as I find him Cited by Dr. Donne in his forementioned book p. 135. He quotes there Mariana de Rege l. 1. c. 7. for cautioning against a King being a self-homicide by drinking poyson prepared and ministred by another he being ignorant for after he concluded how an heretical King may be poisoned he is diligent in this prescription That a King be not constrained to take the poison himself but that some other may administer it to him and that therefore it be prepared and conveyed in some other way than meat and drink because else saith he either willingly or ignorantly he shall kill himself so that he provides that the King who must dye under the Sins of Tyranny and heresie must yet be defended from concurring to his own death tho ignorantly as tho this were a greater Sin. Is not this pleasant to see any of them catching of Kings in a Theological Mousetrap and playing with them like Mice before they devour them to see them sweeten a Cup of poyson for a King with their damn'd Church Sophistry and to sham men as licorish Flies to be Swallowed up in the Cup I wish that some of the most considerable of the Grandees of the Church of Rome could Answer this accusation of their shamming otherwise than by committing it de novo for if they say that some of their Doctors write against this and other crimes as well as some for them as particularly some write against the use of equivocation And as Father Parsons the Jesuite writing against King Iames's succession another English Jesuite namely Creswel writ for it and so that when some of their Doctors break the Churches head others presently gave it Plaisters is not this a fearful shall I say or Contemptible sham Do we not know that the discipline of their Church is as exact as any Military discipline can be by which alone it hath preserved it self so long in being and that none among them can publish books without passing several Courts of Guards of Superiors nor contradict one another in rules of practice more than Trumpeters of an Army dare sound a charge or a retreat but when commanded to it And what a face of something like sham the present Popes declaration about some opinions of the Casuists carries with it I have already mentioned and doth not every one know their avowed doctrine de opinione probabili Namely that tho an opinion be false a man may with a safe conscience follow it by reason of the Authority of the teacher and that a Confessor is bound to absolve the penitent when there is but one opinion for his being absolved tho he believes that opinion not only improbable as to the principia intrinseca but false In Sum according to the old observation of Poperies prevailing by haveing that in it which may fit the temper and humor of every individual person and to be like Manna answering every mans tast whether he hath a gusto for miracles or even for starving or abstinence for business or retirement for Life or for death for Honor or for begging it may to these be added that if any one affects to be a Ruffian or one of the Popes Sheriffs as aforesaid there is a most ample field in the killing of Kings firing of Towns Massacring their Inhabitants for the talent of such a Pavure diable and indeed incarnate one to expatiate in and if any account it a luscious thing to be cheated or to be shammed as some few or to cheat or sham as many think it behold a Religion made for the nonce in that point too But while they are thus playing with all things Sacred and profane he that sits in the heavens has them in derision and leaves not the Protestants to fall finally as a portion to Foxes such who turned tail to tail carry firebrands between them and their shammes do only enter on the Stage of the World to be instantly hissed off My Lord I have not been rash in Censuring either the principles or practices of some Roman Catholicks as aforesaid And particularly I well know that even the most ingenious of our English Papists cannot now in this Conjuncture endure to hear of Father Parsons his book writ by him to Invalidate the Right of King Iames to succeed Queen Elizabeth principally because he was as Father Parsons thought an heretick A very great Man that Iesuite was and so Considerable that one of our eminent Divines in his Sermon in print gives him this Character That he was perhaps one of the greatest men that the order of the Iesuits has produced And methinks 't was pitty he should play at such small game of sham when he publisht that book as to entitle it to Doleman an honest secular Priest whom Parsons hated and to make him odious laid the brat at his door Moreover a kind of inglorious sham it was that Creswel who was Parsons his fellow Iesuite writ as I said at the same time for King Iames his Right to the Crown not out of any desire he should enjoy that Right but that on all events they might have something to say in apology for their Society and bring Grist to its mill For if King Iames had not come to the Crown of England the honour of hindring his Succession had been attributed to Parsons and Creswel the Jesuit expected the Credit for his writing on the Event falling as it did Thus I remember to have heard a Passage of two Astrologers who on the day before the former great Prince of Parma was to throw the die of War agreed together to predict luck to him perfectly contrary to one another that so they might save the credit of their art by one of the artists being in the Right The Author of the book called the Catholick Apology with a Reply c. and which book I think the Author of the Compendium mentions as one of the books writ by the Roman Catholicks of England since the Kings Restoration saith p. 366. speaking of Dolemans book For Dolemans book who wrote it God knows Parsons deny'd it at his death and I believe he was not the author because in several of his works he speaks very much to the advantage of King Iames. But as to Father Parsons having in that Conjuncture been of the Spanish faction and having apply'd his whole soul and strength to hinder King Iames's Succession and his having writ that book the Great foremention'd Cardinal namely D'Ossat who in several of his Printed Letters gives the World a more satisfactory and particular Scheme of the whole design to hinder that Kings Succession to the Crown of England than I know any or all else to have done saith among his letters printed in folio at Paris 1664. in that in book 7th Anno 1601. a letter to the King letter 131. what may be thus render'd in English viz. It may please your Majesty to remember that since the year 1594. there was a book printed in
business of England and in case of a Prohibition to any mans little Court of Conscience in that cause he will certainly give himself a consultation The very humour of the English Nation long hath and still doth run against what they think but like Popery or makes for it and that with such a rapid current of Antipathy as is never likely to be stem'd and nothing is more out of fashion then a kind of Sir-positive or Dictatorian humour in common discourse much less then will a dogmatical Popes infallibility ever be digested here while he makes himself a St. Positive The gentile humour of the Age here that abhorrs hard words as loathsom pedantry will never be reconcil'd to one certain long hard word in Popery namely Transubstantiation nor to another namely Incineration or burning men for not understanding the former word according to the style of the Historian Imperator aegrè tulit incinerationem Johannis Husse and people will account their Protestant Bibles more agreeable to them then the English one published by the Colledge of Doway where the Translator studied for hard words in the room of plain ones as for the Passeover phase for foreskin praepuce for unleaven'd bread azyms for high places excelses and other such words we have in the English Rhemish Testament viz. exinanite parasceue didragmes neophyt spiritualness of wickedness in the Celestials In our Busy English world while men are most yary after profit and pleasure and the study of things if very few or none can be brought to learn the universal real character and which would tend to the propagating Real Knowledge among the Nations of the World accordingâ—y as the excellent propounder of it in Print with great modesty saith in his Epistle dedicatory that he had slender expectation if its coming into common use our Ingeniosi or Witts which all men pretend to be now as they did in the Late times to be Saints tho yet as few are Witts now as were Saints then will not care for troubling their brains with the studying of the Religion whose pretended universality appears but a kind of universal character and not real and tending to obscure the knowledge of things in the World. If they should see here a Religion that was full of pageantry and seem'd to be wholly theatrical they would think it was as much their birthright to censure it as 't is to be eternal talking Critics in the Pit to damn Playes and would think two Supremes in a Kingdome to be of the low nature of two Kings of Branford and rather then part with their money and stake down their Souls for seing such a Moral Representation of an absolute spiritual and absolute temporal power on the stage of the Kingdom they would be too apt with Mr. Hobs to thrust the whole Nation of Spiritual Beings out of the world I mean rather then they would be to their faces cheated and harras'd by a spiritual power and our people inspir'd with witt as well as those with the zealous spirit of Religion would cry out conclusum est contra Manichaeos I and against the Schoolmen too I mean our Romanist Manichaei who make two summa Principia in every State. In this age where the lower or Sixth rate Witts do so over-value themselves on turning every thing into ridicule the Mass would have here a Reception according to what the gloss in the Canon Law observes that when a place had layen long under an interdict the people laughed at the Priests when they came to say Mass again Nor would any Papal interdiction unless it could interdict us from the use of Fire and Water be of any moment The World would now laugh at any Prize that should be play'd between the Two Swords the very glossator on the Clementines saying occasionly that resipiscente mundo the World being grown wiser there must be no longer striving for both Swords And any one that would obtrude on us gross exploded errors in Church or State will appear as ridiculous as St. Henry the Dane who as the Martyrology mentions when worms craul'd out of a corrupted Vlcer in his Knee put them in again My Lord I will further offer it to your Lordships consideration That if it be found so hard to keep up the external polity of the Church of England thô in it self so rational and so meriting the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the Twenty years discontinuance of it insomuch that Dr. Glanvile in the first page of his Book call'd the Zealous and impartial Protestant hath these words the first occasion of our further danger that I shall mention is the present diminution not to say extinction of Reverence to the authority of the Church of England c. and he p. 4. writes largely to that Effect what quarter can Popery expect here from an Age of sense and reason when it should break in upon both after the forementioned Hundred years discontinuance According to the foresaid Argument of the Bees for the Popes spiritual Monarchy we see it improbable for him ever to bring us to a Rendevouz in his Church again for the sad experience we have had of the Sects here that left the Hive of the Church of England not gathering together into any one new Hive but dividing into several swarms and hives and never returning to the old may shew the Hive of holy Church how little of our Company 't is to expect Having said all this about the mists of Popery being to contend with knowledge in its meridian I think I shall comply with the measures taken by our Philosophers in this Critical Age in founding their observations upon Experiments if I further add that the former Experiments England hath had of Poperies being pernicious to its external Polity and Grandeur will perpetuate and heighten the fermentation in the minds of our angry people against it All our Monkish Historians do attest the experience our Kings had in being bereav'd of great Sums of Money while they enrich'd the Pope here by giving him the Office to keep the Theological Thistle which he Rail'd in with so many censures and distinctions and non obstantes that our Kings could not pass to their Palaces but by his leave and on his terms An English King then was but the Popes Primier Ministre and yet paid great wages too for the being a Servant to the Servus Servorum King Iohn used to say That all his affairs in the World were unprosperous and went cross and untowardly after he had once subjected himself and his Kingdom to the Church of Rome His words were Postquam me mea Regna Romanae subjecâ— Ecclesiae nulla mihi prospera omnia contraria advenerunt And 't is obvious to consider on the other hand what a great figure Henry the Eighth made in the World after he had manumitted himself and his Kingdoms from the Papal Usurpation And how he held the Balance of the World in his hand and trod on
been likely to have done being disappointed as to their gratiae expectativae of the Lands of the Bishops had they been let loose to have depended on maintenance by Oblations in such Towns and Cities and where they would have probably tryed with a diversified Curse ye Meros to fly in the faces of Masters who would not feed them I have before said how the Parliament sweetned them into obedience by the luscious power of oppressing their fellow Subjects But neither by any Revenue adequate to those Impropriate Tithes nor by any such power of oppressing that prerogative of Devils to torment can it be imagined that a Popish Successor will ever be able to ensure the obedience of his Clergy to himself His Bishops and Dignitaries will be like the Popes Trent Titulars without a Title I mean one to a Dignity or Benefice and the burden of the Clerical Papists maintenance lying still on the laity will make Popery soon visibly grow weary oâ— it self I shall here take occasion to observe that Tithes were first called Impropriate by the sarcasm of the dislodged Monks who thought that the Tithes Appropriated for that was the Antient Law-term for them were improperly placed on Lay-men but both the present possessors and all that know that 't is necessary for England's being a Kingdom and no Province that its Riches accruing by the number of its Inhabitants and by improvement of its Soil should keep its weight in the Balance of Christendom especially considering the growth of France will for ever think it very improper that so much of its Land and Wealth and Populousness should be sacrificed to Religious Idlers and that according to Bishop Sanderson's account almost half of the Land should be turn'd into Franks for Boares or as I may say Sties for such as are Epicuri de grege Porci or such as were call'd Barnevelts Hoggs he having called the Monkish Herd by that name of whom if any angers one they all rise against him and if he pleaseth them all there is nothing to be got but Bristles That Herd was not a little molested as Mr. Fox tells us by a private Gentleman one Mr. Simon Fish in the Year 1527. who writ a little Book called The supplication of Beggars addrest to the King and it had the honour to reach his Eyes and to be lodged in his Bosom three or four days and to bring its Author to be embraced by the King and to have long discourse with him as Mr. Fox affirms who Prints that Book wherein the Author with much laboured curiosity attaques the Revenue of the Monks with Arithmetick a Science necessary for the strengthening of Political no less Military Discipline He saith there in the beginning That the multitude of Lepers and other sick People and Poor was so encreased that all the Alms of the Realm sufficed not to keep them from dying for hunger And that this happened from counterfeit holy Beggers and Vagabonds being so much encreased These saith he are not the Herds but Wolfes c. Who have got into their hands more then the third part of your Realm The goodliest Lordships and Mannors are theirs Beside this he sets forth that They have Tithes Oblations Mortuaries c. And he therein saith That there being in England 52000 Parishes and Ten Housholds in every Parish and five hundred and twenty Thousand Housholds in all and every of the five Orders of Fryers receiving a peny a quarter that is Twenty Pence in all yearly from every one of these Housholds the Total Sum was 430333 l. 6 s. 8 d. Sterling He further sets forth That the Fryars being not the four hundredth Person of the Realm had yet half its profits There were in that little Book many things so pungent and so confirm'd by Calculation that the Clergy put no meaner a Person then Sir Thomas More on the answering it in Print and it occasion'd the Bishop of London's publishing an Edict to call in that little Book and the English New Testament and many Books writ against the excesses of the Priests Well therefore might Sir Thomas More be favour'd with a License to read Heretical Books when he was to be at the fatigue of answering them Sir Thomas in his Answer to it makes a just exception to Mr. Fish's estimate of the number of Parishes in the Realm But admitting there were then Ten Thousand Parishes in England and about Forty Houses in one Parish with another in the Country beside what were in great Towns and Cities he might modestly Calculate 520000 Housholds in all Nor is it to be much wondered at That a private Gentleman should err in the excess of the number of the Parishes when we are told in Cotton's Collections That in the 45 of E. 3. The Lords and Commons in Parliament granting the King a Subsidy of 50000 l. at the rate of 22 s. 4 d. for each Parish they estimated the Parishes then near that number but were afterward inform'd by the Lord Chancellour that by returns made into the Chancery on Commissions of Enquiry it was found there were not so many Parishes in the Realm It had been very acceptable to those who in this Age take their Political measures of the power and growth of Kingdoms from Numbers if either Mr. Fish or Sir Thomas More who answered his Golden little Book as I may call it for his endeavours therein to fix matters relating to the Oeconomy of the Kingdom by Calculation and for his being a Columbus to discover rich Mines without going to America nor yet further then home or if any of our Monkish Historians or even our Polish'd and Ingenious ones and particularly My Lord Bacon and my Lord Herbert had given the World Rational estimates of the Numbers of the people of England in the times they writ of or particularly of the Numbers of the Males then between the Years of 16 and 60 for if they had done that as on the publick Musters made by occasion of Warlike preparations they might perhaps well have performed we might now easily by the help we have had from the Observator on the Bills of Mortality conclude what the entire Number of the People then was and might likewise have better agreed on a stated Rule of the Period of Nations doubling a Curiosity in knowledge not unworthy the Genius of an Inquisitive or Philosophical States-man and which presents to his View as in a Glass the Anatocisme of the faetus populi resembling the Interest upon Interest of Money as for Example when we see that one pound in Seventy years the Age of a Man is at 10 per cent encreased to a Thousand But it is our misfortune that through the aforesaid omission of our Historians we are not so much illuminated about the encrease of the English Nation as we are about the gradual multiplication of the People of Rome so many hundred years ago And indeed by the help of the Writers of other European Countries we are
that have been since augmented Yet however I doubt not but that if it had been Gods will further to have lengthen'd the last reign the Course of Nature would then have operated as I have mention'd And if it shall appear that those natural Considerations I have urged shall have the success of such further Parliamentary Supplies to His gracious Majesty as may tend to the further greatning of his Character and that of the Kingdom I shall account my claim the more equitable to have the pardon of my fellow Subjects of what Religionary Sect soever for any thing in this Discourse that may disgust them And as an eminent Protestant Divine hath in a Printed Sermon thus said viz. that man is not worthy to breathe in so good a Land as England is who would not willingly lay down his life to cure the present divisions and distractions that are among us I shall say that any Subject deserves not to live here under the Indulgence of so good a Prince who for the helping him to money by all due means for the defence of this good Land would not wish himself as well as his Bigottry a Sacrifice and who would not as to any Extravagant dash of a Pen lighting on his Party and bringing Money to his Prince cry foelix peccatum rather then such Divisions and Distractions and Diffidences of the Government and stifling of Publick Supplies should still live as were formerly known in some Conjunctures and when the Art of Demagogues appear'd so spightful in endeavours to frustrate the Meetings of Parliaments But our Prince having freed all his dissenting Subjects from their uneasiness under Pecuniary Mulcts for Religion and the Members of the Church of England from the uneasiness of imposing such Soul-Money will I doubt not when he shall please to Call a Parliament find from them such necessary Supplies for the support of the Body of the Kingdom as may ease him under the weight of his great Desires for it and that it will then appear to all as absurd to Crown such a Head with Thorns as hath taken the Thorn out of every man's foot in England and that his pass'd Sufferings for his Conscience and others of his Communion having too suffer'd for his Conscience bespeaking us in those words of the Apostle Fulfil ye my joy that both his and theirs will be then Consummated and as the Ioy of those of the Church of England and of all nominal Churches in England hath been fulfill'd by him and that as Luther was pleas'd in a Christian-like transport of good Nature to Profess in his Epistle to Jeselius a Iew Me propter Unum Judaeum Crucifixum omnibus favere Judaeis we shall for the sake of one of the Roman-Catholick Communion who hath formerly suffer'd so much for his Conscience and since done so much for the freedom of ours shew all those of that Communion our favour to such a proportion as may compleat his and their Ioy. My Lord I am here obliged to acknowledge that tho while the several Parts of the following Work were written in the times the Government charged both Papists and Anti-Papists with Disloyalty and Plots I express'd my sense of the Non-advisableness to have the Penal Laws against them repeal'd pending such Charge and Plots I desire the Reader to look on me as very far from insisting on any thing of that nature in this Happy State of England now that the Corner Stone and that some of the Builders rejected hath thus successfully united the sides of the Fabrick of the Government in Loyalty My Lord It is near a year since I writ my Thoughts at large concerning the Subject of the Repealing those Laws and they are in the Fourth Part of my Work about The Dispensative Power of which the two first Parts conclude this Volume ready for the Press and reserving my poor Iudgment in this great Point till the Publication of the whole I think I shall then set forth my Opinion as founded on Medium's that have not appear'd in Print from other Writers and which I believe will not only not give offence to any Member of the Church of England but be of general use in allaying the ferment the Question hath occasion'd And if as they who were long fellow-Passengers in a Ship among violent Tempests and Hirricanes do usually from their being Participants together in the danger and horror take occasion to raise a friendly esteem and well-wishes for each other such of the Loyal whose belief I referr'd to as imbarqued with mine in that of the Plot during the late Stormy Conjuncture shall be the more favourable to what I write I shall be glad both for their sakes as well as mine but do further judge that what I have so largely in the following Discourse asserted and by Reasons taken from Nature concerning the Moral impossibility of the belief of the Tenets of the Church of Rome gaining ground here considerably on the belief of the Doctrine of the Church of England will tend to secure any one from fears of our losing our Religion by any loss of the Test that may happen a thing that none I think will fear who are of the Iudgment of the House of Commons in their Address to the late King on the 29 th of November 1680. that I have referr'd to in my Fourth Part and where they say that POPERY hath rather gain'd then lost Ground since the TEST ACT and make that Act to have had little effect I have in the following Discourse referr'd to that Act as represented to have had its rice in the year 1673. from the alledged petulant Insolence of Papists in that Conjuncture and I took notice of a learned Lord since deceas'd as vouching somewhat in Print of such temper among some of them And a Proclamation that year charging the Papists therewith I was implicitly guided thereby to take the thing for granted and as to the which considering since the publick Passages in that Conjuncture I have otherwise judged But as I think no loyal Roman-Catholick should in that Conjuncture have suffer'd any Prejudice for any ill Behaviour of any other of that Communion then much less ought any such thing be now and when there appears so noble and general a spirit of Emulation among all men of sense in the Diffusive Body of the People about who shall make the Head and all Members of that Body most easie and for the doing which we may well hope that the People representative and the other Estates of the Realm will come with all due Preparation of Mind when it shall please His Gracious Majesty to assemble them My Lord I have nothing further to add but my begging your Lordship's Pardon for this trouble and my owning the many Obligations I am under to be My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Earl of Anglesy having shewed me an Affidavit and Information against him delivered at the Barr
Guymenius shortly after in that year appearing in Print as a Champion for the Principles so damned the College of Sorbon shortly after that damned the Work of Guymenius in the 11th of May the same year and that in the latter end of Iune so shortly following in the same year the same Pope Alexander the 7th damned that very Sorbon Censure of Guymenius and that therefore 't is possible the great Scene of Vertue appearing in this Popes said Decree may with a short turn of Apostolical Power receive too the Fate of Pageantry and presently disappear and that the great Mountain which his Faith hath removed into the midst of the Sea may in little more than the twinkling of an Eye return to its old place But in Answer to which I shall do that right to the Papacy to clear the mistake in the objection and inform the Reader that tho Alexander the 7th did Ex Cathedra damn that Sorbon-Censure as aforesaid yet it appears out of the Condemnatory Bull it self that what that Pope there did was not out of favour to Guymenius or the Iesuites themselves or their Tenets and that to satisfie the World in that point he there gives the reason for his damning the Sorbonists Censure namely because it intermedled in Censuring some other Propositions or Principles of the Jesuites that concerned the Authority of the Pope the Iurisdiction of Bishops the Office of the Parish Priests and the Privileges granted by Popes and but for the Sorbons complicating which with their Censure of the other Scandalous Principles of the Iesuites no doubt but the Sorbon Censure had stood as a Rock unshaken Let therefore such who fear every thing fear that this great Pope will after his said Condemnatory Decree appear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Condemned while I observe it for the honour of his Iustice that he made that Decree and for the honour of his Prudence that before Nature had caused the detestable Principles therein censured silently to evaporate he gave the World this loud warming of them as it likewise may be for the honour of that great Seminary of the Divines of our Church of England our University of Oxford observed that before the Seditious Principles and Tenets of Iesuites and some Dissenters came to be naturally exterminated out of the English World by fear and shame they notified them to this Age and to Posterity There is no Subject that hath since the year 1641 more employed the English Press than that of Liberty of Conscience pro and con and the fiercest and sharpest of the Writings concerning it were what passed between the Independents and Presbyterians on the occasion of Presbytery's great Effort to make the English Nation by one short general turn Proselyted to its Model and when it pushed for the auspicious fate of former great Religionary Conversions happening as it were simul and semel and when Nations seemed to be like the Hyena which having but one Back-bone cannot turn except it turn all at once But the Independents observing the Kingdom and Presbytery frowning on one another thought they could do nothing more popular than to take the Arguments they found in the many Pamphlets of the Presbyterians lying on every Stall for toleration under the old Hierarchy and turn them upon Presbytery and every one then who had fears and jealousies of the Arbitrariness of Presbytery seem'd to be a well wisher to those Books for Liberty of Conscience and the destroying of the Credit of Presbytery by Books that had so much contentious fire in them was really an acceptable sweet-smelling Sacrifice to the Nation And after the King's Restoration tho some few Books were writ of that Subject and with much more Candour than the others yet the Yoke of the King 's Ecclesiastical Laws was so easie to the People as that the Writing of Books against it was not encouraged by Popular Applause The King's Declaration of Indulgence afterward appearing and as not gained by dint of Pen but ex mero motu was applauded by some few particular Writers among the Popish and Protestant Recusants discoursing in Print at their ease of Liberty of Conscience But as if Nature meant that Books of that Subject should no more here divert the curious World the Empire toleration had thereby gained did presently labour under its own weight and the Non-Conformists being jealous of that Declaration proving a President of the Prerogatives suspending Acts of Parliament in general and suspecting that the Popish Recusants would have the better of that Game as supposed to have many great Court-Cards here and abroad in the World and likely to have more while the Protestant Recusants had not so good in their hands tho yet they had here what amounted to the point in Picquet I mean the advantage of their Numbers did presently thereupon cause all the Cards to be thrown up but first had in Concert with the dealers provided for the packing them to their own advantage in a new Deal In plain English some Loyal Persons and firm Adherents to the Church of England in the House of Commons thinking that Declaration illegal and whether justly or no I here presume not in the least to question endeavoured tanquam pro aris focis to get that Declaration Cancell'd and knowing they could not effect the same without the help of the Dissenters Party in Parliament engaged their help therein by giving them hopes to carry an Act of Parliament for their Indulgence but what a little fore-sight would have made appear to them impossible to be gained for many Considerations too obvious to be named And the natural result of this Fact which is on all hands confessedly true cannot but be the making of the former fashion of Polemical writing for liberty of Conscience to pass away We have since seen some few Florid Sheets published by some of the Dissenting Clergy on that Subject but they have made no other Figure then that of the poor Resemblances of Flowers extracted by Chimical Art out of their Ashes and any little shaking them in the Glass of Time must make them presently fall in pieces I have in this Discourse expressly owned my having no regret against any due or Legal Relaxation of the Penal Laws against Recusants but what any due or legal way may be therein I enquire not The power of the King in dispensing with the Penalties in case of particular Persons was not that I hear of in the least Controverted in the Debates of the Commons about that Declaration And Fuller in his Church History relateth that when Bishop Williams was Lord-Keeper there was a Toleration granted under the Great Seal to Mr. Iohn Cotton a Famous Independent Divine for the free exercise of his Ministry notwithstanding his dissenting in Ceremonies so long as done without disturbance to the Church and the lawfulness of which particular Indulgence I suppose none in that Age controverted as I think none would any thing of that kind in this
