water and the Sea and like that they are apt to be eating towards the Roots of the Powers of Soveraigns but while the Mountains of their Power are bottom'd on Natural Justice all the preying of the Sea of the People there makes but the promontory more surely guarded and appear more majestic as well as be more inaccessible And of this Sea of the Peoples as I would wish every Prince in the just observance of the Municipal Laws of his Country to espouse the Interest as much as the Duke of Venice doth his Adriatic yet should I see one for fear of Popular Envy or Obloquy forbearing to administer Iustice and to follow the real last Dictates of his practical understanding rightly informed and servily giving up himself to obey any mens pretended ones I should think it to be as extravagant a Madness as Hydrophoby or fear of water on the biting of a Mad Dog and while a Sovereign observes the immutable Principles of Justice he may acquiesce in the results of Providence and expect that the troubling of the waters may be like that of the Angel before the time of healing or a Conjuncture of the Peoples being possessed of healing Principles and in fine a King when he finds the Waters of Popular Discontent more tumultuous by Religionary Parties as two Seas meeting as for example Papists and Presbyterians he may depend on his being near Land that being always near where two Seas meet and let every Prince be assured that 't is not only Popery but Atheisme in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion I know that it hath been incident to some good men to strain pretences beyond the nature of things for justice Causes of War abroad in the World to advance the Protestant Religion And thus in the last Age the Crown and Populace of England being clutter'd with the Affair of the Palatinate the Prince Palatine had here many well-wishers to his Title for the Bohemian Crown and Rushworth tells us in his 1st Vol. Ann. 1619. That he being Elected King of Bohemia craved Advice of his Father in Law the King of Great Brittain touching the acceptation of that Royal Dignity and that when this Affair was debated in the Kings Council Arch-Bishop Abbot whose infirmity would not suffer him to be present at the Consultation wrote his mind to Sir R. Nauton the Kings Secretary viz. That God had set up this Prince his Majesties Son in Law as a Mark of Honour throughout all Christendome to propagate the Gospel and protect the Oppressed That for his own part he dares not but give advice to follow where God leads apprehending the work of God in this and that of Hungary that by the Pâ—ece and Peece the Kings of the Earth that gave their power to the Beast shall leave the Whore and make her desolate that he was satisfied in Conscience that the Bohemians had just Cause to reject that Proud and Bloody Man who had taken a Course to make that Kingdom not Elective in taking it by Donation of another c. And concludes Let all our Spirits be gathered up to animate this Business that the World may take notice that we are awake when God calls Rushworth saith that King Iames disavowed the Act of his accepting that Crown and would never grace his Son in Law with the Style of his new Dignity And in King Charles the Firsts time in the Common-Prayer relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runs for Frederick Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife yet in the Assemblies Directory afterward as to the Prayer for the Royal Family that Lady Elizabeth is Styled Queen of Bohemia But our Princes not being satisfied it seems that the Palatine of the Rhine had a just Title to the Bohemian Crown thought it not just for them to assert it However that Arch-Bishop Abbot the Achilles of the Protestants here in his Generation thought that the English Crown ought to descend in its true Line of Succession whatever profession of Religion any Member thereof should own appears out of Mr. Pryns Introduction to the History of the Arch Bishop of Canterburies Tryal where having in p. 3. mentioned the Articles sent by King Iames to his Embassador in Spain in order to the Match with the Infanta and that one was That the Children of this Marriage shall no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience of Religion wherefore there is no doubt that their Title shall be prejudiced in case it should please God that they should prove Catholicks and in p. 6. Cited the same in Latin out of the French Mercury Tom. 9. as offered from England Quod liberi ex hoc matrimonio oriundi non cogentur neque compellentur in causâ religionis vel conscientiae neque leges contra Catholicos attingent illos in casu siquis eorum fuerit Catholicus non ob hoc perdet jus successionis in Regna Dominia Magnae Britanniae and afterward in p. 7. mentioned it as an Additional Article offer'd from England That the King of Great Brittain and Prince of Wales should bind themselves by Oath for the observance of the Articles and that the Privy Council should Sign the same under their hands c. He in p. 43. mentions Arch-Bishop Abbots among other Privy-Counsellers accordingly Signing those Articles and further in p. 46. mentions the Oath of the Privy-Council for the observance of those Articles as far as lay in them and had before given an account not only of Arch-Bishop Abbots but of other magna nomina of the Clergy and Layety in the Council that Signed the same and particularly of John Bishop of Lincoln Keeper of the Great Seal Lionel Earl of Middlesex Lord High Treasurer of England Henry Viscount Mandevile Lord President of the Council Edward Earl of Worcester Lord Privy-Seal Lewis Duke of Richmond and Lennox Lord High Steward of the Houshold James Marquess of Hamilton James Earl of Carlile Lancelot Bishop of Winchester Oliver Viscount Grandison Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland Sir Thomas Edmonds Kt. Treasurer of the Houshold Sir John Suckling Comptroller of the Houshold Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway Principal Secretaries of State Sir Richard Weston Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Julius Caesar Master of the Rolls who had done the same Mr. Pryn afterward in p. 69. having mentioned the Dissolution of the Spanish Match gives an account of the bringing on the Marriage with France and saith It was concluded in the life of King James the Articles concerning Religion being the same almost Verbatim with those formerly agreed on in the Spanish Treaty and so easily condescended to without much Debate and referreth there to the Rot. tractationis ratificationis matrimonii inter Dom. Carolum Regem Dom. Henrettam Mariam sororem Regis Franc. 1 Car. in the Rolls The Demagogues of the old long Parliament who made such loud Out-cries of the danger of Popery
and likewise any one that owned any of those Pernitious Principles that strike at the heart of the Civil Government and that they would presently give his Majesty an accompt of all their own Names Places of abode and Numbers of their Families and that they would not live in nor come to the Court nor into any of our Cities or great Towns without leave obtain'd pursuant to the Statute of the 35 th of Elizabeth Ch. 2. wherein 't is Enacted under several Penalties That they shall not remove above Five miles from their dwellings and to give in their Names to the Constables Headborough and Minister c. and that the people might be delivered not only from any danger by them but any fears that might fall on a wise man either of their power or numbers encreasing I should joyfully entertain such an invention But what way of that kind is practicable I am altogether ignorant But do suppose that the present Lawes Oaths and Tests ought to continue till with the Consent of His Majesty and Lords and Commons in Parliament we are further secured I know that we ought to be much more vigilant over English Papists then over any Forrainers for that 't is a kind of a Rule that Angli nil modicum in Religione possunt and therefore that no Popish Priest who is a Subject to England can with the public safety live here Your Lordship hath I think as comprehensive a knowledg of the affairs of Ireland as any man can have and therefore I shall here tell you that a Gentleman of Ireland told me that in the times of the usurpt powers 't was in the Act of Settlement for Ireland