and too reserved to your Lordship if I should not tell you that a Gentleman of good parts and a great Estate a Member of that Parliament acquainted me that he being then one of the great Admirers and Followers of Sir W. I. and frequently present with him in the most private Cabals did observe him to be full of fears of the Courts being brought to favour the Exclusion-Bill as supposing that the Parliament would be thereby engaged to part with great Sums of Money and that he observed Sir W. I. and others of the Cabal were at a stand in their Politicks as not knowing what steps to make next if that Bill had passed and the Consideration whereof he told me made him not desirous to participate further in their Councils Thus just is it for Heaven sometimes to blind and confound and abandon good men in their Councels when they abandon plain Principles and Dictates of Reason and when they will not do what they know to suffer them not to know what they do and particularly not to know while they were so busily founding Dominion or Empire in Grace that they were riding Post to Rome as fast as ever that Father of the Trent-Council did who was so often employed to the Holy See to bring thence the Holy Ghost in a Cloak-bag It is some Consolation to your Lordship to have fellow sufferers in the Obloquy cast upon you by the Tongue of a young Man in a matter so remote from verisimilitude and not worth the twice naming and whose Person I thought not worthy the naming once however a Loyal Parliament thought his Accusations worthy the Press and in whose reproach that Honourable Person and your Lordships old friend the Earl of Peterborough shared with you But by what I have found to be the judged Character of that Lord among the most Impartial Studiers of Men in the Age I may justly say that the honour of the Age was a fellow sufferer with you both by the publick Countenancing of the dirt by so obscure a hand thrown on a Person of so Noble Descent both from Father and Mother and of so much Courage and Loyalty and Learning and on whom his great knowledge of all History Ancient and Modern hath so much accomplished as a States-man and one who in his Travels in the World abroad left there such impressions of his real value on the most Critical Observers that his Prince thought him to be the most proper Person to employ abroad as Ambassador in negotiating the Marriage between his Royal Highness and the Princess of Modena whereby we may yet hope for an Heir Male to inherit the Crown of England I never heard that any thing but sham could represent this Lord otherwise than a true Son of the Church of England and having once or twice seen him en passant at your Lordships House and observed the lineaments of Honesty and Honour in his looks do think that his very face may serve to confute thousands of such Tongues as that which aspersed him But both his Lordship and yours have likewise in that Persons Accusations and in the greatest Circumstances of improbability been fellow sufferers with the greatest Subject and therefore need not be ashamed of your fate according to what the Famous Historian so well said Post Carthaginem captam vincâ— neminem pudeat Yet having said all this I shall say that perhaps had it been the fortune of that Loyal Parliament to have sate longer it might too have happened that none of your Lordships that I have named would at last â—ave thought it Parliamentum sine misericordia and that I believe you will not find any future one so and that your Lordships who have so eminentâ—y supported the Northern Heresie so called will be like the North Magnetick and attract a general popular love which after all its variations will return again to you But 't is high time for me to take off my hand from this Map of the Future State of England that as a Predicter rather than a Prophet I have here so particularly delineated and as one who according to what is in St. Mathew When it is Evening say it will be fair weather for the Sky is red c. and from Natural Causes have as well as I could discern'd the signs of the times and what it may be a shame for any one that is a piece of a Philosopher to be wholly ignorant of when the inspired Prophet tells us that the Stork knoweth her appointed times and the Turtle and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming and that 't is obvious that the Beasts of the Field as well as Birds of the Air foresee unseasonable weather from the disposition of the Air. Nor is it hard for any Considerer now in relation to some of the Popish and Protestant Recusants to undertake what the Magicians Astrologers and Chaldeans durst not to the King of Babylon I mean to tell them what their Dream was they dreamt to rule us still by a Nation within a Nation as the Mamalukes did Aegypt they dreamt of Offices and like idle Millenaries of Lactantius his golden Age when the Cliffs of the Mountains shall sweat out Honey and the Springs and Rivers shall flow with Milk and Wine and of a pingue solum that shall tire no Husbandmen and of such a Country as Campania the Garden of Italy that shall not be called terra del lavoro But I do predict that the noise of the World and their being necessarily disturbed by the busie in whose way they stand will awaken them and that if they will have any food to raise the vapours that will again
are somewhat disguised but are as well known as the Ecclesiasticks are in France and are not in the least assaulted c. There was one day in a Long-boat or Ship a Priest dressed in black Cloths who was not otherwise disguised than that his Coat was short who said his Breviary before a hundred persons with as much Liberty as he could have done in France And yet perhaps the number of those who in Holland fear them or who pretend to fear them is but the least of numbers I think too in this sharp sighted age where Art among the Inquisitive follows Nature as carefully as Equity doth Law one may safely predict that in the Dividend of our time little will come to the share of Metaphysicks or the considering how Metaphysica agit de iis quae sunt supra naturam and that the World being infinitely busie will not trouble it self with Arriagà s infinitum infinito infinitius and Christendom's being universally employed in preparing its defence against War and giving us time only for real Learning will divert us from either much opposing or defending the old point whether Vniversale be ens reale or whether Vniversalia are res extra singularia If by Metaphysicks we could find a real Answer to the Question what is truth or what is time of which it hath devoured so much or learn how to measure it by knowing what 's a Clock we might go on with its entitas which Mr. Hobs well englisheth the isseness of a thing but since it resolves not what things are as aforesaid but as Hudibrass saith only what is what I think as Filesac de authorit opiâ—c c. 1. mentions that the Council in France forbad Aristotle's Metaphysicks and punished with Excommunication the exscribing reading or having that Book our time will hold little Communion hereafter with Second Notions on those who Trade in them and that as it will seem very absurd to sacrifice much time to the enquiry if Vniversale is a real being and whether Vniversalia are res extra singularia and to sacrifice men for believing the contrary so it will likewise seem to enquire Whether there be one Catholick or Vniversal Apostolick Church existent apart from particular Churches which sense and reason tell us are and must be many tho the Catholick Church be but one and for the want of considering which so many People have been decoyed into the Church of Rome Many are the things that an ordinary Philosopher may predict concerning Rome and particularly varying from the Prophecy that it was to be destroyed by Fire may soretel Romam fore luce delendam and as Tully's words are in his Book de Naturâ Deorum Opinionem Commenta delebit dies veritatis judicia confirmabit And thus too it is easie to predict that the light of Reason and Experience will forever blot out here the Innovations that came from Geneva as well as those from Rome The Jewish Rabbins have from the words of the Sol Iustitiae arising with healing in his wings introduced a Proverb of The Sun ariseth the infirmity decreaseth meaning thereby that the Diseases that make Mortals groan and languish in the Night are somewhat abated by the rising Sun and thus the State of our Nation will be attended with greater health on the decay of Presbytery's Kingdom of Darkness The Walls of its Iericho are fallen down flat with the sound of the Trumpets of the Dissenters own Sayings so usefully published Tho I have said enough to speak my opinion of all Dissenters to the Discipline of our Church not owning such sanguinary Principles as are chargeable on some Papists yet the Dissenters Sayings have proved enough what some of their Principles were Nor can it be forgot that King Iames did very justly in the Conference at Hampton Court accuse the Notes in the Geneva Bible to be Seditious and to savour of Traiterous Conceits and that he instanced there in the Notes on Exodus 1. 19. Where they allow of disobedience to Sovereign Kings and Princes As absurd as that Tenet beforementioned in the Decrets and there founded on the 13th of Deuteronomy is I would wish no Presbyterian to insult over any Papists for it for it is visible in no meaner a Book than the Assemblies Annotations on Zechary 13. 3. where the Father and Mother of a false Prophet are commanded to say to him thou shalt not live and 't is said his Father and Mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he Prophesieth The Comment on the words Thou shalt not live affirms that the equity of the Law of Deut. 13. 6. 9. remains under the Gospel and with less danger is a Thief an Adulterer a Witch tolerated than such an Heretick and Seducer The present pleading for liberty of Conscience in Preaching and Practice is a thing extremely shameful dangerous and destructive and the Comment on the the words His Father c. is His Parents themselves shall not spare him preferring therein their Zeal and Piety towards God before the Affection and Love which naturally they bear toward their own Children See Deut. 13. 6. 9. No less Zeal is required under the Gospel than was under the Law. I pray God deliver all Mankind from the cruel rigour of the Equity as those Divines term it of that Iudicial Mosaic Law binding under the Gospel and from that kind of Zeal binding under the Gospel that did under the Law by virtue of the 6th and 9th Verses of that Chapter and from the 16th V. of which Chapter the Obligation for firing Heretical Cities was as well deduced by the Pope The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine and our Reverend Bishop Sanderson tells us in his 4th Lecture De obligatione conscientiae that no Law given by Moses doth directly and formally and per se â—ind the Conscience of a Christian i. e. as it was given by Moses for that every Mosaic Law as such was positive and did oblige those only it was put upon i. e. the Iews and shews that the Precepts of the Decalogue oblige not because Moses commanded them but because of their being consentaneous to nature and confirmed by the Gospel and so doth manumit the Christian World from the Yoke of the Iudicial Law that was made only for the stiff necks of Jews Calvin himself on that place of Zachary 13. 3. doth blunder as shamefully as did our Assembly men for he there makes the Penal Jewish Laws to bind under the Gospel His words there are these Sequitur ergo non modo legem illam fuisse Iudaeis positam quemadmodum nugantur fanatici homines sed extenditur etiam ad nos eadem lex and himself was in this point the Fanatick and not the contrary opinors and deniable it is not that several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines beyond Sea did imbibe the error of hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians namely that the Penalâ—severe Jewish Laws were obligatory
