THE Mystery of Iniquity Working in the dividing of PROTESTANTS In order to the subverting of Religion and our Laws For almost the space of 30 Years last past plainly laid open With some Advices to Protestedts of all Perswasions in the present Juncture of our Affairs To which is adâ—â—â—… A Specimen a BILL for Unâ—â—…g of Protestants By a Protestant and true English-man Every Kingdom divided against it self is brought to Desolation and every City or House divided against it self shall not stand Mat. 12.25 Dum pugnant singuli universi vincuntur Tacit. Printed in the Year 1689. The Mystery of Iniquity working in the dividing of Protestants c. 'T IS long since the Court of England under the Authority of the late King and his Brother was embark'd in a design of subverting the Protestant Religion and of introducing and establishing Popery For the two Royal Brothers being in the time of their Exile seduced by the Caresses and Importunities of their Mother allured by the Promises and Favours of Popish Princes and being wheedled by the Crafts and Arts of Priests and Jesuits who are cunning to deceive and knew how to prevail upon Persons that were but weakly established in the Doctrine wholly strangers to the Practice and Power of the Religion they were tempted from they not only abjured the Reformed Religion and became reconciled to the Church of Rome but by their Example and the Influence which they had over those that depended upon them both for present Subsistence and future Hopes they drew many that accompanied them in their Banishment to renounce the Doctrine Worship and Communion of the Church of England though in the War between Charles the First and the Parliament they had pretended to fight for them in equal conjunction with the Prerogatives of the Crown So that upon the Restoration in the Year 1660 they were not only moulded prepared themselves for promoting the desires of the Pope and his Emissaries but they were furnished with a stock of Gentlemen out of whom they might have a supply of Instruments both in Parliament and elsewhere to co-operate with and under them in the Methods that should be judged most proper and subservient to the extirpation of Protestancy and the bringing the Naâ—â—on again into a Servitude to the Triple Crown And besâ—des the Obligations that the Principles of the Religion to which they had revolted laid them under for eradicating the established Doctrine and Worship they had bound themselves unto it by all the Promâ—ses and Oaths which Persons are capable of having proscribed unto and exacted of them Nor can any now disbelieve his late Majesty's having lived and died a Papist who hath either heard what he both said and did when under the prospect of approaching Death and past hope of acting a part any longer on the present Stage or who have seen and read the two Papers left in his Closet which have been since published to the World and attested for Authentick by the present King. And had we been so just to our selves as to have examined the whole Course of his Reign both in his Alliances Abroad and his most important Counsels and Actions at Home or had we hearkned to the Reports of those who knew him at Collen and in Flanders we had been long ago convinced of what Religion he was Nor were his many repeated Protestations of his Zeal for Protestancy but in order to delude the Nation till insensibly as to us and with safety to himself he had overturned the Religion which he pretended to own and had introduced that which he inveighed against And while with the highest asseverations he disclaimed the being what he really was and with most sacred and tremendous Oaths professed the being what he was not his Religion might in the mean time have been traced through all the signal Occurrences of his Government and have been discerned written in Capital Letters through all the material Affairs wherein he was engaged from the Day he ascended the Throne till the Hour he left the Work. His entring into two Wars against the Dutch without any provocation on their part or ground on his save their being a Protestant State his being not only conscious unto but interposing his Commands as well as Encouragements for the burning of London His Concurrence in all the parts of the Popish Plot except that which the Jesuits with a few others were involved in against himself his stifling that Conspiracy and deâ—â—â—ering the Roman Catholicks from the Dangers into which it had â—ast them His being the Author of so many forged Plots which he caused to be charged on Protestants His constant Confedeâ—â—cies with France to the disobliging his People the betraying of Europe the neglect of the Reformed in that Kingdom and the encouraging the Design carried on against them for their Extirpation His entatling the Duke of York upon the Nation contrary to the Desires and Endeavours of three several Parliaments and that no out of Love to his Person but Affection to Popery which he knew that Gentleman would introduce and establish All these besides many other things which might be named were sufficient Evidences of the late King's Religion and of the Design he was engaged in for the Subversion of Ours So that it would fill a sober Person with amazement to think that after all this there should be so many sincere Protestants and true English Men who not only believed the late King to be of the Reformed Religion but with an insatiableness thirsted after the Blood of those that durst otherwise represent him And had it not been for his receiving Absolution and Extream Unction from a Popish Priest at his Death and for what he left in writing in the two Papers found in his strong Box he would have still passed for a Prince who had lived and died a cordial and zealous Protestant and whosoever had muttered any thing to the contrary would have been branded for a Villain and an execrable Person But with what a scent and odor must it recommend his Memory to them to consider his having not only lived and died in the Communion of the Church of Rome in contradiction to all his Publick Speeches solemn Declarations and highest Asseverations to his People in Parliament but his participating from time to time of the Sacrament as administred in the Church of England while in the interim he had abjured our Religion stood reconciled to the Church of Rome and had obliged himself by most sacred Vows and was endeavouring by all the Frauds and Arts imaginable to â—â—â—vert the established Doctrine and Worship and set up Heresy and Idolatry in their room And it must needs give them an abhorrent Idea and Character of Popery and a loathsom representation of those trusted with the Conduct and Guidance of the Consciences of Men in the Roman Communion that they should not only dispense with and indulge such Crimes and Villanies but proclaim them Sanctified and
oblige Men unto that they not only entertain the greatest abhorrency and detestation imaginable for it but seem resolved not to cherish in their Bosom a Thing so abominable to God execrable to good Men and destructive to Humane as well as to Christian Societies Nor are the Dissenters meerly to believe that the Conformists are equally zealous as themselves for the Reformed Religion and English Rights but they are to consider them as the only great and united Body of Protestants in the Kingdom with whom all other Parties compared bear no considerable proportion For though the Nonconformists considered abstractly make a vast number of honest and useful People yet being laid in the Scale with those of the Episcopal Communion they are but few and lie in a little room And whosoever will take the pains to ballance the one against the other even where Dissenters make the greatest Figure and may justly boast of their Multitude they will soon be convinced that the number of the other doth far transcend and exceed them And if it be so in Cities and Corporations where the greatest Bulk of Dissenters are it is much more so in Country Parishes where the latter bear not the proportion of one to a hundred Nor doth the Church of England more exceed the other Parties in her number than she doth in the quality of her Members For whereas they who make up and constitute the separate Societies are chiefly Persons of the middle Rank and Condition the Church of England doth in a manner vouch and claim all the Persons of Honour of the Learned Professions and such as have valuable Estates for her Communicants And though the other sort are as necessary in the Common-Wealth and contribute as much to its Strength Prosperity and Happiness yet they make not that Figure in the Government nor stand in that Capacity of having influence upon Publick Affairs For not only the Gentlemen of both the Gowns who by reason of their Calling and Learning are best able to defend our Religion and vindicate our Laws and Priviledges with their Tongues and Pens but they whose Estates Reputation and Interest recommendeth them to be elected Members of the great Senate of the Nation as well as they who by reason of their Honours and Baronages are Hereditary Legislators are generally if not all of the Communion of the Church of England So that they who conform to the established Worship and Discipline are to be look'd upon and acknowledged as the great Bulwark of the Protestant Religion in England and the Hedg and Fence of our Civil Liberties and Rights And though it be true that this great Breach made upon our Religion and Laws is fallen out under their hand while the poor Dissenters had neither accession to nor were in a condition to prevent it yet seeing their own Consciences do sufficiently load and charge them for it with Shame and Ignominy it were neither candid nor at this Juncture seasonable to upbraid it to them or improve it to their Dishonour and Reproach For as they have tamely look'd on and connived till our Religion and Liberties are so far undermined and supplanted so it is they alone who have been in a condition of stemming the Inundation of Idolatry and Tyranny with which we were threatned and of repairing our Breaches and reducing the Prerogative to its old Channel and making Popery sneak and retreat into its holes and corners again And should the Church of England have been overthrown and devoured what an easie Prey would the rest have been to the Romish Cormorants And could the King under the Conduct of the Jesuits and with the assistance of his Myrmidons have dissolved the established Worship and Discipline they of the Separation would have been