pretends onely to foreclose him doth truly depose him It is insufferable that this man should impute to the House of Commons and the best People of England Diabolical Fiction the worst of all Jesuitical Equivocations and of endeavouring to make a colour to their perfidious and perjurious dealings for these reasons onely because we will not believe or take our selves to have sworn Allegiance to the Duke of York when we swore it to the King Because we will not allow that a Parliament of England which is the King Lords and Commons have no more to do with our Government than the Pope of Rome or that the Pope hath as much power to depose one of the Kings as the Parliament hath to punish a most obnoxious Subject This he dares address to the King and publish to the World He proceeds to presume and tell us that this at least must be granted that whosoever is by Bloud next Heir to the Crown we are by our Oath obliged before God to bear him Faith and true Allegiance nay to defend him against all attempts until he is disinherited by Act of Parliament and therefore says he whatsoever we do against him before this Act be fully established is a violation of our Oath and therefore the very attempt of voting and passing this Bill makes the actors and abettors Perjurers before God and the World Sure it will be allowed that this Gentleman is mistaken sure he doth not intend to speak Treason but hath a way of speaking which he will use by himself and will make Words stand for what he hath a mind to which Will and Pleasure of his this peremptory absolute man thinks himself not bound to explain though to save his Neck if he should be Indicted therefore of Treason which I desire he may and Arraigned too for the better clearing the matter if it be possible how we are now bound to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the Duke But he will sooner be Hanged than make out how a thing may be done Lawfully which is not Lawful to go about That the Duke of York may be Lawfully Dis-inherited but the Voting and Passing of the Bill must be Perjury May not he that is bound by an Oath to pay money desire a release from the Debt without Perjury Cannot all Civil Debts Duties and Contracts though confirmed by Oath be discharged by the Interested Person to whom the Duty is to be performed and for whose Benefit the Contract is made May not Kings by renouncing their Governments make the Oath of Allegiance cease to all effects of Obligation And cannot an Act of Parliament that shall disable a Successour equally prevent it from passing any Obligation upon us But shortly to explain of what Import and for what reason the words Heirs and Successors are put into the Oath of Allegiance and it is this That in case of the Demise of the King and the Devolving and vesting of the Crown upon the Heir and Successor the Oath that we took to the Predecessor by virtue of those Words laies hold upon our Consciences and obligeth us to him from the first minute of his Reign but not before and so we are not one minute free from the Bonds of our Allegiance This being the scope of the Law that requires it and of the Oath it self it must likewise be by that interpreted for finis discendi est ratio dictorum and an Oath doth not oblige as this or that man would interpret neither according to the vulgar or technical use of the Word but in such a sense as is adaequate and agreeable to the Intent and End of the proposing and requiring it But by what is said before it appears that we are not yet under the Obligation of that Oath to the Duke and that it is in the Pleasure and Power of the Parliament whether we ever shall be our Comfort is whatever he thinks that there is a great difference between Hopes and Enjoyment And further it appears that the Heir Apparent is but equivocally and in a less proper sense so and yet this Considerer who if he be not a perfect Atheist and serves a turn in this Paper must be a Papist in his heart according to the Modesty of the Gentleman chargeth us with Jesuitical Equivocations in the Oath of Allegiance while in the mean time he is equivocating the King out of his Throne shifting the Duke into his place by an aequivocal Abuse of the word the coursest slight that ever was used by any Hocus Pocus or any Pretender to Legerdemain And yet upon the Confidence of these weak and mistaken Reasonings he presumes to arraign the House of Commons of the greatest Injustice and Iniquity and would have us apprehend Slavery the Arbitrary and Despotical Power of Parliaments The loss of all Security either of Property or Liberty by a prevailing Faction of Parliament which he will be able to effect at the same time when he can perswade us to dissolve the Polity and exchange the best and safest Government into an Anarchy To be without Judges for fear of unrighteous Sentences and without a Power of Legislation for fear of Laws of Iniquity But it is not a new thing for obnoxious Criminals and Out-laws to turn Rebels against Government What this man is and what the Cause is he Espouses is declared sufficiently in that he hath no better ways of Advocation and Defence than by Opposing and Reviling the Government it self and he that dares revile the Government would if he had Power Destroy it In that he calls the major part of the House of Commons a Prevailing Faction I challenge him Guilty of the Highest Treason of a Treason not onely against this Government but of a transcendent Treason of a Treason virtually against all mankind for that we cannot subsist without Polities and no Polities can subsist but by deference to the results of the Governing Power which is Interpretatively in the resolves of the major part But he