Crescent there should so powerfully dâ—ive away the Cross. And thus too when Italy was over-run with the barbarous Nations partly of the Pagan and parâ—ly of the Arrian Belief Pagâ—nism and Arrianism being then Dotard Trees in the World the Seed of the Christian Doctrine falling on them from the Pious and Learned hands of Gregory the Great did easily work through them and for the Conversion of them and likewise of our English Nation about the Year 600 from Heathenish Idolatry the greatest Celebrations are due to him and no wonder if the Papacy then yielding so good Fruit did then cast so venerable a shade in the World. But that Tree afterward being observed to degenerate and decay within Six Years as the general Observation of our Apocalyptick Men is Valeat quantum valere possit and who thus tells us of the aetates Antichristi viz. Nascentis in Bonifacio circa Ann. 606 Iuveniliter exultantis in 2. Consilio Nicaeno Anno. 787. Regnantis in Hildebrando successoribus post An. 1075. Triumphantis in Leone Decimo Ann. 1517. Vltima senescentis est and say that shortly after it began to be consumptive and the decays of it being obvious to the view of the gazing World and the Branches of the Lutheran and Calvinistick Tenets appearing through its sides the quiet and gentle Order of Capuchins was invented for the praying for its growth and flourishing in the Year 1530. and ten years afterward the Active Fiery Order of the Iesuites was invented to extirpate the Men that wished ill to its growth and after that the Fathers of the Oratory were set up to extoll and preach up the Tree but Nature would not be extirpated the Potent Seminal Virtue of the Rational Religion dropt on the Tree of the other hath passed its roots through and through and as I may say transubstantiated it self through them and rooted it self deep both into the intellectual World and into States and Kingdoms and their Laws and will in time probably leave not one Fibre or Capillamentum of the Roots of the Irreligionary part of the Tenets of Popery remaining in Nature and shew the World that the Schisma Anglicanum that Sanders and other Papists cry out of as so unnatural was a mere natural Scissure or Rupture of the parts of the decaying Tree of the Church of Rome that came to pass from the Seed of the Protestant Religion being cast thereon And such a Natural Scissure hath the Religion of the Church of England made through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy and the Seeds that by the hands of Non-conformists probably guided by Iesuites have been laid on the Royal-Oak of the Church of England which they vainly thought decay'd were in effect thrown away and as the old Prophetic Fiction represents it that every great Tree included a certain Tutelar Genius and still living with it it may be said that Nature it self is the Tutelar Genius of that Plant of Renown that according to the Scripture expression we may call the Church of England and will ever live with it The Numbers of our Non-conformists are daily decaying and the names of their Tenets will probably be in a short time forgotten We are told in Townsend's Collections that Sir Walter Raleigh mention'd it in one of the Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth viz. in Anno 1593. That there were then near 20000 Brownists in England a number somewhat near as great as that of the Papists to be estimated from the Bishops Survey The name of those Schismaticks is evaporated and their Tenets are not more known or enquired into by the Populace then are the Heresies of the Bardesanistae the Aquei the Abelonitae the Messaliani and some others As was remarked concerning the late Non-Conforming Divines not having bred up their Sons to Non-Conformity the same thing is much observable among the Lay-Dissenters and that their Children do not generally imbibe their Parents principle of Dissentership but rather the contrary The Gross of their Numbers always consisting chiefly of Artisaâ—s and Retail-Traders in Corporations where before the King's Restoration they were numerous and naturally hating Popery and its Parade of Ceremonies cannot but be sensible of the sharp hatred against the same in the Professors of the Religion of the Church of England as by Law Established and how vastly such Professors do every where over-shoot the Dissenters in numbers and how the Seed of the Church of England hath as naturally and with as much ease pierced through the Body of theirs and dissolved its Roots as doth the Seed of an Oak often growing in the Body of a decayed Willow The times were known in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth King Iames and King Charles the first and likewise since till within these late years that some States-men when their Court-Interest was decaying and in danger of Extirpation could by wheadling Dissenters into a belief that they would plant their perswasion in the Church plant themselves the better in the State but humanly speaking such Conjunctures of time will come here no more and the seeming Eradication of such a Religion-Trade in Church and State is a strong Indication That our Heavenly Father or as I may say the God of Nature never planted it But if there were no Laws in being to extirpate any Dissenters Schism or separation from our Church or to Mulct or Excommunicate the obstinate Separaters or if any of those Laws were never Executed as through the vigilance of our Magistrates they have been yet is there one apparent way whereby the Conformists to the Church of England could now as easily lessen their numbers and consequently extirpate their Potency every where as they can frame a thought or resolution to do it and by no other Engine than that with which our Universities of Oxford and Cambridge batter the Contumacy of particular Towns-men namely not by Excommunicating but by discommuning them that is to say by forbidding the Scholars to Trade with them Their own forbearance of buying from Conformists the Wares that those of their own Sect do sell may reasonably invite such a reâ—aliation While heretofore they were so numerous in England their Congregated Churches helped many of the mean Artists and poor Traders thereof with the pretence of Liberty of Conscience to force a Trade by Combination among themselves and their doing it then turn'd to some account but would now be altogether insignificant in this wane of their Numbers And thus without sweat or blood or one Information brought on Penal Statutes or the least occasion or colour for their Out-cry of Persecution may the many Millions of Conformists here humble the Comparative handful of Popish and Protestant Recusants both in Corporations and out of them too when they please and in effect reduce them to the Condition the many Empericks in our Land would be in if they only sold Physick to one another I affect not to be a Propounder of any new Law or of the execution of any old that
may have who shall believe it nor of the Doctrine of Consubstantiation under any Prince of the Lutheran perswasion nor of Calvin's horrendum decretum relating to reprobation as 't is call'd under any Prince that may believe the Doctrine of Calvin tho yet till the Peace of Munster the timid People of the Lutheran and Calvinian Religions hating one another more than they did Papists abroad in the World were so much imposed on by fears and jealousies in Case a Lutheran or Calvinian Prince should by the right of Lineal Descent come to rule them But the Munster Peace has taught them better things and should I ever hear that any Roman Catholick Prince here did according to the power by Law reposed in him relax some of the Penalties of the Law in Case of Recusancy that as things now are Recusancy would not be thereby rendered considerably prolific with Converts Tho I have given my opinion as beforementioned concerning the Fact of the encrease of the number of the Papists in the Conjuncture of the Declaration of Indulgence and do not think fit to alter it yet I can tell your Lordship that a Person of great Sagacity who I believe considered the State of their Numbers here then very carefully and entirely believe what he published thereof in Print I mean the Author of the Catholick Apology with a reply c. there saith that during the Year 1672. and which he calls a year of Peace there was not one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England than in the Year 1663 1666. or any other time of trouble I have in this Discourse spoke of such a perfect hatred against Popery as may always consist with a perfect love to Papists and cinge not a hair of their heads more than a Lambent fire I have acknowledged the great mortifications austerities and zealous devotions not only among many of the Religious Orders of the Church of Rome but of the common People and have allowed a sober Party to the Iesuites themselves and have reason to believe that Bellarmine himself that hammer of Heretical Princes as his Works shew him was yet of so soft and gentle a disposition as would not permit him to hurt a Fly or tread on a Worm and I have reflected on no other Principles of the Iesuites with any sharpness than what the present Pope hath done and which the Court of Inquisition at Rome or elsewhere would have allowed me to do and I have been as I still am so free from any thing of rancour or acerbity in my Principles relating to the usage of the Papists that an English Priest of the Church of Rome the Author of the remarkable Book beforementioned called the Advocate of Conscience Liberty or an Apology for toleration rightly stated published in the Year 1673. and the most considerable Book that had for several years been writ in favour of the Roman Catholicks and a Book our Learned Dr. Stilling fleet refers to in a very excellent printed Sermon of his p. 43. and called The Reformation justified and Preached before the Lord Mayor of London doth me the honour there to adopt as his own several Sayings of mine he found in a printed Discourse of mine that was disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion and gave me occasion when I read some passages in his 14th 25th 26th 34th 43d 54th 55th 62d 94th Pages there to call to mind that I had read them elsewhere and much good might any thing in my Writings do that Author and he was as welcome to them as if they had been his own and I am sorry that his not citing an Author where he should have done it was accompanied with another misfortune of citing one where he should not I mean his in p. 225. citing of D' Ossat He might have cited another passage of mine against Hereticide as being impolitic if he had pleased to have took notice of it among its fellows and where I observed that the putting of the Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion and that that Faith was given to the Assertors of Popish Opinions because they were dying which they could not have drawn from me but by raising the dead I still own what in p. 93. he partly cites of mine as said by another Author That if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private Iudgment in things of Religion 't will be hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Romish Church from the guilt of Schism c. and if any Papist shall as to any Tenet that can properly come within the denomination of Religion tell me that his private Judgment guides him to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome and that therefore I a Protestant ought not to be inclined to bear hard upon him on the account of such adhesion to his private Judgment I shall own the Argumentum ad hominem so far as to tell him that I am not inclined eo nomine to he severe to him And now my Lord because it hath been so â—ustâ—mary in the Authors of large Discourses to bestow on them a short REVIEW that it would appear sullenâ—ess in me not to follow them and because it would be an irreverence to your great Judgment in me to present any thing for you to view once that I had not resolv'd to view twice I intend to improve some Intervals of leisure hereafter in reviewing of this Discourse and shall explain some passages therein on occasion and add others and if I doubt of any thing particularly in the various matters of Calculation herein contained and of many of which few or none perhaps have written or shall alter my opinion therein or in any thing else I shall acquaint your Lordship why I do so and do as much value my self on my natural temper of acknowledging a quick and ready assent to any proposition of Reason that convinceth my understanding how contradictory soever the same may be to any former Notion of mine as any man can value himself on his thinking he never erred or on his Abilities either by Eloquence or Sophisms to make others think so and to make them erre with him and do still account this to be one of the best properties in the best Ship namely the soonest to feel its Rudder and do think that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunces are positive My Lord after the Efflux of the various Intervals in which this Discourse was written it having happened that the Papists are to the general satisfaction of impartial Judges of Men and Things become as found a part of this Nation as they were and are of the Dutch States and as throughout this Discourse I always supposed them capable of being and that the Body of them is as Loyal as can be wished and likely forever so to continue and that none but the Factious would have them now to groan under the Penal Laws