in no capacity to support the Reformed Religion nor able to escape the common Ruine and Persecution 'T is therefore the Interest as well as the Duty of the Dissenters to help maintain and defend those Walls within the skreen and shelter whereof their own Huts and Cottages are built and stand And the rather seeing the Conformists are at last though to their own Religion's and the Nation 's Expence become so far enlightned as to see a necessity of growing more amicable towards them and to enlarge the Terms of their Communion grant an Indulgence to all Protestants that differ from them And as we ought to admire the Wisdom of God in those Providences by which Protestants are taught to lay aside their Animosities and to let fall their Persecutions of one another so it would be a Contradiction both to the Principles and repeated Protestations of Dissenters to aim at more than such a Liberty as is consistent with a National Ecclesiastick Establishment Yea it were to proclaim themselves both Villains and Hypocrites not to allow their Fellow-Protestants the Exercise of their Judgments with what further Profits and Emoluments the Law will grant them provided themselves may be discharged from all obnoxiousness to Penalties and Censures upon the account of their Consciences and be admitted a free and publick Practice of their own respective Modes of Discipline and be suffered to worship God in those ways which they think he hath required and enjoyned them And were England immediately to be rendred so happy as to have a Protestant Prince or Princess as we are not now quite out of hopes ascend the Throne and to enjoy a Parliament duly chosen and acting with freedom no one Party of the Reformed Religion among us must ever expect to be established and supported to the denial of Liberty to others much less to be by Law empowered to ruine and destroy them Should it please Almighty God to bring the Princess of Orange to the Crown though the Church of England may in that case justly expect the being preserved and upheld as the National Establishment yet all other Protestants may very rationally promise themselves an Indulgence and that not only from the Mildness and compassionate Sweetness of her Temper but from the Influence which the Prince her Husband will have upon her who as he is descended from Ancestors whose Glory it was to be the Redeemers of their Country from Papal Persecution and Spanish Tyranny so his Education Generosity Wisdom and many Heroick Vertues dispose him to embrace all Protestants with an equal Tenderness and to erect his Interest upon the being Head and Patron of all that profess the Reformed Religion Had the late Duke of Monmouth been victorious against the Forces of the present King and inabled to have wrested the Scepter out of his Hand though all Protestants might thereupon have expected and would certainly have enjoyed an equal freedom without the liableness of any Party to Penal Laws for matters of Religion yet he would have been careful and I have reason to believe that it was his purpose to have had the Church of England preserved and maintained and that she should have suffered no alteration but what would have been to her
can suspend the Laws against Popery he may also suspend those for Protestancy And by the same Power that he can in defiance of Law indulge the Papists the Exercise of their Religion in Houses he may establish them in the publick Celebration of their Idolatry in Churches and Cathedrals Yea whereas the Laws that relate to Religion are enacted by no less Authority than those that are made for the Preservation of our Civil Rights should the King be admitted to have an Arbitrary Power over the one it is very like that by the Logick of White-hall he might have challeng'd the same Absoluteness over the other Nor do I doubt but that the eleven Judges who gratified him with a Despoticalness over the former would when required grant him the same over the latter I know the Dissenters have been under no small Temptations both by reason of being hindred from enjoying the Ordinances of the Gospel and because of many grievous Calamities which they suffer for their Nonconformity of making Applications to the King for some Relief by his suspending the Execution of the Laws but they must give me leave to add that they ought not for the obtaining of a little Ease to have betrayed the Kingdom and sacrifice the legal Constitution of the Government to the Lust and Pleasure of a Popish Prince whom nothing less would serve than being Absolute and Despotical And had he once been in the quiet Possession of an Authority to dispense with the Penal Laws the Dissenters would not long have enjoyed the benefit of it Nor could they have denied him a Power of reviving the Execution of the Law which is part of the Trust deposited with him as Supream Magistrate who have granted him a Power of suspending the Laws which the Rules of the Government precluded him from And as he might whensoever he pleased cause the Laws to which they were obnoxious to be executed upon them so by virtue of having an Authority acknowledged in him of superceding the Laws he might deprive them of the liberty of meeting together to the number of five a Grace which the Parliament thought fit to allow them under all the other Severities to which they were subjected Nor needs there any further Evidence that the Princes challenging such a Power was an Usurpation and that the Subjects making any Application by which it seem'd allowed to him was a betraying of the ancient legal Government of the Kingdom whereas the most obsequious and servile Parliament to the Court that ever England knew not only deny'd this Prerogative to the late King Charles but made him renounce it by revoking his Declaration of Indulgence which he had emitted Anno 1672. And as it will be to the perpetual Honour of some of the Dissenters to have chosen rather to suffer the Severities which the Laws make them liable unto than by any Act and Transaction of theirs to undermine and weaken either the Church or the State so it will be a means both of endearing them we hope not only to the Prince of Orange now by a miraculous Providence brought in amongst us but to future Parliaments and of bringing them and the Conformists into an union of Counsels and Endeavours against Popery and Tyranny for ever which is at this season a thing so indispensably necessary for their common preservation Especially when though a new and more threatning Alliance and Confederacy with France than that in 72 the King had not only engaged to act by and observe the same Measures towards Protestants in England which that Monarch hath vouchsafed the World a Pattern and Copy of in his carriage towards those of the Reformed Religion in France but had promised to disturb the Peace and Repose of his Neighbours and to commence a War in conjunction with that Prince against Foreign Protestants For as the King 's giving Liberty and Protection to the Algerines to frequent his Havens and sell the Prizes which they take from the Dutch is both a most infamous Action for a Prince pretending to be a Christian and a direct violation of his Alliance with the States General so nothing can be more evident than that he thereby sought to render them the weaker for him to assault and that he was resolved if some unforeseen and extraordinary Providence had not interposed and prevented to declare War against them the next Summer in order whereunto great Remises of Mony were already ordered him from the French Court. So that the Indulgence which he pretends to be inclinable to afford the Dissenters was not an effect of Kindness and Good-will but an Artifice whereby to oblige their Assistance in destroying those Abroad of the same Religion with themselves Which if he could once compass it were easy to foresee what Fate both the Dissenters and they of the Communion of the Church of England were to expect Who as they would not then have known whither to retreat for shelter so they would have been destitute of Comfort in themselves and deprived of Pity from others not only for having through their Divisions made themselves a Prey to the Papists at Home but for having been accessary to the Ruin of the Reformed State Abroad and which was the Asilum and Sanctuary of all those that were elsewhere oppressed and persecuted for Religion Gloria Deo Optimo Maximo Honos Principi nostri celcissimo pientissimo A Specimen of a Bill For UNITING PROTESTANTS BEING A rough Draught of such Terms as seem equal For the Conformist to grant and the Non-conformist to yield to for Peace sake Provided a good while and Published on purpose only for the farther better and more easy Consideration of the Parliament WHereas there are many Jealousies risen about Popery which makes it even necessary to the peace of the Nation that the Protestant Interest be united and strengthened by all Good and Lawful Means And to this end there being this one proper Expedient to wit The removing the Occasion of Divisions which several persons do find to themselves in those late Injunctions which yet were intended to the same purpose of Concord in the Nation Be it Enacted That an Explanation of these Impositions and such Allevations be allowed to the tenderly Considerate and peaceably Scrupulous as follow In the Act of Vniformity By the Declaration of Assent and Consent to all things and every Thing contained in and prescribed by the two Books of Common-Prayer and of Ordering Priests and Deacons we understand These Materials were provided during the Sitting of that Parliament which passed the Act of Uniformity and other the like Rigorous Acts and are therefore drawn up in the form of an Explanatory Bill because it was supposed they were not like to Repeal their own Acts though they might be got to Interpret them But now we have a New Parliament and that after another also Dissolved we may expect quicker Work Yet will the Proposing these Things still to view have their use both for suppressing
