believed him likewise and so thought that the Exclusion of him from the Crown was a degree of rigour to which they in Conscience could not consent upon which they were generally cried out on as the Betrayers of the Nation and of the Protestant Religion Those who demanded the Exclusion and some other securities to which the Bishops would not consent in Parliament looked on them as the chief hindrance that was in their way and the Licence of the Press at that time was such that many Libels and some severe Discourses were published against them Nor can it be denied that many Churchmen who understood not the Principles of Humane Society and the rules of our Government so well as other points of Divinity writ several Treatises concerning the measures of submission that were then as much censured as their performances since against Popery have been deservedly admired All this gave such a Jealousy of them to the Nation that it must be confessed that the spirit which was then in fermentation when very high against the Church of England as a Confederate at least to Popery and Tyranny Nor were several of the Nonconformists wanting to Inflame this dislike all secret Propositions for accommodating our differences were so coldly entertained that they were scarce hearkned to The Propositions which an Eminent Divine made even in his books writ against Seperation shewed that while we maintained the War in the way of dispute yet we were still willing to treat for that Great man made not those advances towards them without consulting with his Superiours Yet we were then fatally given up to a spirit of Dissention and tho the Parliament in 1680. entred upon a project for healing our differences in which great steps were made to the removing of all the occasions of our Contests the Leaders of the Dissenters to the amasement of all persons made no account of this and even seemed uneasy at it of which the Earl of Nottingham and Sr. Thomas Clarges that set on that Bill with much zeal can give a more particular account All these things concurred to make those of the Church of England conclude a little too rashly that their ruin was resolved on and then it was no wonder if the spirit of a Party the remembrance of the last Wars the present Prospect of Danger and above all the great favour that was shewed them at Court threw them fatally into some angry and Violent Counsels self-preservation is very natural and it is plain that many of them took that to be the case so that truly speaking it was not so much at first a spirit of Persecution as a desire of disabling those who they believed intended to ruin them from effecting their designs that set them on to all those unhappy things that followed They were animated to all they did by the continued earnestness of the King and Duke and of their Ministers That Reproach of Iustice and of the profession of the Law who is now so high was singled out for no other end but to be their Common Hangman over England of whom the late King gave this true character That he had neither Wit Law nor Common Sence but that he had the Impudence of ten carted Whores in him Another Buffoon was hired to plague the Nation with three or four papers a week which to the Reproach of the Age in which we live had but too great and too general an effect for poysoning the spirits of the Clergy But those who knew how all this was managed saw that it was not only set on but still kept up by the Court. If any of the Clergy had but preached a word for moderation he had a chiding sent him presently from the Court and he was from that day marked out as a disaffected person and when the Clergy of London did very worthily refuse to give Informations against their parishioners that had not always conformed the design having been formed upon that to bring them into the Spiritual Courts and excommunicate them and make them lose their right of Voting that so the Charter of London might have been delivered up when so many Citizens were by such means shut out of the Common Council we remember well how severely they were censured for this by some that are now dead and others that are yet alive I will not go further into this matter I will not deny but many of the Dissenters were put to great hardships in many parts of England I cannot deny it and I am sure I will never justify it But this I will positively say having observed it all narrowly that he must have the brow of a Iesuite that can cast this wholly on the Church of England and free the Court of it The beginnings and the progress of it came from the Court and from the Popish party and tho perhaps every one does not know all the secrets of this matter that others may have found out yet no man was so Ignorant as not to see what was the chief spring of al those Irregular motions that some of us made at that time so upon the whole matter all that can be made out of this is that the passions and Infirmities of some of the Church of England being unhappily stirred up by the Dissenters they were fatally conducted by the Popish party to be the Instruments in doing a great deal of mischief IX It is not to be doubted but tho some weaker men of the Clergy may perhaps still retain their little peevish animosities against the Dissenters yet the wiser and more serious heads of that great and Worthy body see now their error they see who drove them on in it till they hoped to have ruined them but it And as they have appeared against Popery with as great a strength of learning and of firm steadiness as perhaps can be met with in all Church-History so it cannot be doubted but their reflections on the dangers into which our Divisions have thrown us have given them truer Notions with relation to a rigorous Conformity and that the just Detestation which they have expressed of the Corruptions of the Ch. of Rome has led them to consider and abhor one of the worst things in it I mean their Severity towards Hereticks And the ill use that they see the Court has made of their zeal for supporting the Crown to justify the subversion of our Government that is now set on from some of their large unwary expressions will certainly make them hereafter more cautions in medling with Politicks the Bishops have under their hands both disowned that wide extent of the Prerogative to the overturning of the Law and declared their disposition to come to a Temper in the matters of Conformity and there seems to be no doubt left of the sincerity of their Intentions in that matter Their Piety and Vertue and the prospect that they now have of suffering themselves put us beyond all doubt as to their sincerity and if