the least if the Oath were to be interpreted otherwise than in the Imposers sense and under this Conclusion it may be properly added that where that sense is sufficiently manifest in the words it is exactly to be stood to as Sanderson hath well shewed in his second Lecture of the aforesaid Subject and where having shewed how we must take heed that we impose not on the Oath we have taken or any part thereof other sense than that which any other Pious and Prudent Man and who being unconcerned in the Business is of a freer Iudgment may easily gather out of the Words themselves he saith That we become without question guilty of the heinous Crime of Perjury if that milder interpretation which encouraged us unto the Oath chance to deceive us And in his 6th Lecture § 7. he saith As it is one kind of Perjury to strain the words during the Act of Swearing unto another Sense than that wherein they are understood by the Auditors so it is another kind of Perjury having sworn honestly not to proceed sincerely but to decline and elude the strength of the Oath tho the words be preserved with some new forged inventions variously turning and dressing the words to cloak the guilt of their Consciencâ—s as Tacitus saith of some and he concludes that Section by saying That where the words of an Oath are so clear in themselves that among honest men there can be no quâ—stion of their meaning the Party swearing is obliged in that sense which they apparently afford and may not either in swearing or when he hath sworn stretch those words upon the last of his Interest by any studied interpretations There appeared nothing more detestable to the Eye of the old Civil Law then fraud and trick and particularly the destroying the true Sense and meaning of a Law by a cavilling fraudulent interpretation that retains the words but confounds the ends for which the Law was made and accordingly 't is said in the Digests In fraudem legis facit qui salvis verbis legis sententiam ejus circumvenit But this in the Case of an Oath was more abominated and accordingly Cicero tells us that Fraus adstringit non dissolvit perjurium And if the Civil Law was afterward so provident for the honour of Humane Nature as to determine in the Case of an unask'd free gift that Cum in arbitrio cujuscunque sit hoc facere quod instituit oportet eum vel minime ad hoc prosilire vel cum venire ad hoc properaverit non quibusdam excogitatis artibus suum propositum defraudare tantamque indevotionem quibusdam quasi legitimis velamentis prolegere any one may judge how much it abhorred any thing of fraud in the evading of the payment of a due subjection to Sovereign Power acknowledged by what the thinking Heathens term'd Sacramentum as if the most eminent or only thing emphatically Sacred and religiously to be observed I should not since the Extermination of the Iesuites Doctrine of Equivocating have thought it worth while so much to dilate on this plain Conclusion before the publishing a Pamphlet in our Metropolis in the Year 1680 called An Account of the New Sheriffs holding their Office made publick upon reason of CONSCIENCE respecting themselves and others in regard to the Act for Corporations and in which ACT tho the Lawgivers meaning of the Oath thereby imposed is most apparently manifest out of the Words yet the Author of that Casuistical Pamphlet makes it lawful to take the Oath and subscribe the Declaration and not in the literal strict Construction but in an imaginary sense topp'd upon the Lawgivers and that nothing but a vitiated fancy or injudicious mind could imagine I was sorry to hear that that Pamphlet was writ by a Non-Conformist Divine and that in a Conjuncture when the Magistrates of that City were so hot against the name of Popery any men should be so zealous for the Thing called Iesuitism and that any men by attempting to rivet Equivocation into their Model of Protestancy should at once endeavour to rob us of the Energy of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and of the Test it self and to make the sacredness of all Oaths whatsoever to evaporate Let any sober Person of the Dissenters Party but seriously read that Pamphlet so scandalous to Protestancy and it cannot but give him the Alarm of coming out from among them for that he must do that would come out even from the Iesuitick Equivocation If there were not a Church of England Protestancy in that Loyal City I may without unjust reflection say it that Magistrates who were Accessory to the erecting that Paper-Monument to Equivocation and to the trying to help it to a jus Divinum and to be a part of pure Religion and undefiled could bring little honour to our Metropolis by calling it a PROTESTANT CITY on its Monument of Stone As we find in the Book of Iudges that all that saw that inhumane Butchering and Quartering out into pieces of the Levites Wife by her own Husband cried out and said There was no such thing done or seen since the time that the Children of Israel came up out of the Land of Egypt until that day I believe it may be affirmed that never in any PROTESTANT City in the World since the time that it was free'd from the Egyptian Servitude of the Papal Impositions was any such barbarous butchering of the Obligation of an Oath by Equivocation in a printed Case sent about the Kingdom by the pretended Espousers of Protestancy ever done or seen And according to the saying that Nisi serpens serpentem comederit non fit draco it may be said that the most superlative and dreadful outraging of Oaths cannot be compassed but by the Consciences of pretended Protestants digesting the old Equivocation of the Iesuites When I consider this therefore that the false Protestant Discusser of that CASE of CONSCIENCE of the SHERIFFS doth determine that by taking up Arms against the King mentioned in the Oath is to be meant against HIS RIGHTFUL GOVERNMENT and that the Oath must be taken in the SENSE or MEANING of the Major part of both Houses that passed it and then makes their meaning so opposite to their words and do recollect what is so clearly laid down in my Lord Chancellor Hatton's Treatise concerning Statutes and the Expositions of Acts of Parliament viz. That the Assembly of Parliament being ended functi sunt officii and that as to all of the lower House who are by Election their Authority is returned to the Electors so clearly that if they were altogether assembled again for interpretation by a voluntary Meeting eorum non esset interpretari and that then the interpretation of the Statutes falls into the hands of the Sages of the Law and when I consider that great Caution of Sanderson in his said Book that where we depart from the words of an Oath to the intent it must be well proved that
dâ—bent ut aliquid operentur and that verba cum effectu sunt accipienâ—a And as 't is said in the Civil Law Semper in stipulationibus in caeteris contractibus id sequimur quod ACTVM est and as actus is there taken for a general word sive re sive verbis quid AGATVR here is an ACT of the Swearer done in relation to such HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and he is promittendi reus in the Civil Law Phrase and as he is there called Reus qui debitor est omninoque obligatus ex quavis Causa and as he who hath promised any thing is said Reus debendi and so Reus constitutus dicitur qui se obligavit ff Quod met Caus. l. 14. § Labeo But on the whole matter our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy contain in them nothing impossible and nothing ambiguous and do ipso facto or in plain English oblige us as soon as taken to be ready to pay our Allegiance to the King and afterward to his Heirs and Successors as respectively due according to the Legal Course of Descent And if any one be frightned with Sir W. I's Day-Dream of Treason viz. in being immediately upon the taking of the Oaths under some Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors let him repair to our Statute-Book and he will there find as good Bail provided for him in the Case as Heaven and Earth can give for in the Preamble of an Act of Parliament the King and three Estates tell him of the Duty that every true and well affected Subject not only by BOND of Allegiance but also by the COMMANDMENT of Almighty God OVGHT to perform to his Majesty his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS 7 o Iac. c. 6. In fine I shall hereupon affirm that should any English Subject who hath taken these Oaths live to the age of Nestor and in the course of Nature â—ee several of our Kings Heirs and Successors in the due and Legal course of Descent Succeeding one another and should such Subject be never call'd on to reiterate those Oaths in the Reign of any of them he would yet by these Oaths before once taken continue obliged to bear true Faith and Allegiance to them all Successively And thus in the first faederal Oath we read of the Father of the faithful obliged himself at once in relation to Abimelech and his SON and his SONS SON and we know how afterward God was pleased to oblige himself at once to Abraham and his SEED and how after that God was pleased to oblige himself by his Oath and Covenant made to David and his SEED as to their Succession in the Royal Throne of Iuda And 't was to this the words in the Psalms ONCE have I Sworn c. refer And therefore this Scriptural Representation of God after the manner of Men condescending in the Government of the world to bind himself ex gratiâ as aforesaid may well inculcate to us the reasonableness of our becoming ipso facto bound by our Oaths to pay the debitum Iustitiae to his Vice-Roys and their HEIRS and SUCCESSORS To proceed therefore I shall lay down this as a 6 th Conclusion and genuinely deducible from the former one viz. That by Virtue of those two Clauses the takers of those Oaths do particularly bind themselves not only against the Aiding and Assisting or Abetting any Rebellion or any Vsurpation of the rights of his Majesty's Heirs and Successors that can happen but to the aiding and assisting of the Crown and preserving its Inheritable Rights on all Emergent occasions Sanderson in his 4th Lecture of the Obligation of Oaths puts the Case concerning the Person to whom an Oath was made viz. Whether he who hath Sworn the performance of a thing to another the Party to whom he Sware being deceased be bound to make it good to the Heirs and Successors of the said Party And his words are I answer ordinarily he is It is certain that the Party Swearing is obliged if he express'd that he would perform the Oath unto the Heirs of the other It may also be taken for granted that he is bound tho he expressed it not if the Oath taken relates to DIGNITY because DIGNITY varies not with the change of Persons Whence if any Subject or Souldier Swear Fidelity to his King or General the Oath is to be meant to be made unto them also who succeed to that Dignity Yet Ames our Learned Non-conformist in his Case of Conscience 4th Book Chapter 22. viz. De Iuramento as to the 11th Question and about the Obligation of an Oath Ceasing saith Quum aufertur ratio juramenti juramentum cessat ratione Eventus qui casus est eorum qui jurarunt se obedituroâ— Domino aut Principi alicui qui postea cessat esse talis But perhaps had the Case of so strict an Oath as that of Allegiance to our Prince and his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS layn before him he would have writ otherwise of its Obligation For as the Consideâ—ation of the forâ—mentioned Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy did sufficiently prevail with the Ejected and Persecuted Divines of the Church of England and most of its Lay Members to avoid all sinful Compliance with the late Vsurpation and Vsurpers so it did likewise with many of the Presbyterians and others to avoid the same and particularly to refuse the taking the ENGAGEMENT set up by the Republicans and even to Publish in Print their holding themselves obliged by those Oaths so to do I shall instance in two that did so Mr. Pryn in his Book before cited mentions those OATHS as in direct words extending not only to the late King's Person mentioning King Charles the 1 st but his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and Inviolably binding the Swearers in perpeâ—uity in point of LAW and CONSCIENCE so long as there is any Heir of the Crown and Royal Line in being and that upon many Vnanswerable Scriptural Precedents and Legal Considerations c. He had before charged those with apparent Perjury who had taken those Oaths to the King and his HEIRS and yet repute those few Reliques of the old Parliament then sitting forcibly secluding the Lords and Majority of their Fellow Members to be a lawful Parliament within the Statute of 17 Car. Cap. 7. or submit to any Oaths Taxes or Edicts of theirs as Parliamentary or Legal I refer the Reader to the Book and which because somewhat Scarce I think to have reprinted The other Person of the Presbyterian Communion I shall refer to for this is the Author of a learned Tract in 4 to printed in the year 1650 called An EXERCITATION concerning VSVRP'D POWERS wherein the Author very substantially proves that by virtue of the Obligation to the King's HEIRS and SUCCESSORS resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it is not lawful to give up ones self to the ALLEGIANCE of an VSVRP'D Power and saith very well in p. 16. If I should do that I should yield assistance to the