Meritorious from the end which they are calculated for and levelled at And for his dear Brother and renowned Successor who possessed the Throne after him I suppose his most partial Admirers who took him for a Prince not only merciful in his Temper and imbued with all gracious Inclinations to our Laws and the Rights of the Subject but for one Orthodox in his Religion and who would prove a zealous Defender of the Doctrine Worship and Discipline of the Church established by Law are before this time both undeceived and filled with Resentments for his having abused their Credulity deceived their Expectations and reproched all their gloryings and boastings of him For as it would have been the greatest Affront they could have put upon the King to question his being of the Roman Communion or to detract from his Zeal for the introduction of Popery notwithstanding his own antecedent Protestations as well as the many Statutes in force for the preservation of the Reformed Religion so I must take the liberty to tell them that his Apostacy is not of so late a Date as the World is made commonly to believe For though it was many Years concealed and the contrary pretended and dissembled yet it is most certain that he abjured the Protestant Religion soon after the Exilement of the Royal Family and was reconciled to the Romish Church at St. Germains in France Nor were several of the then suffering Bishops and Clergy ignorant of this though they had neither the Integrity nor Courage to give the Nation and Church warning of it And within these five Years there was in the custody of a very worthy and honest Gentleman a Letter written to the late Bishop of D. by a Doctor of Divinity then attending upon the Royal Brothers wherein the Apostacy of the then Duke of York to the Sea of Rome is particularly related and an Account given how much the Dutchess of Tremoville who without being her self observed had heard the Queen Mother glorying of it â—â—â—alled it as a dishonour to the Royal Family and as that which night prove of pernicious Consequence to the Protestant Interest But though the old Queen privately rejoiced and triumphed in it yet she knew too well what disadvantage it might be both to her Son and to the Papal Cause in Great Britain to have it at that Season communicated and divulged Thereupon it remained a Secret for many Years and by virtue of a Dispensation he sometimes joined in all Ordinances with those of the Protestant Communion But for all the Art Hypocrisy of and Sacrilege by which it was endeavoured to be concealed it might have been easily discerned as manifesting it self in the whole Course of his Actions And at last his own Zeal the Importunity of the Priests and the Cunning of the late King prevailing over Reasons of State he withdrew from all Acts of Fellowship with the Church of England But neither that nor his refusing the Test enjoined by Law for distinguishing Papists from Protestants though thereupon he was forced both to resign his Office of Lord High Admiral c. nor his declining the Oath which the Laws of Scotland for the securing a Protestant Governour enjoin to be taken by the High Commissioner nor yet so many Parliaments having endeavoured to get him excluded from Succession to the Crown upon the account of having revolted to the Sea of Rome and thereby become dangerous to the established Religion could make impression upon a wilfully deluded and obstinate sort of Protestants but in defiance of all means of Conviction they would perswade themselves that he was still a Zealot for our Religion and a grand Patriot of the Church of England Nor could any thing undeceive them till upon his Brother's Death he had openly declared himself a Roman Catholick and afterwards in the fumes and raptures of his Victory over the late Duke of Monmouth had discovered and proclaimed his Intentions of overthrowing both our Religion and Laws Yea so closely had some sealed up their Eyes against all beams of Light and hardned themselves against all Evidences from Reason and Fact that had it pleased the Almighty God to have prospered the Duke of Monmouth's Arms in the Summer 85. the present King would have gone off the State with the Reputation among them of a Prince tender of the Laws of the Kingdom and who notwithstanding his own being a Papist would have preserved the Reformed Religion and have maintained the Church of England in all her Grandure and Rights And tho his whole Life had been but one continued Conspiracy against our Civil Liberties and Priviledges he had left the Throne with the Character and under the Esteem of a Gentleman that in the whole couse of his Government would have regulated himself by the Rules of the Constitution and the Statutes of the Realm Now among all the Methods fallen upon by the Royal Brothers for the undermining and subverting our Religion and Laws there is none that they have pursued with more Ardor and wherein they have been more successful to the compassing of their Designs than in their dividing Protestants and alienating their Affections and embittering their Minds from and against one another And had not this lain under their prospect and the means of effecting it appeared easie they might have been Papists themselves while in the mean time they had been dispensed with to protest and swear their being of the Reformed Religion and they might have envied our Liberties and bewailed their Restriction from Arbitrary and Despotical Power but they never durst have entertained a Thought of subverting the Established Religion or of altering the Civil Government nor would they ever have had the boldness to have attempted the introducing and erecting Popery and Tyranny in their room And whosoever should have put them upon reducing the Nation to the Church of Rome or upon rendring the Monarchy unlimited and independent on the Law would have been thought to have laid a Snare for exposing the Papists to greater Severities than they were obnoxious unto before and to have projected the robbing the Crown of the Prerogatives which belong unto it by the Rules of the Constitution and to which it was so lately restored And the despair of succeeding would have rendred the Royal Brothers deaf to all Importunities from Romish Emissaries and Court Minions Neither the Promises and Oaths which they had made and taken beyond Sea to introduce Popery nor their Ambition to advance themselves beyond the restraint of Laws and the Controul of Parliaments would have prevailed upon them to have encountred the Hazards and Difficulties which in case of the Union of English Protestants must have attended and ensued upon Attempts and Endeavours of the one kind and of the other Or should their beloved Popery and their own Bigottedness in the Romish Superstition have so far transported them beyond the bounds of Wisdom and Discretion as to have appeared possessed with an Intention of subverting the Protestant
more easy a Prey to the Papists but afford them an advantage through our Scuffles of undermining our Religion with the less notice and observation How such Persons came to be chosen and to constitute the majority of the House of Commons who by their Actings have made themselves infamous and execrable to all Ages were a Matter too large to penetrate at present into the Reasons of but that which my Theme conducts me to observe is That as they sacrificed the Treasure of the Nation to the Profuseness and Prodigality of the Prince and our Rights and Liberties to his Ambition and Arbitrary Will so they both introduced and established those Things which have been a means of dividing us and by many severe and repeated Laws they subjected a great number of industrious English-men and true Protestants to Excommunications Imprisonments rigorous and multiplied Fines and all this for Matters only relating to their Consciences and for their Obedience to God in the Ordinances of his Worship and House And notwithstanding the late King 's often pretended companion to the Dissenters it will be hard to discern them unless in Effects which proceed from very different and opposite Principles The distance which he kept them from his Person and Favour the influencing these Members of both Houses that depended upon him to be the Authors and Promoters of Severities against them the enjoining so often the Judges and Justices of Peace to execute the Laws upon them in their utmost rigour the instigating the Bishops and Ecclesiastical Courts if at any time they relented in their Prosecutions to pursue them with fresh Citations and Censures the arraigning them not only upon the Statutes made intentionally against Dissenters but upon those that were originally and solely enacted against the Papists these and other Procedures of that Nature are the only Proofs and Evidences which I can find of the late King's Bowels Pity and Tenderness to them And whereas the weak Church-men were imposed upon to believe that all the Severity against the Nonconformists was the Fruit of his Zeal for the Protestant Religion and for the security of the Worship und Discipline established by Law they might have easily discovered if Passion Prejudice Wealth and Honour had not blinded them that all this was calculated for Ends perfectly destructive to the Church and inconsistent with the Safety and Happiness of all Protestants For as his seeking oftner than once to have wriggled himself into a Power of superceding and dispensing with those Laws and suspending their Execution plainly shews that he never intended the support and preservation of the Church by them so his non-execution of the Laws against Papists his conniving at their encrease his perswading those nearest unto him to reconcile themselves to the Sea of Rome as he did among others the late Duke of Monmouth his countenancing the Roman Catholicks in their open and intolerable Insolencies and his advancing them to the most gainful and important Places and Trusts sufficiently declare that he never had any love to Protestants or care of the Reformed Religion but that all his Designs were of a contrary Tendency and his fairest Pretences for the Protection and Grandure of the Church of England adapted to other Ends. Thus the Royal Brothers having obtained such Laws to be enacted whereby one Party of Protestants was armed with means of oppressing and persecuting all others neither the necessity of their Affairs at any time since nor the Application and Interposure of several Parliaments for removing the Grounds of our Differences and Animosities by an Indulgence to be past into a Law could prevail either upon his late Majesty or the present King to forgo the Advantage they had gotten of keeping us in mutual Enmity and thereby of ministring to their projection of supplanting our Religion and re-establishing the Faith and Worship of the Church of Rome Hereupon the last King not only refused to consent to such Bills as divers late Parliaments had prepared for indulging Dissenters and for bringing them into an union of Counsels and conjunction