by the Parliament declared that it was not their intent after almost a National Rebellion to extirpate the whole Irish Nation but that after an exception of certain persons as to Life and Estate the Act orders some Irish to be banish'd the Kingdom and other Irish to be transplanted to some part of Ireland allowing them such proportion of Land and Estate there as they should have had of their own elsewhere in Ireland if they had not been removed What effect that Transplantation had I know not but I suppose it easier to remove a handful of men from one corner of the Land to another then 't was to remove almost a Nation And do suppose there are some Papists in England as innocent of this late Plot as there were some in Ireland of that Rebellion The Dean of Canterbury doth in his incomparable Sermon before the House of Commons on the 5 th of November 1678 acknowledg the Piety and Charity of several persons who lived and dyed in the Roman Communion as Erasmus Father Paul Thuanus and many others who had in truth more goodness then the Principles of that Religion do either incline men to or allow of And so I think my self bound in justice to Judge in that manner of some Papists of my acquaintance Thus the Epicureans of old tho their Principle of making happiness consist in pleasure was detestable gained this point that many of their Sect were honest men And so much Tully acknowledged to be true but with a Salvo to his exception against their Doctrine Speaking of Epicurus and his Followers L. 2. De Finibus Boni Mali he saith Ac mihi quidem videtur quod ipse vir bonus fuit multi Epicurei fuerunt bodie sunt in amicitirs fideles in omni vita constantes graves nec voluptate sed officio consilia moderantes It seems to me that Epicurus was a good man and many of his Sect have been and are faithful in their friendships and constant and serious men in every condition of life and managing the conduct of their life 's by duty and not pleasure But then saith he hoc videtur major vis honestatis minor voluptatis and afterwards he saith atque ut caeteri existimantur dicere melius quam facere sic hi mihi videntur melius facere quam dicere As much as if he had said No thanks to their Principles but their honest inclinations the force of honesty shew'd it self more Predominant in them then that of pleasure and as other mens Principles are accounted better then their Practises these mens Practises are better then their Principles It is I think Gods standing Miracle in the world who is able to make a divulsion between the formal and the vital Act namely to make fire not burn to keep some men from undoing themselves and Mankind by the genuine consequences of the Opinions they profess in matters of Religion And thus it is happy for the World that Caliginosa nocte premit Deus nepotes discursus And he can by an Omnipotent easiness when he pleaseth Divert a mans understanding from seeing any first-born consequence from his opinion as well as a more remote one Moreover the Divine Power doth in the Government of the World interpose it self sometimes between professed Notions or Principles themselves and mans intellectual faculties Good men sometimes do not believe even the existence of that and of some other divine Attributes where the things to be believed are to be seen by the light of Nature And bad men habituated to lying sometimes do at last believe the lyes and shamms themselves made though yet for the most part it happens what is perfectly worthy of the Divine Power and goodness when men are with Candor and purity of mind seeking after Truth that-Heaven does so influence their understandings as that they are not by false lights artificial seduced to believe any thing against the light of Nature nor given up by weak arguments to strong delusions These things considered I think that that great Divine of our Age the Lord Bishop of Lincoln hath with a Noble modesty and charity in the Title of his unanswered and unanswerable Book against Popery exprest the Principles of that Religion when really believed to be pernicious And having said all this I need not trouble your Lordship or my self much further about finding a way to prevent the Papists from troubling us but do suppose that the Papists themselves are most concerned to labour in such an invention And instead of their being led by any hellish Principles to destroy any City of Course by Sinister means That is by burning it they may if they please in their Devotion address to Heaven for that favour to its old chosen People on Earth mentioned in Psalm 107. v. 7. And he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a City of Habitation I suppose that after so eminent a Person as the Lord High Chancellor of England in his Speech at the Condemnation of the Lord Stafford made that great interogation Does any man now begin to doubt how London came to be burnt and after the Vote of the last Parliament the last day of their Sitting in these words viz. Resolved That it is the Opinion of this House That
rate the people of England and Wales will appear to be 10 Millions The slowness of believing great things which is incident to Humane Nature and my inclination to desire that any thing may be proved to me by ocular Demonstration where the Subject Matter will bear it do make me as to any of the greater forementioned Quotas of the People of England contended for by Calculators to reserve my Judgment till some such accurate Survey hath been made thereof as I have heard Sir W. P. that Mathematical Statâ—s-man wish for But this I will venture to affirm that by what may be observed out of the Returns on the late Pole-Bills and the Bishops Survey 't is very highly probable that the Total of the number of the people here will upon any actual view hereafter to be made by publick Authority appear very considerably greater then any cautious Calculators have made it Another account of the same great Quaesitum was sent me into the Country from a Gentleman of London who acquainted me that he received the same from a very knowing and ingenious person whom the late Lord Treasurer as great a Master of the Science of Numbers as perhaps ever any that Acted in that high Sphere of State employed to effect an Impartial Return of the number of the people in London and in Middlesex and every other County both in England and Wales and the Total resulting from them was as I cast up the same 8,272,062 But I judge that this account was not taken upon ocular View of the several Counties but by way of Estimate not absolutely perfect and by Calculation or comparing several former accounts together There is no doubt but the most satisfactory way that we can at present take for our Estimates and whereby we may Trace the Numbers of the people from somewhat that looks like matter of Record is as I hinted from the Returns on the Pole Bill and the Bishops Survey And as to the Poll-money of Anno 1666 2 hundred thirty seven thousand Pound was the gross Charge and if on the consideration of Counties whereof the Charge was not returned as Buckinghamshire Durham Northumberland Kent Oxon North Wales Brenoc Radnor Glamorgan Pembroke of which the proportions in numbers with the Counties return'd are not hard to be Calculated and of the omissions perhaps through partiality whereby great numbers of persons chargeable were not returned and withal on a supposal that there had been in the Act no qualifications and exceptions of many persons from being Charged and particularly of persons under the Age of Sixteen and of Paupers c. we may further venture to make the Total chargeable to be 600,000 l. and every one paying for his Head there would then apppear 20 times as many people i. e. 12 Millions I know that out of such a Sum as 600,000 l. supposed chargeable it will be obvious to consideration that what was paid by the Nobility and by Titlers and Officers must be substracted but when it shall be likewise considered that in that Poll-money that of the Peers paid into the Receipt came to but 5693 l. 6s 8d and that perhaps as much went beside the Nett of the Receipt under the notion of imaginary Paupers and by persons not return'd as came into it from the Officers and Titlers and that the persons excepted under the Age of 16 were about a Moiety of the people the supposition of 600,000 l. chargeable by way