well come under the account of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to those Opiners hath for the honour of the Church of England's Principles in his 8th Lecture and there de lege paenali well taught us in what Cases Penal Laws oblige in Conscience and shewed that they may so bind where the Legislator did intend to oblige the Subject Ad culpam etiam non solum ad paenam and in that Case saith he Certum est eos teneri ad observandum id quod lege praecipitur nec satisfacere officio si parati sint poenam lege constitutam subire and where he further saith That the mind and intention of the Legislator is chiefly seen in the Proeme of his Law in quo saith he there ut acceptior sit populo lex solet Legislator Consilii sui de eà lege ferendâ causas rationes expoâ—eâ—e quà m sit lex iusta quam fuerit tollendis incommodis abusibus necessaria quà m futura sit Reip. utilis There is a particular Principle of moment worthy of the Magistrates Survey that relates to the Gathered Churches and that is a Principle made a necessary ingredient in the Constitution of of those Churches by a Divine of the same Authority among them as Bishop Saâ—â—erson is in the Church of England and whom I occasionally beforementioned and that is Mr. Iohn Cotton B. D. who in a Pamphlet of his printed at London in the year 1642 Entâ—tuled The true Constitution of a particular visible Church proved by Scripture wherein is briefly demonstrated by Questions and Answers what Officers Worship and Government Christ hath ordained in his Church and in the Title-page whereof is this place of Scripture viz. Jer. 50. 5. They shall ask the way to Sion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual COVENANT that shall not be forgotten in p. 1st makes his first Question what is a Church And the Answer is The Church is a mystical Body whereof Christ is the head the Members and Saints called out of the World and united together in one Congregation by an holy COVENANT to Worship the Lord and to Edifie one another in all his holy Ordinances And in another Book of his printed at London in the year 1645 called The way of the Churches of Christ in New England his third Proposition is this viz. For the joyning of faithful Christians into the Fellowship and Estate of a Church we find not in Scripture that God hath done it any other way than by entring of them all together as one man into an holy COVENANT with himself to take the Lord as the head of the Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People which implies their submitting of themselves to him and one to another in his fear and their walking in professed subjection to all his Ordinances their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness unto Mutual Edification He there partly props up the Obligation of this Church Covenant on the Iewish Oeconomy mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy and other places of the Old Testament The reasonableness of Subjects not entring into Religionary Covenants without the Consent of the Pater patriae may be inferred from the old Testament where in Numbers c. 30 the Parent hath a power given for the controuling of the Childrens Vows not enter'd into by his consent but since these Principles of a new Church Covenant may seem to introduce a new Ecclesiastical Law without the King's privity and consent a thing that if our very Convocation should presume to do would bring them within a Praemunire and since the whole power of reforming and ordering of all matters Ecclesiastical is by the Laws in express words annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and particularly by the 1st of Elizabeth and since that it hath been said that even without an Act of Parliament a new Oath or Covenant cannot be introduced among the King's Subjects and moreover since all the famous Religionary Confessions of the Protestant Churches abroad assert nothing of any such Church Covenant and since Covenants and Associations have lately heard so ill in the Kingdom I think the nature and terms of this Independent Covenant ought to be laid as plain before the Eye of the Government as was the Scotch Presbyterian one Those words of Mr. Cotton of the entring them all together as one man into an holy Covenant carry some thing like the same sound of one and all and tho their thus entring into it to take the Lord as the head of his Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People may be a plausible beginning of this new Church Covenant in nomine Domini yet the following words of submitting themselves to him and to one another in his fear and their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness are words that I think the Magistracy ought to watch and to see that Dissenters have a very sound form of words prescribed to them in this Case if it shall think fit to have the same continued I have found the Assertion of a Church Covenant as Essential to the Form of a true Independent Church in many other of their Books and do suppose that this Covenant being laid as Corner-stone in the building of their Churches by Divine Right it must last as long as Independency it self and of its lasting still I met with an Indication from a Loyal and Learned Official of the Court-Christian who told me that tho several of the Dissenters called Presbyterians have been easily perswaded to repair to the Divines of the Church of England that they were admonished to confer with and had upon Conference with them come to Church and took the Sacrament yet he thought that some of another Class of Dissenters were possessed with a Spirit of incurable Contumacy by reason of their Principles having tied them together to one another by a Covenant And if it shall therefore appear to the Magistrates that they are thus Conference-proof and as I may say Reason-proof by vertue of their Covenant it will then be found that no one Mâ—mber of a gathered Church can turn to ours without the whole Hyena-like turning and perhaps some of the Lords the Bishops may think it hereupon proper humbly to advise his Majesty to null by a Declaration the Obligation of this Covenant as his Royal Father did that of the Presbyterian Covenant In the mean time the Consideration of the Principles of Independecy thus seeming to have cramp'd the Consciences of its followers with a Covenant that is at least unnecessary and must naturally be a troublesom imposition to men of thought and generous Education who love to perform Moral Offices without entring into Covenant or giving Bond so to do may serve to
and a printed Devotional Office called The Office of the immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin our Lady approved by the Sovereign Pontiff Paul the 5th had been much in vogue in the Papal World yet the Pope by his Decree of February the 17th 78. damned that Office and as I may say threw it over board And of this the Author of Iulian the Apostate might have took notice if he had pleased when in his Comparison of Popery and Paganism he instanced in the transprosing of part of the Psalms to the Virgin Mary after the mode of this Office that had been suppressed about 4 years before The old stubbornness of Popes against the making any Reformation of Abuses and Errors in their Church hath been commonly observed but I believe that considering the great Figure England makes in the World it may not be unlikely that the brisk Spirit of Opposition against Popery that had displayed it self in England for about 8 years before the Plot-Epoche and the sharp and learned Books that were in that Conjuncture printed here against the Abuses of the Church of Rome might much contribute to the laudable Proceedings of this Pope in those Decrees I have mentioned And therefore when Nature had thus enforced the Papal Chair in so great a Measure upon Recantation and a great deal of pretended infallibity was thrown over-board and that even relating to some Principles that might be called Religionary it may reasonably be thought that the same operation of Nature will produce among our little Protestant Recusants a tacit renuntiation of the Irreligionary part of those very Principles that both the World and themselves must needs see they have transcribed from Popery The Complication of the Principles of Irreligion that hath joyned the Iesuites Popery with that of our former Presbyterians Popery hath long been as visible as the great Isthmus I spake of that joyns the Mexican and the Peruan parts of the new World and as I being to explain as in a Dictionary what I meant by Popery I would not expose my self to the Critical Religionary Controvertists by nicely defining Popery the Observation being no less than a Rule in the Civil Law that omnis definitio in jure Civili periculosa est parum est enim ut non subverti possit but gave the Description of my sense of it as before in this Preface so if I were to give a Description of our Scotch Presbytery as Covenanted to be here introduced I would take the said Description of Popery and only mutatis mutandis say that by Presbytery I mean the power of our Presbyters in imposing Creeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on men and the Presbyters jurisdiction interloping in that of our Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Jus Divinum and as they are Christs pretended Vicars and do account that its intended Arbitrariness here in England justly appeared as terrible as that of Popery and that our Consciences being enslaved to a Foreign Bishop is not more inglorious than their being so to our fellow Subjects and that a blush being divided among ten thousand Ecclesiasticks after they had out-raged our Laws and our Consciences would have here been no more seen by us than one at Rome on occasion of any Popes there blushing after they had so done I have observed in this Discourse how that part of Presbytery that may tho erroneous be called Religionary as practised in some Foreign Churches hath here decayed and must so naturally more and more and was glad to hear That since the putting the Laws in Execution against Protestant Recusants those of them who were called Presbyterians have on recollection of thought and after Conference had with our Divines forborn their former Schismatical Separation from our Churches and that particularly in our Metropolis they have in all things been ameinable to the Doctrine and Discipline of our Church except as to the submitting to have their Children baptized with the use of the Sign of the Cross there and their Superstition in not complying with which will I hope not be long lifed The gradual encrease of the Christenings in some Parishes in the Country that I have seen Accounts of and in which places the Dissenters formerly were very numerous hath been to a far greater Proportion than the gradual Encrease by me remarked as to London and within the same years And a Learned Divine who is Minister of a Parish not far from London hath acquainted me That the number of Communicants being there about the beginning of those years but a 100 hath since arisen to 400 and I believe that generally the numbers of Conformists may have much encreased in the Country beyond the proportion of their Encrease in the City and may probably do so for some years Tho there are several Merchants and rich Traders in our Metropolis who are Dissenters yet I have observed that the gross of their numbers consists there of ordinary Retail-traders and as these have been naturally Sufferers there by the Cities so much removing Westward and by the Retail-trade being so much gone to the other end of the Town and are likely so to be more and more so it hath been and will be natural to them to be more and more querulous according to the saying of Omne invalidum est Querulum And in this Case it will be natural to them both to support their decaying Trade by Religionary Combinations and perhaps to fancy Religion it self breaking together with their Bankrupsy and both for the Consoling one another as Socii doloris and likewise relieving one another thereby to endeavour to keep Heterodox Religionary Societies as long and as much as they can But Necessity the known Mother of Industry must naturally in time cure them of their Poverty and Temptation to Heterodoxy thereby Our Quakers are by many thought to be a kind of a Roma subterranea but whether justly or no I enquire not nor shall I give my opinion in it till the Principles of their Light within shall be exposed to that without many of which Principles have hitherto been by them kept as hid from the World as were the Subterraneous Lights preserved in the Roman Monuments and as to which Principles they are perhaps conscious that when they shall be exposed to the Air and Light of the Sun they will be as naturally extinguished as those Monumental Lights were when occasionally brought into the open Air. But one of their known Tenets being the unlawfulness of Oaths I account they have an advantage thereby beyond the Presbyterians or Independents in their Claim to Indulgence by demanding it in a Doctrinal point wherein there is Dâ—gnus vindice nodus by reason of some words in the 5th of St. Matthew and 5th of St. Iames seeming primâ facie very emphatically and vehemently to forbid all manner of swearing as the Commentators generally observe And in this point they are entituled to a very true and
we have of late found cause to judge that that Doctrine and those Principles have been believed and practised by others of them and with such Artifice to amuse and divert the incautelous Loyal from the apprehension thereof as was practised by several of the Papists a little before the Gun-powder Treason for as at the end of the Papists supplication to the King and the States of the Parliament in the year 1604 they undertake that as to the Loyalty of their Priests they shall readily take their Corporal Oaths for continuing their true Allegiance to his Majesty or the State or in Case that be not thought assurance enough that they shall give in sufficient Sureties one or more who shall stand bound life for life for the performance of the said Allegiance and further that if any of their number be not able to put in such Security that then they will all joyn in such supplication to the Pope for recalling such Priests out of the Land and thus by the Offer of Security attempted to lull the State in a secure sleep and dream of their Loyalty so have many of our Protestant would-be's by the publication of their NO PROTESTANT PLOT so lately before their plotted Out-rage done what was tantamount to keep our Country from being awake to observe the March of their Principles till it should be surprized with the suddenness of Sampson's Alarm when it came to be said The true Protestants are upon thee I mean those who falsly call themselves so I know no true Son of the Church of England owning a greater propension to afford favour to Heterodox Religionaries in points denominable by Religion than what my natural temper and habitual inclination prompt me to And tho some men are apt to have a sharper regret against others for differing from them in judgment than for a material injury I am naturally so far from such an humour as to be more pleased with and to think my self better diverted by the Conversation of the Learned whose Sentiments differ from mine in most points Philosophical and in many Theological than by theirs who perfectly agree in opining with me therein and do fancy to my self that I have the fortune hereby for my hâ—mour to accord with that of the generality of men of the gayest temper in the Age how different soever their Religions are and do suppose that if such a captioâ—s fiery Bigot as Bishop Bonner were now living the ingenious Maimbourg would scorn to keep him Company But the present State of Christendom making Loyalty a Vertue of Necessity here in England as I have shewn in this Discourse I would abhor the Conversation of any Dissenter I thought Dis loyal as of a Person not only wicked but stupid and on this Rock as I may say of Loyalty being likely so long to continue Essential to our continuing a Nation have I built my Conjecture of the future happy State of England It is a possible thing that the serenity of its Future State may be for some little time over-cast by Clouds of Discontent if the Balance of Trade should long continue to be against us and that then forlorn Paupers instead of fearing Popery would for a while fear nothing at all for Nescit plebs jejuna timere But I have cited the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for accounting not above one in 4000 to have starved and I having in p. 185 cited the Author of Britannia languens for saying that he heard of no new improving Manufacture in England but that of Periwigs did give my Judgment that the Ebb of our Trade hath been at the lowest point and that Nature will necessarily hasten its improvement and having observed in p. 66 that after a long Age of Luxury a contrary humour reigns as long in the World again I have said that of that contrary humour I think we now see the Tide coming in and have assigned one late Woollen Manufacture by which England hath gained double as much as for 76 years it lately did by the Balance of Trade But if any one of our true Protestant Plotters should be supposed ever to inveigle any of the poorer Mobile to fly out into tumultuous Disorder or Commotion any such Commotion making an Exception from my general Rule of England's necessary future pacific State would both certainly firmare regulam and make the Odium of the Loyal Populace so keen against all Principles and Doctrines of Resistance as to exterminate the same from our Soyl for ever and to deter men as much from daring to propagate the same in England as in those two most Famous Receptacles of Heterodox Religionaries I mean Amsterdam and Constantinople Any one who will accord with me how necessary it was for the confounding of Dis-loyalty that I should point out the fatal time when our Trade was confounded viz. in Ianuary 1648 and any Reader of this Discourse will find the obvious way mentioned how a Child of ten years of Age may know when the Balance of Trade is against us and how long it hath been so tho not to what proportion and so whether I have been too sanguine in my fancy by predicting in effect that it will be for us and long so continue time will shew But if I am out in my Measures as to that point I am sure the Divines of the Church of England will gain Cento per Cento thereby as to the point of their absolute usefulness and necessary encouragement under a Prince of what resolution soever and upon a wanton supposition that they had all withdrawn themselves to the remotest parts of the Earth it would be any Princes interest to invite them back again at any rate and that for their persisting in the preaching up of Loyalty as they have done for several years and thereby so much helped to preserve us from weltring in one anothers blood It is excellently observed by Lucius Antistius Constans in his De jure Ecclesiasticorum that the CLERGY is necessary to console us with the World to come as to the hardships daily occurring to us in this as well as to direct us in our Course to that World. And if contrary to my expectation Heaven should think fit to punish the past Rebellions and present murmurings of so many of our Land by any future diminution of our Trade and when we should be enforced to work the harder for the necessary support of our Families and of the Government 10000 Preachers of Loyalty will be an useful Treasure both to the Prince and People Fuller in his Church-History mentions that in the year 1619 It was complained of that the Grantees of Papists forfeitures generally favoured them by Compositions for lâ—ght Sums But the famous Book of The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince printed A. D. 1617. saith in the Epistle Dedicatory to the English Catholicks You have this long time suffered as violent and furious a Persecution as ever the Jews did under an
Amsterdam to the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter ib. The number of the Inhabitants of Venice in the year 1555 ib. An Account of the Political Energy of the Reformation in England p. 107. The Revenue of the Kingdom of England quintuple in the year 1660 to what it was at the time of the Reformation p. 108. A Calculation of the Revenue of the Church holding in the year 1660 the same proportion of encrease ib. The Customs of England when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown made but 36000 l. per Annum and were since 1660 farmed at 400000 l. per Annum and have since then made about double that Sum p. 109. The yearly Revenue of the whole Kingdom of England computed ib. Queen Elizabeth wisely provided for the enlargement of the Trade and Customs of England ib. The Numbers of the People of Spain p. 111. The knowledge of the Numbers of People in a Kingdom is the Substratum of all Political measures ib. An Animadversion on the Author of la Politique Françoise ib. There were about 600,000 Souls in Paris shortly after the year 1660 p. 113. An Animadversion on the Calculation of Malynes in his Lex mercatoria ib. Animadversions on the Calculations of Campanella as to the numbers of the People of France p. 114. Lord Chief Iustice Hales his Observations of the gradual encrease of the People in Glocester shire corroborated by the Author p. 115. The Author believes the Total of the People of England to be very much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it p. 116. Observations on the Numbers of the People of England resulting from the returns on the late Pole-Bills and the Bishops Survey ib. and p. 117 118 119. An account of a Tax of Poll-Money in Holland in the year 1622 p. 117. Some illegal Proceedings in Queen Mary's Reign remarked p. 119 120. The Authors opinion that any Roman Catholick Prince that may come to inherit the Crown will use the Politics of Queen Mary as a Sea mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land-mark to go by p. 122. Eight hundred of the empty new built Houses of London have been filled with French Protestants ib. A high character given of Edward the 3 d a sharp Persecutor of the excesses of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and who saved the being of the Kingdoms Trade and Manufacture and patronized Wickliffe and the Authors opinion that any lawful Prince of the Roman Catholick Religion that can come here will uphold the falling Trade of the Kingdom as he did ib. Occasional Remarks on the Numbers of the People in the old Roman Empire p. 124. The vanity of the fear of any ones erecting another Universal Monarchy p. 125. Campanellas Courting Spain and afterwards France with that Monarchy remarked ib. Observations on the fate of the Spanish Armada in 88 and of the Numbers of its Ships and Seamen and likewise of the Numbers of the Ships and Seamen then in Queen Elizabeth's Fleet p. 127. She claimed no Empire of the Ocean either before 88 or afterward ib. The Shipping and Numbers of our Seamen in 12 years after 88 were decayed about a 3 d part p. 128. An account of the French Monarch's Receipts and Expences in the year 1673 ib. The Authors conjecture of the result of the Fermentation about the Regalia in France p. 129. The things predicted in the Apocalyps are with reference to exactness of number and measure p. 130. The Origine of the name Fanatick ib. The Author asserts this as a Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World as well as of a mans own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the Municipal Laws of their Countries ib. The Author gives his Iudgment of the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of Presbytery here being come p. 133. Of the illegality of the Scotch Covenant p. 134. The Assembly of Divines here would have been Arbitrary in Excommunication ib. The first Paragraph of the Covenant introduced Implicit Faith p. 135. The Author of the Book called The true English Interest computes that 300,000 were slain in the late Civil War in England p. 138. Observations on his Majesty's and Royal Brothers Exile into Popish Countries caused by our Presbyterians and even out of Holland into France and out of France into Spain p. 138 139. Presbyterians are obliged of all men to speak softly of the danger of Popery p 139. An account of the present Numbers of the Papists in England and some Historical Glances about the gradual decrease thereof in this Realm in several Conjunctures since the Reformation from p. 139 to p. 154. The late Earl of Clarendon occasionally mentioned with honour p. 147. The Authors judgment that the growth of Popery and of the fears thereof will abate under any Conjuncture of time here that can come from p. 153 to p. 157. In December 1672 the Protestants in Paris mere but as one to 65 p. 157. Observations on the late Conversions in France ib. The Author explains what he means by the expression of Religion-Trade ib. The Author's Assertion that the World can never be quiet and orderly till its State be such that men can neither get nor lose by Religion from p. 158 to 160. Animadversions on a Pamphlet aiming at the overthrow of the Clerical Revenue of England and called The great Question to be considered c. p. 160 161. The Author asserts the present Clerical Revenue of England to be reasonable and necessary and very far from excess in its proportion from p. 161 to p. 167. The Author's reason why he doth usually in this Discourse call Popery an Hypothesis or Supposition and not it or our former Presbytery in gross by the name of Religion from p. 168 to p. 170 and after The Author's Assertion That Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturbed worshipping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the blood of Christ p. 170. The Author distinguisheth Principles of Papists Socinians and Presbyterians into Religionary and Non-religionary and shews to what Principles the name of Religion is absurdly applied from p. 168 to p. 172. The Author observes it in many Papists who have deserted the Church of England that the rational Religion they were first educated in hath had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholly over-power p. 174. An Observation of three of the Nobility that went off from the Church of England to that of Rome but receded not from the Candour of their tempers and that neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and that the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and make great Figures in the State ib. Turen after his being a Papist as kind to his Protestant Friends as
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
very gravely that when once he was vehement in prayer before a Crucifix at Naples he heard this voice bene de me scripsisti Thoma none likewise in that age laught at the Pope for saying bene de me scripsisti Moses The world then brought no quo warranto against the Popes Charter derived thus in his Canon Law from Moses nor that gloss on it which says Since the Earth is seven times bigger then the Moon and the Sun eight times bigger then the Earth the Papal Power must Consequently be fifty seven times bigger then the Regal dignity Our English World will no more allow of the logical Consequence of that doughty argument of Bellarmine Lib. 1. de Pont. ca. 2. sect denique sect sed There is one King among Bees therefore there ought to be one Commander chief Teacher and visible Monarch in the Vniversal Church then they would allow that argument of the Bees to give our neighbour Monarch a right to an Vniversal Temporal Monarchy The Popes vociferating of that Text Behold two Swords and while their adherents held so many Thousands in their hands might then pass muster for as good an argument of his right to Spiritual and Civil power as the words that the Lillies spin not did for the Salic Law with the help of another Army then one of Commentators The Renewall of the Popes Charter by Pasce oves was not then disallowed either for the fleecing of many Millions of Christians or killing some hundreds of thousands in the German Empire according to what has been observed by the famous Erastus in his Theses p. 72. propter excommunicatos Imperatores Reges aliquot Centena millia hominum trucidata sunt in imperio Germanico And perhaps the Popes plea for making the World a great Slaughter-house might then be admitted by the authority of the Text Arise Peter kill and eat Conculcabis super aspidem basilicum then went for a claim of Divine Right to make the head of the World to be trampled on by the foot of a bald-pated Fryar But if the Papacy the light that was in the World then was darkness as the Scripture Expression is How great was that darkness And as the Popes continued art was then to Conceal Nature so 't was not then held tanti for art in others to be Curious in following Nature when an Opinion was imbibed that the Pope could change the very Nature of things according to that saying I have been shewn in the Canon Law glo in C. proposuit de Conc. praeb c. 5. de trans◠ep Papa mutare potest rerum substantialia de Iustitia injustitiam facere mutando Iura corrigendo adeóque quadrata aequare rotundis et rotundis quadrata And for my part I should not have repined at the Popes assuming to himself the honour of the light that rules by day if he could have illuminated the World with the demonstration of the quadrature of the Circle which that gloss pretends to a great Knowable thing as Aristotle said tho not known and which secret all the penetrating Mathematicians from Archimedes down to Mr. Hobbs have wooed with very great passion and could not enjoy But during the Egyptian plague of darkness that many Ages then lay under our famous Countreyman Wicliff alarm'd the Lethargic World and he assail'd several gross Errors of Popery with its own weapons of Metaphysics and School Divinity and by means of the noise his Two hundred Volumes made in the World he dispers'd a great terror in that dark Age and as one saith Sir Iohn Old-Castle Lord Cobham and the Lollards being awaken'd out of their first sleep were desirous to rise before it was day and before the appointed time was Come for the Reforming the abuses in the Church and between that time and morning most men fell asleep again as fast as ever but yet long before the dawn of the Reformation the doctrine of Wicliffe had made such a fermentation in our English World that in the Year of our Lord 1422 that great States-man Chichley Archbishop of Canterbury in a Letter to Pope Martine the Fifth Complain'd That there were then so many here in England infected with the heresies of Wicliff and Husse that without force of an Army they could not be supprest Whereupon the Pope sent two Cardinals to the Arch-Bishop to Cause a Tenth to be gather'd of all Spiritual and Religious men and the money to be Laid in the Chamber Apostolic and if that were not sufficient the residue to be made up of Chalices Candlestics and other implements of the Church as the Acts and Monuments Attest And it is not unknown that long before viz. in Harry the Fifth's time Chichley foreseeing that a Storm was coming from the Commons on Church-Lands diverted it by engaging England in its darling popular War with France and caus'd the Clergy to contribute very liberally to it But that fermentation that Chichley said could not in the Year 1422 be checkt in peoples Minds otherwise then as aforesaid soon out-grew the power of any Army to allay for in less than Thirty years afterward the Invention of Printing came into the World by which one man could transmit more notices of things in a Day then another could by writing in a Year and which did as much out-do the publication of notions by the Goosquill as the invention of Gun-powder did the killing Force of the gray-goose-wing and which did as it were revive the old Miracle of the Gift of Tongues and Cloven too I may Call them for their being divided from the Sentiments of the Papal Holy Church and made Learning begin to fly like lightning through the World to the Controuling and detecting of the Popes Excommunicating Thunder and which shew'd the World its true face in the stream of time and shew'd the greet Fisherman of Rome dancing in the Nett and which was the true speaking Trumpet whereby a single Author could preach to the diocess of the World. And that great birth of Fate the taking of Constantinople within three years after the Invention of Printing occasioning the World's acquiring the knowledge in the West that it lost in the East and dispersing the Learned Greeks Theodore Gaza Iohn Lascaris Manuel Chrysaloras and many others to teach the Greek Tongue where they went the Press was thereby furnished with Glad tidings for the Curious World and Erasmus and many learned Papists did soon imbibe the knowledge of that learned Language and he complained in a Letter to the Archbishop of Mentz That the Friars would fain have made it Heresy to speak Greek So pleasant was it then to consider that that barbarous Generation instead of knowing Heresy to be Greek voted Greek to be Heresy and that they who had murdered so many thousands for being Heretics knew not what the very word in its original language imported The Sagacity of Erasmus could not then but easily see through the Cobwebs of the School-Divines totam Theologiam a
by some accidents be made to cast Anchor or they may be sunk but they cannot be forced to go back When a man hath long been compell'd to creep with Chains on him through a toilsome dark Labyrinth and having extricated himself out of it and being come to enjoy his liberty in the light of the Sun the persuasion of words cannot make him go back again My Lord I lately mentioned the Motto of the Royal Society of England of which your Lordship is a Member and I look on the very constitution of that Society to be an inexpugnable Bulwark against Popery In which Society many of our choice English Witts have shew'd as much subtilty and curiosity in the Architecture of Real Science and such as tends to the edification of the world as any of our Countrey men heretofore did in those curious but useless Cobwebs of holy Church call'd School Divinity And the constitution of that Society hath not only been useful in encreasing the Trade of Knowledge among its members by a joyned stock but moreover hath tended to the raising in the Kingdom a general inclination to pursue Real science and to contemn all science falsly so call'd and the Raising of this inclination I will call a Spirit that can never be Conjur'd down nor can the knowledge that depends on number weight and local Motion be ever exterminated by Sophisms or Canting or terms of Art Nor will they who have from this Society learned to weigh Ayre give up their Souls to any Religion that is all Ayre without weighing it or notwithstanding any hard name that may come to be in vogue ever forget that bread is bread His Majesty by the founding of this great Conservatory of knowledge presently after his Restoration wherein his great Minister then the Earl of Clarendon was an honourable Member did convey real knowledge and a demonstration of his being an Abhorrer of Arbitrary Power to all that can understand Reason and affect not the ridiculous Treasonableness of Bradshaw's Court to say that they will not hear reason for had he like the Eastern King 's affected Arbitrary Power he would have used their artifice of endeavouring to cast mists before the understanding faculties of his Subjects and to detain them from knowledge by admiration and to deprive them of sight like horses that are still to drudge in the Mill of Government by blind obedience But to shew that he abhorr'd both such obedience and implicit Faith and that he intended to establish his Throne as well in the heads as in the hearts of his Subjects he presently setled this Great Store-house of Knowledge that shew'd it was his desire and ambition by the general Communication of Knowledge in his Dominions to Command Subjects whose heads were with the Rays of Science crown'd within And therefore I think His Majesties Munificence to the Royal Society in giving them Chelsey-Colledge at their first institution was very Consistent with the Primary Intention of the erecting that Colledge which was to be a Magazine for Polemical-Divinity wherewith to attaque the Writers for Popery for the very planting of a general disposition to believe nothing contrary to Reason is the cutting of the graâ—s under Poperies feet and His Majesty providing for the growth of reason did apparently check the growth of Popery as well as of Arbitrary Power without the prop of which Popery can never run up to any height more then the Sun-flower without a supporter and the setling in men an humour of Inquisition into the truth and nature of things is as I partly said before an everlasting barricade against the Popes darling Court of the Inquisition That great and noble notion of the Circulation of the blood took its first rise from the hints of a common persons enquiring what became of all the blood that issâ—â—d out of the heart seeing that the heart beats above Three Thousand times an hour thô but one drop should be pump'd out at every stroke and if any one shall tell me that he believes that Popery with its retinue of implicit faith and ignorance can over-run us I will ask him what will then become of all that knowledge the vital blood of the Soul that hath issued from the heads of inquisitive Protestants and been Circulating in the World for above a Hundred and Fifty years and I doubt not but it will be in mens Souls as long as blood shall have its Circular Course in their bodies and maugre all the Calumnies cast on the Divines of the Church of England for being fautors of Popery I shall expect that our learned Colledge of Physicians will as soon be brought to disbelieve the Circulation of the blood of our Royal Society to take down the Kings Standard that they have set up against implicit faith as our learned Convocation the learnedest that ever England had be brought to believe the principles of Popery I know My Lord ' tâ—s obvious against this my hypothesis of the unpracticableness of Popery being here the State-Religion to say that in little more then Twenty years time Four great changes in Religion happen'd in England and that the generality of the people then like dead Fishes went with the stream of the Times but I ask if the generality of the people had been throughly enlighten'd in the rationality of the Protestant Principles Twenty years together would they have return'd to the belief of the Popish Will they now do it after the establishment of a Rational Religion for above a Hundred years together Can Popery now find the way into most Mens brains here presently after the whole Nation almost were Preachers and when all our great and little unruly disagreeing Sects yet agreed in this as a fundamental that the Bishop of Rome is the Antichrist If Printing had been free in Turky for a Hundred years and a libera Philosophia and Theologia had been there in fashion for a Hundred years and every man had been allow'd his Judgment of discretion so long about the sense of the Alchoran or of the holy Scripture and of all Books of Religion could ignorance even there come into play again or if the Turkes had drank Wine for a Hundred years together could any one Conjure the glasses out of their hands by telling them there was a Devil in every grape If that Law in Muscovy that makes it death for any Subject to travel out of that Kingdom without the Emperors Licence lest his Subjects having seen the freedome of other Countreys should never again return to the Arbitrary Power in their own again I say if that Law had been repeal'd for a Hundred years and multitudes of oppress'd mankind had thence found the way to breath in the ayre of Liberty like men could they be persuaded to return to the Yokes of Beasts again When a floating Island has been a Hundred years fixt to the Continent can any teach it to swim again Consulitur de Religione is likely to be the eternal