of Interest with those of the Church of England for resisting the Conspiracies of the Papists against our legal Government and established Religion but he rejected an Address for suspending the Execution of the Penal Laws against Dissenters which was offered and presented unto him by that very Parliament which had framed and enacted those cruel and hard Laws And as the Royal Brothers have made it their constant Business to cherish a Division and Rancour among Protestants and to provoke one Party to persecute and ruin another so nothing could more naturally fall in with the Design of Arbitrariness or be more subservient to the betraying the Nation to Papal Idolatry and Jurisdiction For several Penal Laws against a considerable Body of People do either expose them against whom they are enacted to be destroyed by the Prince with whom the executive Power of the Law is trusted and deposited or they prove a Temptation to such as are obnoxious of resigning themselves in such a manner to the Will and Pleasure of the Monarch for the obtaining his connivancy at their violation of the Laws as is unsafe and dangerous for the common Liberty and Good of the Kingdom For in case the Supreme Magistrate pursue an Interest distinct from and destructive to that of his People they who the Law hath made liable to be oppressed are brought under Inducements of becoming so many Partisans for abetting him in his Designs in hopes of being thereupon protected from the Penal Statutes the execution whereof is committed to him And as it is not agreeable to the Wisdom and Prudence which ought to be among Men nor to the Mercy and Compassion which should be among Christians for one Party to surrender another into the Hands and Power of the Sovereign to be impoverished and ruined by him at his pleasure especially when those whom they give up to be thus treated and entertained are at agreement with them in all the Essentials of Religion equally zealous as themselves for the Liberties of their Country and who for Sobriety in their Lives Industry in their Callings and Usefulness in the Common-Wealth are inferior to none of their Fellow-Subjects So it is obvious to any who give themselves leave to think that the King would long ere this have been stated in the Absoluteness that is aspired after and both Church and State reduced to lie at the discretion of the Monarch provided the Nonconformists for procuring his Favour in non-execution of the Laws had suffered themselves to be prevailed upon and drawn over to stand by and assist him in his Popish and Despotical Designs But that honest People though hated and maligned by their Brethren rather than be found aiding the King in his Usurpations over the Kingdom have chosen to undergo the utmost Calamities they could be made subject unto either through the Execution of those Laws which had been made against them or through our
Princes and their Ministers wrecking their Malice upon them in Arbitrary and Illegal Methods But what the Royal Brothers could not work the afflicted and persecuted Side unto they found the Art to engage the other Side in tho not only excepted from all Obnoxiousness to those Laws but strengthened and supported by them For as soon as the Court begun to despair of prevailing upon Dissenters to become â—heir Tools and Instruments of enslaving the Nation and of exalting the Monarchy to a despotical Absoluteness they applied to the Bigots of the Church of England whom by gratifying with a vigorous Execution of the Laws upon Dissenters they brought to abet applaud and justify them in all those Counsels and Ways which have reduced us into that miserable condition wherein we not long since were The Clergy being advanced to Grandure and Opulency things which many of them are fonder of and loather to forgo than Religion and the Rights of the Nation the Court made it their business to possess them with a Belief that unless the Fanaticks were suppressed and ruined they could not enjoy with Security their Dignities and Wealth Whereupon not only the lesser Levites but the Superior Clergy having their Lesson and Cue given them from White-hall and St. James's fell upon pursuing the Nonconformists with Ecclesiastical Punishments and upon exciting and animating the Civil Officers against them And under pretence of preserving and defending the Church they gave themselves over to an implicit serving of the Court and became not only Advocates but Instruments for the robbing of Corporations of their Charters for imposing Sheriffs upon the City of London who had not been legally elected and of fining and punishing Men arbitrarily for no Crime save the having asserted their own and the Nations Rights in modest and lawful ways Posterity will hardly believe that so many of the Prelatical Clergy and so great a number of Members of the Church of England should from an Enmity unto and pretended Jealousie of the Dissenters have become Tools under the late King for justifying the Dissolution of so many Parliaments the Invasion made upon their Priviledges the ridiculing and stifling of the Popish Plot the shamming of forged Conspiracies upon Protestants the condemning several to Death for High-Treason who could be rendred guilty by the Trangression of no known Law and finally for advancing a Gentleman to the Throne who had been engaged in a Conjuration against Religion and the Legal Government and whom three several Parliaments would have therefore excluded from the Right of Succession And being seduced into an espousal of the Interests of the Court against Religion Parliaments and the Nation it is doleful to consider what Doctrines both from Pulpit and Press were thereupon brought forth and divulged Such as Monarchy's being a Government by Divine Right that it is in the Prince's Power to rule as he pleaseth that it is a Grace and Condescention in the King to give an account of what he does that for Parliaments to direct or regulate the Succession borders upon Treason and is an Offence against the Law of Nature and that the only thing left to Subjects in case the King will tyrannize over their Consciences Persons and Estates is tamely to suffer and as some of them did absurdly express it to exercise Passive Obedience So that by corrupting the Minds and Consciences of Men with those pestilent and slavish Notions they betrayed the Nation both to the Mischiefs which have already overtaken us and to what further we were threatned with Nor did these Doctrines tend meerly to the fettering and enfeebling the Spirits of Men but they were a Temptation to the Royal Brothers to put in Execution what they had been so long contriving and travelling with and were a kind of reprimanding them for being ignorant of their own Right and Power and for not exerting it with that Vigor and Expedition which they might I do acknowledg that there were many both of the Sacred Order and of the Laick Communion of the Church of England who were far from being infected with those brutish Sentiments and Opinions and who were as zealous as any for having the Monarchy kept within its ancient limits Parliaments maintained in their wonted Reverence and Authority the Subjects preserved in the enjoyment of their immemorial Priviledges and who were far from sacrificing our Religion and Laws to Popery and Arbitrariness and from lulling us into a Tameness and Lethargy in case the Court should attempt the abolishing the established Doctrine and Worship and the subverting and changing the Civil Government But alas besides their being immediately branded with the Name of Trimmer and conformable Fanaticks and registred in the Kalender with those that stood precluded the King's Favour and merited his Animadversion their Modesty was soon drowned and silenced in the loud Noise of their clamorous Brethren and their retiredness from Conversation while the others frequented all places of Society and publick Concourse deprived the Nation of the benefit of their Example and the happiness of their Instructions Nor have I mentioned the Extravagancies of any of the Ecclesiasticks and Members of the Church of England with a design either of reproaching and upbraiding them or of provoking and exasperating the Dissenters to Resentments but only to shew how fatal our Divisions have been unto us what Excesses they have occasioned our being hurried and transported into and what mischievous Improvement our Enemies have made of them to the supplanting and almost subverting of all that is valuable unto us as we are English-men Christians and Protestants And as our Animosities through our Divisions gave the Court an advantage of suborning that Party which they pretended to befriend and uphold into a Ministration to all their Counsels and Projections against our Religion and Laws so by reason of the unnatural Heats wherewith Protestants have been enflamed and enraged against Protestants many weak ungrounded and unstable Souls have been tempted to question the Truth of our Religion and to apostatize to the Church of Rome and thereupon have become united in Inclination Power and endeavours with the Court and our old Enemies the Papists for the extirpation of Protestancy and the alteration of the Government As it hath been matter of Offence and Scandal to all Men so it hath been ground of stumbling and falling unto many to see those who are professedly of the same Religion to be mutually embittered against one another and so far transported with Malice and Rage as to seek and pursue each others Destruction For such a Carriage and Behaviour are so contrary to the Spirit and Principles of Christianity and to the Genius and Temper of true Religion that it is no marvel if Persons ignorant of the Holy Scriptures and strangers to the converting and comforting Vertue of the Doctrine of the Gospel asserted in our Confessions and insisted upon by our Divines should suspect the Orthodoxy of that Religion which is accompanied with so bitter