of Capitation will not seem so strange as at the first view The great difficulty of having the Total of the people chargeable by any Poll-Bill exactly and impartially return'd appears in the Case of a PollTax in Holland The Author of the Interest of Holland mentions that Anno 1622 The Tax of Poll-money was laid on all the Inhabitants of Holland and none excepted but Prisoners and Vagrants and those that were on the other side the Line and all strangers and that then there were found in South Holland no more then 481934 Souls though yet the Commissioners instructions were strict for the making true returns and the particular returns are thus Registred in the Chamber of Accounts viz. Dort with the Villages 40523. Harlem with the Villages 69648. Delft with the Villages 41744. Leyden and Rynland 94285. Amsterdam and the Villages 115022. Goud with the Villages 24662. Rotterdam with the Villages 28339. Gornichem with the Villages 7585. Schiedam with the Villages 10393. Schoonhoven with the Villages 10703. Briel with the Villages 20156. The Hague 17430. Heusden 1444. In all 481934. And supposing that West Friesland may yield the 4 th part of the Inhabitants of South Holland it would amount to 120483. In all 602417. The Author there delivers his opinion That many evaded the being return'd on that Poll and that the number return'd was very short and defective but adheres to the account of them being now as is before mentioned viz. 2 Millions 4 hundred thousand And this as it doth in some measure fortifie my foregoing notion of the prodigious growth of the people of Holland under the Reformation so it doth likewise afford an instance of the partiality used in the returns of the numbers chargeable in Poll-Money But that which doth chiefly induce me to believe the Total of our numbers may very much exceed the sentiments of Cautious Calculators in this point is the Result of the Bishops Survey which was made for the Province of Canterbury and wherein none under the age of Communicants or 16 were return'd and but very few Servants or Sons and Daughters or Lodgers or Inmates of the people of several perswasions of Religion and the thing endeavour'd was that the heads of Families or House-Keepers i. e. Man and Wife might be truly return'd and at that rate the Total at the foot of the account for the Province of Canterbury is 2,228,386 the which according to the forementioned currant Rule of Calculation to be necessarily about doubled on the account of the people under 16 makes the Total of the Souls in that Province to be 4 Millions 4 Hundred 56 thousand 7 hundred seventy two and the Province of York bearing a sixth part of the Taxes and having therefore the 6th part of the people that the Province of Canterbury hath which is 742,795 that being added to those of Canterbury makes 5 Millions a hundred ninety nine thousand five hundred sixty seven and since 't is apparent that not more persons were returned in that Survey then did really exist in Nature and live within the Province as return'd it will hereafter seem a very unnecessary thing and indeed absurd to question whether the people of England were not then at least 5,199,567 But since it appears by the inspection of that Survey that there was so vast a quantity of places that made no returns at all some of which presently occur'd to my view in the Cursory reading and taking some few Notes thereof and without my designing to make any Collection of all the
Petition yet the Impartial Thuanus doth it and in Book 135. and on the Year 1605. going to relate the History of the Gun-powder Treason he saith Ad libellum supplicem pro libertate Conscientiarum à Majorum Religioni addictis i. e. the Papists in proximis Comitiis oblatum à Rege rejectum fama erat alium his proximis quae jam aliquoties dilata erant porrectum iri qui non repulsae ut prior periculum sed concessionis vel ab invito extâ—rquendae necessitatem adjunctam haberet Itaque qui regni negotia sub principe generoso ac minime suspicioso procurabant nihil pejus veriti in eo laborabant ut petitiones iis adjunctam necessitatem eluderent Verum non de gratiâ de quâ desperabatur decimò obtinendâ sed de repulsâ illà vel cum regni exitio quod minime rebantur illi inter conjuratos agebatur And as to the Puritans Petition to King Iames The Resolution of the Lords and likewise of the Iudges assembled in Star-Chamber shortly after doth I think refer to it in the 3d § viz. Whether it was an offence punishable and what punishment they deserved who framed Petitions and Collected a Multitude of Hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick Cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King that if he denied the Suit many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented where to all the Iustices answered that it was an offence finable at discretion and very near Treason and Felony in the punishment for they tended to the raising of Sedition and Rebellion and discontent among the People to which resolution all the Lords declared that some of the Puritans had raised a false rumour of the King how he intended to grant a toleration to Papists c. And the Lords severally declared how the King was discontented with the said false rumour and had made but the day before a Protestation to them that he never intended and would spend the last drop of Blood before he would do it I remember not in the Millenary Petition any such expression as the insolent intimation that thousands would be discontented if it were not granted but do on the occasion of this ruffianly way of petitioning by Papists and Puritans remember what Alexander ab Alexandro speaks of the Persians who worshipped Fire that they did once in their supplicating their God threaten him that if he would not grant their Request they would throw him into the water I was therefore no imprudent Act of the Nonconforming Divines who had been deprived of their Livings to publish voluntarily such a Protestation of their Tenets as aforesaid after the detection of the Papists Gun powder Treason Plot and by which Act the Government was diverted from putting such a Cautionary Test on their Party as was on the Papists by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Certain it is that both the Parties appeared very rude in the manner of their Petitioning In the Decrets where the Text saith that a thing is done Contra fidem Catholicam the gloss explains it to be Contra bonos more 's and so it may be said that both the Petitioners for the Roman Catholick Faith and for the others alledged Catholick Faith were injurious to each by their unmannerly Petitionings as well as to their Prince and their being both such frequent Aggressors against his quiet gave occasion for the Question to vex his Reign viz. Which were the worse of the two or whether they were not equally bad and so many may carelessly render them according to the saying Rustici res secant per medium What Bishop Elmore the Bishop of London thought in such a Case I have said and yet that Bishop as Fuller tells us in the Church History was a Learned Man and a strict and stout Champion for Disciplinâ— and on which account was more mock'd by Mar-Prelate and hated by the Nonconformists then any one And a great Son of the Church and Minister of the State hath judiciously in a publick Speech inculcated the different regard to be had to those who stray from the Flock and those who would destroy it Moreover a great Iustitiary of the Realm in the Tryal of one of the Popish Plotteâ—s took occasion to observe That Popery was ten times worse then the Heathen Idolatry And Dr. Burnet in a printed Sermon having said That in many places Lutherans are no less and in some tbey are more fierce against the Calvinists then against Papists adds like a strange sort of People among our selves that are not ashamed to own a greater aversion to any sort of Dissenters then to the Church of Rome I hope the Authority of that great Divine and excellent Person will in the point of this Comparison help to allay such a mistaken Aversion to some mistaken Dissenters I care not who knows the great deference I have to the judgment of that great Historian of our Reformation and whose History of which as the House of Commons has done right to by one of their Votes so likewise hath the highest Judicatory in England