Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A51682
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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 Protestants of all perswasions in the present juncture of our affairs : to which is added A specimen of a bill for uniting of Protestants / by a Protestant and a true English-man.
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Protestant and true English-man.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing M3186; ESTC R1551
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35,764
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46
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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
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