A LETTER Sent from beyond the SEAS To One of the CHIEF MINISTERS OF THE NON-CONFORMING PARTY By way of Reply to many Particulars which He sent to the Author in a Letter of News Useful for these Distempered Times By a Lover of the Established Government both of Church and State ANNO DOMINI M. DC LXXIV A Letter sent from beyond the Seas to one of the Chief Ministers of the Non-conforming Party Dear Cousin I Was very glad to receive your Letter but very far from being glad to find you still so extreamly desirous of Innovations in a Government so well established as that is under which you live I perceive you are more zealous than it becomes a good Subject or a good Christian to be for carrying on a Project of my Lord Choses's as Unreasonable as New viz. That of Disabling a Papist to Inherit the Crown For doubtless that proposal was first made and afterwards promoted by him the last Sessions of Parliament not out of true Love to the Reformed Religion but out of Spite or Revenge to the D. of Y Who were he not only Papist but Heathen or Mahumetan which I think is not much worse would certainly have as good a Title to his Crown and all his Temporal Rights as if he were the most Orthodox and Holy Christian in the World And I am perswaded that my zealous Lord Chose would not be willing that the King and Parliament should make a particular Act to disable his own Posterity to Inherit the great Estate he hath got if they should turn Papists or Atheists as others have done before them We all know what mischief in the World that Damnable Doctrine has made That Temporal Rights and Inheritances depend upon Saintship and Grace And if it be clear from Scripture as nothing is more clear that a King ought not to lose his Crown or any other Person for feit his Temporal Rights for not being Christians or for renouncing the Christian Religion then it is plain that neither the D nor any other Person ought to be deprived of their Temporal Rights especially Crowns of all Temporal Rights the greatest for not being Protestants or which is more for renouncing the Christian Religion And I am heartily glad that God gave the Fathers of the English Church the grace to defend her Doctrine in opposing that Unreasonable and truly Romish Proposal of my Lord Chose which if they had approved and defended after it was proposed they had truly acted in that like men Popishly affected and shewed themselves to be what their Adversaries would fain perswade the World they are For 't is the Romish Church and her Doctors which maintain That Kings Excommunicated or Heretick Kings or which is all one that Kings that renounce the Apostolick Faith ought to be Deprived and Deposed But 't is the Church of England that maintains the contradiction of that Unscriptural Unevangelical Principle and thinks her self as much obliged to submit her self to a Heathen Atheistical Heretical or Popish Prince where she can as to an Orthodox King and where she cannot she thinks her self obliged to suffer as her Saviour like a Lamb brought to the slaughter and dares pretend to take up no Arms but those of the Primitive Christians whose true Copy she is Tears Arguments and Prayers I say it is the Church of England that is of this judgment and neither the Church of Rome nor the Church of Scotland both of which have actually Excommunicated and Deposed Lawful and Rightful Princes under the Notion of being Hereticks and Enemies to Christ's Kingdom forgetting both alike the Precepts and Examples of our Saviour and his Apostles on which the Church of England hath grounded the contrary Doctrine as well as on right reason Our Saviour though God rendred unto the Heathen Caesar the things that were Caesar's he owned his right to the Empire both by word and deed although he were but the adopted Successor of the greatest Usurper that ever was in the World Nay furthermore he owned and submitted to the Procuratory Power of Pilate who acted but by Commission from the Emperour Tiberius who if there be any truth in the Character of Tacitus was the greatest Tyrant and the most wicked man that ever the World saw And as for St. Paul there is no Article of our Religion not even that that Jesus Christ is the Son of God more clear in his Epistles than that Every Soul should be subject to the Higher Powers That we should Obey not only for Wrath but Conscience sake That whosoever resisieth receiveth to himself Damnation and lastly that all the Powers and when he wrote there were none but Heathen Powers were Ordained of God I might here insist upon the Practice of the Apostles as it is represented in their Acts and the constant Submission and Sufferings of the Primitive Christians as they are reported by the Ecclesiastical Fathers and Historians but the Scripture it self is sufficient to demonstrate the truth of this Argument which the Church of England has not only established in her Doctrine but her Fathers and Sons of late maintained in their Practices and which the Church of Scotland agreeing in this and many other Points with that of Rome did ever oppose both in Word and Deed. And since that Kirk and Nation have been of this Opinion we need not wonder that the English Disciples of their Buchanan and Knox have practised those rebellious Principles which have so debauched and corrupted the Subjects of the Kings of