I mean the House of Lords by a late Order of theirs by which the Thanks of that House are given him for the great service done by him to this Kingdom and to the Protestant Religion in writing the History of the Reformation of the Church of England so truly and exactly and that he be desired to proceed to the perfecting what he further intends therein with all convenient speed c. As the words in the Iournal are My reading lately ten small printed Controversial Discourses between two Baronets of Cheshire near of kin to each other in which are many references to Historical Antiquities concerning the Illegitimacy of one Amicia Daughter to one of the Earls of Chester and my observing that one of those Authors blames the other for not better learning the duty to his deceased Grand-mother as his words are then by divulging the shame of her Illigitimacy and saith there is no Precedent in Scripture of any man that did divulge the shame of any person out of whose loyns he did descend except the wicked Ham and that the other Author thinks himself on the account of truth and for its sake to assert her Illegitimacy those many Tracts passed about that Controversy from the Year 1673 to 1676 occasioned my thinking that thus have some Writers that would take it ill perhaps not to be thought legitimate and true Sons of the Church of England took too much pains to prove the Birth of its Reformation to be illegitimate to the great Applause of the Papists and that our Reverend Historian of it did seasonably come in to Aid his Mother Church by publishing the very Records that would secure her from a blush on that account and leave that Mauvaise honte as the French call it to be Enemies and hath appear'd by his very laborious and judicious Writings to be a
of the House of Commons on the 20 th of October 1680. and printed by Order of that House and in which Affidavit and Information he was Charged with Endeavours to stifle some Evidence of the Popish Plot and to promote the belief of a Presbyterian one and with encouraging Dugdale to recant what he had sworn and promising to harbour him in his House and that his Lordships Priest should there be his Companion and likewise watch him his Lordship being thereupon desirous that right should be done him by a printed Vindication was pleased to Command my Pen therein and I was the less unwilling to disobey his Commands because in that Conjuncture wherein so many Loyal and Noble Persons were sufferes by the humour of Accusation then regnant I held it a Patriotly thing to withstand its Arbitrariness Sir W. P. in an Excellent Manuscript of his called The Political Anatomy of Ireland hath one Chapter there Of the Government of Ireland apparent or external and the Government internal and he describes the apparent Government there to be by the King and Three Estates and with the Conduct of Courts of Iustice but makes the internal Government there to depend much on the Potent Influence of the many Secular Priests and Fryars on the numerous Irish Roman Catholicks and on those Priests and Fryars being governed by their Bishops and Superiors and on the Ministers of Foreign States governing and directing such Superiors and thus while England was blest with the best external Government namely of Monarchy and with the best Monarch and a Loyal Nobility and Commons yet after the detection of a Popish Plot several Persons under the Notion of Witnesses about the same made so great a Figure in the Government and were so Enthroned in the Minds of the Populace that the Office of the King's Witnesses was as powerful as ever was that of the high Constable of England and the internal Government of the Kingdom was then very much as I may say a Martyrocracy and by that hard name the Noisy part of Protestants Endeavoured to gain Ground as much as ever any peaceable ones did by the old known Name of Martyrology But as all external Forms of Government have some peculiar defects as well as Conveniences so did this internal Government appear to have and those too so dreadful that the Air of Testimony having sometimes got into the wrong place was likely to have made Earth-Quakes in the external Government and as the Militia that after the Epoche of 41 was called the Parliaments Army did before the fatal time of 48 produce the Revolution of the Army's Parliament so were we endangered after the Plot-Epoche of 78 to have heard of the Office of the King's Witnesses changed into another namely of the Witnesses Kings And whoever shall write the English History of that part of time wherein that Martyrocracy was so powerful and domineering will if he shall think fit to give a denomination to that Interval of Time and to found the same on most of the Narratives he shall read or the Sham-Papers that many Papists and Protestants after the Plot Attaqued each other with be thought not absurd if he gives the old Style of Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incertum or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulosum It was in the time of the most Triumphant State of this Internal Government that I undertook to weigh its Empire as I have done in p. 33 34 35. discussing the points of Infamous Witnesses and their Infamy and of their Credibility after pardon of Perjury or Crimes and Infany incurred and a bolder man than my self would hardly have dared in that Conjuncture to have sifted their Prerogative and as I may say to have put hungry Wolves into Scales and to have taken the dimensions of the Paws of Lions or to have handled the stings of Serpents without expressing against some of the Romanists Principles he thought Irreligionary all the zeal he thought consistent with Charity and Candour to the Persons of Papists which is so much done in the Body of this Discourse and without the expressing of which my Vindicating a Noble Person from being a Papist had been an absurdity However I have been careful in any Moot-points of Witnesses not to disturb in the least the Measures of the External Government about them and out of the tender regard due to the safety of Monarchs from all Subjects have in p. 205 asserted the Obligation of doing every thing that is fairly to be done to support the Credits of Witnesses produced in the Case of Treason and have there given a particular reason for it and have in p. 36. with a Competent respect mentioned Dugdale on the occasion of the Shamm sworn against the Earl of Anglesy as if his Lordship had undertook to have unjustly patronized him and have shewed my self inclined enough to belief credible Witnesses by the Concurrence of my thoughts with the Iustice of the Nation in Godfrey's Case and the fate of which Person and the Casuistical Principles that allowed it I had perhaps not mentioned but out of a just indignation against the infamous Shamms about it spread by some ill Papists to the dishonour of that Excellent Lord the Earl of Danby But there was another consideration that induced me to write with such a Zeal as aforesaid against such Romanists Principles and their effects and but for which the following Discourse had not swollen to a large Volume I observed that since the late Fermentation in England such a Panique Fear of the Growth of Popery and the numbers of Papists had been by Knaves propagated among Fools that made the English Nation appear somewhat ridiculous abroad and that during its Course many considerable Protestants were so far mis-led as to think the State of the Nation could never be restored to it self but by disturbing the Succession of the Crown in its lawful Course of Descent and therefore resolving to do my utmost to free the Land from the Burthen of another guess Perjury by the general Violence done to our Oaths Promissory I mean to those of Allegiance and Supremacy then that of any Witnesses in their Oaths Assertory I thought fit at large to shew the Vanity of any Mens fearing that Popery can ever humanly speaking be the National Religion of England and to direct them that they may not by the imaginary danger of Popery to come run with all their swelling Sails on the Rock of it at present by founding Dominion in Grace and out-rage those Oaths that do at present bind us without reserve to pay Allegiance to the King's Heirs after his demise And for any one who being concerned to see so many of his Country-men lying as it were on the Ground and dejected with unaccountable fears of the extermination of their Religion and themselves and besmearing themselves with the dreadful guilt of their great Oaths was resolved to endeavour to help them up and by perswasion gently to lead them