Fruits even in the Dispensers of the Word as well as in others and betake themselves to the Communion of that Church where how many and important soever their Differences be one with another yet they do not break sorth into those Flames of excommunicating and persecuting each other that ours have done How have some among us through having their Spirits fretted and exasperated by the craft and cunning of our Enemies not only loaded and stigmatized their Brethren and fellow-Protestants with Crimes and Names which were they true and deserved would justly render us a loathing and an Abomination to Mankind but have libelled and branded those whom God had honoured to be Instruments of the Reformation with Appellations and Characters fit to beget a detestation of their Doctrine as well as their Memory The worst that the Papists have forged and vomited out against Luther Zwinglius Calvin c. hath been raked up and repeated to the disparagement of the Reformation and to the scandalizing the Minds of weak Men against it And as the Jesuits and Priests have improved those Slanders and Calumnies to the Seduction of divers from the Church of England and to a working them over to a Reconciliation with the Church of Rome so the Court hath thereby had an increase of their Faction and Party against our Religion and Liberties and have been inabled to muster Troops of Janisaries for their Despotical and Unlimited Claim Nor have our Divisions with the Heats Animosities Revilings and Persecutions that have ensued thereupon proved only an occasion of the Seduction of several from our Religion and of their Apostacy to Popery but they have been a main spring and source of the Debauchery Irreligion and Atheism which have overspread the Nation and have brought so many both to an indifferency and unconcernedness for the Gospel and all that is vertuous and noble and have disposed them to fall in with those that could countenance and protect them in their Impiety and Prophaneness and feed their Luxury and Pride with Honour and Gain What a woful Scheme of Religion have we afforded the World and how shamefully have we painted forth and represented the holy Doctrine of the blessed Jesus while we have not only lived in a direct opposition to all the Commands of Meekness Love and mutual forbearance which our Religion lays us under the Authority of but have neglected to practise good manners to observe the Rules of Civility to treat one another with common Humanity and to do as we would be done unto While we have been more offended at what seemed to supplant our Dominations and Grandures than at what dishonoured God and reproached the Gospel while we weighed not so much whether they whom we took into our sacred Communion as well as into our personal Friendship were conformable in their Lives to the Scripture as whether they complied with the Canons of the Church while we reprobated all that were not of our way though never so vertuous and devout and sainted all that were though never so wicked and prophane while we branded such for Fanaticks whom we could justly charge with nothing save the not admitting that into Religion which came not from the Divine Author of it and hugged those for good and Orthodox Believers that would sooner consult the Statute-Book for their Practice in the Worship of God than the Bible while we haled those to Prison and spoiled them of their Estates to whom nothing could be objected except their being too precise and consciencious in avoiding that through fear and apprehension of sinning which others had a liberty and latitude to do as judging it lawful and in the mean time esteemed those worthy of the chiefest Trusts in the Church and Common-wealth whose Folly and Villanies made them unfit for Civil Societies while they who lived most agreeably to the Laws of God and the Example of Christ were persecuted as Enemies to Religion and the Pests of the Kingdom and in the interim too many of the very Clergy were not only Countenances of the most profligate Persons as their best Friends but joined and assisted in scandalous Debaucheries under pretence of sustaining the Honour of their Tribe and doing Service to the Church I say while these were the unhappy but too obvious Fruits of our Divisions and of the bitter Heats that accompanied them how was the Reverence for the Sacred Order lessened and diminished the Veneration for Religion weakned and lost the Shame and Dread of appearing prophane and wicked removed and banished and such who took the measures of Christianity from the Practices of those that were stiled Christians rather than from the immaculate and holy Scriptures tempted to think all Religion a Juggle and Priesthood but an Artifice and Craft to compass Honour and Wealth And though nothing but a shortness of Understanding and an immoderate Love to their Lusts could occasion the drawing such a Conclusion from the foregoing Premises yet I must needs grant that there was too just a ground administred unto them of saying that many did not believe that themselves the Faith whereof they recommended to others But that which I would more particularly observe is that it is from among those who by the foregoing occasions have been tempted to Debauchery and Irreligion that the Romish Emisaries have made the Harvest of Proselytes and Converts to the Church of Rome For as they who fear not God will be easily brought to imitate Ceasar and such who are of no Religion will in subserviency to Secular Ends assume the Mask and Profession of any so Popery is extreamly adapted to the Wishes and Desires of wicked and profane Men in that it provides for their living as enormously as they please here and flatters them with hopes and assurances of Blessedness hereafter They who can be ascertained of going to Heaven upon their confessing their Sins to a Priest and their receiving Absolution the Eucharist and Extream Unction need not look after Repentance towards God Conversion to Holiness nor a Life of Faith Love Mortification and Obedience which the Protestant Religion upon the Authority of the Gospel obligeth them unto in order to the obtaining of Eternal Happiness And as the late Apostates to Popery in England are chiefly such who were notorious for Looseness Prophaneness and Immorality and were the Scandal of our Religion while they professed it and while in our Church were not properly of it so it is from among Men of this stamp and character that their late Majesties have found Persons assisting and subservient to their Despotical and Arbitrary Designs For whosoever takes a Survey of the Court-Faction and considereth who have been the Advocates for Enchroachments upon our Liberties and Abetters of Usurpations over our Rights they will find them to have been principally the profligate and debauched among the Nobility and Gentry the mercinary ignorant and scandalous among the Clergy the Off-scouring and such as are an Ignominy to Human Nature among the
Yeomanry and Peasants And it was in order to this villanous End that the Royal Brothers have endeavoured so industriously to debauch the Nation and have made Sensuality and Profaneness the Qualifications for Preferment and the Badges of Loyalty And if among those that appear for the Preservation of the Liberties of their Country there be any that deserve to be stiled Enemies to Religion and Vertue as I dare affirm that they owe their Immoralities to Court-Education Converse and Example so I hope that though they have not hitherto been all of them so happy as to have left their Vices where they learned them yet that they will not continue to disparage the good Cause which they have espoused with an unsutable Life nor give their Adversarie reason to say that while they pretend to seek the Reformation of the State they are both the Deriders of Sobriety and Vertue without which no Constitution can long subsist and guilty of such horrid Oaths Cursing Imprecations Blasphemies and Uncleannesses which naturally as well as morally and meritoriously dispose Nations to Subversion and Extirpation Finally Being through the bitter Effects which have ensued upon our Divisions made apprehensive and jealous one of another it hath from thence come to pass that while the Care of the Conformists hath been to watch against the growth of the Dissenters and the sollicitude of the Nonconformists hath been how to prevent the Rage of the biggotted Church-men the Papists in the mean time without being heeded or observed have both incredibly multiplied and made considerable Advances in their designs of ruining us For whensoever the Court was to take a signal step towards Popery and Arbitrary Power there was a clamour raised of some menacing Boldness of the Dissenters And if the Nation grew at any time allarmed by reason of the Favour shewn to the Roman Catholicks and of some visible Progress made towards the King's becoming Despotical all was immediately hush'd with a shout and cry of the Government and Church's being in imminent hazard from the Dissenters Yea whensoever the Papists and their Royal Patrons stood detected of having been conspiring against our Religion and Civil Liberties all was diâ—erted and stisled by putting the Kingdom upon a false Scent and by hounding out their Beagles upon the Nonconformists So that the Eyes and Minds of Protestants being imployed in reference to what was to be apprehended and feared from one another the working of our Popish Enemies either escaped our Observation or were heeded by most only with a superficial and unaffective Glance And while our Church-men stood prepossessed by the Court with a dread and jealousy of the Dissenters all that was said and written of a Conspiracy carried on by the Papists against our Laws and Religion was entertained and represented by the prejudiced Clergy as an Artifice only of the Dissenters for compassing an Indulgence from the Parliament which in case such a Plot had obtained the belief that a Matter of so great Danger and Consequence required would have been easily granted being the only rational Expedient for the preservation of the established Religion and the legal Government Nor did our Enemies question but that having enflamed our Divisions and raised our Animosities to so great a height rather than the one Party would lay aside their Severities and the other let fall their Resentments we would even be contented to lie at their Mercy and submit our selves to the Pleasure and Discretion of the Court and Papists And there have not wanted some peevish foolish and ill Men of both Parties who rather than sacrifice their Spleen and Passion and abandon their particular Quarrels for the Interest and Safety of the whole have been inclined to expose the Protestant Religion and English Liberties to the Hazards wherewith they were apparently threatned and to suffer all Extremities meerly to have the satisfaction of seeing those whom they respectively hate involved with them under the same Miseries But as this was such a degree of Madness and Infatuation as could proceed from nothing but brutish Rage and argues no less than a Divine