proceeds to question whether by the Constitutions of this Government the Parliament can extend their power to shut out the Duke from succeeding to the Crown for admitting he means That it is Just which we will not accept of as a voluntary concession of this Considerer for that it doth appear not onely Just but highly necessary to exclude the Duke by Bill he will then draw it into question Whether there be any competent power in the Government for doing a thing not onely just but absolutely necessary for the preservation of the King and Kingdom Whether there be any Subject too great for Justice or any private Right that is not governable and may not be ordered as to the Legislature shall seem necessary to the preservation of the whole Whether that which is properly the Right of the Community for so is the Succession may receive no alteration in a single instance for the Weightiest Reasons and whether he that declares that he will not Govern but Destroy
that to make Experiments and try Conclusions upon There is little reason to charge the Guilt of the unexpiable Murder of our late Excellent King for which at this day we are doing most severe penances upon Presbytery which was not thought of here in England till the War was begun The heats that produced that unhappy War were from other Causes and Reasons as every body may know But when that War was once begun as no War can be managed by fore-established Rules and Measures it did not stand within the reasons and first designs thereof but was prosecuted and managed by such means and measures as were necessary and possible This will always happen more especially in a Civil War wherein though both parties share in the Causes yet the Guilt to be sure belongs to the Rebels side The Parliament in the Course of the War in their distress prayed Aid of the Scotch Nation who was shortly before entered into the Covenant They refused them any Assistance except they would enter into that Covenant which they had passed upon their own people By this accident that part of the Nation that was engaged in that unnatural War of the Parliaments side were imposed upon by the Scotch Presbytery But after the Covenant was thus imposed they still retained the English Loyalty filled the Town with Protestations and Remonstrances against the Kings feared Murther declared out of their Pulpits against the Actors of that detestable Tragedy were continually contriving to restore our present King to the Government of his Kingdoms and of their instrumentality in his Restoration the King himself is very sensible I wish the Church too were made sensible of the extinction of that prejudice the Scotch Covenant created against her for though God be thanked she hath survived almost all of those deluded Covenanters yet the apprehension of the danger or the remembrance of the evil at least will return with the mention of that name and render it very displeasing I wish I say that prejudice was removed by their frank Declaration of their good liking of her Order in general and by their humble desires to be spared in the matters whereof they yet remain in doubt by the indulgence of the Church That we may not incur the danger of loosing our Religion and Government by the scandal that is given to the Church-men at the old remembrance of what hath been done here by some that were of the Presbyterian Name For this matter of Offence they of the Popish Faction do with mighty advantage to their Villainous design cultivate and improve They stigmatize all that oppose the Popish Plot with the Name of Presbyterians and thereby would denote them Enemies of our Church-Order By this means they have brought many too many Eminent men of our Church to at least a dead Neutrality as if things were come to this pass that they must perish either by that or the Popish Faction and had nothing left them to do but to chuse which way our Church shall be destroyed A cold comfort this would be that whatever way they should take they must assist to the destruction of their Order Upon this rock we are like to be split this makes our deliverance to stick in the birth and upon this hinge the fate of our Religion and Nation will turn Lord what a prodigious thing is this that is come to pass in our age Religion it self must be the devoted thing to the rage and folly of the Priests of that Religion Let them in the Name of God consider what iniquity it is to declame against the faults of others and not endure to hear of their own Crimes To hate one-another for those very proceedings that their own faults occasion where the fault is in both sides the fault is in neither so as they may justly accuse one another and yet they will both fall under a most severe Condemnation to be sure in the next world if they do not both miss their aims and be confounded with guilt and disappointment in this I wish it were considered that scarce any Nation ever yet perished that was so blinded in her own concerns that she had not discerning men enough to have preserved her from the destroying Evil if many good and wise men did not perswade themselves it was better to suffer it than to endeavour to prevent it and from the fears of one Party and the dislike they have conceived against the other determine with themselves to stand Neuters whilst they want Resolution to oppose the dangers that one side threatens and think the disorders of the discontents incorrigible It was a wise Law of Solon That if the Common-wealth at any time should be divided into Factions that the Neuters should be noted with infamy by which every man was obliged to take a side or Party and all the virtuous peaceable and modest were engaged to appear openly in the