England as to make them be proverbially called The Kings of Devils And which the Anabaptists in Germany improved into this Maxim That Saintship was the Foundation of Soveraignty and that the Righteous ought to Inherit the Earth And furthermore if Crowns ought to be Entailed upon Protestants only then it is but just that the Estates of all Subjects whatsoever should be so Entailed And if for example the D of Y must be cut off from his Rights for being a Roman Catholick then let the rest of the Papists lose theirs they are all alike Idolaters and let them all alike suffer And to bring the Case to your own House can you imagine that you your self ought to lose your Right to the Estate you have or may have hereafter upon that supposition that you should turn Papist which men as firmly resolved against it as you have certainly done These Practises and Proposals are such that they have left a blot on the memories of some men that seem more zealous than their Brethren And I am glad at present that the Religious Lord Chose is the Chief Patron and Promoter of such an Unreasonable and Romish Design I have more than ordinary reason to call it Romish because I have heard it maintained here among all the Priests I converse with It is a Doctrine dearly beloved by the Romanists And put but the name of Heretick to a Prince here and it is just the same case as when you call a
Prince a Papist in England where if there be no more than my good Lord Chose that are Fautors of this Romish Doctrine my Country is in a far better case than I thought it to be And truly this noble Project of the late Lord Chose was condemned by all Protestants as soon as it took air in France not only for that it was an Ungospel way of proceeding and savors strongly of the Doctrine of Rome which they abhor but because it puts their King in mind of a Project he is very much inclined to viz. To make a like Law here that none but a Roman Catholick shall ever be King or bear any Office or Trust in the Kingdom And certainly if it should ever please God for our sins to suffer our Princes to back-slide into Romish Idolatry and Superstition we have nothing to do but to pray and like our glorious Ancestors in Queen Mary's days suffer quietly when we cannot flie And therefore I wonder that you should so oblickly reflect upon the Bishops and censure them for doing that which in Honor and Duty they were bound to do and represent this to their Disgrace which all good and well advised Protestants must needs commend them for if they will be Impartial But put the case such an Act were made who can see the bad consequences thereof None but a Protestant shall govern now but Faction still increasing none within a while but a Presbyterian c. For you that are used to talk of Numbers and Strength can best tell how Numerous and Powerful they are that are possessed with as firm a prejudice against the Church of England as the Church of Rome it self denying communion equally with both and who educate their Children in perfect hatred of the one as the genuine Daughter of the other I have wrote all this to present to your view what perhaps in the hurry of Business you have not had time to consider And though I think it very impious and unreasonable to deprive any such Prince of his Crown upon this account yet were the Government to be formed again I would be as zealous for this condition as the greatest Zealot of them all And I am as sorry as any other man that it was not alwaies one of the Fundamental Laws of England though now it be too late to make it such You tell me also that my Lord intends to come and live in London I suppose it may be under pretence to secure his Person from the Papists but I wish it may not be with a design to act over the same things under a pretence of securing the Protestant which the Duke of Guise acted in Paris under a seeming zeal to secure the Popish Religion The Reason that makes me fear it is the conformity of our times in England with those in France as you may see by the following account The Duke who was a man of an high spirit and not able to bear the least disgrace being removed by Henry III. from the most rich and honourable of his Court-preferments became thereupon male-content and retiring from the Court which he now did hate went to live at his house in Paris where by many Arts as in particular by the subtle Practises of the Priests and Jesuits he became in a short time the Minion of the People whose Affections he drew off from the King by representing him though a hearty Roman Catholick as a favorer of the Hereticks who under the protection of the Princes of the Bloud increased mightily in his Reign He also represented him in particular to be a great fovorer of the King of Navarre against whom he himself had a particular ill will and whom the People through the Instigation of the Priests and Jesuits did perfectly hate because he was a Protestant although he was Primier Prince of the Bloud for whom the French commonly have a great Reverence and by consequence Heir Apparent or as a Friend of yours would have said Heir Presumptive for the King was Childless to the Crown of France After he had thus made the credulous People by the help of the Priests and Jesuits zealous for the Defense of their Declining Religion he drew them to League into Rebellion against