I think that an eximious man impeacht in Parliament and there acquitted will need no Herald to proclaim his worth nor his deserving to be restored in integrum to the Royal Protection and Favour when that his own works have praised him in the gates that is in the Jurisdiction where they were so strictly scann'd My Lord if any could prove your Lordship to be a Papist he need not call that accumulative Treason in you nor need he go about by torturing the Law to make it confess many Felonies to be one Treason many Rapes to be one false coming But Popery in you would be plain down-right palpable and rank Treason by vertue of the Statute of 23 of Elizabeth Ch. 1. which makes it High Treason for any person in the Dominions of the Crown of England to be withdrawn from the Religion then established to the Romish Religion That your Lordship hath been bred a Protestant and been so as it were ex traduce there needs no other evidence then the contents of this Letter and that you have not been withdrawn to the Romish Religion you have declared by the Series of your actings against it that shew your Mind beyond the power of words and 't is by the help of that great Wisdom God has given you that our English World expects that a way may be found how to make it more clearly appear to the eye of the Law when any others have been or are withdrawn to the Romish Religion a thing perhaps at present of somewhat difficult proof For without supposing that the Pope can or will give them dispensations to take all Oaths and Tests that can be devised doth not a reserving some fantastic sense to themselves make nonsense of all Oaths and that one word Equivocation make them proof against all other words Doth not that with them sanctify or at least justify all other words they can use May they not on these terms safely swear there is neither God nor Man nor Hell nor Devil that is meaning not in a Mathematical point or in Vtopia and that they saw not such a Man such a day that is not with the eyes of a Whale And have not the late dying Speeches of some of these Imposters and particularly Father Irelands shewn us that in the points of mental reservation and equivocation they persevere in the impudent owning of that which would unhinge the World and turn humane Society into a dissolute multitude And do we not believe many to be Papists who we know have taken the Oaths and Tests Hath not a Papist some Years since writ of the lawfulness of the taking of the Oath of Supremacy I speak not this my Lord to derogate from the Wisdom of our Ancestors that appointed these discriminations nations and do think that when we have used all the lawful means we can to know who among us are Papists as certainly as we do what is Popery and to keep Papists from hurting us and themselves we ought to acquiesce in the Results of the Providence of God. But what all those means are tho I know not yet I am apt to believe that your Lordships comprehensive knowledg of men and things and of the true interest of the Kingdom hath qualified you to tell your Royal Master and His Houses of Parliament nor do I believe that the difficulty of either finding out such means and making practicable things be practised will blunt but rather whet the edg of your Industry in this case as being of Quintilians mind who Judged that there was Turpitude in despairing of any thing that could be done I think his words are Turpiter desperatur quicquid fieri potest â—Tis certainly the interest of the King and Kingdom that the numbers of the Papists here and especially of those withdrawn from Protestancy to the Church of Rome should be known in the case of which Apostates tho it be impossible without seizing on the Papers and Archives of one certain Priest to see the Original Acts of their Recantation of Protestancy yet is it most certain and on all hands confessedly true that Eminent Overt-Acts of abhorrency of Protestantisme are alwayes required at the admitting one who was of that Religion into the bosome of the Roman Catholic Church which any one will be convinced of who reads the Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Villeroy of the 20 th of Octob. 1603. from Rome where he gives his Opinion against the Queen of England being made Godmother at the Baptism of Madam That Cardinal who had incomparable skill in the Canon Law and the knowledg of all the Customs of the Papal See and who had lived at Rome above 20 Years saith in that Letter I account it my duty to write to you freely that that cannot be done without very great Scandal to good Catholicks nor without the extream displeasure and offence of the Pope You presuppose that the Queen of England is a Catholic but Here we know the contrary tho some believe that she is not of the worser sort of Heretics and that she has some inclination to the Catholic Religion And I will tell you moreover that tho she were in her heart of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion as much as the Pope himself so it is that she having been bred up in Heresie and outwardly persisting in it as she doth she cannot according to the Canons be held for a Catholic in public acts of Religion till she hath first both viva voce and by writing under her hand abjured all Heresie and made profession of the Catholic Faith. Nor was it ever known that in the case of any Protestants Apostacy to the Church of Rome any Pope ever dispensed with those Canons and therefore it may well hence be inferr'd That if evidence just so much as the Law requires as to such Apostacy be given that no superpondium or proof of overt-acts more then necessary ought to be expected for that overt Acts almost impossible to be proved may yet necessarily be presumed but this by the way And therefore now further my Lord if fas est ab hoste doceri be adviseable in the case as strict Circumstances may be required in the conversion of Papists to our Church as are in the withdrawing of any from our Church to theirs Indeed if I were a Member of Parliament and any one there should be so happy as to invent a way and propound it whereby the present Lay-Papists in England might let us have a Moral Certainty that they neither consented to nor concealed the late Plot and likewise that they did really detest all those desperate Popish Principles that are fundamentally destructive to the Safety of the King and Kingdom and that they would harbour no Priests born in the Kings Dominions nor send any of their Children to be bred in Forrain Seminaries and on the contrary that on occasion they would discover to a Magistrate any such Priest or one who sent his Children to such Seminary
the Earth and scandals to Heaven I mean all Religion-Traders whether Popish or Fanatical those vilest of Nominales who cheat in nomine Domini and such likewise who disquiet States by assuming the Trade of World-menders and everlasting Propounders that are like busie Insects flying in the Eys of Mankind and whom Sir E. Coke in the 85. Ch. of his Institutes which is entituled against Monopolists Propounders and Projectors deservedly brands and Atheists that would reform a Church Bankrupts in their particular Trades that would advance Trade in general Defiers of Justice who would amend the Law and wasting that time as Censors of the Manners of Kings for not paying their Debts which they should employ in acquiring Assets to pay their own In fine Undertakers to Cure Church and State as Confident as the Quack who said in his Bills He Cureth all Diseases both cureable and incureable All these sorts of men whose Trade is talking and whose talk is cheat will only come to be Bankrupt by being heaved out of all places by the Generations of Useful Traders multiplying there Nature that has been long laying its Siege to such Idlers in places of resort will then at last carry on its works so far as to leave them no Earth to play their Engines upon and such unprofitable people will be as naturally extruded out of our Towns as are Women and Children out of Places besieged nor can all the humming of their Propositions procure them more