Nemesis so I hope they are but few that now stand infected with these passionate Sentiments and Inclinations and remain thus hardned in their mutual Prejudices And to those I have nothing to say nor the least Advice to administer but shall leave them to their own Follies as Persons to whose Conviction no Discourse though never so rational can be adapted and whom only Stripes can work upon 'T is to such therefore as are capable of hearkning to Reason and who are ready to embrace any Counsel that shall be found adjusted to the Common Interest that I am to address what remains to be represented and said in the following Leaves For all Parties of Protestants having seen how far our Enemies have improved our Divisions and Rancours to the compassing their wicked and ambitious Designs and the robbing us of all that good and generous Men account valuable they are at last convinced of the necessity we have been and are reduced unto of altering the measures of our acting towards one another and both of laying aside our Persecutions and of exchanging our Wranglings among our selves into a joint contending for the Faith of the Gospel and the Rights of the Nation For what the Gentleman so lately in the Throne intends and aims at is not any longer matter of meer Suspicion and Jealousy but of demonstrable Evidence and unquestionable Certainty His Mask and Vizor of Zeal for the preservation of the Church of England and of tender regard for the Laws of the Land were laid by and put off and his Resolutions of governing Arbitrarily and of introducing Popery were become obvious to all Men whom Reason and Sense have not forsaken and left The Papists whom it was thought much a while ago to see connived at in the exercise of their Worship in private Houses are allowed now to practise their Idolatry openly in our chief Towns and in the Metropolitan City of the Kingdom to usurp the publick Churches and Cathedrals Those Catholick Gentlemen whom heretofore it was matter of surprise to see countenanced with the private Favour of the Prince are now advanced to the supream Commands in the Army and the principal Trust in Civil Affairs The Recusant Lords whose enlargement out of the Tower we could not but look upon as an unpresidented Violation both of the Laws of the Land and of the Rights and Jurisdiction of Parliament being committed thither by the Authority of the House of Lords upon a Charge and Impeachment of High Treason by the Commons of England in Parliament assembled were now honoured to be Members of the Privy Council and exalted to be chief Ministers of State. They whom the Statutes of the Realm make subject to the severest Penalties for Apostacy to Rome are not only protected from the edg of the Laws but maintained in Parochial Incumbencies and Headships of Colledges Our Orthodox Clergy are
not only inhibited to preach against Popery but are illegally Reprimanded Silenced and Suspended for discharging that Duty which their Consciences Offices Oaths and the Laws of the Kingdom oblige them unto And such whom neither the Ecclesiastical nor Westminster Courts can arraign and proceed against we had a new Court of Inquisition erected for the adjudging and punishing of them So that it is not the Dissenters who are the only Persons to be struck at and ruined but the Conformists are to be treated after the same manner and to share in the common Lot whereunto all honest and sincere Protestants are destined and designed Even they who were the Darlings of Whitehall and St. Jameses and recompensed with Honours and Titles for betraying the Rights and Priviledges of Corporations persecuting Dissenters and heading Addresses wherein Parliaments were reproached the Course of Justice against Popish Offenders was slandered the illegal and arbitrary procedures of the Court applauded and justified and all that were zealous for our Laws and Liberties stigmatized with the Names of Villains and Traitors are now themselves for but discouraging Popish Assemblies and attempting to put the Laws in execution against Priests who had publickly celebrated Mass not only check'd and rebuked but punished with Seisure and Imprisonment Nor are our Religion and Civil Liberties meerly supplanted and undermined by illegal Tricks glossed over with the Varnish of judicial Forms but they are assaulted and battered in the face of the Sun without so much as a palliation to give their procedures a plausible figure And the King being brought to a despair of managing the Parliament to his barefaced Purposes of Popery and Arbitrariness and of prevailing with them to establish Tyranny and Idolatry by Law notwithstanding their having been as industriously pack'd and chosen to answer such a Design as Art Bribery and Authority could reach and notwithstanding their having been obsequious in their first Session to an excess that has proved unsafe to themselves the Nation he became resolved not to allow them to meet any more but to set up a-la-mode de France and to have his personal Commands seconded with the Assent of his durarte-beneplacito Judges to be acknowledged and obeyed for Laws So that they who were formerly seduced into a good Opinion of him are not only undeceived but provoked to warm Resentments for having had their credulity and easiness of belief so grosly abused And as the converting so a vast a number of well-meaning but wofully deluded People who had suffered themselves to de hood-wink'd and fatally hurried to betray their Religion Country and Posterity to the Ambition and Popish Bigottry of the Court was a design becoming the Compassion Mercy and Wisdom of God so the Method's and Means whereby they are come to be enlightned and proselyted are a signal vindication of the Sapience and Righteousness of God in all those tremendous steps of his Providence by which our Enemies have been emboldned to detect and discover themselves For though their continuing so long to have a good opinion of the present King and their abetting him so far in the undermining our Religion and invading our Liberties may seem to have proceeded not so much from their Ignorance as from their Obstinacy and Malice yet God who penetrates into the Hearts of Men may have discovered some degrees of sincerity in their Pretentious and Carriages though accompanied with a great deal of folly and unmanliness Nor are the Lord's ways like to ours to give Persons over as unteachable and irreclaimable upon their withstanding every measure of Light and the resisting even those Means which were sufficient and proper for their Conviction but he will try them by now and extraordinary Methods and see whether Feeling and doleful Experience may not convert those upon whom Arguments and moral Evidence could make no impressions And there being among those formerly misled and deluded Protestants many who retained a Love for their Country a Care for their Posterity and a Zeal for the Gospel and Reformed Religion even when their Actions imported the contrary and seem'd to betray them the singling and weeding out such from among the Court-Faction and Party is a compensation both for the defeatment of all endeavours for the prevention of the Evils that have overtaken us and for the Distresses and Calamities under which we do at present lie and groan And if there be joy in Heaven upon the conversion of a Sinner with what thankfulness to God and joy in themselves should they who have so many Years wrestled against the encroachments of Popery and Arbitrariness and who have deeply suffered in their Names Persons and Estates upon that account welcome and embrace their once erring and misled but now enlightned reclaimed and converted Brethren And instead of remembring or upbraiding them with the opposition and rancour which they expressed against our Persons Principles and Ways let there be no Language heard from us but what may declare the joy we have in our selves for their conversion and the entire trust and confidence which we put in them The first Duty incumbent therefore upon Dissenters towards those of the Church of England is to believe that notwithstanding there have been many of them so long Advocates and Partisans for the Court through ignorance of what was aimed at and intended they are nevertheless as really concerned as any others and as truly zealous for the preservation of the Protestant Religion and for maintaining the legal Rights and Liberties of the Subject and when occasion shall offer will approve themselves accordingly 'T is a ridiculous as well as a mischievous Fancy for one Party to confine all Religion only to themselves or to circumscribe all the ancient English Ardor for the common Rights of the Nation to such as are of their particular Fellowship and Perswasion there being sincere Christians and true Englishmen among those of all Judgments and Societies of Protestants and among none more than those of the Communion of the Church of England It were the height of Wickedness as well as the most prodigious Folly to imagine that the Conformists have abandoned all Fidelity to God and cast off all Care of themselves and their Country upon a mistaken Judgment of being Loyal and Obedient to the King. The contrary is plain enough they knew as well as any that the giving to Cesar the Things that are Cesar's lay them under no Obligation of surrendring unto him the Things that are God's nor of sacrificing unto the Will of the Sovereign the Priviledges reserved unto the People by the Fundamental Rules of the Constitution and by the Statutes of the Realm And they understand as well as others that the Laws of the Land are the only Measures of the Prince's Authority and of the Subjects Fealty and where they give him no Right to Command they lay them under no tie to Obey And though here and there a Dissenter has written against Popery with good Success yet they