their lawful Sovereign under a pretence of securing the same by removing Evil Counsellors from his Person and obliging him to employ his Royal Power in suppressing the Protestants and in particular by declaring the Heretick King of Navarre afterwards Henry IV. uncapable of succeeding to the Crown For the sake of Peace the King was willing so far to deny himself as to grant the two first but could never be made so false to the Interest of the Royal Family as to consent to the last by changing the Order of Succession to the Crown by which his Ancestors had Reigned for One thousand and two hundred years and which had been so long established without any respect to Religion by the Salique or Original Laws of France Hereupon the League in Imitation and after the Pattern of which the Solemn League and Covenant was formed or Rebellion grew so high as to beat the King out of Paris where the Guisards had a design to sieze upon his sacred Person shut him up like King Chilperick in a Monastery and set up the silly old Cardinal Bourbon the King of Navar 's Uncle to Reign in his stead But the King escaping from Paris sheltered himselfe in Chartres where to compose Differences he issued out Writs to call together the three Estates which much resemble our Parliaments at Blois Thither the Deputies or Members repair some for the King but far more for the Cursed League and therefore the Guisards finding themselves more potent than the Royalists insisted almost on nothing else but securing the Roman Catholick Religion by declaring the King of Navarre because an Heretick uncapable of succeeding to the most Christian Crown You see Cousin what a parallel there is between those times ours excepting First That there are no Priests and Jesuits to second such a Design in England as there were in France But to supply that Defect there may be found men as fit in all points as they to stir up the People to Discontent and Rebellion I mean the same sort of Persons that Preached up the late Bloudy War who really are the Bastard-brood of the Monastick Emissaries though they bear not the names of their Fathers but like Bastards are disowned by those that begot them The Seditious Principles Preached and Printed by them in the late Times are Evident Proofs of what Race they are come and as a man may travel so far West till at last he come to the same Eastern-point from which he did set out so you Cousin and your Brethren have gone so far from the Church of Rome that you are some I believe unawares come thither again as is unanswerably proved by Lysimachus Nicanor in his Letter of Congratulation to the Kyrk But Secondly the Parallel
failes in this too That his Royal Highness is not a declared Papist as the King of Navarre was a declared Protestant but on the contrary persists in the Communion of the Church of England for which his blessed Father died a Martyr And therefore of the two our English Guisards are too much to blame to represent his Royal Highness as a Papist which it is so absurd to imagine him to be But furthermore upon supposition he were a declared Papist the Proposal of my Lord Chose was very ridiculous since it did suppose a possibility of prevailing with his Majesty to disinherit his Royal Brother who must needs be so much dearer to him than the King of Navarre was to Henry III. as he is nearer in Bloud And for for my own part I cannot but imagine at this distance that his Majesty who is a Prince incomparably wiser and juster than was Henry III. of France must needs disdain and abhor such a Proposal which were it Enacted it would enervate the Laws of Succession by which He and His Ancestors have hitherto Reigned and give as great a Blow to the English Monarchy as that which cut off His Royal Father's Head I have here forborn to give you an Account of the Tragical End of the Duke of Guise which is a Lesson well worth your learning and may teach all Persons so disposed as he was how unsafe it is to provoke Sovereign Authority since the Goodness of the best of Kings like the infinite Goodness of God himself whose Ministers they are may at length be so injured and affronted as to be forced to sharpen it self into Sovereign Vengeance and Justice And therefore Cousin let me advise you if not for Conscience yet for Wraths sake to have nothing to do in Blowing up the Flames of Sedition Nor let your Soul enter into the secret of my Lord though his Interest among the Senators as you write be so very considerable and strong You likewise forget your self in miscalling the Execution of the late Laws by the odious name of Persecution which if you can prove to be such according to the Scriptural notion of Persecution viz. infliction of Evil for Righteousness sake then will I become your Proselyte and forsake the Church of England as much as I have this Idolatrous Church of Rome For no man is persecuted but either for immediate matters of Divine Worship which concern the First Table or with respect to matters of Morality or a Good Life which concern the Second With respect to the First a man is persecuted either on a negative account for not worshiping a False God as the three Children in Daniel or for not worshiping the True in a False way as St. Paul and the other Apostles were persecuted by the Pharisees for not worshipping the True God according to the