and dangers 'T is true some few others have written something Mr. Baxter and Mr. Pool have laboured worthily Dr. Owen hath said somewhat to Fiat lux and there are some Sermons of the Presbyterians extant Morning Lectures against Popery these are the most and the chief of their performances I ever heard of The Conjuncture of the few and evil days of Popery would occasion another good effect a thing that is always to be wished but considering the general present ferment in Mens minds and pass'd mutual exasperations never else to be hoped for and that is this the common Calamity would cause such an Union between Protestants of several perswasions in Religion as would put a Period to that dreadful state of dissension among them which has so much horrour in it that all those subtle miscreants who have been able to cause it here and make so many of them almost ready with the ferity of the canes sepulchrales to devour one another can never in words express Nor can my imagination paint out to me any thing of the kind like it in the past course of time without my recollecting the description of the fears of the Doctor of the Gentiles given by himself concerning the State of the Church of Corinth to which he applies the words of debates envyings wraths strifes backbitings whisperings swellings tumults and without my considering the fermentation in the City of Ierusalem when near its fatal destruction But there will be a finalis concordia among the now implacable Protestants if ever Popery should set up to be the State-Religion And then any one who will give advice to a Painter to draw The present state of the Protestant Church of England may make a good Copy from the great Original of that Prophesie in Scripture The Wolf and the Lamb shall feed together c. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy Mountain c. And perhaps without going so far for a Mountain that may represent to ones fancy that State of English Protestants he may find one in England to do the work one that several of our Historians speak of telling us that in the Year 1607 When by the Irruption of the Severn Sea the Country in Somerset shire was overflown almost Twenty Miles in length and Four Miles in breadth it was then observ'd that Creatures of contrary natures as Dogs and Hares Foxes and Conies yea Cats and Mice getting up to the tops of some Hills dispensed at that time with their antipathies remaining peaceably together without sign of fear and without any violence used toward one another Nor do Men in great Towns supposed qualified only as the Children of light but as the Children of this World and as wise in their Generations and as projecting their own wealth and the encreasing of their Trade and of the value of their Rents by eminent Oblations provide for such Divines planting there and 't is obvious to every thinking Man that the erecting of Free-Schools and encouraging excellent Divines to live in any particular Town turns sufficiently to Mens account in this World as to the ends aforesaid by attracting inhabitants For it will be natural to Christians there when they do not barely hear of a Christ Transubstantiated into a dull Wafer but see one as I may say Transfigured and shining as the Sun in the Preaching of the Gospel to say Lord it is good for us to be here and for them there to make Tabernacles and provide Oblations not for dead but living Saints and as a living Dog is more valuable then a dead Lyon so I beâ—lieve that in any times of Popery here that can come any one Corporation and a holy learned Divine of the Church of England will get more by one another then all Towns where Shrines and Images of dead Saints shall be set up will mutually gain thereby Then will the Clergy and People being benefactors to each other be naturally ready to pray for each other and the former being believed from their hearts to say O Lord save thy people will find both an Oral and Cordial Response from the latter And bless thy Clergy But while I am thus accompanied by the Guide of Natural reason travelling in the Region of future time the time that only is the object of humane sollicitude and from which anxious minds are too apt to fear that every days birth may be a Monster I have by considering the former Revenue accruing to the Church by Oblations took occasion to Corroborate my great affirmation of it s not being naturally possible for Popery to exterminate the Protestant Religion in England a Religion that Popery can never take by assault or making of its professors Martyrs nor yet by Siege in starving its Pastors 'T is true that such a great impost as Popery may occasion to Protestants by Oblations may in one sense seem to have the nature of a punishment namely because 't will not be a burden to which all Subjects or indeed all Protestants will be equally liable and it will chiefly light on the devouter sort of Protestants And in like manner it may be said that the gain that arose from Oblations in the times of Popery to the Parish Priests of great Towns was in effect an unequal impost on the Popish Laity as being a Tax only on the more Ignorant and Superstitious of them But any one who has in the least considered matters of State cannot but know that any great inequality of Taxes that lights on the Subject as a mischief doth prove to the Prince an inconvenience to whom the Subjects pressure makes him unable to afford that Subsidium he otherwise could and perhaps would cheerfully for the Publick safety Thus may the great supposed charge to be incumbent on the more devout Protestants by Oblations probably tempt them to use all the means the Law will permit to render the Government of a Popish Prince uneasie to him and certainly disable them from paying in that proportion toward the public Levys upon emergent occasions they else might do It may therefore here be affirm'd that the gain of Popes arising from Indulgences which was so vast that Popes would boast That they could never want 〈◊〉 while they could command Pen and Ink and which Klockius in his Book de Contributionibus observes did yield the Pope in Common Years a hundred Tuns of Gold i. e. a Million of pounds Sterling and which being an unequal Tax on Papists and not pressing the debauchees of that Religion but only falling heavy on the more Pious and devout sort made them the less able to supply the holy See with mony on extraordinary occasions or to pay their Taxes due to the Popish Princes they lived under and particularly those due to the Pope as a Temporal Prince has since in a manner dyed a natural death the light of Learning having no sooner come into the World then that poor Hermit Fryer Martin Luther scourged the Popes Buyers and Sellers
longevity of Popery if ever it should call it self here the State-Religion for it can naturally be but a short dull Parenthesis of time in an Age of Sense and the Eye of Reason can see through the duration of it as well as through its absurdities and it can naturally be but like an angry Cloud that with the Eye of Sense we shall see both dropping and rowling away over our heads and shall behold the Sun playing with its Beams around the Heavens near it at the same time and nothing can be easier to you then to dye in the Faith that Popery cannot live long in England and to know that you are not to be compared to an Infidel though you should have provided for your surviving Family nothing but Abby Lands the which I believe may by a bold instrument of Eternity drawn by a small Scriveners Boy be effectually Conveyed to any Lay-man and his Heirs for ever I know that the present State of that part of the Land of England that was aliend from the Church is such that it bears not the price of years purchase it did before the Plott and that it is according to the common expression become a drug as to Moneys being taken up on it in comparison of other Lands and it is obvious to consider how much herein the Plott hath prejudiced the Wealth and Trade of the Kingdom in making so great a part of the Land in some regard comparatively useless to the Possessors but I likewise know that hereby Popery will be no gainer for that 't is apparent that the owners of it will be indefatigable in the use of all means lawful to bring Popery to such a State as shall make any men ashamed to say they fear it Tho Holy Church that everlasting Minor that Minor like Sir Thomas Mores Child that he said would be always one will be still labouring the Resumption of what was alien'd from it and hence I believe it hath proceeded that our Kings thô in the eye of the Law always at full Age have thought fit to learn from Holy Church the Priviledge too of being reputed Minors or Infants in Law for so the Books call them that upon occasion they may resume what was alien'd from the Crown and thô the hopes of such resumption would be a bait to help Popery to Multitudes of Proselytes yet the people imagine a vain thing who think such resuming practicable in England and especially at this time if the Calculation of the Ebb of the Coinage of England be as is contain'd in Britannia languens viz. from the foremention'd period of May 1657 to November 1675 near another nineteen years 3 238 997 l. 16s ¾ a Calculation that I think cannot be disproved but by the Records in the Pipe Office where annual account of the Money Coined in the Mint are preserved or by Ballances of Trade made up from that time whereby the exportations eminently preponderating what is imported would evince what considerable quantities of Bullion have been Coyned or by our knowing that since that time Sterling Silver has not still obtain'd the Price of 5 s 2d an Ounce a price that it has not indeed fall'n short of in England about these twenty years past and therefore before the late Act for the Coynage could never be entertain'd by the Mint to be Coyn'd which was by its Law and Course necessarily restrain'd from giving for Sterling Silver above 5 s. the Ounce and which Rate and no more it did afford when the Ballance of Trade favouring us caus'd that vast Coynage mentioned in the former Ternary of nineteen years But in fine his Majesties Royal Goodness to his People in not only quitting what did accrue to him for Coynage but being at the expence of the Coyning the most exquisite sort of Money in the Known world and such as in Curiosity does equal Meddals is an indication of the Ballance of Trade not having employed the Mint sufficiently in making for his Subjects the Medium of Commerce and for the depression of the Trade not only of the English but of more then the European World the Usurper Cromwel is to be justly blamed who not long after the wounds England had felt by the Munster Peace did harrass us by his fantastick War with Spain which not only impoverish'd England but the Trading World and forcibly obstructing the Returns of the Spanish Plate Fleets did particularly put both Spain and France under a necessity of making that Peace that gave the French Crown its leasure to trouble the World. But let any one judge then how ridiculous it is to suppose that the Trade of the Nation must not as I may say shut up Shop if half its wealth should be again juggled into the hands of a few Ecclesiasticks and the old Trade between England and Rome be renew'd of giving the Pope Gold for Lead It must indeed be acknowledged by all who have conversed with History that the absolute and unbounded Power with which the Eastern Monararchs Governed their Kingdoms did not more require an excessive share of the publick Revenue to feed standing Armies then Priests who with their Idols and Superstitions and Crafts did awe and delude People into obedience but as in orderly Commonwealths there is no need of such an immense Charge for Artifice to make men obey themselves so in our Constitution of the English Government it being justly to be supposed that we have all the desireable solid and substantial freedom that any Form of Government can import besides the insignificance of the name of it and insignificant we may well call it who remember that our late real Oligarchists took not only the name of God but the name of a Commonwealth in vain and are to the envy of Forraigners and shame of our former Domestick Propounders blessed with the Soveraign Power of a Great and Glorious King over a free and happy People as the words of the Royal Martyr are in one of his Declarations it may be well said to any one who shall talk of giving half the profits of the Realm to use Art and Imposture to make Members obey their Head so constituted quorsum perditio haec But in a word to come closer to the Case of Popery any one that would have half the Revenue of the Kingdom given to Impostors for the making a Monarch only half a King or King but of half his People and for the tricking both him and them into a blind obedience to a Forraign Head and for the making a Forraign Power Arbitrary and absolute is a very bad Land-Merchant and knoweth not the use or value of the soyle of England and will never find the half of 25 Millions of Acres sold for Chains and Fetters and will be put to the trouble of taking out the Writ de idiota inquirendo against at least three Millions who have already out-witted him and will never think a Forraign Minor and whose concessions are resumable fit to be
Scene of Merchandizing was not open'd in Europe till about 6 or 7 hundred years ago and till then none were there worthy the names of Merchants except some few in the Republicks of Italy who lived in the Mediterranean parts trading with the Indian Caravans in the Levant or driving some inland Trade and then and some hundreds of years afterward the Nations in the worst Soil of Europe being the greatest breeders and having superfluity of nothing but people had no invention for living but by being Murderers and by the boysterous Trade of Fighting their way into better Quarters and during that dark and Iron Age that produced Herds of Men void of knowledge there was nothing in humane Conversation or discourse valuable and in our European World it was scarce worth Men a few steps to gain one anothers acquaintance but on the gradual encrease of knowledge there Men found a readier way at once with delight and profit to exchange Notions and Commodities of Traffick and the Protestant Religion at last drawing up the Curtain that kept all things obscure on that Stage of the World Men being better taught the knowledge of the God of Nature and of Nature it self were grown worth one anothers knowledge and were for the surprizing brightness of their intellectual Talents gazed on by the wondring World like in Machines Gods coming down out of Clouds and it was worthy of the bounty of Heaven then to spread on the Earth the Commerce of Men and the Medium of Commerce too and to allow them to converse together with more splendor by the Donative of the American Mines when the dawn of the knowledge a little before that of the Reformation had rendred them conversable Creatures and fit for the interviews of one another and shortly afterwards by a mighty encrease of Navigation many did pass to and fro and knowledge was more and more encreased Thus as I have some where read of a saying of one of the Fathers Deus ambit nos donis formâ suâ the Divine Goodness provided that the World should Espouse the beauty of the Reformation with a great Dowry and that it should appear particularly in England with the great Figure that Wisdom makes in the Proverbs Length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour And the truth is conspicuous in our English History that former intervals of some Efforts of Trade and of some of withstanding the Papal Encroachments were alway contemporary and liv'd and dy'd together and they were no sooner risen out of the Grave where the barbarity of former times depressed them but they were again found in one anothers Embraces That the Stock and Wealth of the Kingdom is vastly encreased since Harry the 8ths time is visible to any one who considers what Stow saith in his Annals on the Year 1523 the 15th Year of his Reign That when in a Parliament held at Black-Fryers and where Sir Thomas More was Speaker 800000 l. was required to be raised of the fifth part of every mans Goods and Lands that is 4 s of every Pound to be paid in 4 years but it was denyed and it was proved manifestly that if the fifth part of the substance of the Realm were but 800000 l and if Men should pay to the King the fifth part of their Goods in Money or Plate that there was not so much Money out of the Kings hands in all the Realm for the fifth part of every Mans Goods is not in Money or Plate c. And then consequently if all the Money were brought to the Kings hands then Men must barter Cloath for Victuals c. And there it was further Argued that the King had by way of Loan 2 s. in the Pound which is 400000 l. and if he had 4 s. more in the Pound 't would amount to 1200000 l which is almost the 3 d part of every Mans Goods which in Coyn cannot be had within the Realm That the Merchandizing Trade of England was before the Reformation and sometime after managed chiefly by Forraigners we Learn out of Heylin's Edward the 6 th p. 108 where he saith that Edward the 6 th Supprest the Corporation of Merchant Strangers the Merchants of the Stilyard concerning which we are to know that the English in the times foregoing being neither strong in Shipping nor much accustomed to the Sea received all such Commodities as were not of the growth of their own Country from the hands of Strangers resorting hither from all parts to upbraid our laziness namely Merchants known by the name of Easterlings who brought hither Wheat and Rye and Grain c. for their encouragement wherein they were amply priviledged and exempted from many impositions I shall here deduce a proof of the growth of the Revenue of the Nation from the growth of that of the Church and to prove that the Revenue of the Church Nation of England were in the year 1660 about Quintuple to what they were at the time of the Reformation I shall say first that Godwin in his Catalogue of Bishops makes the Revenue of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops to be valued at the time of the Reformation near 22000 l. per Annum and if we admit the Revenue of the Deans and Chapters to be double the Sum viz. 44000 l. then will the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy appear to have been then 66000 l. per Annum But Dr. Cornelius Burgess a Man vers'd in the speculative and practick part of Sacriledge doth in his Book concerning Sacriledge call'd Two Replies and Printed Anno 1660 affirm that the Bishops Deans and Chapters Lands were at the end of the late Civil War sold for two Million three hundred thousand pounds and he saith there was offer'd since his Majesties Restoration seven hundred thousand pounds more to confirm that Sale whereby the value of the said Land is made to be in the year 1660 3 Millions And Mr. Prynne in his Printed Speech in the House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the satisfactoriness of the Kings Answers to the Propositions of both Houses doth in Page 68 there affirm That near one half of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops Possessions and Revenues consists in Impropriations Tithes Pensions and the like and if we may suppose the like as to the Revenues of the Deans and Chapters then according to that Estimate will the value of the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy of our Church be about 6 Millions the twentieth part whereof viz. at twenty years Purchase is 300,000 l. per Annum and the 12 th part of the same viz. at 12 years purchase is 500,000 l. per Annum so that what at the time of the Reformation was worth but 66000 l. per Annum was in the Year 1660 worth between 300 and 500000 l. as aforesaid In the next place I shall prove the Remainder of my Position that the Revenue of the whole Nation is about Quintupled also for that the
Millions of Souls But there scarce needs any other Medium whereby to evince that the Progress of the Reformation hath vastly encreased the value of our Land and proportion of our Commerce then that it hath so vastly encreased the number of our People a Fact that I have already proved and have shewn what Depopulaors or dispeoplers of the Kingdom the Monks were and have made some Calculations of the numbers of the Religious Persons living in Celibate and the effects thereof in restraining formerly the growth of the Numbers of the People but do find that I was extremely short in assigning the number of those whom Popery made to live in Celibate to be but 120000. I was glad to gain a rise for somewhat like an Estimate of the numbers of all the Religious persons in Monasteries by finding it in Weavers Monuments that the Religious Persons put out of the Religious Houses under the yearly value of 200 l. were above 10000 and that therein Weaver agrees with Sanders de Schismate c. but I made no Estimate of the numbers of Friers Mendicant the which were very great and I was too short on the accounting that there were perhaps no more Secular Priests then Benefices in England for thô the Rule of the Canon Law allows not Orders to be given to Men without a Title yet it admits an exception in the Case of Men who can live on their own patrimony and it still took the Title to be a Curate as current Coyn for one to a living and moreover the livelihoods that many unbeneficed Secular Priests acquired by saying particular Masses did pass for Titles and thus in France it being conceived that the Secular Priests unbeneficed are about 6 times as many as the beneficiaries we may thence guess what the proportions of their numbers were in England But yet further to discourse of the growth of the numbers of the people of England before and since the Reformation I shall acquaint your Lordship that you may easily find among the Records of the Exchequer what the number of the people of England was in the Year 1522 when Harry the 8 th as I cited it out of my Lord Herberts History p. 121 Caused Warrants to be Issued out Commanding the Certificates of the number of all above 16 years old to be returned and by an Index or Repertory of the Matters of State in the Exchequer that I have I can readily direct the finding it out there and moreover by the accounts of the Pole Acts in former times a considerable indication of the numbers of the people in those days may be had And if we may guess at the encrease of the people of England from that of London I can easily satisfie any person about the prodigious growth of that City in numbers of people and consequently in wealth since the abandoning of the Papacy I have by me an account of the proportions of the Shires of England City of London in a Tax of 50000 l. long since in Edward the 3 ds time and in which Surry bore the same proportion with London and in which London and Surry and Middlesex paid but about 1500 l. which was but about a 16 th part And in Harry the 8 ths times it hapned that Cardinal Pool excited divers Princes of Christendom to invade England a fit man he was who had been then a Traytor to come here and absolve Hereticks but Holling shead in his Chronicle of Harry the 8 th p. 947 tells us That the King having heard of the Treasonable practices of the Cardinal did Anno 1539 make a Survey of his Naval Strength and did ride to the Sea-Coasts and that Sir William Foreman Knight then Major of London was commanded to certifie the names of all the Men within the City and liberties thereof between the age of 16 and 60 whereupon the said Mayor and his Brethren each one in his Ward by the Oath of the Common-Council and Constable took the number of Men Arms and Weapons and after well considering of the matter by view of their Books they thought it not expedient to admit the whole number certified for apt and able men and therefore assembling themselves again they chose forth the most able persons and put by the residue especially such as had no Armour But when they were credibly advertised by Thomas Cromwel Lord Privy-Seal to whom the City was greatly beholden that the King himself would see the People of the City Muster in a convenient number and not to set forth all their power but to leave some at home to keep the City c. then he saith the number beside the Whifflers and other Waiters was 15000. But the Observator on the Bills of Mortality hath in his last Observations on that Subject told us That there are in London about 6 hundred and 70000 Souls and thô I know that some Parishes are included within the Bills of Mortality for the said City that formerly were not yet the said Observator having told us that there are in London more Males then Females and it being true that there are as many above the Age of sixteen as are under it and that the Sexagenarii are but a 6 th part of Mankind and the Quota of the numbers resulting from the Parishes added being likewise shewn us by that Observator let any one judge how vast the number of able Men certifiable between 16 and 60 is grown to be since that year of Harry the 8 th before mentioned It must be acknowledged that the thanks of the Age are due to the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for those solid and rational Calculations he hath brought to light relating to the numbers of our people but such is the modesty of that excellent Author that I have often heard him wish that a thing of so great publick importance to be certainly known might be so by an actual numbring of them and the truth is it is much to be pittied that by the care of Magistrates an exact number of the people as well of London as of all other places in the Realm hath not with diligence been made and preserved the knowledge whereof is the Substratum of all political measures that can be taken as to a Nations strength or riches and the part thereof that is spareable for Colonies and the value of the branches of the publick Revenue and the equality in proportioning any Taxes or Levies by Act of Parliament and the satisfying the World about the value of our Alliances a thing one would think somewhat necessary when 't is published in Print that a Forraign Minister who hath spent much time here and is deservedly famous for being a Critical Judge in the Politicks and in many sorts of Learning makes the people of England to be but two Millions and when a late famous French Author of la Politique Francoise who sets up with his Goose-quill to be a Governor of the World reproacheth us
subject that are equal to great Parishes c. Moreover the Grants from the Crown of Extraparochial Titles in several Counties may serve for an indication of great numbers of people that are not Inhabitant in Parishes and so likewise may the Multitudes of those people who live in Forrests and which places are generally accounted by the Law to be Extraparochial The Number of Parsonages and Vicarages in Edward the 1 sts valuation whereof there is a Manuscript Copy in the Bodleian Library was about 8900 and into that number the Chappels are not accounted but of the Chappels many since have grown up into Parsonages and this would likewise induce one to think the number of our Parishes at this time to be greater then the common Estimate especially when according to the Kings Books which respect the valuation in Harry the 8 ths time the number of them is considerably above 9000. But what may seem more strange is that some men of Thought and Learning have attempted even by Calculation to prove that the people of England have for a very long space of time decreased in their numbers and particularly the Author of a Book in Quarto called An account of the French Vsurpation on the Trade of England and the great damage the English yearly sustain by their Commerce Printed in the Year 1679 and Writ with excellence of Calculation in some parts thereof and yet that Author doth p. 16 say And I can easily believe that 1000 years since this Nation had a much greater stock of people then now it hath for the Rome-Scot or Peter-pence which was but one Penny a Chimney granted by Offa and Ina Saxon Kings to the Pope did amount to 50000 yearly and the Hearth-money which is two Shillings the Hearth and one Stack of Chimneys may have many Hearths doth not amount to 300,000l yearly whereas if the number of Chimneys charged with the Romescot had been two Shillings a Chimney it would have amounted to 1,200,000 l. yearly So that we may conclude there were then more Buildings and Chimneys and so by consequence more people But had that Author considered that the Romescot or denarius sancti Petri was only an annual Penny from every Family or Houshold and that it amounted to 300 Marks and a Noble yearly as Blunt says by that reckoning it would have appeared that there were not then in all England 50000 Families liable to that Duty whereas there are now above a Million of such Families so that now the people and Families of England are twenty times as many as they were then which agrees pretty well with my Lord Chief Iustice Hales's reckoning That great person in his Primitive Origination of Mankind yields that the people of England are at least 6 Millions and doth too in Page 205 say That he doth not know any thing rendred clearer to the view then the gradual encrease of Mankind by the curious and strict Observations on the Bills of Mortality and doth very elaborately make a comparison between the numbers of the people in Glocestershire and particularly some great Towns and Burroughs there as Thornbury and Tedbury as they were at the time of the making up of Domesday Book and as they now are and shews That there are very many more Vills and Hamlets now then there were then and few Villages or Towns or Parishes then which continue not to this day and that the number of Inhabitants now is above 20 times more through the general extent of the Country then at that time and afterward saith if we should institute a later Comparison viz. between the present time and the beginning of Queen Elizabeth which is not above 112 years since and compare the number of Trained Soldiers then and now the number of Subsidy men then and now they will easily give us an account of a very great encrease and multiplication of people within this Kingdom even to admiration It would be no difficult thing to fortifie the observation of the great gradual encrease of the people and particularly of those in the Parishes of Glocestershire by the shewing the encrease of their worth and riches in the several publick Valuations and their present real value from whence their growth in the numbers of their Inhabitants may be well inferr'd as for example in Edward the 1 sts Valuation Tedbury is valued Ecclesia de Tedbury 36. m. i. e. Marks and in Harry the 8ths Valuation is valued at 36l 13 s 2d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum Thornbury in Edward the 1 sts valuation is valued at 47 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 120 l. per Annum Berkley in Edward the 1 sts Valuation comes to 36 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum I have instanced in these places as referred to by Hales and shall here as to Gloster only further observe that there are more places in the Decanatus Glocestriae in Harry the 8 ths valuation then were in Edward the 1 sts as for instance Edward the 1 sts Valuation doth in the rural Deanry of Glocester comprize 6 Churches and a Chappel but Harry the 8 th doth in the Deanery contain above 20 Churches and a Chappel I shall here corroborate his Lordships remark of the encrease of Families in another Town in Glocestershire which he calls Dursilege and which is in Edward the 1 sts Valuation called Dursly and valued as a rectory there at 10 Marks per Annum and in Harry the 8 ths as a Rectory at 10 l. 14s 3d. and is now let for 72 l. yearly I have observ'd a suitable difference between the former valuations of other Livings in that County and their present real values His Lordship having before justly acknowledged that it was a laborious piece of work to make a Calculation of the number of Inhabitants at this day throughout England did however in a way very worthy of his great judgment adapt his Estimate to the extent of one entire County for had he gone less and restrained it to this or that Parish the gradual encrease of the People there might have fallen short by particular accidents and to this purpose we have it in Mr. Bentham's Christian Conflict p. 322. that 11 Mannors in Northamptonshire have been enclosed with depopulation and have vomited out their former desolate owners and their posterity Many ingenious persons have applyed their thoughts to several ways of Calculation whereby to discover the total of the number of the People in England and in the Investigation thereof some concern'd in the management of the Hearth-money have reckon'd that in England and Wales the number of Hearths of rich and poor is 2 Millions and 6 hundred thousand and that at a Medium there are between 4 and 5 persons to a Hearth and accounting but 4 persons to a Hearth they suppose that at that