continuance in such places of business then the noyse of Drones entitle them to a residence in the Hive and it will as little quit Cost to have them planted in our Cities as for a Gardiner that pays a high Rent to have beds for weeds Of the Improvement of great quantities of Land by Gardening the Ilands of Iersey and Guernsey are examples and we have a Pleasant and Profitable Prospect of such Improvement near our Metropolis and other Great Cities and I doubt not but England may flourish so as to become the Garden of the World and do as little doubt of any Course of time bringing the Pope again to say as Matthew Paris tells us he did Verè hortus Noster deliciarum est Anglia as I do of that honest Monk's sleeping till the Resurrection or Mr. Coleman's having any more Dreams of a Paradise in the Gardens of Wooburn 'T is hard for a Visionaire not to fancy any thing possible but he who shall pronounce that England can from its present improvement and populousness be driven back ad primordia rerum and that the many cultivated understandings in it and who have reduced Knowledge ad firmam by calculation can be reduced to the Calculation only of Beads and be imposed on like the Indians to part with their Gold for Beads and that half the Land of England now inhabited by three Millions of People as all estimates make to be the least that half of it contains will be delivered up to 50000 Regulars and to persons that the Laws in being allow not so much as a Foot of Earth for Graves and that it is not of equal detriment to a Country to have half the Land made unprofitable and become Bog or the like as to be long in perpetuity to unprofitable people and that such as make property their God which they who over value the things of this Life do and are the Majority of any Country will idlely sacrifice it to those real Impropriators who make but a Property as I may say of God I mean those hypocritical Idlers who only by a Religion-Craft without any service useful to Mankind claim a great Quota of the Profits of others labours and that when we are going on so fast toward the exactest culture by Gardening which excludes all Weeds the old inimicus homo shall find six Millions asleep to give him an opportunity to sow Tares and to ask half the Land for his pains I say he who shall pronounce as aforesaid is one that looks but at few things and so de facili shoots his Bolt and is one that we may think to be a fool without being in danger of Hell Fire and Holy Churches great work of the Conversion of three Kingdoms to the end that it may Convert half the Land again to its use is likely to prove as fruitless as the Christian endeavours to recover the Holy Land. There is such a strong Rampart of living Earth against the assaults of Popery in this kind I mean the Number of our Protestants and particularly of those employ'd in Tilling the Land that Popery cannot dissolve and let it pipe never so plausibly we shall be like the deaf Adder stopping our Ears by laying them against the Earth we are possest of My Lord They who have observed the Intervals of your pleasure when you have had some breathing times for retirement from the fatigue of Affairs of State know that the contriving the improvement of your Ground by Tillage and Planting and Gardening hath been at once your care and your delight And I believe Cicero's Cato Major doth not describe the pleasure of old Age in the improvement of the Earth with greater hight then your Lordship is able to do and your example in this thing may Crown both that of Tully and the Aged Hero's by him there commemorated for delighting in Husbandry and indeed it may be supposed but natural for old Age being so near the Earth its Center to move with a quicker sort of delight toward it and especially among Christians to whom the dull Earth Aided by the acuteness of St. Paul I referr to his similitude of the Corn is so kind and greateful for their culture of it as to Court them with an Embleme of their Resurrection and to teach them a surer way then Galilaeus had found out to Transplant the Earth into Heaven But now methinks to one that has so curious and perfect a Sence of this solid and manly pleasure that the Culture of the Earth affords as your Lordship the very Idea of England's Degeneracy from its thriving State of Agriculture to poor solitary pasture how unpracticable soever the thing is must necessarily carry some horrour with it to be imagined and the very telling it to you that some vain Popish Projectors would rob us not only of the Culture of Learning but even of that of the very Earth must give your thoughts a Nausea instead of such a Noble Extacy as fill'd the whole Soul of Erasmus who in his old Age in a Letter to Budaeus speaking of Sir Thomas More 's and other mens Works that did then begin to beautifie the World with Learning cryes out Deum immortalem quod seculum video brevi futurum Vtinam contingat rejuvenescere And as I am sure you would not desire to Renew your Youth like the Eagle only to live in an Age of buzzards so you know too much of the course of nature to wish your Life a day shorter for fear of the
man certainly apprehended no reason of an additional Commandment Thou shalt not fire thy Neighbours house and had he been convinced that the Pope in his decrepit Age had made a Commandment for the firing of it and whole Cities and had so pronounced è Cathedrâ would probably have imputed the lingua dolosa and the caâ—bones desolatorii to his Doctrine and the smoak from that fiery Doctrine would have had the effect of opening his Eyes But as for Mr. Cressy's Idea of the Massacring any Incendiaries tho they had been tooâ—â— in flagranti if he had staid in his old Church I mean that of England he would have found any such thing sufficiently stigmatised by its Doctrine which makes the King to bear the Sword and that not in vain and allows not the Rabble to be a Terror to Evil Doers nor Hell to break loose for the support of Heaven and which inculcates Obedience to the Law of the Land for Conscience sake and even that Law permits none to Assemble in Arms against a declared Enemy but by the Kings particular Commission and he must therefore go to China or to Rome that will have a Street or a Town or the Vniversitas or Community therein punish'd for the pretended or real faults of particular persons Moreover the English Genius hath not in Story that I know of been tainted with Infamy for penetrating any thing of that horrid Nature except in the old days of Popery in relation to the Iews and the Lay-Rabble was then put upon it by the Rabble of Fryars and Monks who owing Money to the Iews were that way willing to confute their Creditors And since the time that that Great and High Judg of Reason as well as Equity and to whom the Custody of the King's Conscience was Committed and who hath held the Scale of Equity with as steady an hand and tender heart and as discerning and watchful an Eye as any of his Predecessors did place the dreadful Guilt of the Firing of London where he did at the Condemnation of the Lord Stofford and probably had satisfied his Judgment for the doing of it by Observations or Examinations of Passages that occured elsewhere rather then at that Tryal for there the Evidence did not rise clear and high enough for the occasioning that part of his Sentence and since the time that the People of England by their Representatives threw the Guilt of that Fire on the Papists and the Magistrates of our Metropolis inscribed it on the Monument the populace have been as calm and temperate in their judging of it and as perfectly free from resentments of Revenge against all the Papists in general or any one Papist in particular as if none but that poor angry Antiquary Mr. Prynn had censured them for it and whose Thunder the World being so long used to did so much despise that his popularity could scarce have obtain'd an out-cry for the killing of a single Mad Dog. I must confess tho by the reiterated Confession and by the Execution of Hubert a Papist it appear'd that he did set Fire to the House in London from whence its rage began and tho his Confessing of Peidelow to be one of his Accomplices in the Fact exempts it from being doubted that Papists burn'd London and tho after I had heard of that judgment of the Lord Chancellor and of the House of Commons