Jewish manner after it was abrogated or as our Fore-fathers in England For not worshiping God and our Saviour after the Romish Rites Or Secondly On a positive account For worshiping the true God in a way that is true or to express it yet more clearly and absolutely in your own tearms For serving of God as Daniel was cast into the Lyons Den for praying to God against the King's Decree With respect to the Second A man is also persecuted on a negative account For not doing something which is in its own nature or by Gods positive command morally evil as the good Midwives were afraid to be persecuted by Pharaoh for not murthering the Hebrew Infants Or else on a positive account For doing some good moral action which ought in such and such circumstances to be done and thus was our blessed Saviour persecuted for opening the eyes of the blind man and for healing on the Sabbath-day Now these distinctions being premised tell me in which of these cases you are persecuted or which is all one for what you are Martyrs For no man is persecuted but as he is persecuted he is a Martyr and by his sufferings bears witness to the Truth With respect to the Second head you cannot say that you are persecuted and therefore let me see whether you are so with respect to the first And First 't is plain that you are not brought to suffer for not worshiping a fall God and 't is likewise as plain that you do not suffer for worshiping the true God in a false way For First the Laws whose Execution you mis-call Persecution do not punish you for not worshiping God after our way or if they did to prove their Execution to be Persecution you must First prove that the Church of England whose Doctrine is down-right against Idolatry and Superstition does worship God in an Idolatrous and Superstitious manner which good Cousin you know can never be proved There remains nothing then but to assert That you are punished for serving God or for worshiping God in a way which you are sure is true That you worship God in a true way I verily believe and could heartily joyn with you in other circumstances But then you are not punished for worshiping God in that manner for the same Laws you complain of allow you to worship God in what fashion you please and not only you but your Family be it as great as it will and Lastly not only your Family but Five Persons more Which allowance were you the only Christians in the World and the Magistrates Heathens or which your Friends are more likely to suggest were they Papists or Atheists is so far from being Persecution that were you of the temper of the Primitive Christians you would esteem it as a great priviledg and instead of reviling thank the kind Magistrate for the same But then if on the other hand you be considered and many good English men and good Christians cannot but consider you as a sort of men that have formerly raised a Civil War and now make Schism in the Church and Broyles in the State your punishments you suffer will be so far from seeming persecution of you as Christians that it will rather seem your just Desert as factious and turbulent Subjects And I assure you that your Brethren in France whom you falsly so call and for whom you pretend so great respect are so far from judging you persecuted that they will not excuse you but wonder at your non-submission to the Church and pity your mistakes that make you stand out against the Laws They that have seen and examined our English Liturgy which is Printed at Geneva in French cannot understand your Notion of Persecution And Ministre Claude the most famous of them all for Piety and Learning told me in the presence of many others after a Discourse wherein he said all for you that could be said that he wondered how the Presbyterians in England could rend the Peace of the Church for such little indifferent matters and that if he were in England he would be of the Episcopal Party and heartily submit himself to the Discipline
and Government of the Church of England And if you would do so too how happy a thing would this be both for your selves and the Nation Or seeing as you pretend you cannot yet at least live peaceably and forbear to trouble the World with compassing Sea and Land that is by doing all that you can like your Fathers of old the Pharisees to make Proselytes when yet you cannot shew any sinful condition of communion with the Church of England nor prove your way of worship as Apostolical as that of hers from which out of Pride Interest or Ignorance or partly all together you dissent I am sure this would rather become the dissenting Brethren than to foment Divisions raise Parties betake themselves to the wickedness of men as of late to and cry up the Kings Prerogative which they formerly cried down which with many other self-contradictions confirms me in an opinion you know I was of before That in those matters wherein you differ from us you are men of no Principles and know not where to fix I have enlarged upon this Theam more than I thought to do at first because the Papists here in France complain as loudly as you of the cruelty of the same and other of our Laws and cry out wherever they come how their Brethren have been and still are persecuted among us though with this difference that in disputing ad hominem their case is far more reasonable and pleadable than