concernments of the Government he concluded assuredly that by this means Peace would be more easily restored and terms of an accommodation more readily invented and entertained the Factious Knaves of both sides turned out of Office their Evil Designs disappointed and the ruine of the Nation by the Extremities of wicked men prevented For the worst men are most forward in Factions and the greatest beautefeus most honoured by their respective contending Parties before the wise and good interpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Causes of the Differences would be better understood be rendred clear and conspicuous when the honest men such as can have no interest but the publick good whose Authority is more prevalent with the people than the clearest Reason do declare them and those that are mis-led and abused into Extreams would then unite and conspire against those who gave the first occasion to the Divisions and promote them As did the Factions of the Colonnois and the Vrsins who having discovered that Pope Alexander the Sixth set them still at discord and variance amongst themselves so by their Calamities and Falls to encrease the strength and power of his Son Borgia they fell to agreement among themselves and made head against him their common Enemy If all that are true Protestants and true lovers of our Government would declare themselves on the behalf of our Religion and Government in such terms as befit honest men and as the Exigency of our present state shall require we shall find the numbers of Addressers reduced to the Dukes Pensioners Creatures The number of Phanaticks made so few that the Papists would again become the Fautors and Defenders of Fanaticism as they were about ten years since lest the numbers of Fanaticks should not be big enough to make a Scare-crow for the Church of England or the Schism not considerable enough to disgrace her All discerning men see that the late Addresses have been obtain'd by application That the design therein was to make Voices for the discontinuance of Parliaments and for a Popish Succession If the people
when it is made apparent that these mistakes are made serviceable to the Popish Plot and the means which the Popish party prosecute to compass and bring about the ruine of our Church But that nothing may be wanting that lies in my poor power for pulling their Foot out of the Snare I shall more distinctly consider them First I shall desire them to consider what our Government is and where the true knowledge of it is to be found And where can it be found but in our Statute-Books the Commentaries of our Law the Histories of our Government and of the Kingdom Search them if you be at leisure if you are not consult those that have read them and whose business and employment it is to understand them and you cannot fail to be informed That the King hath no power to make Laws that both Houses of Parliament must joyn with the King in making a Law It can with no more reason be concluded that the King hath the Legislative Power because his Assent makes the Bills in Parliament Laws than it can because the third Unit added to two makes a Triad that the other two do not go to the making of that number When a matter 's moved from the King in Parliament to pass into a Law the Commons consent last The Letters Patents of Ed. 3. for making the Eldest Son of a King in Succession Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal Sir E. Cook 8. R. was confirmed as they must have been otherwise they would have been void by the House of Commons And yet we will not say that the House of Commons can make a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cornwal And yet upon no better reason than this some men will talk as if they believed themselves that the Legislative power is in the King when no King of England yet ever pretended to it but by their process of Law have punished such officious and mischievous Knaves They also will tell you that the Laws are the measures of our Allegiance and the Kings Prerogative and declare the terms of Obedience and Government That a Legislative authority is necessary to every Government and therefore we ought not to want it and therefore Parliaments in which our Government hath placed the making of Laws cannot be long discontinued nor their Conventions rendred illusory and in vain which is all one as to want them That to Govern by Laws implieth that great fundamental Law that new Laws shall be made upon new emergencies and for avoiding unsufferable mischiefs to the State By the Statutes of 4 Ed. 3. c. 14. 36 Ed. 3. c. 10. it is provided that Parliaments be holden once every year The Statute of this King required a Parliament every three years which being an affirmatory Law doth not derogate from those of Ed the 3. But if the King doth not call a Parliament once in a year he neglects these Laws and if he delays calling a Parliament three years he neglects the other Law of his own time too And for that he is by the Law intrusted with the calling of Parliaments he is at liberty to call them within the times appointed And that Laws ought to be made for Redress of mischiefs that may ensue appears by the Statute of provisors 25 E. 3 cap. 23. In which we have these words Whereupon the Commons have prayed our said Soveraign Lord the King that sith the right of the Crown of England and the Law of the said Realm is such that upon the mischiefs Dammage which happeneth to this Realm be ought and is bound of the Accord of his said People in his Parliament thereof to make Remedy and Law in avoiding the mischief and damage which thereof cometh which that King agreed to by his Royal Assent thereto given I