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A47440 Europe's delivery from France and slavery a sermon preached at St. Patrick's Church, Dublin, on the 16th of November, 1690, before the right honourable the Lords Justices of Ireland : being the day of Thanksgiving for the preservation of His Majesty's person, his good success in our deliverance, and his safe and happy return into England / by William King ... King, William, 1650-1729. 1691 (1691) Wing K532; ESTC R17458 18,583 31

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pretended Parliament our Houses were filled with Soldiers and Dragoons our Churches possessed by Romish Priests our Persons shut up in Prisons and our Religious Assemblies interdicted Our Friends and Relations our Nobility Gentry and Clergy driven for the most part out of the Kingdom attainted for Life and Estates and an Army ready to be transported into England if God had not put a stop to their Designs and confounded their Devices 'T is by his Mercy we are Redeemed from the Lands from the North and from the South and therefore let us give Thanks unto him and Praise him You see then the Extent of this Design that it took in all the Princes and States of Europe that it struck at our Estates our Liberty our Lives and above all at our Religion that it was carried on by many and powerful hands and by the most secret and efficacious methods And who else cou'd defeat such a contrivance or put a stop to it but the same God that bounds the Sea with a heap of dust and says to the Waves thereof hither shall you come and no further III. Which is a proper Introduction to my third Head the miraculous Concurrence of Providences for our Deliverance in breaking this Design so deeply laid and vigorously prosecuted These were so many and so remarkable that I doubt whether ever any Revolution was accompanied with a chain of such strange and unaccountable Accidents I shall mention only a few that every body must have observed and leave you to judge whether the Finger of God must not be acknowledged in them First therefore It was strangely unaccountable that the Pope who seemed to have a great stake and interest in this Design and as one wou'd imagine was most deeply concerned in the success of it should upon a trifle break with the French King and not only desert his Party but most cordially espouse the opposite side and that the King of France who never before stuck at any thing when interest was in the case upon the World 's counting it base or wicked shou'd refuse his Ghostly Father common Justice in Matters of so little moment as the Regale and Franchises It is plain that the Pope has right on his side in both these and that the French King was not much concerned either in profit or honour to defend them The Regale being a new Usurpation and the Franchises an ancient Nusance yet so obstinate have both sides proved in the contest that we hope 't is become irreconcilable Now if this had not happened the counter-Counter-League of the Princes of Europe to the French Conspiracy cou'd hardly have been entred into or continued 't is this takes off the odium from the Emperour and King of Spain of assisting his present Majesty to redeem England and deprives the French King of the advantages he proposed to himself by declaring this a War of Religion It being rediculous to pretend a Holy War against the Father and Head of his Church This aversion of the Pope to the French designs is an obstacle in the way that neither Lewis nor James can yet get over tho the one begs hard and the other offers fair to remove it Having profered the Pope all that he desired at first and to oblige the French Clergy to own his Infallibility into the bargain Thus God shews that the hearts of Kings are in his hands that he can make them stoop and do mean things when it will do them no good and obstinate when yielding would be serviceable to them It cannot but be esteemed a further Providence that two Popes should succeed one another of the same humour which is not common and should persevere in the same enmity to France But 2dly It must be owned as a signal piece of Providence in God to have raised up a Man endued with the Courage Closeness and Activity of his present Majesty Who durst attempt so strange and inhumane probability such an impracticable thing as our Deliverance 'T is a rare thing in the World that one Man should have the dexterity to engage and the wisdom to manage so many different Interests into a Confederacy and argues a particular Providence 3dly It was another piece of Divine ordering that his Majesty should be so particularly interessed and engaged to undertake this Work before it was too late and our destruction unavoidable If we had gone on a few years in the course in which we were in all probability our condition would have become altogether desperate But the eagerness of the Conspirators to cut off their present Majesties from all hopes of Succession to the Crown made them introduce a Prince of Wales two or three years sooner than they were ready for him they knew very well when he appeared the persons concerned would be provoked to the height and that then if ever their present Majesties must appear for their Right and the Kingdoms for their Deliverance against which they were not as yet prepared for they had not yet sufficiently trained the Irish nor filled the Army in England with Papists for want of which they were not able to make any resistance against the Prince of Orange Having awakened him before they were prepared for him and necessiated him to make his descent into England whil'st the Arms were still for the most part in the Protestants hands and the Papists in no capacity to awe them 4thly The very pretended Birth of the Prince of Wales was so ill managed that it was not so much as a well contrived Cheat. The very Papists complained of it and that publickly in Print There was published here amongst many others under the late Government a Virulent Paper against his present Majesty Entituled England's Crisis or the World well amended To give it the greater credit the Author pretends to be a Protestant and the evidence of truth forced from him this following passage One reason of his the Prince of Orange's Expedition had at least a shew of Justice in the Quarrel I mean the business of the Prince of Wales which I cannot but confess some People managed as if they designed either that we should not believe at all or if we did our belief should be as implicit as to Successions and Inheritances here as that of the Romanist is in his expectation of Inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven hereafter This it is true they imputed to the Treachery of Councellors and Managers But when their Zealots writ and King James permitted such Accounts of that Matter to be published 't is a sign the business needed an Apology and that by God's just Judgment on them their usual dexterity failed them in it 5thly It was a peculiar Providence in this Affair that King James did not adhere determinately to any Councels or Councellors but did things irresolutely and by halves I find Papists in their Letters to him complaining of this and cautioning him against it one intreats him for God's sake not to listen to trimming Councellors whose aversion