have been mostly Conformable Divines who have triumphed over it in elaborate Discourses and who have beaten the Romish Scriblers off the Stage Nor can it be thought that they who have so accurately related and vindicated the History and asserted and defended the Doctrine of the Reformation should either tamely relinquish or be wanting in all due and legal Ways to uphold and maintain it And though some few of the Nonconformists have with sufficient strength and applause used their Pens against Arbitrariness in detecting the Designs of the Royal Brothers yet they who have generally and with greatest Honour appeared for our Laws and Legal Government against the Invasions and Usurpations of the Court have been Theologues and Gentlemen of the Church of England Nor in case of further Attempts for altering the Constitution and enslaving the Nation will they shew themselves unworthy the having descended from Ancestors whose Motto in the high Places of the Field was nolumus Leges Angliae mutari They who have so often justified the Arms of the Vnited Netherlands against their Rightful Princes the Kings of Spain and so unanswerably vindicated their casting off Obedience to those Monarchs when they had invaded their Privileges and attempted to establish the Inquisition over them cannot be ignorant what their own Right and Duty is in behalf of the Protestant Religion and English Liberties for the Security whereof we have not only so many Laws but the Coronation Oaths and Stipulations of our Kings And those Gentlemen of the Church of England who appeared so vigorously in three Parliaments for excluding the Duke of York from the Succession to the Crown by reason of a Jealousy of what through being a Papist he would attempt against our Religion and Priviledges in case he were suffered to ascend the Throne cannot be now to seek what becomes them towards him having seen and felt what before they only apprehended and feared For if the Law that entaileth the Succession upon the next of Kin and obligeth the Subjects to admit and receive him not only may but ought to be dispensed with in case the Heir thrô having imbib'd Principles which threaten the Safety and are inconsistent with the Happiness of the People hath made himself incapable to inherit we know by a short Ratiocination how far we stand bound to a Prince on the Throne who by transgressing against the Laws of the Constitution hath abdicated himself from the Government and stands virtually Deposed For whosoever shall offer to rule Arbitrarily does immediately cease to be King de jure seeing by the Fundamental Common and Statute Laws of the Realm we know none for Supream Magistrate and Governor but a limited Prince and one who stands circumscribed and bounded in his Power and Prerogative And should the Dissenters entertain a belief that the Conformists are less concerned and zealous than themselves for the Protestant Religion and Laws of the Kingdom they would not only sin and offend against the Rules of Charity but against the Measures of Justice and daily Evidences from Matters of Fact. For neither they nor we owe out Conversion to God and our practical Holiness to the Opinions about Discipline Forms of Worship and Ceremonies wherein we differ but the Doctrines of Faith and Christian Obedience wherein we agree 'T is not their being for a Liturgy a Surpliss or a Bishop that hath heretofore influenced them to subserve the Court in Designs tending to Absoluteness but they were seduced unto it upon Motives whereof they are now ashamed and the ridiculousness and folly of which they have at last discover'd Nor is the multitude of profligate and scandalous Persons with which the Church of England is crowded any just impeachment of the Purity of her Doctrine in the Vitals and Essentials of Religion or of the Vertue and Piety of many of her Members For as it is her being the only Society established by Law that attracts those Vermin to her Bosom so it Is her being restrained by Law from debarring them that keeps them there to her reproach and to the grief of many of her Ecclesiasticks Neither is it the fault of the Church of England that the Agents and Factors for Popery and Arbitrary Power have chosen to pass under the Name of her Sons but it proceeds partly from their Malice as hoping by that means to disgrace her with all true English-men as well as with Dissenters and partly from their Craft in order thereby the better to conceal their Design and to shrowd themselves from the Censure and Punishment which had it not been for that Mask they would have been exposed unto and have undergone And I dare affirm that besides the Obligations from Religon which the Conformists are equally under with Dissenters for hindring the introduction of Popery there are several Inducements from interest which sway them to prevent its establishment wherein the Dissenters are but little concerned For though Popery would he alike afflictive to the Consciences of Protestants of all Persuasions yet they are Gentlemen and Ministers of the Church of England whole Livings Revenues and Estates have been threatned in case it had come to be established Nor would the most Loyal and obsequious Levites provided they resolve to continue Protestants be willing that their Personages and Incumbencies to which they have no less Right by Law than the King hath to the Excise and Customs should be taken from them and bestowed upon Romish Priests by an Act of Despotical Power and of unlimited Prerogative And for the Gentlemen as I think few of them would hold themselves obliged to part with their Purses to High-way Padders though such should have a Patent from the King to rob whomsoever they met upon the Road so there will not be many inclined to suffer their Manours and Abbey-Lands to which they have so good a Title to be ravished from them either by Monks or Janizaries though authorised thereunto by the Prince's Commission Even they who had formerly suffered themselves to be seduced to prove in a manner Betrayers of the Rights and Religion of their Country will now being undeceived not only in conjunction with others withstand the Court in its prosecution of Popish and Arbitrary Designs but through a generous exasperation for having been deluded and abused will judg themselves obliged in vindication of their Actings before to appear for the Protestant Religion and the Laws of England with a Zeal equal to that wherewith they contributed to the undermining and supplanting of them For they are not only become more sensible than they were of the Mischiefs of Absolute Government so as for the suture to prize and assert the Priviledges reserved unto the People by the Rules of the Constitution and chalk'd out for them in the Laws of the Land but they have such a fresh view of Popery both in its Heresies Blasphemies Superstitions and Idolatries and in the Treachery Sanguinariness Violence and Cruelty which the Papal Principles mould influence and
Strength and Glory through an enlargement of the Terms of her Communion and what would have been to the Praise of her Moderation and Charity through her being perswaded to bear with such as differ from her in little things and could not prevail with themselves to partake with her in all Ordinances Upon the whole it is both the prudence and safety of Dissenters as they would escape Extirpation themselves and have Religion conveyed down to Posterity to unite their Strength and Endeavours to those of the Church of England for the upholding her against the assaults of Popish Enemies who pursue her Subversion As matters have been circumstanced and stated in England there hath not been an Affront or Injury offered or done unto her by the Court which did not at the same time reach and wound the Dissenters 'T is not her being for Episcopacy Ceremonies and imposed set-Forms of Worship the Things about which she and the Nonconformists differ that she hath been not long since maligned and struck at by the Men in Power and his Popish Juncto but it is for being Protestant Reformed and Orthodox Crimes under the Guilt whereof Dissenters were equally concerned and involved Being therefore in opposition to the common Cause of Religion that the late Court of Inquisition was erected over her Ecclesiasticks all Protestants jointly resented the Wrongs which she sustain'd and not only to sympathize with those dignified and lower Clergy which were called to suffer but to espouse her Quarrel with the same warmth that we would our own And as we are to look upon those of the Episcopal Communion to be the great Bulwark of the Protestant Religion and Reformed Interest in England so it was farther incumbent on Dissenters towards them and a Duty which they owe to God the Nation and themselves not to be accessary to any thing through which the legal Establishment of the Church of England might have been by any Act of pretended Regal Prerogative weakned and supplanted I never counsel the Dissenters to renounce their Principles nor to participate with the Prelatical Church in all Ordinances on the Terms to which they have straitned and narrowed their Communion For while they remain unsatisfied of the lawfulness of those Terms and Conditions they cannot do it without offending God and contracting Guilt upon their Souls nor will they of the Church of England in Charity Justice and Honesty expect it from them For whatsoever any Man believeth to be Sin it is so to him and will by God be imputed as such till he be otherwise enlightned and convinced nor are the Dissenters to be false and cruel to themselves in order to be kind and friendly to them But that which I would advise them unto is that after the maintaining the highest measure of Love to the conformable Congregations as Churches of Christ and the esteeming their Members as Christian Protestant Brethren notwithstanding the several things wherein they judg them to err and to be mistaken that they would not by any Act and Transaction of theirs betray them into a Despotical Power nor directly nor indirectly acknowledg any Authority paramount unto and superceding the Laws by which the Church of England is established in its present Form Order and Mode of Jurisdiction Discipline and External Worship Whatsoever Ease arrived to the Dissenters through the King 's suspending the Execution of the Penal Laws without their Address and Application they might receive it with Joy and Humility in themselves and with Thankfulness to God nor was there hereby any prejudice offered on their part to the Authority of the Law or Offence or Injury given or done to the conformable Clergy Nor is it without grief and regret that the Church-Men have been forced to behold the harassing spoiling and imprisonment of the Nonconformists while in the mean time the Papists were suffered to assemble to the Celebration of their Idolatrous Worship without Censure and Controul And had it been in their power to remedy it and give Relief to their Protestant Brethren they wouâ—d with delight and readiness have embrac'd the occasion and opportunity of doing it But alas instead of having an advantage put into their hand of contributing to the Relief of the Dissenters which I dare say many of them