Contention between the words Heirs and Successors tho with as little sense as was in Sir W. I's fancy of Treason whereby he would have set the Assertory and the Promissory Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy at variance nay the Promissory Clause at variance with it self There was a Book writ by a late Lawyer called Historical Discourses of the Vniformity of the Government of England first printed in the Year 1647 and reprinted by some Factious Anti-Papists since the Epoche of our Fears and Iealousies of Popery and with that former year in the Title which was an ill ominous sign of the fatal time such Persons would have driven us back upon if they could where in p. 279 of the 2d part ill reflections are made on the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy which Oaths saith the Author do make much Parly concerning Inheritance and Heirs but that they do not hold forth any such Obligation to Heirs otherwise than as supposing them to be Successors and in that Relation only His design is too plainly express'd viz. to strike at the Rights of our Hereditary Monarchy and to invite Parliaments to interlope in controuling the Succession of the Crown and he saith That the Doctrine he there insinuates doth not go down well with those that do pretend to Prerogative aided by the Act of Recognition made to King James and the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and I shall say that I hope it never will and 't is pity but a Book that in so many places of it impeacheth the old known Rights of the Crown should in this Conjuncture of Loyalty find some Person at leisure ex professo to make Animadversions on it and the rather for that the Author doth in the Vehicle of somewhat like Witt and his affectation of which is by People of middling Capacities who generally make the greater part of Mankind judged to be Witt dispense his Poysons Yet as to the signification of HEIRS and SUCCESSORS he had before in his first part saved any one the labour of shewing their Identity for there in p. 109 and in his Chapter of the Laws of Property of Lands and Goods under the Saxons he quoted Tacitus about some of the Customs of the Germans which he judged remain'd here with them and which shewed that HEIRS and SUCCESSORS passed then as current Coyn for the same thing according to the words of Tacitus HAEREDES SVCCESSORES cuique liberi nullum est testamentum and thus Englished by that Author viz. the HEIRS and SVCCESSORS to every one are his Children and there is no Testamentary Power to DISHERIT or ALTER the COVRSE of DESCENT which by CVSTOM or Law is setled And as was shewed the Term of LAWFVL annexed to SUCCESSORS hath nailed the Canon of that Sophism and exposed the ridiculousness of any Cavilling or Calumnious Interpretation about Heirs and Successors tho yet without the interposal of the word LAWFVL the plain sense of the words Heirs and Successors in the Oaths would clearly enough have obliged us to the same Persons We say that id possumus quod jure possumus and none are to be construed Heirs or Successors but such who are so in the Eye of the Law and with reference to Proximity of Blood i. e. they who are meant for such by the Law in the Due Course of their Descent But I hope that England's happy Future State will so far influence Loyalty as to incline all Conscientious Protestants to leave of all senseless Cavilling about the sense of the plain words in those Oaths and to agree to employ their most serious and constant thoughts about the extent of the Moral Offices that relate to their bearing True Faith and Allegiance to the King his Heirs and Successors and other very important matters in the Promissory Clauses most clearly expressed in order to the discharge of their Allegiance and the duties of Loyalty viz. DEFENDING him and them to the uttermost of our Power against all Conspiracies that shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity as the Oath of Allegiance runs and to our ASSISTING and DEFENDING to our Power all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors There are no unweigh'd and idle words in the Promissory Clauses and we are to make it our business with the judgment of discretion to consider the sense of the same and to retain it in our Memories and mens not doing which hath been the Cause of the Ebb of Loyalty in some Conjunctures According to the Degrees of mens intellectual Talents and particularly the Talent of understanding beyond other men the Laws natural and positive and the Lex terrae some are beyond others morally bound to defend the particular momentous points relating to all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences granted or belonging to the King and his Heirs and Successors and therefore a disloyal Divine and a disloyal Lawyer are things that do particularly hear very ill But as there is a great part of the Moral Offices expressed in these Oaths sufficiently plain and obvious to vulgar Capacities and which with their Native Light do strike common understandings so the extent of these Offices ought to employ the Meditations of all the Takers of these Oaths and how low soever their Talents lie they are to use all the means they can and particularly that of the Consilium peritorum as any occasion shall offer it self for their defence of any of the Privileges or Preheminences belonging to the Crown Our duty in this kind is very well expressed by Sanderson in his third Lecture where speaking of the Subjects Obligations by Oaths of this Nature he saith Doubtless the Subject to his Power is obliged to defend all Rights which appear either by Law or Custom Legitimate whether defined by the written Law or in force through the long use of time or Prescription that is so far as they are known or may Morally be known But he is not equally obliged to the Observation of all those which are controverted Thus therefore as to any Iurisdiction Privilege or Preheminence of the Crown that might seem doubtful the swearer is many times bound to the use of means that it may be Morally known to him as Sanderson's words are Yet what I have urged in this sixth Conclusion as Obligatory to us by virtue of the Oaths is sufficiently plain and there is no occasion for employing a great Genius and penetrating Understanding and Witt to discover that it is one of the Privileges of the Crown to be Hereditary and that the Taker of the Oaths is indissolubly bound to defend that Right There are several explicatory Notions of the word DEFEND and its extent that often occur in the Authors that treat expressly of the Ius Protectitium seu defensorium among whom I account Magerus de Advocatiâ armatâ or of the Right of Protection given by Sovereign Powers to be instar
and Honourable Actions of his numerous Ancestors being made by the hand of Heaven to point at him as the Centre and their being fixt so in his Memory that we cannot well think of his thinking of any thing but Honour that must make other Subjects pay the greater Veneration of his High Birth It is so hard a matter even for the flights of imagination with the exquisiteness of Art to produce thoughts of Kings and Princes any way proportionable to their real Figure that I have observed that our old famous Dramatists of the former Ages could hardly in any Scene give us the Character of a King done up to the height of a Monarchs Glory and as the Characters of Kings in those days were expressed it was but necessary that the Rule in Theaters should be that the Kings should enter there with loud Musick that so their Quality might that way be understood It is then no marvel if so many in the present Age who are not made è meliore luto and whose Education was low and whose Souls are narrow cannot comprehend the honour of the great part that God calls Kings to Act on the Stage of the World and are especially Strangers to the great thoughts that are to be supposed to Crown the Souls of Kings when they espouse a Religion But in that great particular Concern of Princes owning their Religion we are morally bound to think of them with all the honour we can nor to repine at that our Duty to them since in the Concern of Religion and as it is a Principle of the Divine Life we are to honour our Inferiours and cannot without profanation and usurping on Gods Right judge them rashly We are not to think that our honouring all men and the necessary parts of that duty are recommended to us by way of Council in order to a more perfect life and as not sub peccato obliging any but those who have by Vow bound themselves to the practice of the same but we are to esteem them Precepts and properly so called and universally binding and as necessary parts of that Holiness without which no man can see God. And therefore when I see any man after much labouring of his thoughts to have changed the Profession of his Belief of any Tenets controverted among Christians and particularly one who was in the Communion of the Church of England to own the belief of Transubstantiation Purgatory and the Doctrine of Iustification according to the Sense of the Council of Trent or other such points and shall find that most certainly that it neither was nor could be for Gain or respect to Temporal advantages that his judgment appeared thus altered nor yet out of levity and natural inconstancy and that his habitual constancy and steadiness in all measures relating to Persons and things long by me observed have assured me that no such change could thence proceed and shall further observe in such Person a greater tenderness in his regard to second Table Duties than before and that his inclinations of Beneficence to all Mankind and particularly to his former friends now differing in judgment from him have not been tinctured and discoloured by any alteration of his Notions I shall think my self under various Moral Obligations to honour such a Person tho perhaps erroneously opining I will honour him for his discharge of his Duty in trying all things and having spent time in examining the truth of Religionary Speculations and taking up a Religion not by chance as most Orthodox Religionaries do but by choice I will honour him for following that which Sanderson in his Lectures of Conscience calls the next and immediate tho not the adequate Rule of his Conscience the light of his mind for the time present a Light that I see so many Orthodox Religionaries playing with or endeavouring to extinguish I will honour him for the great Sacrifice I think that he honestly intends to truth and to offer which to it I see so many Persons who erred so reluctantly brought to its Altars I mean the Pride and Glory of the Humane understanding by a Recantation of its former Sentiments a Sacrifice that to him who consults with Flesh and Blood may seem as unpleasant as the offering up of Isaac did to Abraham And since to presage well of men is to honour them I will thus in the Case of such a Person