used then by some of our well-meaning Church-men who thought that the use of some Ceremonies more than our Law required would have brought the Church of Rome over to us ' T is aut Caesar aut Nullus that the Pope would be and he will here keep as many Subjects as he can since not able to acquire as many as he would And the truth is as the attempt of an excellent Swimmer to save one totally inexpert therein usually proves fatal so likely will the generous and charitable design of a Church of a rational Discipline interposing to save one of an irrational and that can do nothing by vigour of reason to bear up it self and is therefore meer dead weight Since the Epoche of the Popish Plot that the Press has been to all writing Mankind so much unrestrain'd the World hath seen little of the Papists Learned Writings or scarce any thing writ with Art and Wit except the Compendium and instead of proving in Volumes that the Church of England is no true Church or that St. Peter was ever at Rome they have extended all the Nerves of their Wit in Pamphlets only to prove that Doctor Oates is no true Doctor and that he was never a â—alamanca And I believe that as the asserting of Popery here per viam Thomae or in the way of the Schools is in the Course of Nature Eternally over so will the adorning it by the way of Curiosity of Wit or Fancy grow obsolete But here it is proper to be observed that in all the Conjunctures before mention'd and in those wherein our former Protestant Princes for deep reason of State have been most favourable to their Popish Subjects by the Relaxation of the Penal Laws and when some Papists made great Figures in the Court and got the Ballance of Court-preferment a while by stealth into their hands and that Holy Church being anew Whiten'd over with some temporary Prosperity many Proselytes did Flock to it as Doves to their Windows yet the Ground that Popery got then was but Made Ground and not natural and was too chargeable to be kept And as the vulgar have falsly imagined that a great Plague has happen'd in the beginning of every Princes Reign so has it been obvious to the more refined observers that in the Reign of every new Protestant Prince Popery has made a fresh essay to augment it self in the Epocha of a new Conjuncture And that as in the most Pestilential times of Mortality even in our Metropolis almost only the poorer sort of People are swept away by it Thus was it too in in those Conjunctures here when Popery boasted of its many Converts But Nemo decipit lumbos and Popery when pamper'd did but Counterfeit a sound strength and as Quintilian's words are Verum robur inani saginâ mentiri and was but in bad travelling Case by that washy adventitious flesh and soon tired in its furious Race while Protestancy had that permanent Motion which Dr. Iackson on the Creed supposeth the Heavens would have if God should move them in an instant and which if he did were he saith more properly to be called A vigorous permanency alluding perhaps to things seeming to stand still when they move fastest Dr. Twisse in answer to him doth to the Expression of a Permanent Motion with a mirth and raillery unusual in him apply that Verse of a Poet whose Horse being tired and not moveable by the Spur said to his fellow Traveller who Rein'd in his Horse to go easily Your Horse stands still faster then mine will go And thus raillery apart I do believe that Protestancy will stand still faster than Popery can go let it be never so high mounted And we may properly resemble the course of Protestancy in any Conjuncture to the Sun which enjoys its Natural Motion at the same time it suffers its Forced and according to Mr. Cowley's Expression doth at the same time run the day and walk the year And we may as properly resemble the height and greatness of Popery in any former Conjuncture and the greatness of Peoples fears of its Growth and Continuance to the dreadful Entrance and dull Exit of a Comet Many Comets have hung over our heads and lasted some considerable time that were bigger than the Globe of the Earth which as they appear'd on a sudden so hath that great Mass of Matter of which they consisted and which threat'ned destruction to the Earth by little and little dwindled to nothing or disappear'd And this hath been the Event of the Growth of Popery and over-growth of its Fears here and I believe will be in any Conjuncture that can come I believe that if such an extremely improbable thing should ever happen as that the Legislative Power should allow the Papists a publick place for their Devotion in every great City in England the very sight of their Ceremonies would encrease and sharpen the Popular aversion against their Church Du Fresnes in his Learned Glossary in three Tomes as to the Scriptores mediae infimae Latinitatis mentions the origination of the use and name of the Surplice and quotes Durand in Ration lib. 3. c. 1. n. 10. 11. for it viz. Eo quod antiquitùs super tunicas pelliceas de pellibus mortuorum animalium factas induebatur quod adhuc in quibusdam Ecclesiis observatur And cites many Authorities about its being used by the Clergy and while the Antient Monks lived upon the labour of their hands and wore such Leathern Clothes as labouring Rusticks in the Towns with whom they wrought it was but a necessary piece of decency when they retired to their Oratories to Worship God together to have that covering of Linnen that might hide the sordidness of their Clothes and so probably that Linnen Surplice appearing in it self decent and carrying with it more respect from the just Reverence those Innocent Ancient Monks attracted it came by that means first in fashion in the Church to be worn by the better habited Priests and being here enjoyn'd by the Laws of our Sovereign and therein declared to be a thing not in its own nature necessary it seems to me to be an uncivil humour in our Dissenters so much to quarrel the use of it and do suppose that the Civility of the French Nation appearing in the Protestants of that Realm who are here and to whom it is natural not only to comply with Princes but even their fellow Subjects in the use of all Ceremonies they expect to be treated with may instill such a humour of Complaisance into some of those here who were aggrieved at our Churches or as I may say our Kings Ceremonies as all the Learned Books of our Divines have not yet done But if after the disuse of our Ceremonies in the late Usurpation the sight of a Surplice doth fright them so much from our Church how would they be disgusted to see one with a shaven Crown with his Amice Girdle Aube Maniple Stole
like manner will nature probably by the real Poverty of People cause them to forbear to give relief to these Religious Mendicants and will thereby break their Trade And moreover tho there hath in all Ages been another sort of Traders and who too were but splendid Beggars and by their importunity in Courts and with artifice representing the Sores and Maims of their Estates have moved the Royal Commiseration to exhaust its Revenue on them yet the vast publick charge likely to be impendent over us as well as our Neighbours will shew those First-rate Mendicants the vanity of the Science of begging a Science that Agrippa doth very well Animadvert upon in his Book de Vanitate Scientiarum And there being no way for the Heirs and Children of our many Luxuriants to get from under the loads of debts and Incumbrances bequeath'd them but by industry and frugality I account that they will be necessitated to mend the Genius of the Age and so to contribute to the advancement of Trade When the Author of Britannia languens doth I fear too truly tell us p. 139. That our late wealthy Yeomanry are impoverished or so much reduced in their Stocks that a man shall hardly find three in a County able to Rent 3 or 400 l. per Annum and that our Poor are encreased to near ten times their late number within these last twenty years and that their maintainance doth cost the Nation 400000 l. per Annum constant Tax and had before in p. 138 shew'd That the Trades of Tillage Grazing Dairy Cloathing Fulling that formerly enriched the Occupiers of them have in these latter years been the usual Shipwracks of Mens Stocks and Estates in most parts of England and in p. 27. That we have in a manner lost the Eastland and Northern Trades and in p. 240 shews That the cheapness of Interest doth not proceed from the plenty of Mony but scarceness of security and there observes That Personal Security for Mony being in a manner lost and that there is not one Land security in twenty that is good and in p. 291. I hear of no new improving Manufactures in England but that of Periwigs we may well account that the Ebb of our Trade is at the very lowest point and that under so good a Prince in so good and populous a Land nature will hasten its improvement Tho the understandings of the English have in all Arts and Sciences appear'd as sharp as those of any Nation and particularly in the Science of the Politics yet so it has happen'd that since the Reformation our States-men have been so put to it by the efforts of Popery and other Religion-Trades to stand continually upon their Guard and have been so worn out by continual duty that they have not had time to make Platforms of improvement of Political Discipline or to acquaint the World with their Memoires as many of the States-men of France have done and the great Ship of the Nation in its Trading Voyages as I may say under Sail and making a great figure in the Sea of time and having experienced Pilots at the Helm of State hath yet been so clog'd in its motion by the little fantastick Remora of a pretended Religion sticking to its side in several Conjunctures that our making no more way in the World hath appeared a Jest to Critical Spectators and no doubt but pending the Authority of a Religion-Trade as paramount over others in this or any Country its fate will be like Reubens never to excel Not only our States-men but our Princes in former times tho their abilities were very great and adequate to support the weight of the Government had it been greater were yet exposed to perpetual toyl by ballancing the Religionary Contest viz. of the Parties of Papists and Puritans which minds me how it hath been wondered at that a strong Horse should not draw a one wheel'd Coach with a great deal of ease considering that he only bears up part of the weight and keeps it upright to a Ballance by thills on either side of him and that by experience 't is found that this Horse becomes weary sooner then expectation and the reason of it is conceived to be that tho he bears not so much burthen nor draws so much draught as a Coach or other Carriage with two or more Wheels yet he is so bruised and banged on either side with the unusual motion of the thills to keep the one Wheel'd Coach upright that he is thereby much sooner spent and wearied then by ordinary drawing or bearing he would have been and thus neither better nor worse hath been the fate of our Monarchs and their Ministers to be continually throughout the Journey of their Lives hit on this and 'tother side and bruised with the Thills of Popery and Presbytery while they were keeping up Religion to a Ballance but I believe 't will appear a shame to us that they should be thus the Ludibria of Fortune any longer The Author of the present State of England Part. 2. saith That the yearly Charge of his Majesty's Navy in times of Peace continuing in Harbor is so well regulated that it amounts to scarce 70000 l. Had he heard my Lord-Keeper Bridgeman's Speech to the Parliament Anno 1670. he would there have been informed That His Majesty finds that by his Accounts from the year 1660 to the late War the ordinary Charge of the Fleet Communibus annis came to 500000 l. a year and that it cannot be supported with less His Lordship in that Speech mentioning to what proportion our Neighbours had augmented their Fleets and how it imported His Majesty to keep pace with them if not to outgo them in number and strength of Shipping minds me of the Force of that saying of Cicero to Atticus L. 10. Ep. 7. Qui mare tenet eum necesse est rerum potiri and the truth of it is much more applicable to the State of the World now then that in his time and we shall always be but damnati ad insulam if we do not by a vigorous industry so supply our selves as to be able to supply our Princes and so as to enable them to make the Naval Strength of England as proportionable to that of other Nations as it can be made As the ordinary charge of the Fleet for several years came to the great above mentioned Sum so I believe that the ordinary Naval Charge never since amounted to less then 200,000 l. per Year beside the vast Charge in building new Ships and rebuilding old and the Charge of Summer and Winter Guards and of Convoys and of Ships against Algeers and His Majesties most exact care of the defence of the Walls of the Kingdom hath been such while he beheld the emulous endeavours of Nations to excell in Naval Power that he hath enrich'd his Realm since the Year 69 with a more valuable Fleet then it had before and the great Cordial that Nature allows us
Civil Wars observes well That there were at first in the Parliaments Army a great many London Apprentices who for want of experience in the War would have been fearful enough of death and wounds approaching visibly in glistering Swords but for want of judgement scarce thought of such death as comes invisibly in a Bullet and therefore were very hardly to be driven out of the Field And now therefore should any Great Person descend to ask my poor Opinion of the proportion of the danger we are in of a Relapse into the Plague of War I would give it by bringing the Doctrine of Dulce bellum c. into use and application thus namely I would Calculate the number of the inexperts now here living and who were not living in the time of the last War a thing not hard to do sufficiently for my purpose and thus I essayed to do it the last year when I fancied to employ my thoughts on that Subject diverting my self with these Queries 1. What part of the People of England now living are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. Of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War 2. What numbers of those who lived in 1641 about which time the War may be supposed to have begun are now dead 3. What proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War for it may be said that perhaps War may be sweet to such surviving experts 4. The War of Ireland ending about the year 1653 how many may the number of such inexperts there be supposed to be 5. The People of Scotland being now above a Million as are the People of Ireland and the Scotch War ending at Worcester Fight September the 3 d 1651. How many are now living in Scotland that lived there that day and what may be the number of the inexperts there In order to the satisfying my self in these Queries tho I know that many do make the Civil Wars of England to end with the surrender of Oxford in Mid-summer 1646 yet because several Acts of War in England were committed long after 1646 viz. in Lancashire Kent at Colchester Worcester I supposed not the English War to end till 1651 about the same time with that of Scotland both Kingdoms as they are but one Island so intermixing and bringing mutual Calamities on one another and besides a few years at that distance of time would not much alter the State of this Case so then as to the first and last Queries I thus concluded that the People of this Island in the year 1651 were and always are about one half of them under the age of 16 before which time as they are reckoned unfit for War so may they likewise be thought inexperts as to the miseries thereof and the other half above that age and that of this latter half more then one other Moyety are dead in these 28 or 29 years which have passed from 51 to near 80. For if we reckon only Arithmetically without any Consideration of Geomerrical proportion in the Case which with reason enough the Observator on the Bills of Mortality takes in yet 28 ½ the number of years in 51 in which the said half are supposed dead and 27 ½ for the years of the other half surviving and fifteen for the Age of the Inexperts from 1651 makes 72 the full Age of Man so that the surviving Experts are not a fourth of the whole And again at least one half of this fourth either through forgetfulness by Age or Dotage or for want of understanding all their whole life time may be very well counted among the Inexperts also And thus the Inexperts will be above seven eighth parts of the whole People And if in answer to the third Query we shall add the Number of the Gainers by the War which perhaps some will estimate but small and of those who lost by the Peace and Settlement on the Kings Restoration with the Heirs Executors and Principal Legatees of both and to these three last sorts the War was so very sweet that they may very well be reckoned for the Equivalent of three or four or perhaps many times more the number of the other common Inexperts we may on the whole matter judging modestly conclude the Inexperts of all the former sorts not to be less then 9 10 nine Tenths of the whole People and to these also they who have spent their Estates and cannot well live in Peace may be properly added I satisfied my self as to the fourth Query concerning Ireland that it may bear at least the same proportion with what was asserted in relation to Great Brittain and tho the War in the former lasted some years longer yet there are other Considerations obvious enough that would more then ballance that As for the Query about how many are now dead who were living in 41 the Principles I have variously discoursed of out of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality may easily satisfie Curiosity therein I account that of the Lords Temporal in the Kings Long Parliament that sate the 8 th of May 1661. there were dead 77 at the Dissolution of that Parliament in Ianuary the 25 th 1678. And of the 26 Bishops that sate on the 8th of May in that Parliament only 2 were alive in the 25 th of Ianuary 1678. And of the House of Commons which sate in the 8th of May 1661. And consisted of about 520 odd Members there died during their sitting viz. in 17 Years and 8 Months 307 Members viz. in each year about 1 17 th part which is one in about 30 of the whole of that House every year And these things considered we may well conclude that of the Parliament that sate on the 3 d of November 1640 there are few living and I think that of that turbulent House of Commons scarce 16 are now living and that of the Assembly of Divines that met the first of Iuly 1643. all the Divines except 2 are dead The Sculls of many of those hot Spurrs of Church and State that troubled us so much on the Stage of the World have perhaps since diverted us in the Scene in Hamlet and no doubt but of the poor handful of surviving Experts of them the most considerate are not now considering how by any Projects to put the World either in Tune or out of it but are tuning their fancies to the still Musick of the Grave We see that many of the Sons of the Divines of that Assembly and of other Presbyterians are true Sons of the Church of England and are of the Clergy in it But tho I am no Concurrer with their Estimates that make the number of those who gain'd by the War to be small for as the Judicious Author of the Regal Apology Printed in the Year 1648 and by the
Loyalty that any Christian who hath taken these Oaths shall think sufficient doth most certainly take the name of Loyalty and Protestancy and of Christianity and even of God in vain and as the Scripture implies that there is a Repentance to be repented of I shall say that such a mans Protestancy is to be protested against And when we consider that the Presbyterian Author of the EXERCITATION beforementioned hath in p. 41. with so much Loyalty and Reason told us in terms That Obedience is owing to Princes without condition of Religion or Iustice on their part performed and the Scripture is clear for an irrespective and in regard of the Rulers Demeanor absolute subjection Exod. 20. 12. 21. 25. Rom. 13. 1 2 c. Tit. 3. 1. 1 Pet. 2. 13. 1 Sam. 24. 6 7. 26. 9 10 11. Jer. 27. 12. 29. 7. Matth. 22. 21. and hath told us in p. 56. That our Oaths put no condition on the Prince but are all absolute and irrespective and run without ifs or ands in like manner as the Obligation of Subjects Allegiance to their Sovereign is irrespective according to Divine Institution methinks it should make any Son of the Church of England to start at the thought of his being out-done in Loyalty and sworn Allegiance by a Covenanting Presbyterian for such that Author was and at the thought of any ones having taken those Oaths relating to the King his Heirs and Successors and afterward interlining the interpretation of them with ifs and ands and at the thought of such an interlineation not appearing as ill in the Court of Conscience as any would do in a Court of Law. But the truth is the Church of England appearing in this late Religionary Fermentation to have so incorporated this Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty into its Constitution beyond any other Church in the World and likewise the Doctrine of Charity and Moderation toward all Christians whether Foreigners or Domesticks whether whole Churches or single Persons as Primate Bramhal's words are that the same doth now as I may say strike the Eyes of all indifferent men and enforce it self on the thoughts of any who do but for Curiosity walk about this Sion and go round about her and tell the Towers thereof I mean do consider its Prayers Homilies Articles Canons and Ecclesiastical Constitutions it hath hereby been necessarily made like the Eagle to renew its youth and to be invigorated as with a new Soul after its Enemies thought it dead or asleep and after Mr. Hooker's shrewd guessing that after the Year 1677. That what followed would be likely to be small joy to them who should behold it For the Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty being Essential to the Peace of Kingdoms and likely to be so more and more to the Worlds end and the Church of England appearing as by consent of Parties to be THE Church that overtowers all others in the Principles for THAT Sort of Loyalty as well as in the august Principles of Charity for all Christians according to the saying of Magnes amoris amor it must naturally attract the love of thoâ—e in other Churches and supposing that any Church or People love themselves and cannot be preserved but by Loyalty Nature will direct the World to a growing love for the Church of England and therefore I am no Visionaire in predicting from natural Causes That what shall follow to the Church of England will be great joy to those who shall behold it to the very end of time And nothing could possibly in my opinion have brought it to this firm State of its Glory but the disloyal Principles and Practices of some of its Competitors and particularly the just and dreadful apprehensions given to considerate men upon some Nominal Protestants and Nominal Property-men having founded Dominion in Grace and yet having reproached the Church of England and its Divines with Popery and invited the Protestant Mobile to make a Schism from it on such an account and printed many Seditious Pamphlets for the Establishing the IF or AND-Loyalty or indeed which is all one an absolute Disloyalty and in such a Conjuncture when it would have been not more pernicious to the particular Souls of the Disloyal than to the Body of the whole Nation and to the State of Christendom Thus through the Divine Omnipotence which can bring good out of evil hath our late Fermentation been made perfective to our Church as well as the Hereditary Monarchy and the Rule of God's governing the World by the Prayers of his Church and Lusts of his Enemies been here exemplified and as the Air that is the Steem of the dull Earth or the Textura halituum terrae as Gassendus calls it is made by nature to be the Vehicle of those Beams of the Sun that dazle our Eyes thus have the Fumes exhaled by such mens Lusts of Disloyalty and Malice that darken'd their own understandings and would have obscured the glory of the Church of England been made instrumental in dispersing its brightness through the World and even in the opening of the Eyes of many to behold it with amazement and that service hath been done our Church thereby which by all the Pens of its Iewel and Hooker and Sanderson could never be effected England that had so much the Carriage and the Trade of the World till the Munster Peace of 48 could bear the Civil War after 41 and breathe under it and flourish after it but as the State of the World abroad and at home now is and likely to be our ALL must depend upon the Principles and Practice of Loyalty and therefore this new Soul I spake of as now animating the Church of England must be immortal and it may well say to it self under any Prince that can come Soul take thy ease thou hast Loyalty and the Principles of it laid up for many years and England did not before 48 more excel other Realms in Trade than its Church doth now other Churches in absolute and irrespective Loyalty That great Iudge of Churches and their Principles Arch-Bishop Laud having in p. 36. of his famous Star-Chamber Speech remarked the dangerous Consequence of avowing That the Popish Religâ—ion is Rebellion saith That some Principles of theirs teach Rebellion is apparently true c. and I shall add that some Principles of our late Covenanting Dissenteâ—s have taught it is apparently true and for such of the latter who believed and practised these Principles to reproach any Papists with Disâ—oyalty is as apparently ridiculous as was Mr. Prynn's writing two Voluminous Tractates of The Disloyalty of Papists at the time when he was making so great a Figure in the late Rebellion But however suitably to the Moral Offices urged by Ames of not condemning whole Parties of men on the account of the guilt of some Persons I have under this Conclusion cited the loyal Principles of some Recusants of all sorts pertinent to my Scope and because the irrespective Loyalty
the honour of their Religion thereby attacqued yet I gave no Rule about the Merits of the matter in my private thoughts till I saw in the Prints the Copy of the Order of Council of November 2d 1679. reflecting on the Treasonable Papers thrown into a Gentleman's Chamber by which divers Noblemen and other Protestants were to be brought under a suspicion of carrying on a Plot against his Majesty and which Order was after a Person was sent to Newgate by the Council for forging of Letters importing High-Treason and fixing the same in a Gentlemans Chamber and oâ— which Forgery I yet thought none but some few of the faex Romuli who believed and practised the Jesuites Doctrine of Calumny could possibly be guilty But I presently accordâ—d in my thoughts with the many Loyal Protestants and Papists who judged another Effort that pretended to be of the same Nature with the former and referred to a Plot of Protestants to be a poor vile Artifice or Shamm projected by some Calumnious Anti-Papists a shamm too despicable to be here named and obvious enough to detection from the Trite saying That they who can hide can find But the many pitiful Shamms whose humming noise did a while please our Mobile and were below the notice of the Government have had their triduum insecti and are not to expect to live in Story or to be there Entombed like the Fly in Amber The powerful Effects of the Royal Declaration freeing our Land from the Plague of Fears and Jealousies and the Annoyance of the Swarms of these Flies as Moses his intercession prevailed to deliver a Realm from the Judgments of other ones will be a more adequate Subject to a great Writers thoughts and especially when he shall consider that in the Course of Nature and without Miracle those great Effects could not but rise from so great an Efficient and as to which any one will perhaps be of opinion with me who shall consider that the most terrible of terribles in so many mens apprehension of Popery is its arbitrariness and that therefore the publication of the Royal Resolution to govern according to the Laws would effectually secure us against all Arbitrary Power whatsoever Mr. Hobbs saith in his Behemoth I confess I know very few Controversies among Christians of Points necessary to Salvation They are the Questions of Authority and Power over the Church or of Profit or of Honour to Church-men that for the most part raise all the Controversy For what man is he that will trouble himself or fall out with his Neighbours for the saving of my Soul or the saving of the Soul of any other than himself And no doubt it is not barely any mens believing the Doctrines of Purgatory or Trasubstantiation or Merit or Works of Super-Errogation that hath made the past ferment among us but the Arbitrariness of the Papal Power and the Complication of the Tenet of the Plenitude of that Power with those Religionary Tenets and the making of it Penal not to receive those or other Tenets from Rome and the making men Tenants in capite to a Foreign Head for their Brains and Estates and an outlandish Bishop who lives a Thousand Miles off with new Non obstantes outraging their old Laws and whom they can never see blush after it But his Majesty having declared That he would use his Royal Endeavours both in and out of Parliaments to Extirpate Popery of which its Arbitrariness was its great dreaded part and in all things to Govern according to the Laws of the Realm the People knew that the Laws had sufficiently provided against Appeals to Rome as well as against Appeals from the Country to the City and that Declaration naturally fortified the minds of the People as a Praemunimentum guarding them before hand as I may say with allusion to our Statutes of Praemunire against the Arbitrary Power either of Rome or Geneva and did in effect set up an Ensurance Office in each of his Majestie 's Courts of Iustice to secure them against Arbitrary Power as such in whomsoever and that they might in in utramvis aurem dormire as to any danger from the same and 't is therefore no wonder that the Reflux of People from the Metropolis to the Country ensued thereupon as I have remarked out of the Bills of Mortality and from which Bills perhaps we may divert our selves with the sight of the Burial of that Plot which some feared and others hoped would have been immortal who would have had it Entailed too on their Heirs and Successors tho they would not allow the Crown to be so to the Royal Line The Political uses that the Bills of Mortality may be put to being more various than the profound Observator on them took the pains to mention as I have thence by a glancing view of the gradual Encrease of the People coming out of the Country for several years to dwell within the Compass of those Bills and likewise of the gradual decrease thence deduced given an account of what I thought might in some measure deserve the name of an Indication of the diminution of the popular fears resulting from the Burials after the great auspicious year of the Royal Declaration so I could in order to the lessening of the fears of the encrease of Dissentership within the Circuit of those Bills from the Total of the Christenings in the respective years since that of 81 give what I might without Vanity call more than Indicium and which perhaps would be by Critical Persons allowed for somewhat like a Demonstration of the Encrease of the Numbers there as I may say born into the Church of England and to what proportion and that very particularly and make it out thence that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the Year 81 there were Christened 1084 in the year 82 and that the disposition of People for baptizing their Children in the way of the Church of England did encrease near a 13th part in the year 82 and that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the year 82 there were in the year 83 Christen'd 2146 which is near a 6th part that the Baptizing of Children in the way of the Church of England hath gained and Dissentership hath lost ground in that year Nor do I find cause to alter my opinion of such baptizing in the way of the Church of England having lost but rather on the contrary gained ground in this year 84 tho to what proportion I cannot positively judge by reason of what I before hinted namely of the extraordinary proportion of the Burials this year arising from the Accidents of the great Frost and which Physicians by comparing the encrease of the particular Diseases by which so many died this year more than in the former happening from those Accidents have judged to be considerably above 3000 and likewise by reason of the Births having this year been reverâ considerably