and of the Magistrates aforesaid and was shewn that Papal Tenet by your Lordship I doubted not of the Justice of attributing in my thâ—â—ghts one part of the Guilt of the Fire to some Jesuited Papists and that it might be said with the same propriety of Speech that London was Fired by the Papists as 't was by Sir Walter Raleigh that Harry the 4 th of France was kill'd by the Papists yet I never thought any considerable number of the Gentry among our Lay-Papists would have practised any thing of that kind tho the Pope himself should have Commanded it There was a Book containing Observations on our late Affairs of Church and State Printed in the Year 1680 called the Arts and Pernicious Designs of Rome wherein is shewed what are the Aims of the Iesuites and Fryars c. by a person of their own Communion who turn'd Romanist about thirty years since and throughout that Book as he in general fortifies my observation of a Protestant when turn'd Papist not being able to abandon all Candour his mind was first nourished in so he doth it particularly p. 25. where having in Proposition 4th spoke of the Mischiefs we havâ— received from some Popish Orders and particularly that of the Iesuites he saith as followeth in Proposition 41 viz. Amongst which the late sad disaster happening to the City of London not to mention divers others of like nature happening in divers other places since if it were a Practice of any Humane Contrivance and not a meer judgment of God from Heaven upon us cannot reasonably be thought to have been the Project or Practice of any other Men then these and to have come originally from Rome and the Consistory there who beside the bad Principles already mentioned which legitimate such doings at all times that they judge it convenient for their ends were without doubt willing to signalize that year 1666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some in that Party who have had the confidence to affirm and as it were to predict that in this year Rome and their pretended Antichrist the Pope should be utterly destroyed That it appear'd a Practice of Humane Contrivance by the very Confession of the Incendiary is plain and that it was by the People in the City then suspected so I have said but so far were our plain English natures from charging it on any Lay English Papist that Mr. Marvel in his Growth of Popery Printed Anno 1677 having said That we may reckon the Reigns of our late English Princes by a Succession of the Popish Treasons against them adds And if under his Majesty we have yet seen no more visible effects of the same Spirit then the Firing of London acted by Hubert hired by Peidelow two French Men which remains a Controversie it is not to be attributed to the good Nature or better Principles of that Sect but to the wisdom of his Holyness who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special Mark of his Indignation I presume not to charge or discharge any sort of men about this Fact further then the Law hath done whether Papists or Priests or Fifth Monarchy-men for of a Conspiracy to Fire the City on the day it was fired on several of that latter Sect had been before Convicted and deservedly Executed for it as we must either Grant or Arraign the Justice of the Nation and therefore Mr. Cressy had reason to blame Mr. Prynn in some measure for concluding that the Papists were the only Incendiaries of the City
it What a diminution was it to the honour of the Age that the Popularity of Sir W. I. a person who in the florid part of his youth appeared but an Entring Clerk or one who entred Judgments for Attorneys and in the greatest Figure he made in Parliament or the Court acquired no fame by various Learning and Skill in the Politicks or by having profoundly studied the great Book of the World should yet as with the Impetus of an Oracle run down the great Characters of this Lord and of your Lordship and the Earl of Hallifax that are known to the World to be so great for Loyalty and Learning and the Comprehensive Knowledge of the present and past State of Christendom and that after that Loyal and Learned Person and undefatigable assertor of our Laws and Religion Sir L. Ienkins had with great Reason and Courage in a Speech in the House of Commons against the Exclusion Bill affirmed that the passing the same would be contrary to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and Sir W. I. thereupon answering it with the Non est haeres viventis he had somewhat like a general humme of Applause from the House and almost as if his had been the voice of God and and not of Man But on this occasion I should be unjust and too reserved to your Lordship if I should not tell you that a Gentleman of good parts and a great Estate a Member of that Parliament acquainted me that he being then one of the great Admirers and Followers of Sir W. I. and frequently present with him in the most private Cabals did observe him to be full of fears of the Courts being brought to favour the Exclusion-Bill as supposing that the Parliament would be thereby engaged to part with great Sums of Money and that he observed Sir W. I. and others of the Cabal were at a stand in their Politicks as not knowing what steps to make next if that Bill had passed and the Consideration whereof he told me made him not desirous to participate further in their Councils Thus just is it for Heaven sometimes to blind and confound and abandon good men in their Councels when they abandon plain Principles and Dictates of Reason and when they will not do what they know to suffer them not to know what they do and particularly not to know while they were so busily founding Dominion or Empire in Grace that they were riding Post to Rome as fast as ever that Father of the Trent-Council did who was so often employed to the Holy See to bring thence the Holy Ghost in a Cloak-bag It is some Consolation to your Lordship to have fellow sufferers in the Obloquy cast upon you by the Tongue of a young Man in a matter so remote from verisimilitude and not worth the twice naming and whose Person I thought not worthy the naming once however a Loyal Parliament thought his Accusations worthy the Press and in whose reproach that Honourable Person and your Lordships old friend the Earl of Peterborough shared with you But by what I have found to be the judged Character of that Lord among the most Impartial Studiers of Men in the Age I may justly say that the honour of the Age was a fellow sufferer with you both by the publick Countenancing of the dirt by so obscure a hand thrown on a Person of so Noble Descent both from Father and Mother and of so much Courage and Loyalty and Learning and on whom his great knowledge of all History Ancient and Modern hath so much accomplished as a States-man and one who in his Travels in the World abroad left there such impressions of his real value on the most Critical Observers that his Prince thought him to be the most proper Person to employ abroad as Ambassador in negotiating the Marriage between his Royal Highness and the Princess of Modena whereby we may yet hope for an Heir Male to inherit the Crown of England I never heard that any thing but sham could represent this Lord otherwise than a true Son of the Church of England and having once or twice seen him en passant at your Lordships House and observed the lineaments of Honesty and Honour in his looks do think that his very face may serve to confute thousands of such Tongues as that which aspersed him But both his Lordship and yours have likewise in that Persons Accusations and in the greatest Circumstances of improbability been fellow sufferers with the greatest Subject and therefore need not be ashamed of your fate according to what the Famous Historian so well said Post Carthaginem captam vincâ— neminem pudeat Yet having said all this I shall say that perhaps had it been the fortune of that Loyal Parliament to have sate longer it might too have happened that none of your Lordships that I have named would at last â—ave thought it Parliamentum sine misericordia and that I believe you will not find any future one so and that your Lordships who have so eminentâ—y supported the Northern Heresie so called will be like the North Magnetick and attract a general popular love which after all its variations will return again to you But 't is