dare be bold to say that never any Bill in Parliament was lost and wanted the Royal Assent that was promoted by the general desires of the people If Popery therefore which is the greatest mischief that ever threatned this Kingdom can be kept out by a Law we ought to have such a Law and nothing can hinder such a Law to be past for that purpose but want of an universal desire to have it I desire these Gentlemen to consider how they will answer it to our Saviour at the last day if they suffer his true Religion and the professors of it to be destroyed and persecuted when nothing but their desires of a thing lawful to be had and of right due was requisite to prevent it Their sufferings will be just and righteous from God if their sin occasioneth it and very uncomfortable to themselves The extent of the Legislative Authority is nowhere to be understood but by our Acts of Parliament in which it hath been exercised and used and by such Acts that declare the extent of its power By the 13 Eliz. cap. 1. it is made Treason during that Queens Life and forfeiture of Goods and Chattels afterwards To hold maintain affirm that the Queen by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the Crown of this Realm and the descent limitation inheritance and Government thereof And this authority was exercised by Entailing the Crown in Parliament in the times of Richard the 2d Henry the 4th Henry the 6th Edward the 4th Richard the 3d Henry the 7th thrice in the time of Henry 8th and upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of England and Spain were Entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low-Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament Those that are truly Loyal to our present Soveraign have reason to recognize with high satisfaction that such a power of altering and limiting the descent of the Crown is duly lodged in the King and States of the Realm For under the Authority of an Act of Parliament of the Kingdom of Scotland we derive our selves to the happiness of his Government and He his Title to the Crown of Scotland which drew to him the Imperial Crown of England For Robert Stewart first King of Scotland of that Family lived in concubinate with Elizabeth Mure and by her had three Sons John Robert and Alexander afterwards he Married Eufame Daughter to the Earl of Ross and after was Crowned King of Scotland He had by her Walter Earl of Athol and David Earl of Straherne When Eufame his wife died he Married Elizabeth Mure. After that by one Act of Parliament he made his natural Children first Noble that is to say John Earl of Carrick Robert Earl of Menteith and Alexander Earl of Buchquhane And shortly after by another Parliament he limited the Crown in Tail Successively to John Robert and Alexander his Children by Elizabeth Mure
and Laws design to make them though they do not always answer the good designments of the Government To what purpose then are these new Hypotheses fram'd and published Kings are exempted by their Office and the sacredness of their persons from all fears but the fears of Nature and these can never be discharged Those who do ill will fear ill eternally though their power were made little less than omnipotent for the frame of Humane Nature hath made it necessary to be so Besides God hath made one thing against another There is a divine Nemesis interwoven in the nature of things And God will always govern the World Omne sub regno duriore regnum The great Mogol at his Inauguration swears That his People shall be at peace at home and victorious abroad afflicted neither with Plague nor Famine but enjoy Health and Plenty all his days This seems extraordinary Pompous and Arrogant but it means no more than this that he will govern them so vertuously that Gods Providence shall be always propitious to his People and is no more in plain English than what our Church offers up in her publick Prayers for the King viz. That he may govern us in Wealth Peace and Godliness that he may live long and so govern us ought to be every honest mans Prayers But after all these vain Hypotheses contrived for making Kings Absolute it will be more easie for Kings to make their Reigns unquiet and turn their Kingdoms into Fields of blood But lastly to revive the ancient Zeal of the true Members of the Church of England against Popery To rectify the mistakes of some Gentlemen of the Clergy about the Dissenters And of our late Parliaments and their proceedings in reference to them Let it be considered how unreasonable their apprehensions are of any danger to the Church of England from the desires of the House of Commons of some indulgence or toleration in favour of the Dissenters at this time especially when the Protestant Religion is so shrewdly beset she hath reason now sure to take all such for her Friends that are heartily Enemies to Popery though not so skilful as they should be to ward off its assaults Since the Papists presume to call them Fanaticks though exactly conformable to the Church of England that will not assist to bring on the Popish Plot by dis-believing it and put us in fear of the Fanaticks by taking all the courses imaginable to provoke and exasperate them and to increase their discontents which they maliciously heighten and by falshood and forgeries misrepresent To graft thereupon a Pretence of a Protestant Plot for a pretext to extirpate Protestantism and introduce Popery which they impudently pretend to be of a more firm Allegiance to the Government than the Reformed Religion I pray let it be considered that that which is tolerated is put under disgrace even for that it is tolerated and that which tolerates even for that it tolerates hath