fewer according to the Rule of the Observator on those Bills That the more sickly the year is it is the less fertile of Births All who have been in the least conversant with those Observations of his know that the Births in ordinary years are equal to the Burials or rather more and I have observed the same from the Paris Bills where the Christenings do generally much exceed the Burials and as particularly appeared by the Total of the Burials in the year 1683 being 17764 and the Total of the Christenings being 19717 but by the Christenings among us registred and reckoned in our Bills we know thence when the disposition of the People to baptize their Children in the way of the Church began to encrease and Dissentership consequently to decrease and accordingly the ground gained by the Church of England and lost by Dissentership within the Compass of those Bills after the year 81 hath been by me sufficiently proved Quod erat demonstrandum I have in this Discourse given somewhat like a little Historical Account of the Numbers of the Papists since the Reformation to our late Conjuâ—ctures and have with honour mentioned the Vigilance of his Majesty's late Minister the Earl of Danby in directing a Survey of the Numbers of the People of several Religionary Perswasions in the Province of Canterbury and which was returned in the year 76 and whereby the Comparative Paucity of the number of Papists there is apparent as it is by themselves agreed on so to be as I have cited out of the Compendium But tho the Copy of that Survey is in the hands of so many Persons I would not have mentioned any thing thereof as to the Number of the Papists but that Dr. Glanvill had first published the same and whose Book I have referred to for the same Nor shall I therefore give any particular account of the numbers of the Non-Conformists resulting from the same But tho I think that the Number of the Non-Conformists was not returned perhaps in that Survey so justly and near the matter as was that of the Papists yet I am fully of opinion that if the number of Non-Conformists were thrice as great as that returned which I believe no man will reckon it to be their proportion with that of the Total of this great Populous Nation would be very inconsiderable But as to all the Writers or Discoursers of their proportion to that Total that I have conversed with and who have rendered the Quota of the Dissenters so vast with much positiveness I am able to say That I have easily perswaded them to desist from any positive magisterial determination therein by shewing them that their measures of the Total of the People of England have been but conjectural and depending perhaps on some Calculations too fine and subtle or others too course and gross and that no man can be a competent Judge of this Total who hath not seen the Returns on the Bishops Survey and likewise the Returns on the late Pole-Bills and of which latter under the Patronage of a powerful Minister of the Kings I obtained Copies and have thence in the following Discourse shewed the Total of the People of England and Wales to be probably much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it and some whereof made the Total to be 5 others 6 others 7 Millions I thought the doing of this an acceptable service to my Prince and Country and the rather for that several Authors among the Magna nomina have published it in Print that the People of England and Wales are but 2 Millions and which number if they did not exceed we might allow our Dissenters a considerable proportion therein tho yet nothing near so great even as to such a Total as some would have it But the Ebb of their Numbers is at this time so apparent if we respect the State of them in the whole Kingdom that their Out-cry of Implevimus omnia and The Nation and its Trade cannot subsist without us is very ridiculous and they are not in my opinion their friends who writing for them do so customarily magnify their Numbers and as if they were half the People of England as some have done and I believe the Gentleman whom I have cited for saying in a late Parliament that he observed That in the Choice of Knights of the Shire for the County he lived in that they could not bring one in twenty to the Field would if he had been at Elections in some other Counties have found they could not there bring in so great a number And tho the Puritans of old were very numerous in the House of Commons and our Dissenters in the King 's long Parliament made so great a Figure as to be able by their weight to crush the Declaration for Indulgence yet in the succeeding Houses of Commons the Dissenters were far from valuing themselves an their weight or numbers but of the Dissenters in that Loyal Long Parliament I believe there were not any who wished for the Yoke of Presbytery or thought its Platform practicable in this Realm I have in this Discourse mentioned one thing that made the most Eminent Presbyterian Divines after 41 think their bringing of the Yoke of Presbytery upon the English Necks practicable and that is their accounting according to the Pacta conventa between Them and the Parliament they should have the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands settled on their Church whereby their Discipline how defective soever in weight as to Principles of Divinity and Humanity would have made it self â—ormidable by its Balance of Land and 't is probable that in Scotland the Livings of the inferiour Clergy weighing more in value than the Estates or Livelihoods of the ordinary inferiour Layety hath supported that Clergy there in their pretences to expect somewhat of Power and which they yet enjoy in the Figure of the Church Government there Established under Bishops and altho King Iames in his planting so many Benefices throughout that Kingdom worth 30 l. per Annum with a House and some Glebe Land belonging to them never intended any advantage to Presbytery thereby he yet occasioned some by making so many Divines there more considerable in wealth but our Presbyterian Divines here having been so fatally disappointed about the Bishops Lands promised them all ingenious men must necessarily thereby be made apprehensive that they are never to hope to bring the terror of that Church Government upon us by that means It is moreover observable that most of the Race of our old Presbyterian and Independant Divines having been extinct some few of whom were Learned Men and gave some Ornament to their Tenets by their Learning scarce any new ones and who appeared not in the Church before the King's Restoration have since by the publication of any Theological or DevotionalWritings propp'd up the Credit of their Party and that of the Ecclesiasticks of those perswasions none have published any thing valuable against
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any Intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the municipal Laws of their Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
damnati antequam nati and that is this namely That the only substantial thing that could give weight to this Censure of these two Parties being their Principles and that the great allowance of this Bishops Opinion as Oracular by so many being likely to throw so much lasting Odium on the Principles of Popish and Protestant Recusants as Hostile to Church and State whereby any disloyal Practices charged on them by their Adversaries tho perhaps very unjustly will naturally be the sooner and more easily believed as I before hinted it may hence appear necessary for men to go or run and even fly from Principles of Disloyalty as soon and as fast and as far as they can But as I have here observed it to be the Interest of our Heterodox Religionaries to disclaim all Principles that I called Convulsive of Civil Society and the Concern of every Country to have those Principles notified and as fairly and particularly delineated and described as are the Beds of Sands and shoaly places and rocky Bars of its Harbours and Sea-Coasts by Hydrographers so I shall likewise observe that the sharp Execution of any of the Penal Laws hath not to the Factious among the Protestant Recusants appear'd so afflictive as the publication of the Principles and printed Sayings of their Pastors since 41 and the which seemed to be like the Doom of the Priests in Malachy namely to have the Dung of their Solemn Feasts spread in their Faces nor could they call such usage of their Tenets any Tryal of cruel mocking nor the Publishers any of The Mockers that should be in the last times since their very Sayings and Tenets have been plainly and briefly published in their Authors own words and without Addittaments As to the Papal Tenet in the Canon Law dilated on in the following Discourse I have there in p. 181. sufficiently shewed my Aversion to contribute any grief or trouble to Loyal Papists by the notifying the same in the hot time of the late Fermentation and while some factious Anti-Papists were so busy in senseless Narratives to load a great Body of them with the guilt of its Practice and when I had any inclination to shew my self unchristianly or ungenerously disposed as to the Persons or Religion of Roman Catholicks I might with the expence of an hour or two's time have easily gratified such a corrupt Humour by descanting on this Tenet among the Pamphleteers and Sheet-Authors whose feet were accounted beautiful by the Mobile for any dirt their hands threw at the Papists before the Epoche of the Declaration after the Oxford Parliament And after the restoring of the English Genius or as I may say of the English understanding to it self that thereby happened I account that the Notification of any Tenet chargeable on the Papacy or Presbytery referring to the Measures of Loyalty or preservation of the Rights of Civil Society could bring no damage in the least to any Recusants Person whatever it might to his Erroneous Principle And I having accounted it a kind of nauseous superfluity to confute at large any one of the old Religionary Controversies between our Church and that of Rome was willing thus to reserve the discussion of this Irreligionary Tenet how proper soever to be known till some healing Conjuncture of time and when I might hope by discussing the same and thereby effectually satisfying any Considerate Excluders that I was no Papist to bespeak their Approach with more Candour to my great Casuistical point discussed I have sufficiently shewn in this Preface how much it imports our Security and Loyalty to have the Fantome of the Iudicial Law exorcised out of mens understandings and am ashamed to think that Christians do yet no more know the certain time of the Burial of that Body of Moses's Laws than the Iews do the place where his deceased natural Body was laid I know that some of the old Schoolmen have told us that that Law was given only to the Iews but when so many Popish Vniversities and Casuists told our Harry the 8th That his Marriage was against the Law of God the World wanted teaching in this point and the Tutelar Angels even of Protestant Countries are still in effect put to it to contend with the Devil about the Body of Moses his Law and if any one hath a desire to see the dreadful impressions that that Law hath so lately made abroad in the World and here in England and that have much deâ—aced our Loyalty and Religion I shall refer him to Dr. Hicks his printed Sermon called Peculium Dei where he hath given us very Learned Remarks That many unsound Iudaising Christians have still dreamed that the Mosaic Code was yet in force and that Carolostadius and Castellio about the time of the Reformation asserted the Doctrine of the validity and indispensable Obligation of the leges forenses of the Jews and that many tho they did not assert the validity of the whole Mosaic Code have yet asserted the indispensable obligation of some particular Laws in it to the great scandal of the Protestant name and particularly that against Idolatrous Persons and Places the Mosaic Laws are still in force and that for want of distinguishing in the Decalogue and the Laws which follow after it many men have run into many gross unfortunate Errors and he hath there referred to the Ancient and Modern Sabbatarians the Writers against Vsury the Modern Iconoclasts the strict Divine Right of Tithes and Tithes of Tithes or Tenths to the Pope as the Christians high Priest and to the Asserâ—ors of the unlawfulness of the Supreme Magistrates pardoning Murder which God made unpardonable among the Jews and to Baronius and Bellarmine arguing thence for the Popes Supremacy and to Pope Adrian the 6th moving the Princes of Germany to cut of Luther and his followers because God cast Corah and his Company down to Hell and commanded that those who would not obey the Priest should be put to death and to the Promoters and Abettors of the Solemn League and Covenant which some have equalled to the Covenant of Grace and were wont to express themselves about it in the Text and Phrases of the old Testament which concerned the making breaking or renewing of that Political Covenant which God made with the People and afterwards with his Vice-Roys the Kings of the Jews and to the specious popular Arguments used by the former and later Rebels in Great Brttain for Deposing and Murthering Kings and to the Speech delivered at a Conference concerning the Power of Parliament which is nothing but Doleman alià s Parson ' s Title to the Crown transprosed And under this head we might refer to the Covenant mention'd among the Independent Churches Mr. Burroughs one of the best of our late Independents quoting Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother c. Chap. 5. of his Irenicum saith Let not any put of this Scripture saying this is in the Old Testament for we find the
Author's opinion that they can never recover the wounds given them by the publication of the les Provinciales c. ib. and that much less those given them by the Popes said Decree p. 50 51. Observations on that Notion of Moasieur Descartes and Mr. Hobbs That the faculties of the mind are equally dispensed and on the natural effects of that Notion p. 58. The Author remarks some Shamms and Calumnies used by some Protestants and their contending with Papists therein p. 59. An Antidote mentioned for Papists and Protestants to carry about with them in this Pestilential time of Shamms ib. A vile Shamm or Calumny used against Papists as if they intended to burn the Town of Stafford and other great Towns is referred to in one of Janeway's printed Intelligences p. 60. Animadversions on Parsons his Book of the Succession p. 60 61. 'T is for the honour of the Roman Catholick Religion observed that Harry the 4th of France after he turned Papist continued kind and just to his Protestant Subjects notwithstanding the Popes endeavours to the contrary p. 62. The Authors grand Assertion viz. That whatever alterations time can cause yet humanly speaking while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Foreign Conquest the Protestant Religion can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom p. 64. Mr. Hooker's Propliecy of the hazard of Religion and the service of God in England being an ill State after the Year 1677 p. 65. The defections of the ten Tribes from the time of David punished by a Succession of 10 ill Kings p. 66. The words in Hosea I gave thee a King in mine anger falsly made by Antimonarchical Scriblers to refer to Saul ib. Dr. Stillingfleet's Sermon cited about the uncertainty of what the fermentations among us may end in ib. Dr. Sprat's opinion cited That whatever vicissitude shall happen about Religion in our time will neither be to the advantage of Implicit Faith or Enthusiasm p. 67. Historical Oâ—servations relating to the Papacy from p. 67 to p. 77. The Papal Power formerly pernicious to the external Polity and Grandeur of England p. 77 78. Queen Elizabeth said by Townsend to have spent a Million of Money in her Wars with Spain and laid out 100000 l. to support the King of France and 150000 l. in defence of the Low Country and to have discharged a Debt of 4 Millions She found the Crown indebted in ib. How by her Alliances She laid the Foundation of the vast ensuing Trade of England whose over-balance brought in afterward so much Silver to be Coyn'd in the Tower of London p. 78. The Sums Coyn'd there from the 41 st year of her Reign to May 1657 ib. England alone till the Peace of Munster in the year 1648 enjoyed almost the whole Manufacture and best part of the Trade of Europe by virtue of her Alliances ib. The same Month of January in the year 48 produced the signing of that Peace and the Martyrdom of the best of Kings and the fatal diminution of our Trade ib. Queen Elizabeth had what praemium of Taxes from Parliaments She pleased ib. King James told the Parliament Anno 1620 that She had one year with another 100,000 l. in Subsidies and that he had in all his time but 4 Subsidies and 6 Fifteenths and that his Parliament had not given him any thing for 8 or 9 years ib. In Harry the 3 d's time the Pope's Revenue in England was greater than the Kings and in 3 years time the Pope extorted more Money from England than was left remaining in it ib. In Edward the 3 d's time the Taxes paâ—d to the Pope for Ecclesiastical Dignities amounted to five times as much as the People payed to the King p. 79. By a Balance of Trade then in the Exchecquer it appeared that the Sum of the over-plus of the Exports above the Imports amounted to 255214 l. 13 s. 8d ib. Wolsey's Revenue generally held equal to Harry the 8 th's ib. Why the Pope never sent Emissaries to Denmark and Sweden and some other Northern Countries for Money and why probably in no course of time that can happen he will send any to England on that Errand ib. and p. 80. In the 4 th year of Richard the 2 d the Clergy confessed they had a 3 d part of the Revenue of the Kingdom and therefore then consented to pay a 3 d of the Taxes ib. Bishop Sanderson mentions the Monastick Revenue to be half the Revenue of the Kingdom ib. The not providing for the augmentations of the poorer livings in England observed to be a Scandal to the Reformation p. 81. Of 8000 and odd Parish Churches in Queen Elizabeth's time but 600 were observed to afford a competent maintenance to a Minister and four thousand five hundred Livings then not worth above 10 l. a year in the Kings Books ib. During the late Vsurpation the Impropriate Tithes saved the other ib. A Million of Pounds Sterling commonly observed to accrue to the Popes per Annum from Indulgencies p. 87. An account of the Compact between some of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and the long Parliament by which the Parliament was obliged to settle on the Ministry all the Church Lands and those Divines engaged to promote the Parliaments Cause and of the result thereof p. 88. Observations on the Calculations of the Monastick Revenue made in the year 1527 by Mr. Simon Fish in his Book called The supplication of Beggars and which Calculations were much valued by Harry the 8 th p. 90 91. Not only none of our Monkish Historians but even of our polished and ingenious ones made any Estimates of the Numbers of the People in the times they writ of ib. A Calculation of the Number of Religious Persons or Regulars in England at the time of the Dissolution of Monasteries p. 92. A Calculation of the Numbers of Seculars as well as Regulars that then lived in Celebacy ib. The Author's Calculation of the Number of the Levites and of their Quota of the Profits of the Land p. 93. A Calculation of the Ebb of the Coynage of England from May 1657 to November 1675 p. 102. A particular Account of Cromwel the Vsurpers depressing the Trade of the European World p. 103. The Kings of Spain impose Pensions on Ecclesâ—astical Preferments to the 4th part of the value p. 104. The proportion of Papists and Non-Papists by the Bishops Survey in the Year 1676 is 150 Non-Papists for one Papist ib. The People in the Province of Holland reckoned to be 2 Millions 4 hundred thousand ib. The People in Flanders in the Year 1622 reckoned to be 700,000 p. 105. Amsterdam in the Year 1650 reckoned to have in it 300000 Souls ib. An Account of what the Inhabitants of Holland in the Year 1664 did over and above the Customs and other Demesnes of the Earls and States of Holland pay toward the publick Charge namely to the States of Holland to the Admiralty of the Maze to the Admiralty of
formerly ib. The Author shews that none need be afraid of any Roman Catholick Prince who was formerly a Protestant from p. 174 to 177. Non-Conformist Divines not scrupling the lawfulness of what the Conformists do but were ashamed to confess their error p. 175. 'T is a shame for such Divines to censure the belief of Religionary Notions in a high born Prince p. 176. By the falsity of such Divines Principles as many hundreds of thousands were here stain as were bare hundreds put to death in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary ib. A Confutation of one Argument brought for London's being desigâ—edly fired by many Popish Persons p. 181. The Author's Iudgment that the fermentation that hath been in the Kingdom will not prove destructive but perfective to it p. 183. The Author's Iudgment that all Policy Civil or Ecclesiastical will be accounted but Pedantry that Postpones the Consideration of the building Capital Ships and their Maintenance and Equipage p. 184. That Religion-Traders are really of the Trade of Beggars p. 184. More concerning the breaking of the Trade of Beggars and of Court-Beggars ib. The reason why our English Mininisters of State have not writ their Memoires as those of France have done p. 185. The Author of the present State of England observed to say in Part 2d that the yearly Charge of his Majesty's Navy in times of Peace is so well regulated that it scarce amounts to 70,000 l. per Annum p. 185. What the Lord Keeper Bridgman in his Speech to the Parliament in the year 1670 saith that from the year 1660 to the late Dutch War the ordinary Charge of the Fleet communibus annis came to 500,000 l. per Annum and that it cannot be supported with less ib. The Author believes that the ordinary Naval Charge hath in no years since amounted to less than 200,000 l. per Annum besides the vast Charge in building new Ships and rebuilding old and the Charge of Summer and Winter Guards and of Convoys and Ships against Argier p. 186. Since the year 1669 the King hath enriched the Kingdom with a more valuable Fleet than it had before ib. The manifold payments to the Vsurpers amounted to one entire Subsidy in each Week of the Year and what the Kingdom paid before exceeded not usually one Subsidy or 15 th in two or three years space ib. The nature of our old gentle way of Assessments called Subsidies ib. Instead of the demanding of 5 Members from the Parliament above 400 were forcibly secluded from it ib. Taxes afterward levied in the name of a House of Commons when there were no Knights of the Shire for 26 English and 11 Welch Counties and but one Knight of the Shire in other 9 Counties and only the full number of Knights of the Shire for 4 Counties and when York Westminister Bristol Canterbury Chester Exeter Oxford Lincoln Worcester Chichester Carlisle Rochester Wells Coventry had no Citizens and London 1 instead of 4 and Glocester and Salisbury alone had there full number and when by a parcel of about 89 permitted to fit the whole Clergy as well as Layety of England was taxed ib. and p. 187. The Vsurper by his own Authority only laid a Tax of 600,000 l. per Month on the Nation p. 187. He afterward had a giving Parliament that Calculating the Charge of the Nation found 400,000 l. per Annum necessary for the Navy and Ports and settled on him in all 1,300,000 l. per Annum ib. Their helping him into the Power to break the Balance of Christendom as he did hath entailed on the Nation for ever a necessity of labouring hard to support the publick Government ib. A Descant on the saying of Dulce bellum inexpertis from p. 187 to p. 189. A Calculation of the number of the People now living who are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War and a Calculation of what numbers of those who lived in 1641 are now dead and what proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War and of the number of such inexperts in Ireland and Scotland p. 188 189 190. The Vsurpers seized into their hands about a Moiety of the Revenue of the Kingdom p. 190. 'T is observed that presently after the discovery of the Gun-Powder Treason the Parliament gave King James 3 Subsidies 7 Fifthteenths and 10 ths of the Layety and 4 Subsidies of the Clergy and what they amounted to The Author shews how just and natural it was for the Parliament believing that Plot so to do p. 191 194. An intimation of the reason of so much hatred in France against the Earl of Danby p. 192. The Authors belief that the future Warlike State of Christendom will necessarily prompt all Patriots instead of studying to make men unwilling to promote publick supplies to bend their Brains in the way of Calculation to shew what the Kingdom is able to contribute to its defence and how to do it with equality ib. The judgment of Sir W. P. that if a Million were to be raised in England what quota of the same should be raised on Land Cattle personal Estate housing ib. The Iudgment of the same Author cited for the second Conclusion in his Political Arithmetick viz. that some kind of Taxes and publick Levies may rather encrease than diminish the Common-wealth p. 193. An account of the exact Roman Prudence in the equality of Taxes under the Ministry of the Censors appearing from the Civil Law ib. The great care and exactness of the leading men in Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments to Calculate the Levies and to render the same equal ib. The disproportionate Taxes laid by the Vsurpers on the Associated Counties and others have caused the weight thereby to aggrieve many of those places ever since ib. Lilly the Astrologer complaining that whereas he was Taxed to pay about 20 s. to the Ship money he was in the year 1651 rated to pay about 20 l. annually to the Souldiery ib. The Author's belief and reason about Republican Models necessarily growing more and more out of fashion p. 194 195. Observations on the great Clause of proponentibus legatis in the Council of Trent p. 195. The preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and the Priest and with respect to number weight and measure under the times of the Gospel agreed on by Divines to be referred to by Ezekiel in Vision from the 40th Chapter to the end of his Prophecy p. 196. How Augustus his great Tax or Pole helped to confirm the Christian Religion p. 197. The Author's opinion that future legal and equal Taxes will have the effect of strengthening the Protestant Religion ib. Observed that the Parliament may be justly said to be indebted to the Crown for that great
Royal Line from the Crown ib. and p. 222. The Protestants in France now about 2 Millions p. 222. Their Loyal Demeanor to Harry the the 4 th after he became a Papist ib. His condition after he became one ib. An account of the Apology for John Chastel the Scholar of the Jesuites assassinating himâ— and of the Positions in that Apology ib. The Aâ—ology affirms That Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right and that Henry of Bourbon cannot be called a King by reason of his Conversion p. 223. An account of the Gun-powder Treason out of Thuanus and the Tenets that the Traitors had imbibed from their Confessors and particularly That Heretical Princes by being reconciled to the Church of Rome recover not a Title to their Crown and that by such reconciliation they only save their Souls and that Heresie barrs the Hereticks Line from the Succession c. p. 224. Observations on the Millenary Petition in the beginning of King James's Reign ib. Observations on the Papists Petition to him about the same time p. 225. Dr. Burnet's History of the Reformation commended p. 226. The reason why the Author would have more severity shewn to a Seditious Protestant than a Seditious Papist p. 231. Mr. Fox referred to about his Question Whether the Turk or Pope be the greater Anti-Christ p. 232. An account of the Popes being Pensioners to the Turk p. 234. The Author observes in the famous Hosius of the Church of Rome a viler Blasphemy than any he remembers in the Alcoran p. 235. Observations on the Loyalty of many Papists in France to Harry the 4 th when he came to inherit the Crown and remained a Protestant and under the Papal Excommunication p. 236. Harry the 4 th an expected Protestant Successor was Primier Ministre to Harry the 3 d a Papist ib. An Argumentative Speech of an Arch-Bishop of France to prove That Harry the 4th ought not for his Religion to be debarred from the Crown ib. Maimbourg reflects on Calvin for his instigating the Magistrates of Geneva to burn Servetus ib. and p. 237. Dr. Peter du Moulin cited for saying That in the time of the late Usurpation the Jesuites were the principal directors of the Consciences of the English Papists ib. A Book published Anno 1662 observes That of the Papists in England 7 parts of 10 were Gentlemen and People of great Quality ib. The Author believes that the more ingenious and modest sort of Jesuites will by Natural Instinct be more and more ashamed of the turpitude of the former Principles of the Iesuites and particularly of the 13 th 14th 15th 30th 32d contained in the Popes Decree before mentioned p. 238. The Author judgeth that all bloody and rebellious Principles owned by any who call themselves Protestants must naturally by shame and fear decay ib. Mr. Cranford a Presbyterian Divine cited for saying in a Printed Sermon at St. Pauls in the Year 1645 That in 80 years there did not arise among us so many Blasphemous Heresies under Episcopacy as have risen in these few years since we have been without a Government and that above 160 Errors have been here since broached and many of them damnable ib. and p. 241. A Speech in a late Parliament referred to for observing that according to the best Calculation the Dissenters could not in the last Elections for Knights of the Shire bring in above 1 in 20 into the Field ib. The present Gentlemanly temper appearing in the People of England observed as to the not having râ—sentments against any men or their Converse by reason of their asserting Controverted Points capable of the name of Religion p. 241. The great Controversy about Easter now slighted ib. The Terms of Omo-ousios and Omoi-ousios will make no more fermentation in the World p. 242. The word Heresy now generally here reduced to its quiet Primitive Signification of an opinion without reference to truth or falshood ib. Our Courts Christian do no more prosecute men for being Hereticks than for being Usurers ib. There is now a more valuable libera theologia in England then was under the Usurpation p. 243. The Obligation our Land hath received from the Royal Society mentioned ib. The knowledge of Anatomy enriched within this last Century a 3d part ib. There were in the Year 1599 reckoned in Christendom 2,25044 Monasteries ib. By Herods Infanticidium a Million and 44 Thousand slain in the account of Volzius p. 214. In 45 years the Spaniards in America put to death 20 Millions of Indians ib By the growing Populousness of Mankind we must naturally hear more and more of Wars and rumours of Wars p 245. In the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr England not afraid to contend with both France and Spain ib. 2,50000 l. per Annum Calculated to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years gained to England by the Balance of its whole Trade p. 246. The Author en passant Calculates that England hath for late years gained double that Summ by the fashion of Crape ib. Ten times as much spent on the Law or Physick here as on the Clergy p. 247. By the Calculations of Cardinal Pool there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England then in France which he said exceeded England by two 3ds in the numbers of People as in Lands p. 248. The Author observes that in the Code Loüis published in the Year 1667 the Method injoyned for the registring the Christenings and Burials in each Parish in France is better contrived than that used in London ib. 'T is supposed that the publishing the Observations on the Bills of Mortality about three years before in London might occasion the aforesaid exact registring of the Christenings and Burials in France and moreover the registry of the Marriages by the Code Loüis enjoyned p. 249. The Registring of the Births and Burials is as old as the ancient times of the Romans and introduced among them by Servius Tullius ib. The prudenâ—e of the Code Loüis remarked in the numbring of the Regulars and Seculars there enjoyned ib. Sometime before the year 1588 the number of men in Spain being taken by secret Survey there were returned a 11 hundred and 25 thousand and 300 and 90 men ib. A Computation out of Thuanus of the Expences and Receipts of Lewis the 13 th for the Year 1614 ib. The Expences and Receipts of that Crown were more than quadrupled in the year 1674 p. 250. A Calculation of about a 3d part of the Current Coyn of England yearly carried into France ib. A Descant on the saying so much in vogue viz. Res nolunt male adnimistrari and an account of its Original ib. The Author supposeth that a more important Linen Manufacture will here happen from the many French Protestants here lately planted than was the Woollen one here introduced by the Dutch whom Duke Alva's Persecution brought hither p. 251. Remarks about the general sowing of Hemp and Flax here and about the designed