who hath thus honoured God by taking up his â—ross and taking shame to himself believe that God will honour him and judge that tho he may in statu viatoris have mistaken Error for Truth in his way he will not mistake Hell for Heaven at his Journeys end Moreover since to speak rashly to or of any men is a dishonour to them I will not only not dishonour such a Person by determining that his Error is voluntary which whether it be so I can never know and which if it be not I do know it can be no Sin but will pay him the just honour of my judging it to be involuntary as knowing that neither he nor any one else can command his own understanding and that the nature of the understanding is such that it can no more apprehend things otherwise than they appear to it than the Eye see other Colours in the Rain-bow than it doth whether those Colours be really there or no. Moreover altho I know that no Law binds without a Promulgation and that that Promulgation of Divine positive Laws may by reason of mens diffent Abilities of understanding be sufficient for one man that is not for another and so that the erroneous opinion of one man may be a Crime and another mans holding the â—â—me opinion may be innocent yet I will not dishonour the understanding of any man for his not believing the Controverted points of Christian Religion that I observe other men of great intellectuals profess the Belief of and do consider that as the Wind bloweth where it lists so the influx of the Divine Spirit on men is not confined to the excellence of their understandings and that God doth not always reveal his mind to men according to the Proportion of their Gifts and Graces and that when the Book of the Law was found and read before Iosiah Hulda the Prophetess was sent to and consulted tho there were Prophets in the Land at that time and that that was Revealed sometime to Nathan that was not to David who was in all points his Superior I will according to what was cited out of Ames Interpret every thing of him in the better part that is doubtful And tho men do naturally think themselves equally wise I will according to the Morality enjoyned by that place in the Philippians Esteem him better than my self since a great part of Wisdom consists in the proportioning of the means to the end I will out of the knowledge of my own frequent Omissions in that kind account that we both having designed the same end of Eternal
Happiness he tho differing from me in speculative points yet hath by his Practical Devotion proportioned his means to that end better than I have done Moreover because it is a dishonourable thing for any man to receive a Religion in gross and servilely to own all the Religionary Sentiments that the Major part of any Church seem to do I will not so much as in my secret thoughts charge such a Person with owning all the Religionary Tenets of the Church of Rome and much less with owning any one of the Tenets that is Irreligionary how justly soever chargeable either on the Papacy or any of its Adherents I who am a Son of the Church of England have considered how its Constitution hath been prop'd up in various ways and on different Hypotheses by several of the Fathers and great Writers in that Church before Arch-Bishop Laud's time and since and how some of them in some points receded from its Articles and that many of them did in several Doctrines of importance variously interpret its Articles My Conversation with several Divines of that Church who are equally Learned and Pious hath let me see that in many Theological speculative points they differ much from one another and yet retain perfect Charity for one another and their Notions as to which points they have in prudence not troubled the Populace with And yet even in our very Protestant Populace in this Conjuncture of Zeal against Popery I have observed so much Candour expressed to Protestant Writers who have asserted some speculative points that seemed to agree with the Doctrines of the Church ofâ— Rome that no one man hath either called them Papists or Protestants in Masquerade for so doing I have not heard of any who hath censured Mr. Baxter as a Papist or Popishly affected since Dr. Tully in his printed Letter to him p. 21. desiring him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see the very small odds between His Iustification and the Council of Trents addeth for to me neither of them turns the Scale upon the other There was likewise after the beginning of the Popular Out-cryes of the Danger of Popery a Learned Metrophysical Book of Dr. Glisson who was Professor of Physick in Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society Printed and Dedicated to the EARL of SHAFTSBVRY and in the 28th Chapter there viz. De substantiarum penetrabilitate mutatâ quantitate the Dr. saith That 't is better to admit Penetration than a Vacuum however we have been taught from our Child-hood to believe that there is no penetration of Bodies and Dimensions and doth Combat those old Notions of Philosophy with which Transubstantiation was opposed formerly and yet was never censured so much as Popishly affected for so writing nor have I observed any one to blame him for it or to have animadverted on his Book I have likewise observed that several Protestant Divines have not been in the least reproached or censured as maintainers of Purgatory when they have professed their Beliefs that the Souls of good Men after Death go to a good Hades and of bad Men to a bad one and are to stay in those common receptacles till the day of Judgment It is hence obvious that there are ingenious Protestants who do not take up their Religion in gross and that the fear of Popery or hatred of it is not generally so much founded on the Speculative Religionary Propositions maintained by Papists as partly on the Arbitrary Power claimed by the Pope to impose Creeds on men and by which Power he may if he pleaseth command them to believe that there are no Antipodes and excommunicate any who believe there are as one Pope long since did and partly on his claiming a Power to disturb the measures of their Loyalty to their Princes In such a Conjuncture therefore as this when 't is so much out of fashion to think any one the less a Christian or the less a Protestant for differing from others of the Church of England in such point as aforesaid it would be an aggravation of the immorality of our not acknowledging the honour due to any Person of the Roman-Catholick Communion because supposed to own Speculative Religionary Tenets of this Nature and which too have no influence no Mens Conversation with each other or on their Actions as they are Members of any Civil Society and as one saith would be still the same with all the Consequences of them tho there were no other Person besides one's self in the World. And therefore as I will rashly charge no Protestant with the servile resignation of his reason to any true Church nor look on him as one who doth More balantium antecedentem Ducem sequi so I will not without just ground and certain proof charge any Papist with the taking up his Religion in gross from the Papal Chair nor with the owning all the Religionary Tenets that many Romanists do and much less with any one of the Irreligionary Tenets imputable to any Order of the Church of Rome or to the Papacy To think any Papist the less a Christian for owning such Tenets which being held by some Protestants we think them not the less Christians for doth most notoriously come under the Sin of Acceptio personarum and is contrary to that Precept of St. Iames viz. My Brethren have not the faith of our Lord Iesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of Persons and by which accepting of some mens Persons the duty of honouring all men and valuing their real worth is manifestly outraged I will by no means therefore rashly charge any particular Papist with owning the Tenet that he is implicitly to obey the Commands of the Pope without weighing the Justice of them for I find the contrary Tenet own'd in print by the seven Divines of Venice as Ames mentions it in the Preface to his Puritanismus Anglicanus where he saith In Tractatu illo Iudiciosissimo à septem Theologis meaning those of Venice de interdicto Papae conscripto verbatim ponitur nervosè firmatur haec propositio viz. Christianus praecepto sibi facto etiam à Pontifice summo obedientiam praestare non debet nisi prius praeceptum examinaverit quantam materia subjecta requirit an sit conveniens legitimum obligatorium is qui siâ—e illo examine praecepti sibi injuncti caeco quodam impetu obedit peccat And do not many of the Church of Rome by their being picque'z d' honneur upon the being called Papists give some indication thereby of their being not obliged to pay an absolute blind Obedience to the Pope And tho Bellarmine and several of the Popes Parasites have called those Hereticks that believe not the Iure-Divinity of the Popes Monarchy over the World yet all the Gibelline Papists of old made it HERESY to say that the Emperor was not by Divine Right Lord of the World. Moreover tho some Papists have writ opprobriously of the Scripture and called
Acquaintance as to judge them free from any Complication of the belief and practice of any irreligious Principles with the Principles of their Religion and particularly from the owning any Principle of Disloyalty or the Iesuites Doctrine of Calumny or the Obligatoriness of the Lateran Council will not rashly pronounce any other particular Papist guilty of the belief or practice of such Principles Nor is it any great honour that I have done to any men of extraordinary Vertue in thus judging that they cannot believe or practise such Principles for that it being true in the Course of Nature what Machiavel said that next to the being perfectly good 't is the most difficult thing to be perfectly bad the World hath had thereby some Garranty against the belief and practice of such Principles and by necessity of Nature must still have But since Mankind in general may expect to find in our esteem the benefit of the presumption of Law viz. That every man is presumed to be good and that the high Births and Educations of Princes and the great Examples of their Magnanimous Ancestors may well pass as strong presumptions of Nature against their doing any low ungenerous Acts of Cruelty and since in Gods great Ordinance of Magistracy an especial Divine presence may by Virtue of Holy Writ be presumed to accompany the very Magistrates appointed by Sovereign Prinâ—es according to that in 2 Chron. 19. 6. where after it was said to the Judges Take heed what you do for yee judge not for man but for the Lord the following words are Who is with you in the Iudgment and that therefore as Christ is said to be present with those Officers he appointed in the Church because there is a special Virtue and Efficacy of Christ manifest in their Ministry there may likewise be expected a special presence Divine in the Administration of Magistracy from the like manifestation of God in his Wisdom Power Goodness c. for the Well-fare of Societies as Mr. Ny observes and since Kings and Princes are an Oâ—dinance of God or Medium by which in a more special and peculiar way he communicates his Goodness to Christians according to the Style of the 13th of the Romans the great Sedes materâ—ae of Loyalty for he is the Minister of God to THEE for good it may well be thought profaneness and Sacrilege for men to bode and presume ill of the future Acting of any Heirs to Crowns and particularly as to their believing or practising any thing pernicious to their Realms What Roman Catholick Prince doth not deride Innocent the 3d under whom the Lateran Council was held for telling it in the Canon Law that the Papal Power is as much greater than the Imperial as the Sun is greater than the Moon and at the Marginal Note there for saying That the Papal Power exceeds the Imperial no less than 7744 There is a Prince whose Emblem is the Suâ— and whose Power exceeds the Papal in every ones account to more than that Proportion And is it not therefore but according to reason and common sense that we should believe that of all men in any Realm the Prince will be the latest brought to the belief of that Papal Power so categorically asserted by that Council That Kings may be Excommunicated by their own Bishops for not obeying the Pope and their Subjects in such Case be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance Do not all the French Kings notwithstanding that Council claim the liberty of so much freedom from the Papal Power that Popes can neither directly nor indirectly command or ordain any thing concerning Temporal Matters within their Dominions and that neither the French King nor his Realm nor his Officers can be Excommunicated or interdicted by the Pope nor his Subjects absolved from their Oath of Allegiance As I have therefore in my Writing to a Noble Lord one of his Majesty's Ministers who was barbarously accused by one of the Plot-Witnesses for being a Papist and designing to advance the Papal Power said that I would be the last man in England who would believe he could be a Papist meaning it as impossible that he could believe or practise any irreligionary Tenet of Popery I will account it more impossible that any Roman Catholick Prince now living in the World should favour the Usurpation of the Papal Power however any of the Popish Clergy or Layety in his Realms might perhaps be addicted to favour the same That great Affair of the Munster Pâ—ace wherein so many great Roman Catholick Crown'd Heads agreeing perhaps in the Lateran Council being a General one did yet certainly agree together in the Year 1648 for Lutheran and Calvinistick Princes and States and their Subjects quietly possessing forever their Properties both in their Religions and Estates hath afforded the World an important Instance of Heavens so far influencing the understandings of those Crown'd Heads that they thought not themselves obliged to put the Decree of that Council in practice by exterminating Hereticks but to the contrary And because the Affair of that Peace and the great Pacta Conventa therein for the effect aforesaid have been scarce more taken Notice of here than the Transactions in China and that the notification of the same may advance the measures of our Duty by Internal Communion and help to un-blunder some of our Nominal Protestants in their fancying it so necessary for the quiet of Christendom that Christian Princes and their Subjects should agree in the belief of the Speculative points of Religion I intend to take an opportunity to publish some Account of the same I account my having thus largely dilated on the Moral Offices as aforesaid hath tended to corroborate this my 8th Conclusion I am here conversants in the great Court of Conscience the Court whose Seat is in the Practical and not Speculative intellect and the great things of which it holds Plea are as Sanderson tells us Actus morales particulares proprii and therefore particular urging of Records against which lies no averment is not more pertinent in Courts of Law than of Moral Offices in this And moreover I observing in this Conjuncture when many mens zeal hath been so hot against the Speculative points of Popery which disturb not Civil Society that yet they have believed the more pernicious Tenet of it and would have practised the same viz. The founding Dominion in Grace and that tho they have been altogether neglectâ—ul of their Actus morales particulares proprii they have both presumed to judge dishonourably and rashly of the Actings of others and to trouble the World not only with their Anxiety about the Acts of Kings and Princes but the Actus Dei and his illuminating Princes understandings with the Heavenly Mysteries I have thought this discoursing of our Moral Offices as aforesaid the more a Propos and seasonable as tending to fortify the rationality of this 8th Conclusion by exposing the absurdity of a respective or conditional Loyalty a
41 I shall answer him that its weight hath in this present Conjuncture of 81 afforded Loyalty so great a Compensation by that late Act of Parliament there acknowledging and asserting the Right of the Succession c. and which begins thus viz. The Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Royal Power from God Almighty alone do succeed lineally thereunto according to the known Degrees of Proximity in Blood c. that as Historians tell us how in the dark barbarous times many hundreds of years since men repaired from all Countries to Ireland to learn the Liberal Arts and Sciences I shall say that they may now profitably go to Scotland to learn Loyalty and I doubt not but that Kingdom which is so notorious for its mortal or immortal hatred of Popery call it which you will and even of that very part of it which I call the Religionary one of it having thus by the Exterminium of that irreligionary part of it viz. That Dominion is founded in Grace taught us Loyalty in the establishing the Hereditary Lineal Succession may be as instrumental in giving Loyalty in the Body of the People here its temperamentum ad pondus as it was formerly in oppressing us with its weight as a gravamen and be an occasion of blessing our Land with such a joyful Conjuncture of time as ensued after King Iames's Succession as I have before mentioned and to the Consideration of which I shall return England that had formerly by reason of the uncertainty of the Succession being like the Erratica Delos a floating Island and that too in Seas of Blood and did then appear like it afterward fixed and blessed with a Pacifick and Oracular King and as strong a Foundation for the Hereditary Monarchy as could be wished was shortly after in danger of being again unfixed by the Outrage of the Gun-Powder Treason and the Principles that legitimated that practice being really believed and practised and an account of the practice of which Treason we have in the Statute of 3 o Iacobi c. 2. as likewise of the fiery Principles that animated the Actors to it in Thuanus and in King Iames his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 10. a general reference is made to the violent bloody Maxims that the Powder-Traytors maintained and by occasion whereof after the designed outrage against the Lineal Succession of the Prince and the Hereditary Monarchy being in danger while such bloody Principles and Maxims were not exterminated it was in ordinary prudence requisite to apply the extraordinary Remedy of the Oath of Allegiance to rivet that Fundamental Maxim of the Crown the stronger in Nature viz. That the King never dies And the Addition of those words in the Promissory Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. HIS or THEIR Persons THEIR Crown and Dignity and which words were not in the Oath of Supremacy was a plain indication of the intention of the Law-givers to tye Mens Souls to the Hereditary Monarchy in the Due and Legal Course of Descent And moreover with a prospect to mens having a conscientious regard to the King's Heirs and Successors the Fathers of our Church then probably in the Preface of the Collect in the Common-prayer for the Prince and the King's Children as overjoyed with the sight of King James 's being enriched with a most Royal Progeny as the words in the Act of the Recognition are did cause these words to be inserted Who art the Father of thine Elect and of their SEED The Preface to the Act requiring the Oath of Allegiance hath in it the expression of Loyalty and Allegiance unto the King's Majesty and the CROWN of England and mentions the design of the Gun-powder Treason as tending to the subversion of the whole State and therefore if in the ancient times of Popery and when the Pope was generally revered here as a 13th Apostle upon any emergent Papal Usurpations which gave just cause of apprehending future ones intended and particularly in the Case of the Pope's Mandates or Bulls which were called Gratiae expectativae or provisiones and pretendedly issued out of the Pope's pious care to see a Church provided of a Successor before it needed our Kings did think themselves obliged to provide Statutes against Provisors whereby the Ius patronatus was secured to them and their Subjects and by Statutes of Praemunire did as it were build Forts before the Enemies coming the Premuniment of the Hereditary Monarchy by the Oath of Allegiance was most necessary to prevent any Papal Gratiae expectativae of the Crown and the Popes impious care to provide a Successor to its Hereditary Rights The Premuniment of some Laws by others is no new thing nor yet a new word however some idle Criticks have accounted the word praemunire in our Statutes to be barbarous for Grotius in his De jure belli c. l. 2. c. 5. § 14. speaking of some Laws of the Iews saith In quarum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Hebraei loqâ—untur praemunimentum additae sunt leges caeterae and according to the sense of some taking praemunire for praemonere the constant premonition of Heavens great Monitor called Conscience and which is the pulse of the Soul and like the Pulse is Fidelis nuncius vitae aut mortis to warn men by this Oath to defend the Lineal Succession of the Crown was no less necessary and King Iames's setling the Premonition in the minds of his own Subjects was but naturally previous to his Premonition sent abroad to Foreign Princes and States And how far Harry the 7th's Statute by which no Person who should serve the King for the time being c. should therefore be attainted or impeached might induce the Government to secure the undoubted Rights of Succession by the Oath of Allegiance being framed as it was and rooting our Loyalty thereby the deeper into our Consciences and by the fear of our being justly impeached in the Court of Conscience in omnem eventum if we defended not those Rights of Succession is obvious to Consideration As I have thus in this Conclusion shewed that it was the Law-givers intention particularly in the Oath of Allegiance to oblige us to pay our Allegiance not only to the King but to his Heirs and Successors in the Legal Course of Descent so I might here further Ex superabundanti dilate on such intention being to secure the same without any respect to the Religion of such Heirs and Successors A Prince of such profound Learning and Observation as King Iames could not be ignorant of what hath been since by the Loyal Writers of the Succession so clearly and strongly asserted viz. That the Succession to the Crown is inseparably annext to the Proximity of Blood by the Laws of GOD and NATVRE and That Statute-Laws contrariant to those are null and void and That the Hereditary Monarchy was indisputably founded on inherent Birth-right according to the Style of the Act of Recognition
overthrown and the Scope of the Book is to plant Loyalty throughout the Kingdom and to make the Oath of Allegiance be re vâ—râ a Premuniment in all mens Consciences against Faction and Rebellion The Sect of King Iames's old Enemies in Scotland the Puritans and whom he said he found there more dishonest than the Highlanders and Border Thieves is not named in that Book and he having cleared them from being participants in the Gun-powder Treason did with Justice as well as perhaps with hopes of their emendation after the Tenets of Loyalty that had been then lately published by the English Non-Conformists order that Sect not to be in that Book marked Nigro carbone But he could not but know their former Principles as well as Practices here as exactly as any one and in his Canons here published a Year before the Gun-powder Treason The impugners of the Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England were variously censured the Authors of Schism in the Church of England were censured by the 9th Canon and the maintainers of Schismaticks by the 10th and by the 27th Schismaticks were not to be admitted to the Communion The maintainers of Conventicles were censured by the 11th and the maintainers of Constitutions made in Câ—nventicles censured by the 12th and it refers to the wicked and Anabaptistical Errors of some who outraged the King's Supremacy and Regal Rights and who did meet and make Rules and Orders in Causes Ecclesiastical without the King's Authority and therefore as the King knew that such Persons who had made Schisms in the Church had thereby made Factions in the State and would make more the Church being necessarily included in the State and would be as dry Tiâ—der ready to take the Fire of Rebellion from such Republican Tenets as were in Parson's Book of the Succession and the Writings of Bellarmine and other Romanists and being justly apprehensive that such Antimonarchical Principles as had infected the Scotch Puritans might in time infect the English ones as well as that the Principles of the Powder-Traitors might infect other Loyal Papists he applied the Oath