the governing Authority and in so much as it indulgeth it obligeth to modesty and reason and if that indulgence should be abused it may and will be retracted It was never intended by the House of Commons that the Church of England should be altered or modelled to an agreeableness to any form or sect of the Separation or prescrib'd to by any of the Dissenters or that she should be made subject to any of their rules or opinions or her Liturgy laid aside for Directories or which is worse undervalued to the prophane way of extemporizing For as generally used and exercised it deserves no milder a stile That the Church should always govern by her own Wisdom in her own Province and in those things that appertain to her can never be deny'd her No man hath reason to say though he hath great cause to dislike the Separation and to have a bad opinion of the Dissenters that he had rather submit to Popery than to any form of the Separation for he need do neither except he pleaseth No man that thus expresseth himself but will be suspected to seek an occasion and pretence to become a Papist and to make a defection from the Church of England But if these Gentlemen have such a displeasure against Schism and Separation which certainly is the worst disease any Church can labour under and at this time threatens the destruction as well of the Protestant Religion it self as it doth to the Professors of all denominations let this sharpen their Zeal against Popery which by its unhallowed arts hath occasioned and exasperated our Schism and put them upon the use of all means to reconcile if possible the Schism that the Papists have already made and by all means endeavour to continue and take away if possible the occasion of it for the time to come And thus defeat the Arts of the Priests and Jesuits for supplanting our Church It is a most deplorable thing that our Church should be kept rent and divided in danger of being lost between Rituality and Scrupulosity Though the Scruples of the Nonconformists which I always thought and do still think groundless and unreasonable have often moved me into some passion against them yet upon consideration I think this their Scrupulosity may be of God and that some men are by him framed to it That he hath provided it as a bar and obstacle in the Natures and Complexions of some devout men against any Innovations whatsoever that dangerous ones may not steal upon the Church for the better maintaining the simplicity and purity of the Christian Religion and Worship But in saying this I have said nothing that is apt to give them a conceit of themselves but rather to humble them For the best men are not govern'd by their Temper and Constitution but correct them by their Reason and determine themselves by a clear and him Judgement What affrightment all this while either to Church or State from this weak and pityable Scrupulosity Where lyes the Treason or Sacriledge nay or so much as contumacy against our Ecclesiastical Governours which is so much upbraided to them The Christian Religion may be prejudiced by addition to as well as substraction from her rule The Church of Rome by her additions hath almost evacuated the Christian Faith Besides there may be a fineness in the outward mode of Religious Worship in it self very justifiable which may be not congenial to men of a course make The Worship of God will always favour of the manners of the people men of dull capacity can scarce admit of any Ceremonies without danger of falling into superstition or hardly escape being vext with endless and incurable scruples about them until for ease of their minds they throw them off But the wisdom of the best Law-makers hath considered in giving Laws what the people would bear and not what is best to be enjoyned and many things have been tolerated by them which they did not approve Ne majoribus malis detur occasio aut etiam
will slander himself and belie the Devil For observe he saith they use Fanatical Logick and Antichristian Logick The true Fanaticks being impatient of the restraints of Reason and to be confined to sober sense call Logick and Reasoning by that which they would seem most to hate Antichristian The true Antichristians and Papists being impatient of the light reproof and discovery of Reason call sound Reason Fanaticism But our Writer is so vengeancely angry with reasoning that with the same breath he calls Logick for the sake of reason Antichristian and Fanatical too and renders himself suspected of being an Antichristian Fanatick And yet any one may see that it is not the thing it self that he is thus angry with but the name of Logick that he thus exposeth for what it is he knows not he seems to think it comes by Inspiration and that there are two sorts of Logick one good but he is not acquainted for all that appears to us with the Spirit from whence that is derived and another bad which he says is inspired by the Spirit of Belial whereas most certainly there is no such Devil amongst all the Orders of the Apostate Angels Sons of Belial I have heard of indeed that did evil without profit without design for evils sake but these are such men as need no Tempter for they will be wicked without a Tempter according to the fatal propensions of their vitious Natures and are not to be managed by the Devil himself And to this sort of men doth our Pamphleteer seem somewhat to approach for that he is an unaccountable Transgressor No reason can be given of him why he should with so much seeming earnestness concern himself to perswade the People to abandon to an utter neglect those things that of all others are of most value to them their Religion Government Lives Liberties and Estates