settlement of the same proving Abortive in several Parliaments ib. The French King in the last War did forbid the Importation of Sail-Cloath to England ib. A presage of the future happy State of England and the Authors Idea thereof at large ib. and p. 252. An account of the Rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-cloth and all other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax yearly brought into England and from what Countries deduced out of the Custom-house Books p. 254. All the Hemp and Flax sown in England is observed to be bought up by the years end p. 257. Almost as much Hemp and Flax yearly brought into Amsterdam as into the whole Kingdom of England ib. The Authors judgment of the effects of the necessity that will drive us on to the Linen Manufacture ib. An Account of the fine Linen lately made by the French Protestants at Ipswich and of the Flax by them sown ib. The Author's Censure of the excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery ib. His belief that the future State of England will make men ashamed of their pass'd fears of Popery ib. The Vote of the House of Commons for the recalling the Declaration of Indulgence carried by the Party of the Nonconformists p. 258. Most of the Papists of England in the Year 1610 computed to be under the guidance of the Jesuites p. 260. Many Popish Writers have inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decrets of the Canon Law ib. That Law never in gross received in England ib. Binds not English Papists in the Court of Conscience ib. A Tenet ridiculously and falsly in the Canon Law founded on Cyprian ib. Gratian's founding it on Cyprian gives it only the weight it could have in Cyprian's Works p. 261. Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith cited for Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claiming nothing of Faith and Bellarmine's acknowledging errors therein ib. One definition in the Canon Law and gloss held by all Papists ridiculous ib. The Author thinks he has said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope's Canon Law as they would wish said ib. He thinks himself morally obliged in any Theological Enquiry to say all that the matter will fairly bear on both sides ib. Heylin and Maimbourg cited about the firing of Heretical Villages in France p. 262. Parsons and Bellarmine cited by Donne for rendring some things obligatory that are said by Gratian p. 263. The Author expects that the growing populousness of England will have the effect of rendriâ—g men less censorious of any supposed Political Errors in the Ministers of our Princes p. 265. Mr. Fox cited for his Observation of many Excellent men falsly accused and judged in Parliament and his advice to Parliaments to be more circumspect ib. The Author minded by that passage out of Fox to reflect on the severity in a late Parliament in their Votes against the King's Ministers ib. The injustice of the Vote against the Earl of Hallifax p. 266. The Earl of Radnor occasionally mentioned with honour ib. The Constancy of the Earl of Anglesy to the Protestant Religion further asserted p. 267. Mention of his Lordships being injuriously reflected on in a Speech of Sir W. J. ib. The unreasonableness of the Reflections on the Lord Chief Justice North for advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions ib. The great deserved Character of that Lord Chief Justice p. 268. throughout A reflection on the popularity of Sir W. J. and on the â—â—â—essive Applause he had from the House of Commons after his Speech for the Exclusion-Bill p. 269. Sir Leolin Jenkins mentioned with honour ib. The Cabal of Sir W. J. observed to be full of fears of the Exclusion-Bill passing and their not knowing what steps in Politicks to make next ib. The Earl of Peterborough at large mentioned with honour ib. and p. 270. A further Account of the Authors prediction of England's future happy State ib. and p. 271. The Author observes that the most remarkable late Seditious Writers have published it in Print That they feared the next Heir to the Crown only as Chief Favourite to his Prince and that they judged that the Laws would sufficiently secure them from fears of his power if he should come to the Crown p. 271. An Assertion of his never having advised his Prince to incommode any one illegally and of his not having used his own power to any such purpose ib. The Author judgeth such Persons to write but in jest who amuse the People about being Lachrymists by that Princes Succession ib. The Author reflects on our Counterfeit Lachrymists for not affecting as quick a prevention of any future growth of Popery as was 〈◊〉 care of in Scotland p. 272. He observes that few or none in Scotland fear that Popery can ever in any Course of time there gain much ground ib. The Papists in that Kingdom estimated to be but 1000 ib. The Author believes that the fears of Poperies growth will be daily abated in England and in time be extinguished ib. More Popish Ecclesiasticks observed to be in Holland then Ministers in France and that yet none in Holland pretend to fear the Papists ib. The Authors judgment of the Dissenters Sayings being usefully published ib. Some Notes on the Geneva Bible seditious ib. The same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Popes Canon Law founded on the 13 th of Deuteronomy is chargeable on our late Presbyterians ib. The Assemblies Annotations cited to that purpose ib. The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine p. 274. Bishop Sanderson cited for that purpose ib. Calvin as to this point did blunder as shamefully as our Assembly-men p. 274. Several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines imbibed the error of Hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians ib. The Presbyterians here fired the Church and State with a Civil War ib. The Authors belief that there will never be any new Presbyterian Synod in England nor General Council beyond Sea ib. The Popes Pensions in the Council of Trent that sate for 18 years came to 750 l. Sterling per Month â—b The Author predicts the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty in England ib. The reason of such his Prediction p. 275. The Lord Hyde first Commissioner of the Treasury mentioned with honour ib. What the new Heaven and the new Earth is that the Author expects in England ib. The reason that induced false Prophets to foretel evil rather than good to States and Kingdoms p. 276. at large The same applied to our Augurs who by enlarging our fears and jealousies and their own fortunes thereby rendred the Genius of England less august ib. The Authors measures of the future State of England are taken only from Natural Causes and Natures Constancy to it self p. 277. A short account of several great Religionary Doctrines having naturally pierced through the sides and roots of one another p. 279. The
Religion of the Church of England hath naturally pierced through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy ib. The numbers of the Non Conformists are daily decaying ib. There were in the Year 1593 judged to be in England 20000 Brownists ib. The Gross of the Numbers of Non-Conformists always consisting chiefly of Artisans and Retail-Traders in Corporations p. 281. They were very numerous there before the King's Restoration ib. A new way by which their Numbers and Potency may easily there be diminished ib. The Author judgeth the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants to be necessary p. 282. The Lord Keeper Puckerings Speech of the ill behaviour of the Puritans in 88 referred to ib. The prudence and justice of the King's Measures asserted as to the not repealing the Statutes against Protestant Recusants ib. The Peace of Munster observed to have removed the popular fears abroad in Case of the Successions of lawful Princes differing in Iudgment from the Religion Established p. 283. The Author of the Catholick Apology with a Reply cited for there not being one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England in the year after the Declaration of Indulgence then in any year of trouble p. 284. The Author mentioneth the soft and gentle disposition of Bellarmine p. 284. The Authors reflecting on the Principles of the Iesuites with sharpness as the Pope and his Court of Inquisition have done ib. The Author disowneth all acerbity and rancour relating to the usage of any Papists ib. He observes that the putting Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion ib. The Author observes that an English Priest of the Church of Rome hath done him the honour to adopt as his own many passages of the Authors long since printed that were disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion p. 284. Observed that if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private judgment in matters of Religion 't is hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Church of Rome of the guilt of Schism ib. The Author not inclined to be severe to any Papist for being in any Tenets that may properly be called Religion guided by his private judgment to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome ib. The Custom of Authors of large Discourses publishing together with them a REVIEW ib. He promiseth to the Earl of Anglesy a REVIEW of this Discoursâ— p. 285. The Author will in a short REVIEW explain some passages on occasion and add others ib. If he doubts of any thing or shall alter his opinion of any thing therein he will in the REVIEW acquaint his Lordship why he doth so ib. The Author thinks that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunâ—es are positive ib. C2 R DIEV·ET·MON·DROIT HONI·SOIT·QVI·MAL·Y·PENSE Devon Jan. 27. 1680. My Lord AS to the Candour of the English Nation that was formerly so very extraordinary and the whiteness and sweetness of the temper of the People of England that did adde to the representing it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and to the making it like the Galaxy to have one brightness from thousands of fixt Stars placed so high by Nature that they could not suffer the least Eclipse by the shaddow of the whole Earth we may well since the Publishing of the horrid Affidavit of the Infamous Person and so many valuing themselves as the best of Men upon their believing what was sworn by the worst lament the temporary decay of so great a part of the Glory of the English good Nature And they who knew your Lordship and consequently knew you to be a steadfast approver of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England have reason more particularly to be sensible of what concern'd you in that calumnious Affidavit because the wretch presumed therein to fasten on your Lordship the Sanbenito of a Court of Rome Papist and to represent you as a favourer of Popery or the Papal Usurpations that were in Harry the 8th's time hence exterminated and as an endeavorer to stifle the Evidence about the Plot notify'd by the Government for the recalling that kind of Popery Altho I know no Christian more tenderly inclined then your Lordship to shew all Christian Indulgence to the Persons of Popish and Protestant Recusants and have sometimes observed your Lordship while you were wishing that none of the New Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Creed were by any believed yet out of tenderness to the Persons of Devout and Loyal Papists with great reason to wish likewise that no Odium might come to such from the Name of POPERY for their Profession of such Tenets as are held by the Greek and other Churches who yearly Curse the Pope and are so Curs'd by him yet none need doubt but that your Lordship will as much as any man account it the opus diei by all due means to oppose all plotted Designs whatsoever to retrive the Papal Power of Usurping over the Crown or Conscience My Lord there are some among us who would usurp on and appropriate to themselves the Name and Thing of Protestancy and would be thought the only true Protestants and would be Monopolists of all the heat and light against Popery But as I shall make bold to come in for my share with them so I shall yet acquaint your Lordship that if I may in any part of this Letter to you seem with any excess of Passion to reflect on Popery I shall before I take leave of you afford you such a Patriotly and Gentlemanly reason of my warmth against it as I think hath not by others been given nor particularly by some Pedantick Anti-Papists who render their Conversation nauseous by their eternal talking of nothing but Popery and while they are neglectful of all the due means to prevent its growth These things being therefore premised I shall in despite of the Affidavit say that I will be the last man in England who shall believe that my Lord Privy Seal can be such a Court of Rome-Papist I think it was St. Augustine who meaning well in a pang of Zeal cry'd out on one occasion Credo quia impossibile est But I shall both as to the truth of any deposing or imposing Doctrine and of your Lordships believing it ground my disbelief on the impossibility of either When I hear men say they look upon it as an exerting of a miraculous Power Divine that the Globe of the Earth hangs in the Air without falling I interrupt not their thoughts of devotion but know that the Earth which is ballanced by its own weight cannot fall but it must fall into Heaven Coelum undique sursum And should any one tell me of your Lordships falling into any gross erroneous doctrinal opinions I who have long observed the constant tendency of your understanding toward the Center of truth cannot apprehend any danger of your falling from it So likewise when I hear men impute it
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
of the Papal Usurpations to expose himself to the fencing with two enraged Multitudes which would have produced the same effect as would a Iesuit's Preaching a Postilling Sermon here against the Yearly burning of the Pope to the Populace employed in that Solemnity My Lord I find my self her engulfed in writing a long Letter and the truth is having a great concern for your Lordship's Honour I am willing to take pains to satisfie my self exactly by thus tracing your Lordship's steps on the Stage of the World that I may satisfie others so about your being as averse as any one can be from supporting any Papal Power to invade the rights of Conscience or those of Princes The Roman Historian speaking of Nero saith Tyrannum hunc per quatuordecem annos passus est terrarum orbis And it may truly be said That England formerly has endured the Popes Tyranny and the Artifices of its Favourers for some Ages But the Patience of Man has bounds and the Propagators of such Usurpation who had so long maintain'd a separate Soveraignty here the which is like an Animal living within an Animal did find that as the lesser creature is evacuated by the greater or destroyed therein or doth else destroy the greater Animal it was so held to be in the case of such Power among us and as no doubt it always will be by your Lordship When your Travels were ended and you had with the help of the Education your Father gave you saved him by your knowledge of the Lex terroe from falling as a prey to Arbitrary Power and thereby shewed your self both a good Son and great Patriot the first Scene of publick Employment wherein your Lordship appeared with Eminency was as Governour of Vlster by Authority under the Great Seal of England a Charge of difficulty when the Forces from Scotland under the Command of Major General Munro had so long ruled absolutely there that the English Interest had suffered a great eclipse and diminution How you managed Affairs during your Government there and how by your Councils the most pernitious and potent Rebel Owen Roe O Neil was opposed and his design to swallow up that Province and the Province of Connaught disappointed and the Protestant Interest in both united and encouraged and under your Conduct and Command the Titular Popish Archbishop of Tuam taken and by the seisure of his Cabinet and Papers the Popish design upon Ireland discovered and broken in due time I doubt not you will more particularly inform the World. From that Service your Lordship was upon the ill success of those Commissioners who were first sent to the then Marquess of Ormond employed to make the Capitulation with the said Marquess then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of the City of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands for securing them from the Irish Rebels who had invested and streightned the same Which happy work was effectually accomplished by the Articles made with the said Marquess already published to the World And so the Protestants Interest in that Kingdom made entire and so considerable that they daily gained ground of the Confederate Rebels till at length they were wholly subdued and vanquished After those Articles concluded and reception of the said City and Garrisons your Lordship was called back into England where being a Member of the House of Commons you shewed your self no less useful to this Kingdom And have since in Parliament and Council and other great Imployments in both Kingdoms shewed your self an Eminent Instrument both in his Majesties happy Restoration who entirely trusted you with the Management thereof and in other great Affairs of State and Government to general satisfaction being never by those that knew you so much as suspected for Evil Council or want of Zeal and Faithfulness to your King or Countrey but every day gaining more the Love and Esteem of Protestants and Patriots as you had incurred the implacable hatred of the Popish and Arbitrary Factions I cannot here but observe That a little before the Kings Restoration the spirit of the people universally shewing its resentments so strong and vehement against Lambert and his Committee of Safety and against all the propounders of projects of Government that nothing but his Majesties return to the Throne of his Ancestors could quiet the people and your Lordship then as President of the Council by your great Wisdom Contributing highly to the dispatch of many arduous and intricate Affairs requisite to make that great Revolution without bloudshed when things near their Center were moving so fast it may well be reckon'd among impossible things that your Lordship should now espouse the Papal interest when the Vogue the Humour the Sense and Reason and Spirit of the People are bent against it with as keen and strong and general an antipathy as can be imagined And when I consider that great real power you had in the Kingdom at that time testify'd not so much by your signing all the great Commissions then for Military and Civil Employments as by both the King and the best and wisest of the people in the Three Kingdoms putting themselves in your hands and having their eyes chiefly upon you as to the management of the Political part of that mighty concern I cannot but thinking of your Lordship whom thus the King and Kingdom delighted to honour apply to you these words in Valerius Maximus where he speaks of Agrippa Menenius whom the Senate and People chose Arbitrator of their differences and to â—ompose matters between them Quantus scilicet esse debuit arbiter publicae salutis Yet as great as this Man was he could have no Funeral unless the people had by a pole given the sixth part of a penny to defray his Funeral Charges But your Lordships case in one particular seems harder then his for they who unjustly go to take away your good Name and to make a Papist of you go about to bury you alive Had your Lordship after the King's Restoration aspired after the power of a chief Minister or suffered any such to be committed to you you must have took it with the concomitance of universal envy that hath always in England been fatal to such power England having always thought such power fatal to it 'T is the power it self of such a Minister that is look't on as a popular Nusance and t is impossible for such a great Man by raising his power only to what he thinks a moderate height to keep it secure and lasting For tho a Steeple be built with firm Stone great Art and but with a moderate height yet are there Clouds charged with Lightning and Thunder and moving in the Ayr sometimes not higher than the top of such a Steeple and the Pryamid or sharpness of such a Steeple then as I may say tapping or broaching such a Cloud that comes that way is instantly Burnt and Thundered down And the Multitude of the
Matthew for the building of theirs But this by the way And now putting the Question who are to be loved best either the Popish Priest and Levite that help'd to wound Ireland formerly when it fell among Thieves and Rebels or those compassionate Samaritans who put it on their own Beast and poured Oyl into its Wounds and took care of it till it was restored to its true Owner I suppose a Protestant will say the latter and will account that no fire should be called to fall on the heads of such hospitable Samaritans and that others should be spared who instead of powring Oyl into our Wounds did it into our flames when they burnt our Citie Your Lordship hath shewn your self a compassionate Samaritan to Two Kingdoms to which your healiâ—g principles and practices have been beneficial and in this you have out done him in the Parable who did not stay to see the effects of the gentle Medicaments of Oyl and Wine he bestowed on his Patient's Wounds but your Lordships long attendance on the affairs of the Public brought you to see the Languishing Kingdom revived and to have at once both its Head and Senses restored when Providence made our Sovereign to be his repenting Peoples choice But my Lord these Kingdoms have not yet done with your Skill and may have Wounds that require your Wine and Oyl the Lyons Heart and Ladies Hand I mean such Tenderness and such Courage and so great Judgment as you have formerly shewn A Raging Acute Disease that hath been long not only besieging but storming a mans vital parts and with extream difficulty at the long run repell'd by Nature doth yet commonly leave such dregs in his spirits that depress and enfeeble them in the remainder of Life and a man come to himself after a long madness labours still under a dejection of his spirits both by grief and shame thinking of the arrear that he is in to God the World and himself by his former madness and this is the present state of England after its former state of distraction and men with shame now look on their former Physitians and some are apt with that Merry Mad-man in the Poet to be angry with those that took pains about their being cured 'T is true indeed the Kings Restoration cured us of our Civil Wars yet may a man be cured of his Wounds and afterward dye of the Feaver his Wound put him into and our condition is such that 't is some degree of Heavens Mercy to us that our Feaver is continuing for no man can dye in a Feaver as no man can dye without one And our spirits are so sunk under the weight of the Disease we have long languisht under that our Stomach cannot endure any Cordials or especially the same long certainly that strong Physic that would at first have cured us would now kill us Yet now in this conjuncture several of our Political Physitians seem by their retirement to have given us over as if they were of Hippocrates his mind who said that a Physitian should not discredit his generous Medicaments by employing them on a desperate Patient Methinks 't is pity that any of our Pilots should quit the Helm in a Storm and that they should not as Cicero's expression is Sententiam tanquam aliquod navigium ex Reip. tempestate moderari Those words in Prov. 1. A man of understanding shall attain to wise Councels some read Vir saepiens gubernacula possidebit I presume not to Censure any man but I hope that no cross Winds will ever make your Lordship leave the Helm but rather invite the continuance of your Skill in beating and tiding it out as the Sea phrase is and in not overshooting the Port. Your pacific Genius and great Wisdom have in several angry conjunctures produced an unexpected calm by your offering unexpected Expedients a Talent that is indeed very rare and conducive to the quiet of the World as leading Potent Parties from their declared Opinions without the shame of a seeming retreat It happens still in Navigation that what makes the Passenger merriest makes the Steers-man most thoughtful Namely the sight of Land And therefore tho I and others who make no figures in the government of the Kingdom seem to be glad at our sight of land that is the extermination of Popery from England after we have been so long nauseated and Sea-sick with it yet 't is now our occasion for the skill of such a Pilot as your Lordship is greatest when we are endanger'd by some Protestants of narrow Spirits and Principles as by Shelfes or brevia syrtes shallow waters and by little Rocks or breaker's just covered with water and which are only to be discovered by the swelling roughness of the water they occasion It has pleased Divine providence to cast your Lordships whole life of Action into difficult times such as are called in the New Testament 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and translated perilous times And such as Cicero calls Maxima Reipublicae tempora and difficillima Reip tempora Your life hath been a continual contestation with principles pernicious to man-kind and you have been under your Prince a Nutritius pater for the most part to men who have like froward and unquiet Children been crying for each others properly in things civil and in Religion and have thought themselves persecuted when they could not persecute others Nor have you been too much a Latitudinarian as to Church discipline Nor of too narrow a Spirit or principles as to any Protestant Dissenters And I think Envy never charged you for giving any advice that tended to the injuring the ballance of Christendom or the power of England in setling it or the persuading us to love some of our Neighbours better then our selves You who are so far from offending any weak brother That you are ready with the Apostle rather to abstain from eating flesh while the World stands and therefore will much less kill or devour him and lest of all will you offend a weak Brother-Protestant Country or help any else to devour it and will not injure any of those Countreys that you visited abroad when the world and you saw one another by projecting their Mischief And therefore as I find in the Prolegomena of Grotius de jure belli pacis that Themistius speaking to Valens the Roman Emperor he told him that Kings if they would be guided by the Rule of true wisdom they must non unius sibi creditae Gentis habere rationem sed totius humani generis esse non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tantum aut 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it may be justly said that the Counsellors of Kings should alwaies advise them not to take care only of the concern of their own people but of the happiness and quiet of all man-kind and not only to be lovers of the Macedonians or lovers of the Romans but to be lovers of Men. I never
heard your Lordship reproacht for having any interest contrary to that of your Country or indeed to the repose of Christendom And as in Nature we see all heavy bodies tend by their own Center to the Center of the Universe so have I still thought that your Lordship alwaies endeavoured by the pursuing your own good to pursue that of the Kingdom and that your endeavours of promoting the good of your own Country have tended to the good of the World And that in every Scheme of your Politicks whether Civil or Ecclesiastical pollicy you have took your Model from the Great Architect of Nature doing things fortiter and suaviter and with regard to his works of which 't is said in the 8 th of Wisdom Mightily and Sweetly doth she order all things And he that builds so is a Workman that need not be ashamed either of himself or of his work that is both strong and fair such a Councellor need not be aâ—hamed of his Councel 'T is one of the worst sort of Reproaches to which a Councellor at Law can be exposed to be called a crafty Counsel that is one who secretly gives advice for the perverting of Justice and the law and to do that vile thing is more odious in a Counsellor of State And of this subject when I formerly discoursed to your Lordship I remember you were pleased to say it of your self to me That you had a great aversion from giving whispering Councel to your Royal Master and that it hath been your humble motion to him to command his Councel to give him their advice in writing Your Lordship is by one particular accident a necessary subject for the Worlds compassion namely by your having out-lived most of the eye witnesses of the many memorable things you have done for the World. If the people of England your Contemporaries were six Millions at the time of your birth five of those Millions are now lodged in graves persons above the Age of Sixty making but a sixth part of Mankind I reading lately in Tully de Senectute was pleased with what he saith of old men both de facto de jure praising themselves he saith there videtisne ut apud Homerum saepissimè Nestor de virtutibns suis praedicet Tertiam enim jam aetatem hominum vixerat he had lived almost 300 years when he went with the other Grecians to the Trojan War and where he gave such weighty advice that Agamemnon said he should make quick work of the taking of Troy if he had ten such Councellors as Nestor was Quod si acciderit non dubitat quin brevi Troja sit peritura He never wish'd saith Tully to have ten Ajaxes It seems the General thought that an old Commander would be weighed down with a tenth part of an old wise Councellor But Nestor had bury'd all those thrice over who were born with him and he lived to see his Country-men doubled once and a half 200 years being the space judged for a Nations doubling and if he would have his Atchievments in his first Century Celebrated and witnessed he must be his own Herald and witness in his own cause I will not apply Nestors case to your Lordships as to your doing right to your self by praise for you have no more occasion to do that then Tully had who saith there Nihil necesse est mihi de meipso dicere quanquam est id quidem senile aetatique nostrae Conceditur But do think that any Protestant Prince who can say he hath ten such Councellors and resembling your Lordship in the experience of near fifty years spent in the affairs of State in critical times and with success and equal to you in all â—orts of Learning and in the knowledge of the Law and publick Records and in Eloquence and Courage as well as in the hatred of Popery he may add Quòd non dubitat quin brevi Roma sit peritura i. e. without such dilatory Troy Sieges as have been formerly laid to it He saith elsewhere Apex senectutis est autoritas Quanta fuit in L. Caecilio Metelio quanta in Attilio Calatino in quem illud elogium unicum Vno ore plurimae consentiunt Gentes populi primarium fuisse virum And this Authority or Reverence of old age is so weighty that it seems reasonable that in the criminating one that hath this badge of Nature there should be what Tully calls authoritas testimonii and any single witness had need to have an allowance se primarium fuisse virum that would convict such a man for diamonds are not to be cut but with the dust of diamonds 'T is not for nothing that the Scripture cautions the not receiving an accusation against an Elder but by two or three witnesses and I am told that the Canon-Law requires seventy two Witnesses to convict a Cardinal who is a Bishop accused of any crime but heresie and forty four in the conviction of a Cardinal Presbyter and twenty six to convict a Cardinal Deacon and seven to convict any Clerk. And therefore I think that it was a commendable tenderness and worthy of English Judges in a Trial at the Kings-Bench to acquaint the Jury that they are to weigh and consider the credibility of witnesses pardon'd for perjury and both the Judges of the Kings-Bench and Common-Pleas resolved it That the credit of such a person was left to the breast of a Jury The Bishop of Rome who claims that Monarchiall power which is potestas restituendi in integrum Sententiam passos quandoque absolvendi paenam non infamiam quandoque poenam infaniam abolendi and who as Aquinas saith 2. 2 ae q. 68. ar 4. potest infamiam Ecclesiasticam remittere yet allows the School-men to apply distinctions to that priviledge of his and to interpret it of infamia Iuris not Facti for labem illam quae turpi facto annexa est nemo delere potest as Soto concludes De Iustit Iure l. 5. q. 5. ar 4. No man who ever he be can wash out that stain of infamy which by Nature is inherent in a foul wicked Act because saith he ad praeteritum non est potentia when the infamy is inherent by the Nature of the fact and not positive by Law. But still our merciful Laws of England allow a person after a pardon for the infamy of perjury to be a witness reserving his credibility to the Jury and who may after the former crime obtain to be belived by them when they shall have found that he hath acquired an habit of virtue by the series of many actions in his following Life no man being supposed able in a desultory way to leap out of a rooted habit of Vice into an heroical habit of Vertue and so è contra for that nature doth not pass from one extreme to another but per medium 'T is true indeed in case of Treason where the life of both the King and Kingdom is struck at and
3. dub 2. for asserting that per modum defensae ad infringendam contumeliosi authoritatem potest secundum quosdam absque lethali crimen falsum illi objici and that 't is only a venial Sin to object a false crime to an unjust witness and twenty Doctors are there mentioned for the making this a probable opinion And therefore if it be lawful for a man to make shamm-accusations where he hath only a private concern 't is meritorious to do it in the case of holy Church therefore he said very right according to the Popish hypothesis gaudeo sâ—ve per veritatem sive per occasionem Romanae ecclesiae dignitatem extolli Ioseph Stephanus de Osc. pr. in epist. ad lect Guymenius p. 190. extactatu de justitia Iure Propositio 1. Cites both Fathers Schoolmen Divines and Casuists of several orders and even holy Scripture for the asserting this proposition viz. Licitum est clerico vel religioso Calumniatorem gravia crimina de se vel de sua Religione spargere minantem occidere quando alius defendendi modus non suppetit A principle of Religion calculated only for Ballies Hectors therefore no marvel that such were observed to flock from so many parts of most Countries in England to London in and since the year 1678. like Ravens in expectation of the Carcases of Protestants and such miscreants are to the Jesuits their Triarian bands upon occasion and who in the Out skirts of London are a noysome Pestilence and not enduring nor being endured to live in the Countrey But from the said last Cited proposition of Guymenius the proposition that contained the enacting Law Sir Edmund Godfrey fell by I infer that since there is a par or proportion between a good name and life that such who account it lawful for a particular Clergy-man to Murder even a Popish Lay-man who shall but threaten to caluminate him will account it meritorious by Shammes to Murder the fames of those who shall threaten to accuse holy Church And it seems as men try experiments on Creatures they account vile they experimented both these propositions on Godfrey for after they had basely killed him they would have shammed off his blood and the guilt of it upon himself when they pierced his dead body with his own Sword a barbarous and infamous sort of cruelty and which brings to my mind what Dr. Donne in the preface to his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 referres to in the Notae Mallon in Paleot Part. 1. cap. 2. viz. that the Church in her Hymnes and Antiphones doth often salute the Nayles and Cross but the Spear which pierced Christ when he was dead it ever calles dirum mucronem And here because some of them drive an eternal trade of butchering and shamming and then in effect Stabbing their own Shamms of Plots I shall Entertain your Lordship with one egregious instance of a Priest of theirs being abandon'd to a reprobate or injudicious sence of shamming in making by a ridiculous Lye a famous Cardinal and profound States-man perhaps as the World has bred and one of singular Piety and great modesty to render the Gun-Powder-Treason a Sham Plot and thereby wounding the Fame of both the understanding and morals of their great dead Church Hero as barbarously as they did the Corps of Godfry And this instance I refer to is in a Book called The Advocate of Conscience liberty or an Apology for Toleration rightly stated and writ with Learning and Wit and Artifice enough ad faciendum populum by a Priest of Romes Church an English man and printed in the year 1673. In pag. 325. He represents the Gunpowder-Treason to be a Sham Plot contrived by Cecil and to prove this Cites D'Ossats Letters Book 2d Letter 43. And the date of that Letter was from Rome March the 29. 1596. And the date of the last Letter there is from Rome in December that year The Gunpowder-Treason Plot was to have been on the 5 th of November 1605. And on D'Ossats marble Tomb in Rome his Epitaph mentions that he dyed Anno 1604. so then he is made by that Author to have known that Treason to have been a Sham-Plot Eight years before it was to be executed and to have permitted many Papists for want of his sending a line of News of the Shamm to be shamm'd out of their lives and the Roman Church to be shammed and anniversaried out of its credit in England But if they reproach any as they did Cecil on the pretence of the persuading some of their wild principles into the decoy of a plot a thing I think detestable as what implies a tempting or inviting of a Man to degenerate from himself they have no reason to be angry with but only to pitty men that receive infection from their principles and from this particular one That 't is lawful for a good end to ensnare men into acts of Sin. Many Casuists and Divines are brought by Guymenius for this purpose p. 184. in the 9th proposition ex tractatu de Charitate and under which proposition he quotes Sotus de Sec. memb 2. quaest 2. a little before the fifth conclusion where he enquires an liceat expediat aliquando perditum hominem permittere in pejora prolabi crimina ut ignominiâ peccatorum confusus facilius resipiscat emendetur And he answers licet nobis aliquando permittere peccatorem ad tempus in pejus cadere ut cautius resurgat The 9th proposition there is Maritus qui uxorem adulteram suspicatur potest eâ— occasionem offerre ut in adulterio deprehensam corrigat Lay man. Iesuita lib. 2. tract 3. Cap. 13. num 5. But in p. 205. extractatu de justitia Iure Propositio 4. The correction that may be lawfully used is assigned it being there said that non peccat maritus occidens propria authoritate uxorem in adulterio deprehensam the which he saith Sa the Iesuit represents as a probable opinion And which Hurtado he saith positively defends Tom. 1. resol moral tr ulti res 5. § 7. n. 204. so that if a Protestant States-man had inveigled them into a plot and then hang'd them for it his politicks had squared exactly with their Morals And even as the calling of a Rat-catcher is a lawful calling tho some of that profession have had no certain way to take Rats but by the use of one experiment namely first to provoke them to fly in the Artists face according to the said principles is the calling of a States-man both lawful and laudable who deals so with such as he judgeth to nibble at Treason But this by the way And now to let your Lordship see how some of their Divinity is particularly but a laboured Sham in the case of Treason and even but a mocking at Sin I shall divert you with a known Author among them making men play with the bait of Regicide as he is hooking them into it And 't is Mariana the Iesuit