of Allegiance as a general necessary Antidote to the Consciences of his Subjects to prevent such infection In p. 109. of his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance he cited Bellarmine for the Tenets That Kings have not their Authority nor Office immediately from God and that Kings may be deposed by their People for divers respects and when such Writers did so spitefully with the Papal Power endeavour likewise to bring in the Sea of the People to overwhelm Kings it was time to raise the Bank of that Oath the higher against the same and for the Takers of that Oath to be obliged to bear Faith and True Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs c. and him and them to defend c. against all Conspiracies c. which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by reason or colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or OTHERWISE and to declare that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve them of this Oath When therefore I see any serious man disloyal who hath took the Oath of Allegiance and whom Necessity as we say doth not draw to Turpitude I still attribute much of his disloyalty to his not with intense and recollected thought dwelling on the view of his Moral Obligations in the clear Mirror of that Oath but to his cursory viewing them and as St. Iames's words are like a man beholding his natural face in a Glass but beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straitway forgetteth what manner of man he was How many outragious Acts of Disloyalty after 41 had been avoided if the Law of the Oath had been writ in the hearts of the Takers of it as it ought to have been As for Example since to Prorogue or Dissolve Parliaments was ever a known Right and Privilege belonging to the Crown could any Person who had sworn to defend its Rights and Privileges endeavour to retrench that particular one by the Act for the perpetuating the Parliament of 40 How easie would Princes find their Reigns and Subjects their Consciences if these would think of all the Royal Rights they have sworn to defend and how they are to defend them I have mentioned the great Law of Athens against any ones bearing Office under an Usurpt Power and the terrible Oath for the confirmation of that Law and I have likewise mentioned the Author of the EXERCITATION and Mr. Prynn as asserting the unlawfulness of bearing Office under our late usurp'd Powers by reason of the Oath of Allegiance having before obliged them to the King his Heirs and Successors The Author of the Exercitation doth very appositely to strengthen that his Loyal Assertion cite an excellent passage out of Tully's Epistles ad Atticum viz. of his doubting the lawfulness of his bearing the Office of a Councellor of State in such a Case Ec magnum sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 veniendumne sit in Consilium Tyranni si is aliquâ— de re bonâ deliberaturus sit Quare si quid ejusmodi evenerit ut accersamur quid censeas mihi faciendum utique scribito Nihil enim mihi adhuc accidit quod majoris Consilii est And the truth is the great thing that inclineth so many to desire Changes in Governments being the hopes of the Acquest of Offices it was but natural for the Athenian Wisdom to fence with sharp precaution against the lusciousness of Authority under an Usurper and to let every man know as I may say in terrorem that in the day of his eating the forbidden fruit he would die the death by the hand of every man and for the wisdom of the Government in King Iames's time by the effect and necessary Consequences of the Clauses in the Oath of Allegiance to tye mens Consciences from supporting any Vsurpation by bearing Office under it That Law and Oath of Athens were no doubt as almost all other matters of Learning known to King Iames and could he have foreseen how the guest after Offices occasioned the Demagogues to promote the â—ebellion of 41 for 't is known they were then mighty Nimrods after mighty Offices in the State and after what particular ones and how the several Vsurpations supported themselves here afterward through mens supporting themselves by Offices under them and how in this present Fermentation men have been tempted to Faction by hopes of Offices and in pursuit of which men were never generally so wary as iâ— this Conjuncture I am apt to think that in uberâ—orem cautelam for Loyalty and the making men appear perjured even to all of the grossest understandings who should bear Office under any Vsurper and consequently deterring them from projecting to altâ—r the Hereditary Government he would have inserted into the Oath a particular express Clause of not bearing Office here under any other But further to illustrate the intent of the Government
of his Mind that he would never consent to any such thing must necessarily appear to the considerate a Scruple fit to be thrown off Much more then must it appear to such to have been a vile Scruple to have fancied it lawful to pronounce men Enemies to the Kingdom because they so loyally defended the Hereditary Monarchy according to their Oaths in that HOT Conjuncture wherein the Air of mens fancies was so generally infected And as in any long Intervals of extreme hot or cold weather not to participate with the generality of mens bodies in some sensible effects of it would argue somewhat of distemper in ones Constitution so in the late heat of the Populace against Popery it was inconsistent with the soundness of Loyalty not some way to partake of the effects of that heat and as I have sometimes perhaps too much with many other Loyal Persons done I remember to have read it somewhere in a Print full of Wit and Loyalty said with gayety of humour to this purpose viz. That while a whole Nation was drunk meaning I suppose intoxicated with the belief of Witnesses telling incredible things and the Populace being thereupon drunk with Anger and Rage against the Persons of the Papists it was to little purpose for any one man to be sober The Notions that men had of a Plot were very various Some then were so far gone in Credulity as like the Fool that Solomon saith believeth every word they were resolved to believe every thing the Witnesses had said or would say The Loyal generally acquiesced in the Notification of it as published by the Government and thereby discharged part of the Moral Obligations of the Oaths I have discoursed of whereby they were to defend all the RIGHTS and Privileges belonging to the King his Heirs c. and one of those Rights and Privileges is what is allowed by the Law of Nations to all Sovereign Princes namely To have faith given to their publick attestation of any Fact. Yet Religion allowing men the use of the judicium discretionis about the sense and importance of the Writ divinely inspired they modestly employed their Discretion in considering what by the Dii nominales was published and if any thing therein seemed above their reason and not contrary to it their faith rested therein But the Loyal soon found that the fears and jealousies of Popery began more and more to turn into fears and jealousies relating to the Witnesses Veracity and they could not without a profound horror and astonishment reflect on the intoxication of a gaeat Body of Men believing some incarnate Devils in accusing one that had appeared to Christendom as great a Saint of her Sex as the steady practice of all Moral Vertues glorifying a heavenly mind on Earth could render her and who with such a Character must shine as a Star in the History of the Age. That many of the Popish Clergy about that time vainly endeavoured to have their Religion Paramount and had hopes to get their Lands again none will think impossible who have since seen some of our Schismatical Pastors so infatuated as to think it practicable for them again to thrive by their old Religion-Trade And that such particular Persons as were by the late Earl of Clarendon in his Book against Cressy printed in the Year 1673. remarked for the petulant and unruly Spirit that swâ—yed too much among them might continue in the year 1673. no wise man doubted for the said Earl there said The wisest and soberest Catholicks of England did all they could to restrain that petulant and unruly Spirit Many sagacious Protestants who knew the irreligious Principles that the Iesuits Writings swarmed with were apt to fear that there were then endeavours to have some of them practised by some ill men who were Bigots or Paupers and whom necessity might prompt to be mercâ—nary in making disorders in the State. The Iudicious and Learned Bishop Morly was observed then to have some Notion or Idea of a Popish Plot peculiar to himself And as then many had their various Conceptions of the noised Plot so many loyal and serious thinking Persons supposing it to be very unreasonable and barbarous to involve the whole Body of a Religion in the guilt of some particular Persons and on any pretence to bereave them of that freedom in the profession of their Religion that both the Law of the Land and of God allowed them did employ their thoughts and fancies for the reclaiming the Age from the humour of severity then shewed to the Persons of Papists in general The Earl of Anglesy one of his Majesties Great Ministers publickly moved him in the hot Conjuncture to release all Papists and even Priests out of Prison who were not charged with any thing of a Plot. And the Disloyalty of many Nominal Protestants then appearing in their many published Prints it seemed very horrid to all ingenious men that the lives and liberties of Loyal innocent Papists should be sacrificed to feed the humours or appetites of any Beasts of Prey in the Ark of the Protestant Church I speak with Allusion to those thousands of harmless Sheep in Noahs Ark employed in feeding about 20 pair of Carnivorous Beasts there I thank God that while I was a sharer With many of the Loyal in the hatred of the Irreligionary Principles formerly maintained by the Court of Rome and many of its Churchmen and particularly of those of the Iesuits which that Court hath lately disclaimed I have likewise shared with them in the Disclaiming of hatred or enmity to any mens Persons whether Iesuits or Iesuited Protestants and I desire to live no longer than I shall with the most perfect hatred abhor the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace and endeavour to perswade all pretended Protestants but real half-Papists so to hate the same but likewise with a perfect Love to love the Persons of their Brethren-Papists And it is with Justice to be by all men to our Popish fellow-Subjects acknowledged that whatever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of or of any ambitious design of making too great a Figure in the internal Government of the Nation yet that the deportment of the generality of them hath of late appeared with such a face not only of Loyalty but Modesty and Complaisance with his Majesties measures in employing the hands and heads of Protestants of the Church of England in the Management of the great matters of State as is necessarily attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion and the rather for that we have seen at the same time many Factious Anti-Papists to have made a greater Figure in the internal Government of the Kingdom than ever any Papists did in the Reigns of King Iames and the Royal Martyr and to have thereby given disturbance both to the External Government and the Hereditary Monarchy I did observe for some Considerable time after the Plot-epoche somewhat of a becoming Humanity and Gentleness in many Anti-Papists relating