To perswade a whole Nation to lay violent hands upon themselves to cut their own Throats to burn themselves alive and their Houses and to destroy themselves their Wives and Children Bodies and Souls too for Conscience-sake That there can be a Subject not subject to Laws and that offences that cannot be rated because their mischiefs are infinite for that very reason must not be punished and he would have us reckon it a sin of the most heinous nature to punish the Offender with a diminution only in his power to do those evils which are most notoriously by him designed and will be effected by means of his own making and causing if he himself should relent and refuse to execute them If in this Age of License immodesty could entitle any man to be a son of Belial our Writer of Considerations might fairly pretend to it who is immodest for impudence sake which spends it self in waste and cannot effect any thing but the exposing it self In saying this I should think my self very severe but that he hath published his own shame and if I would it is not in my power to cover it But he hath not shewed the worst of himself yet he attempts further upon the Understanding of the People he will have us believe that we owe Allegiance to the Presumptive Heir that we have as many Kings as Princes of the Bloud and that a Son hath a right to his Fathers Estate before he is dead For the probable Successor can have no more right to the effect of the Oath of Allegiance than the eldest Son to receive the Profits of his Fathers Estate without his leave in his Fathers Life-time If this Gentleman's Father had had any Land he would have understood the difference between his right to the Land after his Father's Death and his hopes and possibility onely to have it during his Father's Life The word Heir is joyned with Successor in the Oath of Allegiance to signifie that it means Heirs in the proper sence which is such that succeed to the Inheritance and not such as are in expectancy or possibility of having the Inheritance who are improperly and equivocally so called And tho' the thing is so plain that every man as well as the Lawyers agree what is said yet my Lord Cook for saying the same is called by this Gentleman Silly and Ridiculous Fallacious and Impertinent The Lawyers tell me that it is a Rule in the Law Non est hoeres viventis that is No man can have an Heir while he lives and they likeways say of all the Reguloe Juris There is not one of greater extent and rule than this that it hath governed Ten thousand Cases near upon in the Common Law and they withal assure me that notwithstanding this man amongst other civil terms calls the Lord Cook Fallacious they firmly believe if a Fee had been offered to him of the value of his Estate which is about 200000 l. he would not have signed an Opinion with a Videtur to the contrary but he is resolved that all Mankind shall be mistaken and he will call their reasonings in this matter what he pleaseth New Machiavillian Logick a word that dishonestly he took up on purpose to expose the Bill to the Vulgar imagining in his profound Consideration that some of the Multitude will upon the hearing of Machiavillian fall thereupon into an unwitting dislike of the Bill Nay he will conclude an Heir Apparent to be an Heir because he could not be Heir Apparent unless he were an Heir when the word Apparent and the word Presumptive more especially joyned to Heir is a term of Abatement or Negative and distinguisheth him from being a real Heir and speaks him no Heir but onely one in a near possibility of being so But says he it is a manifest contradiction for one to be Heir Apparent and not to be Heir as it is to be a Learned man and no man Prius est esse quam esse tale I wish we had his Name that we may mark the most absurd reasonings by it for the everlasting Honour of this Pretender to Reasoning and Discourse We all know that the word Heir is a Name to design a Person under such a relation and respect and imports nothing of entity and we may use our own abstract Terms properly or improperly and without any correspondent reality to an equivocal sense But he adds Profaneness to his Levity and as if the Holy Scriptures were writ to so trifling a design as to be an Oracular Dictionary and Infallible Nomenclature he tells us how the word Heir is used in Scripture when the holy Writers formed their Language by the vulgar Idiomes amongst the People of the Jews and never intended to write Law-Cases much less to declare the Common Law of England or imagined that their stile should be produced to expound our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But now thou vain Considerer wilt thou hence conclude that the Duke of York is Heir and Successor That we now owe him Faith and Allegiance That he is already in the Throne and that this Bill though it