AN APOLOGY For the CHURCH of ENGLAND With relation to the Spirit of PERSECUTION For which She is accused I. ONe should think that the Behaviour of the English Clergy for some years past and the present Circumstances in which they are should set them beyond Slander and by consequence above Apologies yet since the the Malice of her Enemies works against her with so much spight and since there is no Insinuation that carrys so much Malice in it and that seems to have such colours of truth on it as this of their having set on a severe Persecution against the Dissenters of being still sour'd with that leaven and of carrying the same Implacable hatred to them which the present Reputation that they have gained may put them in a further capacity of executing if another revolution of affairs should again give them authority to set about it it seems necessary to examin it and that the rather because some aggravate this so far as if nothing were now to be so much dreaded as the Church of England's getting out of her present distress II. If these Imputations were charged on us only by those of the Church of Rome we should not much wonder at it for tho it argues a good degree of Confidence for any of that communion to declaim against the severities that have been put in practice among us since their little finger must be heavier than ever our loins were and to whose Scorpions our Rods ought not to be compared yet after all we are so much accustomed to their methods that nothing from them can surprise us To hear Papists declare against Persecution and Jesuites cry up Liberty of Conscience are we confess unusual things yet there are some degrees of shame over which when People are once passed all things become so familiar to them that they can no more be put out of countenance But it seems very strange to us that some who if they are to be believed are strict to the severest forms and subdivisions of the Reformed Religion and who some years ago were jealous of the smallest steps that the Court made when the danger was more remote and who cried out Popery and Persecution when the design was so maskt that some welmeaning men could not miss being deceived by the Promises that were made and the disguises that were put on that I say these very persons who were formerly so distrustful should now when the Mask is laid off and the design is avowed of a sudden grow to be so belïeving as to throw off all distrust and be so gulled as to betray all and to expose us to the Rage of those who must needs give some good words till they have gone the round and tried how effectually they can divide and deceive us that so they may destroy us the more easily this is indeed somewhat extraordinary They are not so Ignorant as not to know that Popery cannot change its nature and that Cruelty and Breach of Faith to Hereticks are as necessary parts of that Religion as Transubstantiation and the Popes Supremacy are If Papists were not Fools they must give good Words and fair Promises till by these they have so far deluded the poor credudous Hereticks that they may put themselves in a posture to execute the Decrees of their Church against them and tho we accuse that Religion as guilty both of Cruelty and Treachery yet we do not think them Fools so till their Party is stronger than God be thanked it is at present they can take no other method than that they take The Church of England was the Word among them some years ago Liberty of Conscience is the Word at present and have all possible reason to assure us that the Promises for maintaining the one will be as religiously kept as we see those are which were lately made with so great a profusion of Protestations and shews of Friendship for the supporting of the other III It were great Injustice to charge all the Dissenters with the Impertinencies that have appeared in many Addresses of late or to take our measures of them from the Impudent strains of an Alsop or a Care or from the more Important and now more visible steps that some among them of a higher form are every day making and yet after all this it cannot be denyed but the several bodies of the Dissenters have behave themselves of late like men that understand too well the true Interest of the Protestant Religion and of the English Government to sacrifice the whole and themselves in Conclusion to their private resentments I hope the same justice will be allowed me in stating the matter relating to the so much decried Persecution set on by the Church of England and that I may be suffered to distinguish the heats of some angry and deluded men from the Doctrine of the Church and the practices that have been authorised in it that so I may shew that there is no reason to Infer from past errors that we are Incurable or that new Opportunities inviting us again into the same severities are like to prevail over us to commit the same follies over again I will first state what is past with the sincerity that becomes one that would not lye for God that is not affraid nor ashamed to confess faults that will neither aggravate nor-extenuate them beyond what is just and that yet will avoid the saying any thing that may give any cause of offence to any party in the Nation IV. I am very sorry that I must confess that all the parties among us have shewed that as their turn came to be upper most they have forgot the same Principles of Moderation and Liberty which they all claimed when they were oppressed If it should shew too much ill nature to examin what the Presbytery did in Scotland when the Covenant was in Dominion or what the Independents have done in New-England why may not I claim the same priviledge with relation to the Church of England if severities have been committed by her while she bore rule yet it were as easy as it would be invidious to shew that both Presbyterians and Independents have carried the principle of Rigour in the point of Conscience much higher and have acted more Implacably upon it than ever the Church of England has done even in its angriest fits so that none of them can much reproach another for their excesses in those matters And as of all the Religions in the world the Church of Rome is the most persecuting and the most bound by her Principles to be unalterably Cruel so the Church of England is the least persecuting in her principles and the least obliged to repeat any errors to which the Intrigues of Courts or the Passions incident to all parties may have engaged her of any National Church in Europe It cannot be said to be any part of our Doctrine when we came out of one of the blackest Persecutions that is in History I mean