high time for me to take off my hand from this Map of the Future State of England that as a Predicter rather than a Prophet I have here so particularly delineated and as one who according to what is in St. Mathew When it is Evening say it will be fair weather for the Sky is red c. and from Natural Causes have as well as I could discern'd the signs of the times and what it may be a shame for any one that is a piece of a Philosopher to be wholly ignorant of when the inspired Prophet tells us that the Stork knoweth her appointed times and the Turtle and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming and that 't is obvious that the Beasts of the Field as well as Birds of the Air foresee unseasonable weather from the disposition of the Air. Nor is it hard for any Considerer now in relation to some of the Popish and Protestant Recusants to undertake what the Magicians Astrologers and Chaldeans durst not to the King of Babylon I mean to tell them what their Dream was they dreamt to rule us still by a Nation within a Nation as the Mamalukes did Aegypt they dreamt of Offices and like idle Millenaries of Lactantius his golden Age when the Cliffs of the Mountains shall sweat out Honey and the Springs and Rivers shall flow with Milk and Wine and of a pingue solum that shall tire no Husbandmen and of such a Country as Campania the Garden of Italy that shall not be called terra del lavoro But I do predict that the noise of the World and their being necessarily disturbed by the busie in whose way they stand will awaken them and that if they will have any food to raise the vapours that will again
Hereditary Monarchs He knew that a Popish Parliament in England had shewed their Abhorrence of the Pope's being somewhat like an Excluder-General of Kings and an Arbitrary one too as appeared by the Words in the Statute of 25 H. 8. viz. The Pope contrary to the inviolable Grants of Iurisdictions by God immediately to Emperors and Kings hath presumed to invest who should please him to inherit in other mens Kingdoms and Dominions which we your Loyal Subjects Spiritual and Temporal abhor and detest and the practices at Rome for King Iames's Exclusion had made deep impressions in his thoughts As he was a Prince of great Reading he could not but know particularly the many Anti-Monarchical Tenets that were published by many Popish Commentators positive Writers School-men Canonists and never censured by any Index Expurgatorius tho yet several Popish Authors who asserted the Power of Kings were so censured and particularly Bodin de Republicâ and he could not be ignorant of Popes having required several Crowned Heads to swear Fidelity to them and their Successors and that particularly the Pope sent Hubertus to require William the Conqueror â—o swear Allegiance and Fidelity to Him and his Successors and who magnanimously refused so to do and that the Papacy endeavoured to root its Power in the World by obliging men in their Oaths of Fidelity to any particular Pope to swear the same likewise to his Successors according to the common Style in those Oaths viz. Fidelis obediens ero Domino Papae c. suis successoribus and that thus too the Oath of all Popish Bishops at their Consecration runs and that the Great Austrian Family had not more carefully secured to it self the Scepters of the Empire by the Constitution of a King of the Romans than the Papacy had made Provision of that King 's being sworn that he would from that time be a Protector and Defender of the Pope and Church of Rome according to those words in the Oath as I find it set down in Magerus viz. Ego N. Rex Romanorum FVTVRVS Imperator promitto spondeo polliceor atque juro Deo leato Petro me de caetero protectorem atque desensorem fore summi Pontisicis sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae c. He had moreover considered the great Fermentation in the minds of so many Loyal People in England by Queen Elizabeth's being so reserved as She was in the business of the Succession and which as Dr. Matthew Hulton Arch-Bishop of York mentioned in a memorable Sermon he preached before her at White-Hall Gave hopes to Foreigners to attempt fresh Invasions and bred fears in many of her Subjects of a new Conquest and who thereupon very loyally said then The only way in Policy left to quell those hopes and asswage those fears were to Establish the Succession and at last intimating as far as he durst saith my Author the nearness of Blood of our present Sovereign he said plainly That the expectations and presages of all Writers went Northward naming without any Circumlocution Scotland There is an Abstract of this Loyal and Learned Sermon and which throughout pointed at the Succession in the History of some of the Bishops of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth printed in the Year 1653 and the fate of the Sermon was such that tho perhaps it tickled not the Ears of that Queen it so far touched her Conscience that the Historian saith She opened the Window of her Closet and gave the Arch-Bishop thanks for it No doubt but Parsons saying in his Book of the Succession That he thought the Affair about it could not be ended without some War did much heighten the Popular Fears of War happening thereupon and 't is most probable the long fear of War in that Fermentation did variously weaken the Kingdom Nor is it a new thought for the long fears of War to be held to bear some proportion to the mischief of War it self in obstructing Trade and Commerce insomuch that several Writers of the Regalia and fiscal matters among the Tractatus Illustrium have told us That Quando timor belli idem operatur quod ipsum bellum remissio sit conductoribus i. e. of the Revenue and hath Entituled them to defalcations We may imagine by the just effects of our late Fermentation what the state of the Body Politick was in that namely like the state of long tormenting anguish in the Body natural upon the pricking of an Artery and importing often more trouble and danger than the cutting of one And by the great triumphant Flame of joy appearing in the Act of Recognition in King Iames's time and which appears in our Statute-Book as I may say lâ—ke a Pyramid of the Fire of Zealous Loyalty and greater and higher than any former Act of that nature we may judge how overjoyed all the Loyal People of England were on his coming to the Crown and as Pliny in his Panegyrick saith of Nerva's adopting Trajan It was impossible it should have pleased all when it was done except it had pleased all before it was done the same might be applied to the Case of King Iames's Succession to the Crown The very Title of the Act speaks the Triumph of the Hereditary Monarchy viz. A Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James his Progeny and Posterity There was an end of all the dreadful inconveniences of the uncertainty of the Succession and of the fears of the People of what was worse than being torn in pieces by wild Hâ—rses I mean the rending their Consciences by contrary Oaths about the Succession as in Harry the 8th's time There was an end of the â—ears from the growing greatness of France and fears of any Foreign Fremuerunt gentes England was restored to it self and Scotland added to it and tho Boccaline like an airy Iâ—genioso in his Politick Touchstone makes England weigh less on the throwing Scotland into the Scales any one will find that in him but grave Romancery who shall consider what with Oracular Wisdom another-guess Statos-man than Boccaline told Harry the 4th I mean D'Ossat in his long Letter to him from Rome Book 7th and Anno 1601. where he saith That the Pope desisted not to hope that his Maiesty might be perswaded by reason of State to endeavour that the Kingdoms of England and Scotland may not be joyned in the Person of one King considering the great mischiefs that the English alone have done to the French more than all other Nations put together c. And indeed that England is at this day preserved not only from the danger of being overbalanced by France but from the loss of its ancient figure of balancing the World must highly be attributed to the Hereditary Monarchy being fixt in the Line of King Iames and to Scotland being thrown into the Scales as was said and if any one shall tell me by the way that the weight of Scotland was prejudicial to Loyalty in