so long in animadverting upon this last passage but that I think our Considerer hath taken into his assistance in these Considerations some Divine by his abounding so much in Scriptural Allegations And that hereby you may see the Size of the rest of the men of that Order that are Chaplains to the Cause of the Succession and that they ought to be of little regard in this matter as they deserve none it being not in their way though in matters that belong properly to their Function they may deserve much who are of the meanest of that Order Our Gentleman next proceeds to his political Arguments but those can be answered I perswade my self by every man who hath heard of the Plot. Though a man of his Size may frame puzzling Arguments that may perplex mens Minds with scruples and doubts which a Fool may do and a Wise man cannot remove yet it is scarce possible for him to deprive men of their Senses and make them insensible to all the Evils that they hear see and feel and justly fear If the Protestants are not as he saith very strong abroad we have reason to be more united at home and united by the awful Authority of a Law If we are threatned with a great power of the Roman Religion from abroad which he affrights us with we have no reason to retain the biggest power to hurt us within our own Bowels But if it be in the power of such bad men as this Pretender to divide by slights and wiles the good People of England and keep them from uniting in the onely means of their safety we must perish But Wo be to them by whom we are thus destroyed His last effort upon the minds of the People is to intimidate them that by their fears they may fall under the evils they design upon us he scatters his menaces as if he were in the place of God against us and as if he had the executing of the Plot in his Power and tells us of sins that fit us for ruine It is convenient to these Plotters to imagine us mighty wicked that they may believe we deserve the Vengeance they design Our Government it self our Laws our Religion must become wicked when they arrive to a probable power to hurt us They never contrive a Gunpowder Plot a Massacre or burning a City but they dream the iniquity of the People is grown ripe They would turn us into Sodom and Gomorrha which this Considerer frights us with if they could call for Fire from Heaven and then publish us to all the world if we were much better than we are to be as wicked as the Cities of the Plain If we cannot obtain this Bill I shall then begin to think that the Decree is gone forth and our Fate is approaching and that God will let these Villains have their will over us By Gods displeasure not theirs I shall take the true measures of our Sins His displeasure will be remarkable and evident if he seems to deny us the means of our Safety and Preservation and which is the onely means of the Kings Salvation from their Traiterous design If this Bill do not pass they will take him for a wicked King too and they will say he hath no lawful Issue to succeed him for his own sins though our Considerer saith at present that our Sins are the cause of it and many other remarks of wickedness they will make upon him when they find it convenient and for their interest to destroy him at best he will be then but Tenant at Will to them of his Life as well as his Crown which this Considerer most slanderously chargeth to be designed by us but if he will follow the counsel of that excellent Bill he may live long and see good days and peace upon our Israel to which let all good people say AMEN I shall onely remark two or three things in the close of the Paper of Weighty Considerations First that he undertakes to say and affirm that the King is as much subject to the Power of the Parliament as the Duke which doth dethrone the King himself and lessens him to the degree of a Subject Secondly that in this his Address he perswades the King to rend the Government to lay aside the Commons of England and abandon them as Rebels to divide from them and govern by a House of Lords and Privy Council And thirdly that the most venerable and Loyal Parliament that ever was conven'd in this Nation though not so clearly purged from the corrupt Villains of the late long Parliament as the next we hope will be are charged by him to follow the Anarchical Encroachments of the Factions in the Rump-Parliament by which he insinuates that we must become Papists admit of a Popish Successor or be used as Rebels and Traitors by these three Remarks it is evident what Principles and Designs these men are of that oppose the Dukes Bill and from thence you may find reason to assist it and promote it with the greatest unanimity and resolution and the rather for that the Duke himself cannot want Considerations to dispose him to approve of it For what should he do with a Crown that he cannot wear Why should he accept of a trust that he cannot discharge and a Government that his Principles oblige him to transfer to a Forein Prince he is too generous a Prince to enter upon a Province onely to betray it He is a Prince of great Charity it was that surely mov'd him publickly to confess the Roman Religion that he might thereby recommend that Religion to our belief for the better reforming us from Heresie Why then should not the same Charity move him to renounce the Government lest he should offer an irresistable temptation to the People to a Rebellion a greater sin accounted by a King though a Catholick however the Priests rate it than an errour in belief But how can we imagine that he will condescend to be our King He doth not intend to accept of our Oaths of Allegiance and had rather not be King than we should be his Subjects upon those terms Why should we trouble him with the name of King reproach him call him Apostate Heretick and Infidel by swearing our selves his Subjects in the terms of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Pray think no more of it write no more Great and Weighty Considerations for he intends to be no more your King than he doth to desert his Religion and the Roman Catholick Faith Besides his Zeal and Services and the Difficulties that he hath undergone for that Church and the hazards he hath incur'd deserve the best Place and highest Office in that Church which is that of a Priest he ought not to be put off and meanly rewarded with the Sheriffalties which their Eminencies of the Conclave despise and be prefer'd to all the Drudgeries and Cruelties that the Priesthood of that Church require of the Kings of that Communion that