the English language that the Spaniards caus'd to be made by an English Iesuite call'd Parsons and 't was by the way of the low Country dispersed about England c. And further in the 7 th book p. 301. in the letter to Villeroy letter 133. what he saith of that book of Parsons may be thus made English and from that book of Father Parsons one might draw reasons in favour of his Majesty which would be more weighty then those he deduceth for the King of Spain and his Sister the said Father Parsons does contradict himself very often and very grosly as it happens to all persons in passion as able as they are who are not guided by truth and by reason but transported by Interest and by passion And in the last letter of the 8th book and to Villeroy from Rome the 30th of December 1602 he speaks of Father Parsons having made application to himself to desire that there might be a treaty prepared from Rome between the Pope the King of France and the King of Spain to agree among themselves of a Catholick that may Reign in England after the Queen be it the King of Scots if he will turn Catholick or be it some one else c. But there in p. 367 year 1603 letter 174. from Rome to Villeroy and on April 21st it appears that all the Machinations of the hot Iesuitical heads against King Iames his Succession were overturn'd by providence for he there saith that the Queen was no sooner dead then that the King of Scotland was in England peaceably received and the Controversie of King Iames his title evaporated and for the honour of our English understandings he there saith Les gens de cet Isle là ont bien Monstrè qu' ils scavoient faire leurs affaires entr ' eux tost seurement que ceux de dehors se sont fort mescontez en leurs desseins esperances i. e. the people of England have well shewn that they knew how to do their own business among themselves quickly and safely and that others abroad took very wrong Measures in their designs and hopes I have here said enough to entertain your Lordship with the View of their unreasonableness who would impose on us That Father Parsons wrote not that Impious and Treasonable Book and likewise with the more pleasant View of Gods Confuting it as I may say by the happy determination of his over-ruling Providence And Now because I would make it appear to your Lordship that I have not been unjustly severe to the Jesuitical Principles in rendring them such as are the sturdy extravagances of those offals of Mankind call'd Bullyes and Hectors I shall entertain you with one Instance of a Bravado of threatning from one English Iesuite to all Protestant Crown'd Heads a bravado that is like the High Water Mark to shew in words how high 't is possible for the foam of the raging Sea of Anger to reach and 't is in a Letter of Campian the Iesuite to Queen Elizabeths Privy Councellers printed afterwards at Triers 1583. as I find it Cited in that most learned Preface of my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's to the Book concerning the Gunpowder Treason in the Year 1679 and 't is thus in English viz. That all the Iesuits throughout the World have long since enter'd into a Covenant to kill heretical Kings any manner of way and as to our Society know That we Iesuites who are spread far and wide throughout the whole World have enter'd into an holy Covenant that we shall easily overcome all your machinations and that we shall never despair of it as long as any one of us remains in the World. Lo here a Drawcansir that will not only snub all Protestant Kings and take the bowles from their mouths and beat out their Brains with them himself but he saith there is a Society or Corporation of such brethren of the bladed Ecclesiastical who have enter'd into a Covenant or Association to murder all Protestant Kings and that every single Member of the Corporation should have that dead-doing talent of Valour that should awe and subjugate the Protestant World. And here then my Lord every Jesuite values himself on being a Mutius Scaevola and more than Three hundred of these new Romans or so many thousands of them I mean all of them according to Campian have Covenanted to destroy every Porsenna that lays siege to Rome but in that time of Queen Elizabeth there was an industrious Gentleman who fear'd not the terror of these Huffes but with his secrecy and silence did reduce these mad dogs into the Condition of neither barking nor biting in England I mean Sir Francis Walsingham of whom 't is said in Cotton's Posthuma That his bountifull hand made his intelligences so active that a Seminary could scarcely stir out of the Gates of Rome without his privity And no wonder then if Campian was soon brought to the end of a Traytor here in England by the Care of one of Queen Elizabeths Privy Councellers in the Year 1581. who did both defie and scorn that Rhodomantado address wherein the Iesuite did Goliah-like defie All Protestant Kings and their Armies and as if he would give their flesh to the Fowls of the ayr but the event shew'd his own flesh was so given as a Traytors to that use here in England It was a kind of a bravado in the great Archimedes to say Give me where to stand and I 'le shake the Earth He well knew no such place could be found The Iesuits it seems would have every one of their Order to be an Archimedes and able to shake the Earth as he pleas'd and the hypothesis of Popery they know offers them a place divided from the Civil and Imperial Government where to stand with their Engines namely the Ecclesiastical but things will not be ill administred and holy Church it self will sink into the Earth if its Foundation be not laid as God and Nature would have it and the Man who stands for the place to be an Archimedes and to Move the Earth will soon find his fate of being dissolv'd into his own little dust and that among the artificial lines he is making It seems that boasted association or Covenant of the Jesuites did help to occasion another among the Protestants in Queen Elizabeths time which was ratify'd by Act of Parliament in the 27 th of Eliz. which was about three years after the death of Campian who was Convicted of High Treason by vertue of the Statute made in the time of our Popish Ancestors namely in the 25 of Edward the Third and thereupon executed and yet by the Romish Church made a Martyr tho as I said convicted on that Statute But according to this thundring denuntiation of War against all heretical Kings by Campian as the Jesuites Herald and his boasting when he did put on his armour that every one of his Order should be like an Alexander an adequate match for at
least one World of hereticks the author of the Compendium needed not by his Rhetorick to reflect on my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Candour gentleness in saying yet if it be a breach of Christianity to crush the bruised reed and of generosity also to trample upon the oppressed I wish his Lordship may be found guilty of neither c. for behold any single Jesuite according to Campian tho but like a reed shaken with the wind is able to bruise all Protestant Scepters and any little toe of that Order can trample all Heretical crowned heads to dirt and the Number of the Papists in England if reduced to the least of Numbers is not according to Campian to be slighted if one of them be a Iesuite for that that one Jesuite will carry the advantage of odds against all Protestant Kings and Princes that one may say my Name is legion for we are many but as that legion-spirit could not without the Divine permission ruin a herd of Swine off from a Steep place so neither can all the legions of Iesuited evil Spirits in the World drive a King Kingdom from Precipices at their pleasure And Queen Elizabeth in spight of all the arts and power of Rome outlived eight Popes and lived to change all her Counsellors but one all her great officers twice or thrice some Bishops four times and died full of years and did see and leave peace upon Israel And now I shall Entertain your Lordship with a further Reason of my charging the present Popes declaration aforesaid about some opinions of the Casuists as carry with it a face of some thing like shamme and my reason is grounded on what was said in a publick Sermon before an honourable Audience namely that the propositions of the Casuists therein were not Condemned by the Pope in the Consistory which would have made the Censure more authoritative but by the Pope and Cardinals of the Court of the Inquisition upon which a remarkable thing follow'd the Iefuites in France who were much provoked at this Censure moved the Procureur de Roy or Attorney general at Paris to put in a Complaint against the publishing that Decree since it came from the Court of the Inquisition which not being acknowledg'd in France nothing Flowing from that authority could be received in that Kingdom upon which the decree was prohibited and suppress'd And may not the English Popish Priests say the same thing the Inquisition was never received in England and therefore that declaration of the Popes obligeth us not here and we will prohibit and suppress it as much as we can No doubt but the present Pope fearing that the Noysome and Infectious smell of those Opinions of the Casuists being more offensive to the minds of Men then any snuff of a Candle can be to their Nostrils they were ready to cry for the removing of the Candlestick of his Church out of its place went about to extinguish them in the most Summary Manner that he could and therefore attempted to do it by the Court of the Inquisition well knowing that in the Consistory of Cardinals all proceedings are so dilatory and the old magi there so used to do every thing pian piano that they would consume many pounds of new Candles in debating whether or no and how the old snuff should be removed and perhaps would have thought to have contented the World in the mean time with giving it some perfumes but the Pope being afraid of the Iesuites perhaps as sometimes the Grand Signior is of his Ianisaries doth not for fear himself should be extinguished by them so far as I may say follow the light within him as to throw away or tread out that snuff of those opinions as containing a malum in se or declare any of them to be ill as contrary to the principles of the law of nature in which case neither he nor God himself indeed could have dispens'd with them tho yet any honest and ingenious Heathen would on the least occasion given have declared them so As Cicero and Seneca and many others have done and which had the Pope done and the Iesuites or any Papists persevered in the making those principles the Rules of practice his Kingdom had thereby been ipso facto divided against it self and a diffinitive sentence had been thereby given by the Pope that all who had dy'd owning those principles and practices had been sunk for ever into the burning lake Therefore as I said before I hope this declaration of the Popes such as it is will give an alarm to our English Papists to deal seriously with their Souls and to consider as if it were for their eternities these and other Principles of their Religion and that if they will not be thereby perswaded to be almost Protestant Christians yet to be altogether Masters of as good Moral Principles as the Heathens I named and If any of them can but give us a Moral certainty of their Principles being but such I shall never repine at any favour that any new Law may afford to such of them If therefore any of our Lay Country men Papists not guilty of the late Plot shall desire to be heard and to say any thing toward this effect some of us have heard of these principles before mention'd as own'd by our Casuists and Priests and Confessors that are now thus condemned by the Pope and we did not believe that those our spiritual guides did own such Principles but now our Eye seeth by the condemnation thereof that they were before own'd and made rules of Practice Wherefore we hope that who ever do own them will abhor themselves and repent in dust and ashes and others of us did formerly think them Consistent with the Christian faith and the peace of Kingdoms and with humane Society but we now abhor those principles and repent in dust and ashes We are ready to let the King and Kingdom and the World have a moral certainty that we desire no power to change the Religion in England by Law establish'd and we are willing to receive Instruction from any that shall be appointed by publick Authority to give it to us concerning what other principles beside these Condemned by the Pope are inconsistent with Religion or the publick Peace and in case any shall offer to give us dispensations either for principles or practices contrary to those we renounce as inconsistent with the publick peace we shall be so far from accepting of such dispensation that we shall detect the offerer thereof before a Magistrate as much as we would an enemy to His Majesty We are ready to give active or passive obedience as to all the Laws in being We believe not the Bishop of Rome to have more power in His Majesties Realms by Gods word then any other forraign Bishop as was by Acts of Parliament and publick Recognitions declared in the Reign of Henry the 8 th We are willing to render the Kingdom as secure from
giving decent burial to any of their undecent Plotts and for the exasperating any Protestants by despising them and endeavouring to impose on their Understandings as some did on a raw young Country Gentleman whom one day treating at a Puppet-shew they persuaded that the Puppets were living Creatures and after he had found out his gross ridiculous misconceit therein they on the following day attending him to the Theatre engaged him to believe that the Actors were Puppets I mean their endeavoring to make us believe that Sham-Plots were real ones and that a real one was Shamme I shall never wonder at the encrease of the passion of anger incident to humane Nature even in great and generous Souls on the occasion of gross Calumnies invented against them about a matter of weight when I consider the Example of the Great Royal Prophet a Person of a great Understanding and of so great Courage that he was not afraid of Ten thousands of men who set themselves against him round about and tho an Host should encamp ogainst him his heart would not fear and a Man that had in his Nature and temper the Gentleness of a Lamb mixt with the stoutness of a Lyon and one to whom the Divine Promise had ensured a Kingdom and yet was he by the Sycophancies and little Shammes rais'd against him by Saul's great Courtiers wrought to so high a pitch of anger that he did with exquisite forms of imprecation and such as perhaps are not to be found in any other Story frequently devote those Calumniators to the most dire Miseries his fancy could lead him to express But the Cause of his being so highly provoked by those that would turn his glory into shame and did seek after leasing and whose deceitful tongues used all-devouring words as he saith to Doeg the Edomite in one of his Psalms and whose tongue he there sayes did devise mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully may be ascribed to the Shammes of his Enemies wounding him in the most sensible Part namely the Reputation of his Loyalty to his Prince whose Life he spared when 't was in his power to destroy him and who was so far from the use of Shammes against him that he doom'd the Amalekite to dy that shamm'd himself the author of Saul's death And therefore No marvel if the Calumnies of Jesuited Papists attaquing Protestants in that Case too of their Fidelity to their King render the passion of anger in them against those Shams so intense and vehement And tho the English Courage or a very little Philosophy would help them to bestow only a generous neglect on other Calumnies they can never forget those that strike at the heart of their allegiance and consequently of their Religion that so strictly enjoyns it Nor if according to the Example of that great man after Gods heart who said Away from me all ye that work vanity and who would have No lyer tarry in his sight is it to be admired if every true English Protestant shall say too odi Ecclesiam malignantium and shall feclude all dictators of Calumny from his company and banish them home to their own And tho the abuse of Excommunication by the Papal Church and Presbyterian hath been so horrid that the primitive use of it is in a manner lost and grown obsolete yet will that which includes somewhat of the Nature of it be still kept alive in the World by private persons who practice the Christian Religion they profess and to whom tho the Precepts of the New Testament have not given that hateful thing to humane Nature in charge namely to be Informers or Promoters or judicial accusers of any of Mankind accordingly as under the Mosaic oeconomy 't was said Tu non eris criminator yet have they obliged them to withdraw themselves from men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth and not to eat with any one who is call'd a Brother and is a railer and to turn away from men that are truce-breakers and to mark those who cause divisions and to avoid them and to reject a Heretic who is subverted and self-condemned and by men of Cultivated educations and tempers who value themselves on the Company they keep and on it are valued by the World and will therefore abandon or excommunicate from their Conversation such Monsters of men who have renounced the obligations of humane society and who are guilty of Notorious Contumacy in matters that concern the very Salvation of Souls and the Safety of Kingdoms The being staked down therefore to a Narrower Tedder in Conversation or being Civilly Excommunicated from Protestants Company must by necessity of Nature in my opinion be the fate of our Jesuited make-bates and criminators of Protestants that have been so unweary'd in raising Jealousies between the King and his People and between Protestant and Protestant and all such that go to part whom God and Nature and Interest have joyn'd will probably come at last to be the derelicts of humane Society when they shall Come to be understood and especially when there shall be that good understanding between Protestants here of several persuasions that may be expected to arise from their having found out the authors of their divisions and seen how ridiculous Protestants have been in the view of the World while they have appear'd like the Cat to draw one another through the Pool and the Jesuits and their Pensioners stood behind undiscern'd and pull'd the Rope My Lord I know we may justly fear that Popery may during some turbid intervals gain ground in England and as the Renowned Historian of our Reformation hath in a public Sermon Judiciously observed that Sure none believed themselves when they say we are not in danger of Popery and none can think it but they who desire it But without presuming to make my self one of Heavens Privy Councellors and without pretending to a spirit of Prophecy I shall on the basis of the Course of Nature ground this affirmation That whatever alterations Time can Cause yet while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Forraign Conquest the Protestant Religion Can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom nor the public profession of it suffer any long interruption therein I will grant it possible that hereafter under a Prince of the Popish Religion Popery may like the vibration of a pendulum among Certain persons have the greater extent in the return of it as Becket's Image was by Gardiner set up in London 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much pomp in Queen Mary's time after its being pull'd down in Harry the Eighth's and himself unsainted and some people may undertake devout Pilgrimages hereafter to some such Images and Reliques as my Lord Herbert saith were in Harry the Eighth's time exploded and we may again hear of our Lady's Girdle shewn in eleven several places and her Milk in eight the Bell of St. Guthlac and the Felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster both Remedies for
only as a Philosopher Considering that the Properties of humane Passions have as Necessary effects in Minds as gravity or lightness have in Bodies and that let men intend what male administration they will things will not be ill administred do think that the fermentation now in the Kingdome will not end but with Popery it self here ending And that I may not seem to stand alone in this my opinion I shall entertain your Lordship with that of An Excellent Philosopher and Divine the Author of the History of the Royal Society who there having said that experimental Philosophy will enable us to provide before-hand against any alteration in Religious affairs which this Age may produce he goes on thus If we Compare the changes to which Religion has been alwayes subject with the present face of things we may safely conclude that whatever Vicissitude shall happen about it in our time it will probably be neither to the advantage of implicit Faith nor of Enthusiasme but of Reason the fierceness of violent inspiration is in good Measure departed the Remains of it will be soon chaced out of the World by the Remembrance of its terrible footsteps it has every where left behind it And although the Church of Rome still preserves its Pomp yet the Real authority of that too is apparently decaying It first got by degrees to the Temporal Power by means of its Spiritual but now it upholds some shadow of the Spiritual by the strength of the Temporal dominion it has obtain'd This is the present state of Christendome It is impossible to spread the same Cloud over the World again The Vniversal disposition of this Age is bent upon a Rational Religion And therefore I Renew my affectionate request That the Church of England would Provide to have the chief share in its first adventure that it would persist as it has begun to encourage Experiments which will be to our Church as the Brittish Oake is to our Empire an Ornament and Defence to the Soil wherein 't is planted This Author therefore with such Vigour of Reason passing his sentence concerning any Vicissitudes here not happening that will probably Conduce to the advantage of Popery or Enthusiasme I hope your Lordship will acquit me both of Singularity and Enthusiasme as to the opinion I have given especially since I only profess it to be founded on Natural Reason and do only Consider the God of Nature when I think that a Religion that is of God will stand 'T is not unknown to Your Lordship that Columbus being in chace of the New World and Cast among some barbarous Ilanders that deny'd him the hospitality of their Port and freedom of Commerce he Knowing that they worshipt the Moon and that it would shortly be Eclips'd thô he was neither Prophet nor Prophet's Son aw'd them out of their inhumanity by foretelling that the Moons deity would be shortly obscur'd and when ever I acquaint any Roman Catholics with my Judgment of the Nearness of their Religion to an Eclipse I intend no more enthusiasme in my prediction then Columbus did in his and design nothing worse neither by mine then he by his namely the reconciling them to humanity and a fair entercourse with Mankind 'T was in the middle of the Worlds long night of barbarisme and ignorance that Popery was in its Meridian and for hundreds of years all the Learning that busy'd the World referr'd to Iudicial Astrology Rabinical Resveries School-Divinity Latine Rhimes in praise of the Saints Compiling of Legends to Monks Histories of Ecclesiastical affairs and the times they liv'd in but so partial and so full of ridiculous and incredible Stories that we have a better and truer account of the times when Alexander and Iulius Caesar liv'd then of the times of Constantine and Charlemain to gelding of the Fathers writings and purging away their Gold Regulating the Hoods and Hose and Shoo 's of Monks to inventing of Ceremonies and mystical vestments and fantastic geniculations to the making of the Popes brutish Canon Law and the Commenting thereon in barbarous Latine by Doctors of the Decrees and Decretals and to the Commenting on Aristotle by those that could not read his Text and the Commenting likewise on the New Testament by such as knew no Greek insomuch that 't was then a proverbial saying among those illiterate Writers Graecum est non potest legi to quiddity esseity entity and such titivilitium and to eus rationis that did as I may say destroy the being of Reason to the improvement of one sort of Mechanics Viz. by making Images in Churches with little engines and librations turn the eyes and move the lips like the forementioned Rood of Grace at Boxley in Kent and which was by Bishop Fisher exposed as a cheat at St. Pauls Cross at the time of its being there broke in pieces while their great Real Design was to make the Layety but the Churches automata as brute Animals may not improperly be said to be God Almighties to the Composing Paschal Epistles about the time of the Celebration of Easter a Controverâ—y as our great Mr. Hales saith that caused as great a Combustion as ever was in the Church and in which fantastical hurry all the World were Schismaâ—ics and about which Monk Austin was so quarrelsome with the Britains when the difference was not in doctrine but in Almanac Calculations and about which aâ—ter the infallibility of the General Councel of Nice had given a Rule in the Cause the World was yet so much in the dark that the Bishops of Rome from year to year were fain to address to the Church of Alexandrias's Mathematicians for directions as to the week Easter was to be kept in And during this long night Millions of mankind were brought into the World only to sleep out their span of time and to have day-dreams of Knowledge or rather a profound Docta Ignorantia and men were by dignities rewarded proportionably for their sleeping longest according to what the Chronicon Frideswidae mentions of Guimundus a Chaplain to our King Henry the First who in the Celebration of holy offices reading before the King that place of St. Iames non pluet super terram annos III menses VI thus ridiculously distinguished the Notes in his reading non pluet super terram annos unum unum unum menses quinque unâ—m and the King asking him afterward why he red so he answered quia vos in ita tantum legentes beneficia episcopatus Confertis No marvel then if during that long gross and palpable Darkness of the World the Pope travesty'd those words in Scripture about Gods making the two great lights to serve his turn against the Emperor thô yet the attempt to prove the Popes Supremacy out of the first Chapter of Genesis is as extravagant as his who would prove the Circulation of the blood out of the first Chapter of Litleton And as the Roman Breviary tell 's us of S. Thomas
Capite usque ad Calcem retexuerunt ex divina Sophisticam fecerunt aut Aristotelicam saith he in vitâ Hier. praefixâ ipsius operibus And Doctor Colet the Dean of St. Paules whom Erasmus often in his Epistles calls praeceptorem unicum optimum did as Erasmus saith in his life account the Scotists dull Fellows and any thing rather then ingenious and yet he had a worse opinion of Aquinas then of Scotus And tho Luther had angred Harry the 8th by speaking contemptibly of Thomas Aquinas whom that King so highly magnifyed that he was call'd Rex Thomisticus Collet was not afraid to Pronounce in that case as Luther did And here it may not by the way be unworthy of your Lordships observation as to the concert that is between the Genius of one great Witt and another that Erasmus and Mr. Hobbs had the same sense of School-Divinity and School-Divines For Mr. Hobbs in his Behemoth or History of the Civil-Wars speaking of Peter Lombard and Scotus saith That any ingenious Reader not knowing what was the designe of School-Divinity which he had before siad was with unintelligible distinctions to blind Men's eyes while it encroach'd on the Rights of Kings would judge them to have been two the most egregious blockheads in the World so obscure and sensless are their Writings The New Testament was no sooner open'd and read then in Erasmus his translation and in the English Tongue but the Popes Cards were by the Clergy that playd his game thrown up as to all claim of more Power here by the word of God then every other forreign Bishop had and both our Universities sent their judgments about the same to the King which methinks might make our Papists approach a little nearer to us without fear of infection for we allow the Bishop of Rome to have as much Power by the Word of God as any other Bishop and 't is pitty but that Judgment of our Universities were shewn the World in Print and sent to the French King and particularly the Rescript or Iudgment of the University of Oxford as not being any where in Print that I know of but in an old Book of Dr. Iames's against Popery Cromwel the Vicegerent to H. the 8th had as Fuller saith in his Church-history got the whole New-Testament of Erasmus his translation by heart but the sore Eyes of many of the Clergy were so offended with the glaring-Light the New-Testament in Print brought every where that instead of Studying it as that great Primier Ministre did they only study'd to suppress it and thus Buchanan in his Scotch History saith that in H. the 8 ths time â—antaque erat caecitas ut sacerdotum plerique novitatis nomine offensi eum librum a Martino Luthero nuper fuisse Scriptum affirmarent ac vetus testamentum reposcerent i. e. They look'd on the New-Testament as writ by Martin Luther and call'd for the Old Testament again And the truth is if Luther had then set himself to have invented and writ a model of Doctrines against Iustification by works and redeeming our vexation from wrath divine by Summs of Mony and against implicit Faith and many gross Papal Errors he could not possibly have writ against them in terminis terminantibus more expresly then the Writers of the New-Testament did But the New Testament was then newly opened and the legatees permitted to read the whole Will over translated into a language they understood after they had been long by fraud and force kept out of their legacies by the Bishops Court of Rome whose Artifice had formerly in effect suppressed that Will and that inestimable legacy of liberty from all impositions humane being particularly shewn to Mankind there was no taking their Eyes off from this Will nor taking it out of their hands nor suppressing the study of the Greek language it was originally writ in King Harry the 8 th had received his Legacy thereby who before was but a Royal Slave to the Pope and the triumph of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was eccho'd round his Kingdom like that of Archimedes when he had detected the Imposture that had mingled so much dross in the Sicilian Crown 'T is true he retained the profession of several Papal Errors and such as he being vers'd in School-Divinity knew would still keep themselves in play in the World with a videtur quod sic probatur quod non accordingly as the learned Dr. Iones has observ'd in his Book call'd the Heart and its Right Sovereign that Image-Worship Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended on each side to the World's end Harry the 8 th therefore did in his Contest with the Papacy Ferire faciem and did fight neither against small and great but the King of Rome as I may say He attaqued the Pope in his claim of authority over all Christians the authority that Bellâ—rmin calls Caput fidei the head of the Catholic Faith. ' T is therefore very well said in a Book call'd Considerations touching the true way to suppress Popery in England Printed for Mr. Broome in the Year 1677 Whatever notions we have of Popery in other things the Pope himself is not so fond of them but that to gain the point of authority he can either connive or abate or part with them wholy though no doubt he never doth it but insidiously as well knowing that whatever consession he makes for the establishing his authority he may afterward revoke c. And so the Author saith p. 12. That Harry the 8 th for having cast of his obedience to Rome was therefore judged a heretic and that was look't on by Rome as worse than if he had rejected all its errors together He was a thorough Papist in all points but only that of obedience in comparison of which all the rest are but talk I account therefore in Harry the 8 ths time Poperies most sensible and vital part viz. the Popes supremacy did end in England per simplicem desinentiam The radical heat and moisture it long before had was gone like a senex depontanus it was held useless in a wise Senate He establish't the doctrine of his own supremacy without a Battel fought nor did any Rebellion rise thereupon but what he confounded with a general Pardon Many of the Scholars of the University of Oxford did mutinously oppose the introducing the knowledge of the Greek Tongue there and were thereupon call'd Trojans and others of the Schollars were as rohust and loud for that Language who were therefore called Graecians but by a Letter wâ—it by Sir Thomas More to that University and by the Kings Command which Letter is extant in the Archives of the public Library there the Schollars being admonished to lay by those names of distinction and likewise all animosity against the Greek Tongue and to encourage the learning of the same it was there at last peaceably receiv'd The day-break of learning