ardently wish and desire they were compelled contrary to their Inclination as well as their Interest to become instrumental in persecuting and oppressing them Nor does the late King covet a better and a more legal advantage against the Conformists than that they would refuse to pursue Dissenters and decline molesting them with Ecclesiastical Censures and civil Punishments So that their conditition was to be pitied and bewailed in that they were hindred from acting against the Papists though both enjoyned by Law and influenced thereunto by Motives of self-Preservation as well as by ties of Conscience while in the mean time they were forced to prosecute their fellow-Protestants or else to be suspended and deposed and put out of their Offices and Employs And tho I believe that they would at last have more Peace in themselves and be better accepted with God in the great Day of their Account should they have refused to disturb and prosecute their Protestant Brethren and soorn to be any longer Court-Tools for weakning and undermining the Reformed Cause and Interest yet I could not but leave them to act in this as they should be perswaded in themselves and as they judged most agreeable to Principles of Wisdom and Conscience In the interim the Dissenters have all the Reason in the World to believe that the Proceedings of the Clergy and Members of the Church of England against them were not the Results of their Election and Choice but the Effects of moral Compulsion and Necessity Nor will any Dissenter that is prudent and discreet blame them for a matter which they cannot help but bear his Misfortune and Lot with Patience in himself and with Compassion and Charity towards them and have his Indignation raised only against that Court which forced them to be instrumental in their Oppression and Trouble The Protestant Dissenters could not be so far void of sense as to think that the Person lately in the Throne bore them any good-Will but his drift was to scrue himself into a Supremacy and Absoluteness over the Law and to get such an Authority confessed to be vested in him as when he pleased he might subvert the Established Religion and set up Popery For the same Power that he can dispense with the Penal Statutes against the Nonconformists he may also dispense with those against the Roman Catholicks And whosoever owneth that he hath a Right to do the first doth in effect own that he hath a Right to do the last For if he be allowed a Power for the superceding some Laws made in reference to Matters of Religion he may challenge the like Power for the superceding others of the same kind And then by the same Authority that he
Eminently fitted for the Work that is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and consequently to the Bishop So that if this Fundamental Right of Governing their own Flocks be but acknowledged to Reside in every Presbyter by granting so much to us as this and what hath preceded comes to we shall be unwilling to fall off from Episcopacy upon the points of Ordination and Jurisdiction for such faults as they think not at all worthy of so great a Censure We declare it but a just Thing that every Minister be first satisfyed in the Cause or else be exempted from the Execution of that Charge and that the Bishop or his Court provide some other person that is satisfyed about it to do it And to the intent that a free search after Truth may not be discouraged in the pursuit of Concord and many other Scruples avoided upon that Account We declare that though an Authentick Interpretation be required as to the Substance of all Laws yet in the Articles of the Church which are Theses for Agreement and not Laws and the Homilies a Doctrinal Interpretation shall be held sufficient for an Assent or Subscription to them The Authentick Interpretation of an Article is the meaning of the Major Part of the Convocation A Doctrinal Interpretation is the meaning of any one of the Doctors there present and consequently of any other Learned Expositor who are supposed to have the Liberty to abound in their own Sense so long as they can agree in the Words of the Article Established And this Clause therefore we put in upon Mature Consideration in regard more especially to the Conscientious Latitudinarians which is a Name abused who being some Arminian and some Calvinian cannot otherwise Subscribe the Doctrine of the same Theses as the Reader may see more in such a sort of Book as this called The Healing Paper out of which this Bill for Union is Collected And because the very Superintendency of Bishops and that Subjection to them which is required by the Constitution of the Realm is or may be an hinderance to many sober Ministers and other Protestants of coming into the Church who are ready to consent to the Doctrine but not to the Discipline or Government of it We do declare That so long as any person or party do acknowledge the King's Supremacy as Head of the Church in this Nation and obey their Ordinary or the Bishops in Licitis Honestis upon the Account of his Authority committed to them for the Exercise of that External Regiment Circa Sacra which is granted by all our Divines That is Although there be some that cannot acknowledge our Diocesan Prelates to be Christs Officers distinct from the Elders in scripture yet so long as they can live Peaceable lives in Obedience to them as Ecclesiastical Magistrates under His Majesty for the keeping the several Congregations in their Precincts to that Gospel Order which themselves allow and for super-vising their Constitutions in Things indifferent that nothing be done but in Subordination to the Peace of the Kingdom which is a Notion wherein the Judicious of every Party may acquiesce and expressed by us in these very Words in a Book forenamed it is sufficient unto National Church-Vnion to the Higher Powers in every Nation it is enough for the owning Episcopal Jurisdiction so far as they do own it in the Declaration of Assent and Consent or in any other part of Conformity and shall serve them to all intents and purposes in Law no less than a professed belief and acknowledgment of the immediate Divine Right of it Be it therefore Enacted by this present Parliament That i◠any Person be willing to Conform to the present Establishment of the Church of England and her Service appointed according to these Explanations Alleviations Declarations Lenitives or Cautions he shall be admitted to any Ecclesiastical Preferment and enjoy the use of his Ministry without any molestation All Statutes Canons or Laws to the contrary notwithstanding And for the making this Act of better Signification to the Concerned and the prevention of that Scandal which is raised on the Clergy through the Covetousness of some in heaping up to themselves all the Preferments they can get when others have scarce Subsistance for their Families and the Souls of many people are thereby neglected Be it farther Enacted That no Clergy-man for the Three next years ensuing We propose these Things we confess as if we were in Republica Platonis but we should be glad to see any Fruits of this kind as those who are in Faece Romuli may expect What is Right and Just and ought to be done is one thing and to be sought though what is like to be done or will be done is another be suffered to Enjoy any more than one Living or Cure of Souls and one Dignity or other Ecclesiastical preferment at one Time and that every Man without Exception that hath more than One of Either shall immediately give up the Rest to be distributed among those who shall be brought off from their Non-conformity upon the Terms of this Act into the Established Order Which that they may also be obtained and possessed with a clean Conscience and that grievous Corruption of Simony may be extripate out of the Land Be it Enacted moreover That every Patron that shall henceforward present his Clerk to any Living shall have the Oath called The Simonical Oath imposed on himself no less than on the Incumbent And if he Refuses to take it that then the Bishop shall have immediate Power taking only the same Oath of Presentation in his Room And forasmuch as there are some Ministers of a good Life that cannot according to their Judgments allow of our Parochial Churches nor a Book of Liturgy But do choose to Worship God and Jesus Christ in the way of their gathered or separate Congregations and crave the Protection and Clemency of the King upon their Allegiance as other Subjects Be it finally Enacted for the happiness and quiet of the Realm and the Reduction of these Men by other means than those which have hitherto proved unsuccessful That every Christian Subject throughout the Land that profess the Reformed Religion and be not convict of Popery be pardoned all Faults and Penalties incurred upon the account of any Fore-passed Non-conformity and that they shall not during these Seven Years next ensuing be prosecuted upon any Penal Law for their Consciences in the matter of Religion They carrying themselves innocently and peaceably with submission to the Civil and without disturbance to the Ecclesiastical Government now setled in the Nation All Statutes to the contrary notwithstanding There are two Parts of this Bill One for Concord or Coalition with all such as can joyn in Parochial Communion in the Clauses before The other for Forbearance of those that cannot in this last Clause For what shall we do with such We must not knock them on the Head They must therefore have time If the Parliament will begin with the last first that is a Suspension of the Penal Statutes and then let us treat for a Composition after we consent with all ou◠Hearts and like the Method best Then Abner called unto Joab and said Shall the Swor◠devour for ever Knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the end How long shall it be ere thou bid the People return from following of their Brethren * Vntil by a further Act of Parliament or a Convocation those that are fit to be Tolerated and the Intolerable be-distinguished In Short A Repeal of our Laws about Conformity unto the 13th of Elizabeth Or a New Act of Vniformity Or The Kings Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs at His first coming in turned into a Law were Comprehension His latter Declaration to all his Loving Subjects some few things in both yet a little considered made so were Indulgence A Bill for Comprehension with Indulgence both together will do our business An Addition or Clause in it against Pluralities will do it with Supererrogation Deo Gloria