to the Persons of the Papists and likewise of the Divines of our Church but was afterwards sufficiently sensible of their intolerable rancour and animosities against both and of the infamous use and application they made of the Iesuits Doctrine of Calumny and of the Weapons they borrowed from Parson's of the Succession to promote the detestable Exclusion and of their borrowing from Athens and old Rome the Thunderbolts of their old REPVBLICAN Curses viz. of ENEMY c. and throwing them at the most Loyal of our Patriots and absurdly calling them Enemies to the King and Kingdom because they asseâ—ted the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy in opposing the Exclusion By that kind of Republican Curses they gave us the omen of what they would have been at And so extravagant was the use of that anathema in the late Conjuncture that when one in a great Assembly moved against Sir G. I. a Person that all the Loyal must own for his steadiness to the Hereditary Monarchy and for his having first kindled that great Zeal for Loyalty which doth now like a wall of Fire defend our Metropolis that he might be voted such an Enemy as aforesaid a Burgess for that City as I was info m'd did Ridiculously and Presumtuously move that he might be voted an Enemy to Mankind But it was easie for such as had took Gods name in vain so to take Mankinds I shall not degenerate from the Moral Offices of Charity to mens Persons if I call the Exâ—lusion that would have broke the Balance of the Monarchy that was the old Balance of the World enmity to Mankind but shall without my here calling any men names leave it to the soft voice of God's Herald called Conscience to suggest it that tho a man who was deluded a while by the error of the Exclusion that would have been so fatal to the Realm might by reason of any good intentions so for a while ill guided not deserve perhaps to be judged to be an enemy to the King and Kingdom formaliter yet that if after Consideration and all thoughts made about his Sworn Allegiance he doth not make a stand but shall at any time again endeavour the going over the Rubicon of the Bloud Royal in its Line of Succession stated by God and Nature and the defending his false-steps beyond it by Association or Arms â—I say I shall leave it to Conscience to tell him or warn him by the indeleble Characters of natural right there so legibly Engraved how much he will deserve the censure of such an enemy as hath been mentioned and shall be glad he may be thereby to better effect warn'd then Caesar was from his Vsurpatioâ— by the great Senatus Consultum which Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law Printed in the year 1530. saith that he saw remaining Engraved on a Marble Pillar by the River Rubicon viz. Iussu mandatúve P. R. Commilito armate quisquis es Manipularisve Centuriove turmaeve legionarie hic sistito vexillumve sinito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa ductum commeatumve traducito Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo adâ—ersus praecepta ierit fueritve adjudicatus esto P. R. H. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit penatesque è sacris penetralibus asportaverit S. P. Q. R. Sanctio Plebisciti Sâ— ve C. He likewise saith that In Portu Arimini alterum est adhuc ejusdem sententiae senatusconsultum and which appearing to be a Noble piece of Curiosity and expressive of the same sense wiâ—h the former tho with some difference of words I shall here entertain the Reader with viz. Imp. Mil. Tiro armate quisquis es hic sistito vexillumve sinito arma deponito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa arma exercitumve traducito Si quis ergo adversus praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto Hostis P. R. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit sacrosve penates è penetralibus asportaverit Sanctio plebisciti senatusconsulti ultra hos fines arma proferre liceat nemini Rivallius having cited these Senatusconsulta saith that Quibus senatusconsultis Caesar fortassis territus cum è Galliâ rediens ad Rubiconem usque pervenisset adversus Pompeium populumque Romanum bellum gesturus esset militibus dixisse fertur et etiam nunc regredi possimus quod si Ponticulum transierimus omnia armis agenda erunt And thus let all members of theâ— true Church Militant in these Realms by what name or title soever known who have been tempted to think the Exclusion lawful thank Heaven that they have lived to repent of the same and that even now they may go back from the sinfullness of such thought and consider that if they had passed over this Rubicon they were to expect beside the fate of their Involving their Country in War the other tremendous one of being found fighters against God to whom they were sworn I have little further to add but to acquaint the Judicious READER that I desire if he findeth any thing here-said that he may reasonably think to be not according to the Theological measures of the Church of England or the Political ones of the State or against the moral Offices of Charity toward the Persons of 〈◊〉 men or against the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians tho I know of no such thing here said it may by him be taken as non dictum There is no keeping of Passion in number weight and measure and particularly of that of Anger The Excellent Bishop of Downe that was Doctor Ieremy Taylor hath often told me That when he was to return an answer to a Friends Letter that had Anger in it he never concern'd himself to return an answer to the angry part of it because he considered that the anger of his Friend was over before the Letters arrival But against all the Irreligionary Principles of the Iesuits and particularly that of the Founding Dominion in Grace I would crave aid from Posterity for the continuance of my Indignation in the known words of O me propè lassum juvate Posteri but that the Pope hath saved me the labour and so I hope those Principles in them are retiring to theâ—r Eternal rest and I desire not to hinder their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that no pious Roman Catholick may labour under the weight of being Censured as one who is necessarily to believe and practice some Principles beforementioned out of the LATERAN Council I have mentioned various things that may be of use to that effect and perhaps more satisfactory than what hath by any of their Church been said who have denyed it to be a General Council Such denyal will not effectually do their work since Cardinal Perron hath as I said shew'd it to be a general one and his reputation for his profound Judgment and Learning being so great and such that the late Learned Lord Faulkland the Secretary of State was wont to say That Baronius and
that even in the poorest of our Country Parishes where yet by the encrease of people since her time the values of the Livings are proportionably encreased there are Ministers more learned then were there in his time and that the Reading the Prayers and Homilies of our Church hath furnished our Country-Folks with so much understanding as will render them for ever unwilling to sow the matter of which to make the God they must either devour or be devour'd by Had Mr. Coleman vouchsafed to have spoke with some of this sort of men he would not have thought the whole Kingdom ready like moyst Wax to have receiv'd the impressions of Popery but would have observ'd in them That with the stubborn and proverbial Pride of a Russet Coat they disdain to draw in the Yoke either of Papacy or Presbytery and that they talk of Popery as a Religion that would sink down both their Souls and Bodies to the state of Brutes and not only make agriculture vail to pasture but bring them to eat Grass and Hay more pecudum as a great Cardinal bragg'd that they had almost prepared the Laiety to do till Luther shew'd them better things and if any one who has not heard the sturdy Anathema's that our Rustics in their Common discourses bestow on Popery and who has not observ'd that in Elections for Knights of the Shire their Suffrages are given to the most fiery Zealots against it shall not have the same sense with me of the general intense hatred of the Countrey People egainst Popery let him Cast his Eye on the Returns made in the Bishops Survey of the Number of Papists above the age of 16 for those two Diocesses in which the glory of our English Yeomanry so much abounds namely of our Yeomen of Kent and he shall find that the Number of Papists both male and female was in Canterbury Diocess but 142 and in that of Rochester 64 and one would think that the Neighbourhood of France might have transplanted more of the Popish Persuasion into those Diocesses The Traditions our Country People have had from their Ancestors concerning their state in the days of Popery have sufficiently antidoted them against the poyson of Traditions from Popish Priests and such who would have them Traditors of their English Bibles They have a joyful Gusto of the Petition of Right as it were fresh in their Mouths and fear the being thrown back to the supplication of Beggars They cannot think of the Times of Monkery here without thinking of how many of the Plough-men in England were then Villains and that too Villains to Abbies for that part of their Land that was arable they were Villains regardant to their Mannors and such as the Romans call'd adscriptitii glebae And 't is observed by Sir T. Smith in his 3 d. Book de Repub. Anglorum c. 10. That the Monks and Fryars when they were Conversant with the Layety as Confessors in extremis enjoyn'd them in the Court of Conscience for the honour of Christianity to manumit all their Villains but saith he the said holy Fathers with the Abbots and Priors did not so by theirs And he saith Quorum exemplis episcopi insistentes ab ista crudelitate nisi pretio conducti aut Calumniis impetiti sero deterreri potuerunt Dein aequatis solo Monasteriis in manus laicorum recidentibus libertatem omnes adepti sunt i. e. But at last the Monasteries being levell'd with the ground they all gain'd their freedom Thus did the Abbots and Monks formerly affect the Monopoly of ordering Villainage and the multiplying of the people born of their Villains by succeeding Generations did but multiply Slaves to the Abbies and at the same time they sow'd Corn for the Abbys they sow'd their Children too to Villenage The which is apparent by an Abbot and Convent's formula of manumission in Edward the Third's time mention'd in Blount viz. Omnibus Frater Mathaeus Abbas de Halesoweign Conventus ejusdem loci salutem Noveritis Nos unanimi voluntate Consensu fecisse Iohannem del Grene de Rugaker liberum cum tota sequelâ suâ procreatâ procreandâ But the Children that now come to see the light in England are not damnati antequam Nati Condemned to Servitude before they are born and our Yeomen that are above wearing the Badges of our Nobles will scorn the Vassalage to Friers and when the Genius of the English Nation is so full of Candor and what few Nations can pretend to that they never make Slaves of their Prisoners of War in any part of Europe none I believe will ever see their incomparable Infantry by whom their Battels are won to become Slaves in Peace and the very Slaves too of Slaves I mean of the Monastic Slaves to sloth That 40 s. a Year that made them in the state of legales homines heretofore is now become in value 6 l. per annum and as by the encrease of their Wealth they are the more enabled to go to Law so the Policy of William the Conquerour to have mens Lands lie scatter'd as they are in Common Fields to the intent that the multiplicity of Law Sutes occasion'd thereby might divert their uniting against him the which hath been Commonly call'd the Conquerour's Curse hath however enured them to a pugnacious spirit of litigation in the Law and the effect of which tough mettle of theirs Popery is likely to find if ever it shall be a Trespasser on them and in fine Popery need never balder us with any other miracles if it can effect this one namely to reconcile our Husbandmen to love it and to applaud the Ius Divinum of the Monks that coming in Sheeps clothing would by a Pasce Oves make Pasture confound Tillage The truth is they are as unlikely ever to effect this as are any who love the Noble Sport of Hunting to reduce England to its Primitive state and more remote then Pasture namely Forrest for that and Marsh is the Natural state of all uncultivated and desolate Lands tho they should too try to hunt as with a full cry out of the Scripture into that state and with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Isaia cry Resonate Montes laudationem sylva omne lignum ejus and further tell us of the antiquity of the Divine Right to Forrests appearing out of those words of the Royal Prophet For all the Beasts of the Forrest are mine c. and should insinuate that 't was fit to unpeople the Earth of men to make groves for Gods to inhabit We are told in the Preface to Manwood That in the Reigns of Richard the First King Iohn and Henry the Second the Crown had afforrested so much of the Lands of the Subjects as that the greatest part of this Realm was then become Forrest but no man is so sensless as to pretend to fear the Return of any such state in England And according to the Principles of Sense and reason it may