to stir you up to an hearty acknowledgment of God's present Mercies to us and I promise my self some success in this undertaking and that the consideration of the following Particulars will make the same impression on every body concerned as it hath done on me First therefore Let us consider our Deliverance And Secondly The Returns we are obliged to make for it In our Deverance we ought to reflect I. On the depth of the Contrivance and Design against us from which God has graciously been pleased at this time to deliver us II. On the great extent of it All Princes in Europe especially such as profess the Reformed Religion being struck at by it III. On the miraculous Concurrence of Providences for our deliverance in breaking this Design so deeply laid and vigorously prosecuted You all have suffered so much by this Design and the memory of your Dangers and Deliverance from it is so fresh before you that I need not trouble you with the particulars of it 'T was in short to destroy you and your Religion and enslave all Europe under the Tyranny of the French King I. The depth of this Design appears 1st From the length of time wherein it has been formed and carrying on Some and not without reason date it from the very beginning of the Reformation some from the Restauration of the Royal Family and some from the Pyrenean Peace but as it immediately concerns these Kingdoms we can trace it by many Foot-steps from the Year 1670. since which time not only we but all Europe have groaned under the fatal effects of it As to this Kingdom of Ireland we find a Scheme of it laid down at large in a Paper formerly found in the Earl of Tyrconnell's House then Collonel Talbot dated July 1671. supposed to be drawn up by his Brother Peter Talbot then Titular Archbishop of Dublin and accidently dropt about that time several Copies of which have for many years been in Protestants hands In this Paper are proposed The modelling the Army The admitting Papists into Corporations The bringing them to serve in Civil and Military Imployments and the raising a vast Army of them to be transported into England on occasion One Particular in this Paper is remarkable 'T is in these words The Toleration of the Roman Catholick Religion in England being granted and the Insolency of the Hollanders taken down a Confederacy with France which can influence Enggland as Scotland can also will together by God's blessing make his Majesty's Monarchy Absolute and Real Where we see that the Design was to make the King Absolute and the means proposed Toleration of Popery a War with Holland and a League with France all which were at that time put in practice and have been prosecuted vigorously to this Day But 2dly We shall better understand the depth of this Design against us if we reflect on the Power Policy and Number of the Persons engaged The Power and Money of France the Cunning and Craft of the Jesuits the numerous and bigotted Roman Clergy the Wealth and Arms of England were all to be employed to our Ruine the Indigent and desperate Papists of Ireland were to be armed and let loose upon us The Common Enemy of Christians the Turks and Ravaging Tartars were called into Christendom to promote this Design and their destructive methods of managing Wars by universal Slaughters havock and burnings brought into practice by the more Unchristian French and to Crown their Design for the general Slavery and Desolation of Europe Protestants were cajoled bribed or compelled to fight against persecute and devour one another All which might be proved by undeniable Instances if this Sermon were designed for a History But 3dly We may have a further Idea of the depth of this Contrivance from which God has hitherto delivered us if we consider the Methods used for effecting it Had it been hatched in Hell it could not have been more a mystery of Iniquity than it was more Black and Villanous means could not have been applied to bring it to perfection For 1st We find Wicked and Treacherous Leagues and Conspiracies entred into in order to carry it on One of which is more especially notorious and remarkable for its folly and falshood A League so contrary to all sense as well as faith that the great Princes concerned in it are yet ashamed to own it a League so mischievous to Europe in general and so destructive to England in particular that it has brought them to the very brink of destruction and it is only God's miraculous Providence that could or yet can preserve them A League that broke the Ballance of Europe so carefully preserved by our wise Forefathers and by that means has advanced one by depressing and sinking all the rest This is that fatal Confederacy with France proposed in the forementioned Paper These are the Engagements of Friendship and Alliance which Monsieur D' Avaux the French Ambassador tells the States of Holland in his Memorial of September 9. 1688 the King his Master had with the King of Great Britain This is the Secret Treaty Abbot Primi tells us his Britannick Majesty signed in the Year 1670. whereby he should have secured to him an absolute Authority over his Parliament and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholik Religion in his three Kingdoms This is the Alliance with France which Maloony the Popish Bishop of Killaloo in a Letter of his to Bishop Tyrest of March 8th 1689. the Original whereof was found amongst the Bishop's Papers and is ready to be produced is so very angry that some Trimmers as he calleth them obliged King James to disown and this is the very source and fountain of all the present Calamities of Europe but more particularly of ours A second method of carrying on of this Conspiracy to Ruin us was by corrupting Ministers by granting large Pensions and multiplying Bribes I wish this means of promoting this wicked design had stopped at Ministers and that the honour of Princes had set them above the suspicion of taking Bribes for we are willing to think that it should be below the Majesty of a Crowned head to turn Pensioner or to sell his Crown or People for Louis d' Ors. A third means for carrying on this Contrivance against us was Murthering and Poysoning an Art too much practised of late in some Courts and 't is observable that wherever the Life of a Protestant stands between a Papist and an Inheritance it is of no long continuance nor doth any Prince begin to appear vigorous or terrible to France but he is in danger to be taken off in the prime of his age and that not without suspicion of foul play witness Prince Lewis of Brandenburgh and the Duke of Lorrain There is much Gold in France and there are every where wicked men ready to be bribed to do any thing and 't is not supposed of some that they scruple much to make the experiment what it is able to do