Q. Maryes we shewed how little we retained of the Cruelty of that Church which had provoked us so severely when not only no Inquiries were made into the illegal acts of Fury that were committed in that Persecuting Reign but even the Persecutors themselves lived among us at ease and in peace and no Penal law was made except against the publick exercise of that Religion till a great many Rebellions and Treasons extorted them from us for our own preservation This is an Instance of the Clemency of our Church that perhaps cannot be matched in History and why should it not be supposed that if God should again put us in the state in which we were of late that we should rather imitate so Noble a Pattern than return to those mistakes of which we are now ashamed V. It is to be considered that upon the late Kings Restauration the remembrance of the former War the ill Usage that our Clergy had met with in their Sequestrations the angry Resentments of the Cavalier party who were ruined by the War the Interest of the Court to have all those Principles condemned that had occasioned it the heat that all parties that have been ill used are apt to fall into upon a Revolution but above all the practices of those who have still blown the Coals and set us one against another that so they might not only have a divided force to deal with but might by turns make the Divisions among us serve their Ends all these I say concurred to make us lose the happy opportunity that was offered in the year 1660. to have healed all our Divisions and to have triumphed over all the Dissenters not by ruining them but by overcoming them with a spirit of Love and Gentleness which is the only Victory that a generous and Christian temper can desire In short unhappy Councils were followed and severe Laws were made But after all it was the Court party that carried it for rougher methods some considerable Accidents not necessary to be here mentioned as they stopped the mouths of some that had formed a wiser Project so they gave a fatal Advantage to angry and crafty men that to our misfortune had too great a stroak in the conduct of our affairs at that time This spirit of Severity was heightned by the Practices of the Papists who engaged the late King in December 1662. to give a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience Those who knew the secret of his Religion as they saw that it aimed at the Introduction of Popery so they thought there was no way so effectual for the keeping out of Popery as the maintaining the Uniformity and the suppressing of all designs for a Toleration But while those who managed this used a due reserve in not discovering the secret motive that led them to it others flew into severity as the principle in vogue and thus all the slacknings of the rigour of the Laws during the first Dutch War that were set on upon the pretence of quieting the Nation and of encouraging Trade were resisted by the Instruments of an honest Minister of State who knew as well then as we do now what lay still at bottom when Liberty of Conscience was pretended VI. Upon that Ministers Disgrace some that saw but the half of the Secret perceiving in the Court a great Inclination to Toleration and being willing to take measures quite different from those of the former Ministry they entred into a treaty for a Comprehension of-some Dissenters and the Tolerating of others and some Bishops and Clergymen that were Inferiour to none of the Age in which they lived for true Worth and a right Judgment of things engaged so far and with so much success into this project that the matter seemed done all things being concerted among some of the most considerable men of the different parties But the dislike of that Ministry and the Jealousy of the ill designs of the Court gave so strong a prejudice against this that the proposition could not be so much as hearkned to by the House of Commons and then it appeared how much the whole Popish Party was allarmed at the project it is well known with how much Detestation they speak of it to this day tho we are now so fully satisfied of their Intentions to destroy us that the Zeal which they pretended for us in opposing that design can no more pass upon us VII At last in the year 1672. the design for Popery discovering it self the end that the Court had in favouring a Toleration became more Visible and when the Parliament met that condemned the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience the Members of the House of Commons that either were Dissenters or that favoured them behaved themselves so worthily in concurring with those of the Church of England for stifling that Toleration choosing rather to lose the benefit of it than to open a breach at which Popery should come in that many of the members that were for the Church of England promised to procure them a bill of Ease for Protestant Dissenters But the Session was not long enough for bringing that to perfection and all the Sessions of that Parliament after that were spent in such a continual strugle between the Court and Countrey party that there was never room given for calm and wise Consultations yet tho the Party of the Church of England did not perform what had been promised by some Leading men to the Dissenters there was little or nothing done against them after that till the year 1681. so that for about nine years together they had their Meetings almost as publickly and as regularly as the Church of England had their Churches and in all that time whatsoever particular hardships any of them might have met with in some corners of England it cannot be denied but they had the free Exercise of their Religion at least in most parts VIII In the year 1678. things began to change their face it is known that upon the breaking out of the Popish Plot the Clergy did Universally express a great desire for coming to some temper in the points of Conformity all sorts and ranks of the Clergy seemed to be so well disposed towards it that if it had met with a suteable entertainment matters might probably have been in a great measure composed But the Jealousy that those who managed the Civil concerns of the Nation in the House of Commons took off all that was done at Court or proposed by it occasioned a fatal breach in our publick Councils in which division the Clergy by their principles and Interests and their disposition to believe well of the Court were determined to be of the Kings side They thought it as a sin to mistrust the late Kings Word who assured them of his steadiness to the Protestant Religion so often that they firmly depended on it and his present Majesty gave them so many Assurances of his maintaining still the Church of England that they