yours As for you I protest I wish that the Laws you complain of had never been made and though perhaps I am willing to grant they are very hard Laws considering you as free-born Subjects of England yet I will maintain that the Execution of them is not Persecution although you be considered as the only true Christians in the World For as I hinted before you have the Liberty in your Houses to profess what Religion you please and to worship God in what manner you will and for fear your Family should not be a just Congregation you may have five more but for fear you should do as you have formerly done you are not to have five Hundred or five Thousand which Liberty not only the Primitive Christians but our own Ancestors an hundred years ago would have called a Blessing and a Priviledg and have heartily thanked God and the King for the same And God grant we may never see that time in England when truly tender Consciences will esteem so much Liberty as the greatest Blessing in the World The good Protestants here in France though their Religion is made an obstacle to all State-preferments though it disable them to sit in the Courts of Parliaments except just so many as serve in the Chamber of Edicts to decide Controversies between Protestants and Papists or to have any other Charges of Judicature or any high Offices in the Army though their Numbers are much diminished and their Interest weakned by a Prohibition to marry with Roman Catholicks and by a Capital Law which makes it Death to return Protestants after they have once turn'd Papists and though a great number of their Temples have been demolished some under a pretence that they were built since the Edict of Nantes others that they were built without License and others that they were built upon Holy Ground so that hereby they are forced in very many places to the grievous inconvenience of going two three four or five Leagues to Church if not more and though all the Places of Strength where they do abound are demolished and Cittadels are erected to awe them in other Towns where they are numerous though their own particular Hospitals and all other perpetual Provisions for their Poor are taken away and they disabled either living or dying to give any settled Maintenance either to their own Ministers or People as to endowe Churches build Schools Colledges or Hospitals c. nay though they are deprived of the benefit of other Hospitals provided for the rest of the Subjects and although their Ministers are forbid to speak against the Pope or to Preach against the Romish Religion with half that freedom and plainness that you dare speak against the Church of England or to Preach in any places but those few appointed by the King though they are forbidden to call the Papists in their Sermons by any other name but that of Catholicks or to make mention of their Religion and Ceremonies without Reverence and Respect though they are forbid to call themselves Priests or Pastors and have no other Title allowed them but only Ministres de la Religion pretenduë Reformée and though it be Enacted that their Religion shall be called by no other name in any Publick Acts Registers c. Though they are forbidden to bury their dead in Catholick Churches or Church-yards even where the deceased Person was Patron of the Church or where his Ancestors had purchased Burying-places for their Families Though they are forbid to make any Publick Exhortations or Prayer or to sing Psalms at their Burial Though they are forbid to Instruct or Condole those of their own Religion in Prisons or Hospitals or to Pray with them in a voice so loud as to be heard by the standers by though they are forbid to make any Collections of Money among themselves but such as are permitted and regulated by the Edicts of the King Though they are forbid to Work or open their Shops on Romish Holy-daies or to sell Flesh on their Fasting-daies c. I say the good Protestants here in France notwithstanding all this hard dealing are yet so far from complaining of Persecution that they shew themselves thankful both to God and the King for the Liberty and Indulgence they enjoy Indeed they will complain for the aforesaid Reasons that their Religion is very much discouraged and they themselves hardly used But Persecution is a Notion that they never think or speak of when they discourse of their own condition being very far though not so far as you from a state of Martyrdom which consists in a forcible obligation to suffer or renounce the Truth And therefore Cousin I beseech you and conjure you not to misuse the name of Persecution again It is a very sinful way thus to abuse and amuse the Vulgar by calling things by their wrong names and as to this particular honest and knowing men will be apt to suspect that through the name of Persecution you have a design to make your Governors pass for Tyrants and your selves for Martyrs To conclude If this which you call Persecution be not such indeed then I doubt not but they who mis-call it so that is all presumptuous or affectedly gnâ—orant Schismaticks without bitter pangs of Repentance will be persecuted by the God of Peace himself to a sad and endless eternity As for the Bill of Comprehension if such a thing can be I heartily wish it had passed into an Act for I think it would have been much to the advantage and