the Basilisc of the Papal Supremacy and notify'd it to the Nations of the Earth that England is an Empire that being the Style of the Statute of the 24 th of H. 8. c. 12. Viz. That this Realm is an Empire and that the Crown thereof is an Imperial one And the words of Kings and Emperours of this Realm being then attribued in our Statutes to the Monarchs of England and as the great expression in the Prophesie of Ezekiel c. 16. v. 13. is applyed by God to the Iewish state And thou didst prosper into a Kingdom it may be justly said that Harry the Eighth's defying the Popes Usurpation made England prosper into an Empire 'T was his doing that made him hors de page and 't is only the doing it that will make the French King truly so too For 't is only Air that any feed a Monarch's fancy with who would amuse him with an Vniversal Empire abroad till he hath obtain'd one first at home as no Man is to expect to govern his Neighbours Family who is Control'd in his own And like a Master who imagines himself great while he is feared by none but some of his own Servants so how little terrour did Queen Mary's Reign give to any parcel of Mankind but a few of her own Subjects of which the number that she burnt and made to languish in Prisons and such as left her Kingdom by migration to forreign parts would easily have kept Callais for her and prevented the ignominy of her Politics in losing the Real Key of France while she was finding the Imaginary Keys of the Church But 't is a truth not contestable That Queen Mary's Reign in which her persecution of her Subjects was so barbarous and such a scandal to Government That Dr. Heylin himself applyes to it in the Title Page of his History of Queen Mary that passage in Paterculus Hujus temporis fortunam ne deflere quidem quispiam satis digne potuit nemo verbis exprimere potest served only as a foile to the lustre of Queen Elizabeth whom all Generations since have called blessed and who was not more lov'd by the English then she was feared by the French and was offered Calice if she would but have connived at the continuing of the French forces in Scotland and who sent to the great Henry the Fourth a Mandamus to build no more Ships and had more money offered her by her Subjects then she would accept and yet as is said in Towsend's Historical Collections had spent a Million of Money in her Wars with Spain and laid out 100000 l. to support the King of France against the Leaguers and 150000 l. in defence of the Low Countries and discharged a debt of Four Millions she found the Crown indebted in Nay our Historians tell us that She payed the very Pensions that were in arrear in her Father's and Sister's time to divers of the Religious persons ejected out of Abbeys It was Queen Elizabeth who by all her Alliances and especially her Offensive and Defensive one with the States of the Vnited Provinces in the Year 1578. laid such a deep and sure foundation for a vast trade of the English Nation to be built on that it 's overbalance is said to have brought to be Coined in the Tower of London from the first of October 1599 in the 41 st Year of her Reign to March 31st 1619 being 19 years 4,779 314 l. 13 s. 4 d And from March 31st 1619 to March 31st 1638 being 19 years 6,900,042 l. 11 s. 1 d And from March 1638 before May 1657 being 19 years 7,733,521 l. 13 s. 4 d England alone by verture of that her Alliance having till the Peace of Munster 1648 enjoyed almost the whole Manufacture and best part of the Trade of Europe And it was but just for Heaven to punish in England the greatest villany that could be wrought on Earth I mean the murder of the best of Kings by suffering the Trade of England to have its fatal decay in that year 1648. For then I count our over-balance of Trade for the last mentioned Nineteen years had its Period and 't was by the effect of that Peace that both Holland and France and Spain cantonized the power of our Trade and the most Soveraign of our Manufactures Till that black year 't was to be ascribed to the result of Queen Elizabeth's politics and not to the conduct of the Long Parliament that England did as to Trade both do its business and play and as to its Commanding the Trade of the World did Sail with a Trade-wind and during that Wind it could not happen that any should meet us or overtake us in our motion whatever mean Pilots were at the Helm It was for the completing the last ternary of the Coinage that I mentioned the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or nineteen years ending in 1657. For I believe that both Astrea and Trade left our Land in that fatal Crisis of 48 of which the Mâ—nth of Ianuary produced the Signing of that Peace at Munster and the horrid Arraignment and Martyrdom of that matchless Prince 'T is therefore not to be admired That Queen Elizabeth's provident Ensuring such a plenty of Traffick and Riches to her Kingdom both for her own and future time she had what praemium of Taxes from her Parliaments she pleased accordingly as King Iames tells the Parliament Anno 1620 That Queen Elizabeth had one year with another above 100000 l. in Subsidies and in all my time I have had but four Subsidies and six Fifteenths and he said his Parliament had not given him any thing for Eight or Nine years England did thrive apparently while it was to Queen Elizabeth a Puteus inexhaustus But while it was such an one to the Pope was in a miserable and consumptive state as any one must necessarily conclude who considers that the nutritive juyce of the wealth of the Kingdom was diverted from cherishing its own Head to pamper the Bellies of Forreigners Deplorable then was the condition of the English Crown when as we are told by the Antiquitates Britan. f. 178. in the Reign of Hen. 3d. Repertus est Annuus reditus Papae talis quem ne Regius quidem attigit And when according to Matthew Paris f. 549 in the Reign of that King Anno 1240 it was complained of That there remained not so much Treasure in the Kingdom as was in three years extorted from it by the Pope But what is more strange we are told in Cotton's Collections p. 129 of the times of Edward the Third That the Taxes paid to the Pope for Ecclesiastical dignities did amount to five times as much as the People paid the King per annum One would wonder that so martial a Prince the Scene of whose Reign lay almost in continual War should be so careless of the Sinews of it as to permit so much of the wealth of the Kingdom to be mis-applyed and that too while all manner
Populum on 1 Cor. 7. 24. pag. 195 and 196 speaking of the Monks saith It is well known in this our Land how both Church and Common-Wealth groan'd under the burden of these heavy Lubbers The Common-wealth while they becamâ— Lords of very little less by their computation who have travelled in the search â—hen one half of the temporalties of the Kingdom and the Church while they engrossed into their hands the fruits of the best Benefices of the Realm allowing scarce so much as the Chaff to those who tread out the Corn. This profession is God be thanked long since suppressed There is nothing of them now remains but the rubbish of their Nests and the stink of their memories unless it be the sting of their Devilish Sacriledge in â—â—bbing the Church by damnable Impropriations He had before said they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Slow-bellies Stall-fed Monks and Friars who liv'd mew'd up in their Cells like Boors in a Frank pining themselves into Lord and beating down their bodies till their Girdles crackt But though it hath been truly observ'd That the not providing for the augmentations of the poorer Livings in England was a scandal to our Reformation in that it made so many scandalous Livings and consequently so many such Ministers and it has been in one of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments notify'd by Dr. Iames as Townsend's Collections mention that of Eight Thousand and odd Parish-Churches then in England but Six Hundred did afford a competent Living for a Minister And it has been publickly aver'd by Archbishop Whitgift That there were Four Thousand Five Hundred Benefices which are not worth above Ten Pound a Year in the King's Books yet the dispersing of so much of the Church Revenue among the Laity hath had this effect namely to engage the possessors of so great a proportion of the Land of England to be Champions against Popery and one other good effect within my own observation it produced in the late times when Tithes themselves were thought Delinquent namely that the Impropriate Tithes saved the others And the not augmenting the poorer sort of Livings the which mostly were in Cities and Corporations in the Countrey hath not however prov'd any augmentation to the interest of Popery For though the Reliques and Images and Shrines of Saints there that brought a concourse of Offerers and Offerings thither enrich'd those places and the Churches and had the effect of Staple Ecclesiastical Commodities and Harry the Eighth's abolishing them reduced the value of the Livings there almost to nothing they grew by occasion thereof afterward to be receptacles for heterodox Divines who seiz'd on the Livings there in a manner derelict and finding the Genius of Trading people averse from Ceremonies did represent the few and innocent and indeed decent ones of the Church of England as odious to them and therefore were sure of pleasing their auditors by constant declaiming against those of Popery that were so many and cumbersome and had caused so much blood-shed and were known to be Ceremonies both mortuae mortiferae And as Doleman alias Parsons observed in his time that the strength of the Puritans lay in those Corporate Towns and Cities there will the hatred of the Principles of the Papists probably for ever encrease I have for this purpose found it truly observed in a Discourse in octavo concerning Liberty of Conscience Printed for Nath. Brooks at the Angel in Cornhil That the Puritan Preachers by their disesteem of Ceremonies and external Pomp in the worship of God were the more endeared to Corporations and the greater part of persons engaged in Trade and Traffic who hate Ceremonies in general and what does unnecessarily take up time And that persons who nauseate Ceremonies in Civil things will loath them likewise in Religious as a man who has an antipathy against Muscadine in his Parlor cannot love it at the Sacrament And that if we reflect on those who did most love Ceremonies heretofore in our Nation we shall find them to have been persons of the greatest Rank and Quality who did effect Ceremonies in Civil things or of the poorest sort who did get their daily bread by the Charity of the other So natural is it for men to Paint God in Colors suitable to their own fancies that I do not wonder at Trading Persons who hate Ceremonies that they thus think God in respect of this hatred altogether such as themselves That Discourse had before set forth That 't is natural to Men who live by Trade and whose being rich or beggars depends much on the honesty of their Servants to be enamoâ—â—â—â— on that Preaching that is most passionate and loud against what looks like luxury and is apt to occasion unnecessary expences to them And therefore no humane Art will ever Reconcile them to one Casuistical Tenet that is so so branded in the Pope's said Decree of the second of March viz. Servants of either Sex may secretly steal from their Masters for the value of their service if it is greater than the Salary which they receive The Mystery of Iesuitism letter 6 pag. 80 cites for this Tenet Father Bauny's Summary p. 213 and 214 of the sixth Edition viz. May Servants who are not content with their Wages advance them of themselves by filching and purloining as much from their Masters as they imagine necessary to make their Wages proportionable to their services On some occasions they may as when they are so poor when they come into service that they are obliged to accept any proffer that 's made to them and that other servants of their quality get more elsewhere At the rate of this Moral Theology no Tradesman knows what Mony he has either in his Pocket or Compter or what Cash in his Closet nor indeed any King what Treasure he has in his Exchequer But notwithstanding the aversion of many persons of high Birth and Breeding and who are lovers of Pomp and Ceremony in matters Civil and likewise in Religious from the contrary humour of Trading Men yet is there one thing that hath and always will in spight of all differences in Religion occasion an entercourse of Civility between the former Class of Mankind here and the latter and 't is that necessity of nature that makes the Borrower a Servant to the Lender namely that the expensive former Classe taking up Mony at interest from the more frugal latter obligeth them to give the Lenders the respect of fair quarter And thus according to that Bull in Tacitus That in some parts of Scotland the Sun shines all night long there will still during the contrariety of their tenets and humours and which are as opposite as light and darkness occasionally arise a clear understanding between them And of the Redundance of Money the Puritans party had in the late times and of their designed employing it for the greatning the interest of their party the establishment of Feoffees by them for purchasing Impropriations is a great
instance Of their great progress wherein we have an account in Pryn's Compleat History of the Tryal of Arch-bishop Laud where he saith And had they not been interrupted in this good work they would probably in very few years have purchased in most of the great Towns and noted Parishes Impropriate in England in Lay-mens Lands And which had they effected they might have settled such a Bank of Land on the Fond whereof to have brought into their possession the greatest part perhaps of the mony Currant in England and that party without any but Silver weapons have acquired such an arbitrage of the interests of all others in England as to have usurped Harry the Eighth's Motto of Cui adhaereo praeest But though the Livings in these great Corporate Towns are so small and the value they had by oblations be evaporated every where but in the King's Books where it remains still to enhance their payment of first Fruits and Tenths the heterodox Divines there find Harvests of oblations rich enough and so will the Divines of the Church of England if ever a storm of Popish Persecution shall drive them there for shelter to be Pastors of the Monied Men and if the worst comes to the worst they will there find some â—at gathered Churches better then lean Bishopricks as perhaps some heterodox Pastors do now there experiment them and the ambient heat of State-favour that call'd out some of the inward one of Religion being abated they will probably grow more exemplary in austere vertue and thereby attract so much reverence from their flocks as to become Confessors as well as Preachers to them for so the Non-conformist Divines there now in a manner are and as Confession under Popery proved the only Guaranty to the Priests for their being paid their Personal Tithes and as then people at their deaths expiated their omissions in the payment of their Tithes by valuable Legacies thus too will it probably happen to the Ministers of Christ's New Testament and often to be Executors or at least Legatees in Christians Wills the very dust of whose feet is thought beautiful by all Men generally when their return to their own dust is approaching And the persecution design'd them will but reduce their state in the Eye of the World to look and be like that of the Primitive Christians who made the Apostles their Bankers and the depositaries of their wealth and whose Successors likewise in the administration of the Gospel during the following Ages of Persecution had good livelihoods on the Fond of Oblations And as for Tithes we hear nothing of them for many Ages in the Primitive Church In the Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Universae published by Iustellus the most authentick Book in the World next the Bible and which contains the Canons received by the Universal Church till the year 451 there is not one word of Tithes The Clergy were then liberally maintained by the free oblations of the people which were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And there was no such Proverb heard of in the World abroad as laâ—ci semper sunt infensi Clericis till there was another unlucky one Ecclesia peperit divitias c. and till the Goths and Vandals being Proselyted to Christianity exprest the natural zeal of new Converts by vastly endowing the Clergy 〈◊〉 Lands who had as I may say setled Heaven upon them and whoâ—e greâ—â— proportion in the balance of Land necessarily made them aâ—terward one of the Three Estates in the Christian World. And most worthy of Christian Princes care it was to endeavour to secure the profession of Christianity in future times as well as their own by providing that the Clergy should not be of the meanest of the people nor depend on benevolence which in the prosperous condition of Christianity might perhaps grow cold as under Popery the Charity of Oblations had done but for the Aâ—tifices before mentioned of Saints Shrines c. and Reliques and the fear of Purgatory Of the Oblations of the people here in England decreasing toward the Pastors of Independent Churches when Independency became the Darling Religion of the State we had an indication in the late times when some of the most eminent of them obtain'd the possession of great Livings and their Tithes and others of them retreated from their Churches to Headships of Colledges Nor has there been any failure of the return of the old Exuberance of Oblations from such Churches to such Divines who have again returned to them when they were dislodged from those preferments I find not that the Piety of our Ancestors had established any Revenue to the Church from Tithes in England till about the end of the Eighth or middle of the Ninth Century nor was the division of England into Parishes before the time of Honorius Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 636 till which time there could not be Parochial Tithes About that time as 't was said that the measure of donations to the Church was immensitas so was the modus of their Artifices to preserve them sine modo it being incident to humane Nature to be restless in the acquiring of riches for without the perpetual acquiring of more no Man is sure to preserve the Quota of what he hath 'T was thence that Sacriledge of the Monks arose that tore the Bread out of the Mouths of the Parish Priests by the Name of Appropriations which shewed the President to Wolseys alienation of Religious Houses that was the President to Harry the Eighth's And it may well be supposed that the Design of the Monks in robbing the Parochial incumbents by Appropriations was to propagate ignorance among the Laity thereby and to leave the Age as dark as they found it or rather to be able generally to let in or keep out what quantity of light they pleased Yet had those Appropriations been made in an Age of knowledge they would then have met with that Nick-name of Impropriations that was born many years afterward and it would then have appeared improper to all that the Monks should Muzzle the mouth of the Ox that did tread out the Corn and that old natural Zeal for Religion so anciently radicated in English minds that Popes have formerly complained they were addrest to with more questions about Religion from England than from all the World beside would have inclined the respective Parishioners according to their abilities to contribute a liberal maintenance to their Parish Priests and even in St. Paul's words To have plucked out their own Eyes and have given them but that they saw that devotion that brought the fore-mentioned concourse of Spectators and Offerers to the Images and Shrines and to the Altars there made the Vicars at least competently to live by the Altar And if that Classe of heterodox Pastors in Corporations who as to skill in Theology and the Encyclopaedy of Arts and Sciences requisite to Crown a Divine are generally but Images in comparison of the excellent
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
taught to know the Numbers of all people but our own But in this State of improvement that the World is arrived at I do account that all who shall hereafter employ their Pens about that greatest exercise of humane Wit and Judgment call'd History and shall not found the weight of their Remarques upon the Numbers of the People they write of will no more be termed grave Authors or indeed ought but grave nothings and such who deal irreverently with a World that is weary of trifles and from which they are to expect no other Doom then that of the Annales Volusi And though as to the faetus populi as well as to the faetus pecuniae called faenus accidents may happen that may cross the Rule of encrease in both Cases as in the latter by Bankrupts and in the former by Plague or War c. and thus once as to the Romans Censa sunt Civium Capita 270 Millia and in the following enrollment but 137 Ex quo numero apparuit saith the Historian quantum hominum tot praeliorum adversa fortuna populi Romani abstulisset as if he would infer that the losses they received from Hanibal had swept away 133000 Citizens yet do such exceptions but confirm the Rule the which may be made out by continued mean proportionals But this by the way If my Lord Herbert who mentions pag. 121 of his History That in the Year 1522 Warrants were issued out Commanding the Certificates of the Names of all above sixteen Years old had set down the total number of the persons certified he had much more obliged the World then by many things in his History I do not remember that any of our Historians of those times do relate the Numbers of the Religious Persons that all the suppressed Monasteries contain'd We are told by Godwin in his Annals That the number of the Abbies that were in England is not easily cast up and the Names of the chiefest and whose Abbots had voices among the Peers in Parliament he thereupon enumerates But Weaver in his Funeral Monuments p. 104 mentioning That all the Religious Houses under the Yearly value of 200 l. being given to the King and that they were all worth per annum 20941 l. saith That the Religious Persons put out of the same were above Ten Thousand My Lord Herbert p. 441 speaking of that sort of Monasteries being dissolved in the 27 th year of the King's Reign makes Thirty or Thirty two Thousand pound yearly thereby fall into the King's hand And p. 507 makes the total yearly value of all the Religious Houses suppressed to be 161100 l. It may therefore be thence infer'd that if Thirty Thousand pound yearly maintain'd 10000 Religious Persons that there were maintain'd by the 161100 l. above 50000 Religious Persons or Regulars And according to the aforesaid rate of the yearly value of the Land viz. 161100 l. the allowance to each came to somewhat above 3 l. per annum the which shews that those Lands were not sold to half the value because less then double that Sum cannot be imagined to have maintain'd such a person then I do account that supposing the Parishes to have been then in England and Wales as Cambden in his Britannia says 9284 that the Secular Clergy added to the Number of the Regular only the last said Number For then the Canon Law which requires that Orders shall not be given to Men without Titles being strictly executed there were perhaps not more Parish Priests in England And the adding to those Numbers the Dignitaries viz. Two Archbishops and 24 Bishops and 26 Deans and 60 Arch-Deacons and 544 Prebendarys and several Rural Deans doth enlarge the Sum to another Thousand of Persons who lived by the Altar Moreover there being then estimated to live in Oxford and Cambridge about Sixty Thousand Students who in expectation of Church-preferment as either Regulars or Seculars abstain'd from Marriage I account that the Number of Persons then ty'd by Caelibate from encreasing and multiplying the people to be above 120000 as at present above double that Number are in France What accrued to the Secular Clergy then or since by Tithes ought not to have been looked on by any one with an evil Eye as I suppose by Mr. Fish it was not For as to the nature of the payment of Tithes according to the judgment of Sir W. P. in his Book of Taxes and Contributions p. 58 It may be said to be no Tax or Levy in England whatever it might have been in the first age of its Institution And this notion of his may be extended even to that which is called a Tenth but is revera a Fifth I mean the Tith of arables in regard of the charge of Culture and Seed which is ordinarily at least as much as the Rent of the Land because it is a charge equally incumbent on all proprietors of such Land and for that the true notion of Wealth and Riches depends on comparison and 't is only the inequality in the proportion of the Tax that is the sting thereof But that which Mr. Fish chiefly level'd his Calculations at was the excessive share in the Wealth of the Kingdom the Monks and Fryars had who did so little for its preservation and the encrease of its Numbers What an infinite number of people saith he might have been encreased to have peopled the Realm if this sort of Folk had been married like other Men Instead of using his Rhetorical Expression of infinite I shall affirm that these 120000 adult able persons living in Celibate might according to the notion of the Observator of the Bills of Mortality That every marriage one with another produceth four Children viz. Two apiece for each Sex have more then doubled their number in the same age by which any one may well conclude that as the number of the people of England is now vastly encreased by the dissolution of Abbies so it would likewise be so diminished by their re-establishment To effect therefore to lessen thus the number of the people of England when the French King with great wisdom has by the Revival of the Roman Immunity of the Ius trium librorum and the application of others laid so a great Foundation for the growing populousness of France would too much expose us to his power and derision The Divine Wisdom's allotting to the Levitical Tribe the affluent quota it enjoy'd is very justly took notice of by those who discourse of the Clerical Revenue The Author of the Present State of England saith That our Ancestors according to the pattern of God's ancient people the Iews judged it expedient to allot large Revenues to the English Clergy and that the English Clergy were the best provided for of any Clergy in the whole World except only the Nation of the Iews among whom the Tribe of Levi being not the Fourth part of the twelve Tribes as appears in the Book of Numbers yet had as Mr. Selden
be affirm'd That all Monkish hopes of our Ploughmen happening again to be over-run by Shepherds are very extravagant and Popery will grosly err if it shall think that Poverty will ever compel this sort of men to the turpitude of taking up illegal Arms for it or that it can eradicate their innate hatred against it The Subsistence that the Plough afforded our Husbandmen in their Trade made few of them in Comparison of those of other Trades become Souldiers in our late Civil Warrs Nor were they then observ'd to favour those hyhocritical Religion-Traders the Land was then pester'd with Nor indeed can they who really Till and Improve the Earth naturally affect those who pretend to Cultivate Heaven and by necessity of Nature it must still come to pass that they who acquire their own bread by rearing it for others with hard labour will have an aversion against those who can subsist luxuriously by cheating others of it with easie Tricks and against any attempts for a Resetled Monkery which would after the mode of the Pyed Piper demand an unconscionable rate for trying to rid us of a few haeretical Mice and which too tho our Land should pay would yet depopulate it of its Children And here I cannot forbear to Observe That there happen'd one thing so momentous that it can never be forgot while the English Nation has a Being and which did among our people in the Country Convey a fresh sense of the Pestilential nature of Popery and of the encreasing Danger of its infection and that is that the Body of our Clergy of the Church of England did generally from the Press and Pulpit for some Years together send so many strong Antidotes against Popery round the Kingdom Every Pulpit almost from one end of the Land to the other did resound as I may say with a Seasonable discourse against Popery It may be with Justice apply'd to those Discourses of our Divines That they alarmed more than our English World or perhaps the Roman and that the World elsewhere did ring with their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I here allude to those words in the Epistle to the Romans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Their sound went into all the Earth and their words to the ends of the World. There is no doubt but their Sound was heard to Rome by the help of the Iesuits intelligence and that our Divines knew when they so Preach'd and Writ they had pass'd the Rubicon and that 't was in vain like Cranmer to try to be reconciled to irreconcileable Rome and that 't would be as much in vain in any Course of future time to use politic whispers in Commendation of Popery after their former loudness against it as for one who told a Husband that he saw such an one strugling to ravish his Wife to say afterward that he was a very Civil Gentleman Our Fanaticks therefore do by nothing more deserve that Name then by nick-naming the Body of the Clergy of the Church of England as fautors of Popery since 't was but of yesterday that almost all our First and Second Rate Divines did like Capital Ships as I may say one after another attaque the Fleet of the Romanists and discharge their Thunder upon them but as my Lord Bacon hath observ'd That in great Sounds the Continuance is more than momentany and that the noyse of Great Ordnance of which the Sound is carry'd many miles on the Land and much further on the Sea will there come to the Ear not in the instant of the shooting off but an hour or more later the which must needs be the Continuance of the first Sound Thus too I hope that the aforesaid late 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of our Capital Divines against Popery which has been heard far and near among our Countery Inhabitants and will I believe Continue audible among them during the hour of life will in part of that hour sooner or later be heard with regard by our weaker Brethren But what a Daemon then in understanding or God of Eloquence had he need to think himself and to be thought too such by others who Imagines to talk England both out of its Manna of Religion and what is better then its Flesh-Pots too and to persuade us by bringing in Monkery again to have our Land ore-run with Flocks of Sheep and to want hands to Work their Fleeces or as I may say to fancy to have Manufacture without hands and for want thereof to make our Sheep almost useless but only to eat and in that way too to be chiefly appropriated to the Stomachs of Lubbers and who would allow our Land Flocks of Sheep but not Dogs to guard them I mean a sufficient growing Populacy in the Land to defend both it and the very Flocks in it and I may add too who would almost make the Wooll of our Sheep useless but only to send into Forrain Parts and who would abdicate from the Land that benefit of the continual passing of our Wooll here through so many hands busy'd in Trade and thence fill'd with Wealth in the way of Interest upon Interest intended by Nature for the maintenance and subsistance of our People so multiplying as aforesaid and preparing Tables for all new Guests here let them come into the World never so fast and would have us Consent to the diminution of the Number of our People when for want of our being fully stock'd with them so great a part of our Land lyes fallow every Year as doth not in Countreys sufficiently Populous and where the Lands value will quit the cost of the Manuring Alas when through the Divine Blessing England shall arrive at the state of being fully Peopled and being got beyond Pasture that first improvement of a thin Peopled Country shall likewise have Compleated that second of Tillage that our being better Peopled will occasion there will lie a third in our View to employ the Labours of our Consummate Populacy namely that of Gardening and to oblige us that the Earth shall produce nothing but what is exactly useful and instead of going back from Tillage to Pasture we must naturally go forward from Tillage to Gardening whereby one Acre may be made to maintain Twenty persons whereas now 't is observ'd that 20 Acres generally throughout England maintain but a fourth of that number viz. 5. persons And when we are thus furnished with as many People as by Tillage or Gardening can well live on the Land 't is then and not before that our encreasing Populousness will push on greater numbers of our Inhabitants to live on the Sea which none will choose to do that can live on the Shoare and 't is only such a state of populacy that can naturally make us Masters of the Fishing-Trade to compass which all our Projects before whether by Acts of Parliament or Companies and Stock will be but Chymerical Moreover 't is only such a state of Populacy that will exonerate us of those burdens of
Ossat's Letters Part. 2d That the Republick of Venice would not suffer the Ambassador of Henry the 4 th to them thô a Catholick to be admitted to their Chappels with other Ambassadors because they did not know his Master to be reconciled to the See of Rome And Bodin de Rep. says That the number of the Inhabitants of Venice was taken Anno 1555 and was then in all but one hundred and eighty thousand and four hundred and forty Sir William Temple in the 5th Chapter of his Observations on the United Provinces makes one of the great Causes of the first Revolt in the Low-Countries to be the oppression of Mens Consciences or Persecution in their Liberties Estates and Lives on the pretence of Religion and it may be truly said that by their buying the truth at the Rate of such high Taxes as they now pay and not selling it either to France or Spain they have been no losers for many good Artists and wealthy Fugitives have brought their Persons and Families and Estates to them for shelter from the Storm of Papal Persecution and daily continue so to do insomuch that the Author of the Zelanders Choice in Sect. 3. Observes that of late years some of the Wise Men of the Reformed Religion in France being fearful of its being there utterly supplanted have required their Children by their last Wills and Testaments to leave France and settle themselves in the Vnited Provinces and in so doing they bestowed rich Legacies on Holland each head of any new comer being judged to add at a Medium 3 l. per year to the riches of the State. The late great late accession of Protestant strangers to Amsterdam hath caused many new houses to be there built and hath raised the Rents of the old ones a 5 th part whereas they are sunk a 4 th in Cheapside in London 'T is there that Men of every Nation under Heaven Parthians and Arabians Iews Papists Calvinists Lutherans and the Christians of the Subdivisions of all Sects do hear Men speak in their own Language and what they think most Musical to them the wonderful works of God. Nor are the Enemies to Monarchy to ascribe the flourshing State of Holland to its former throwing the Power of the State-holder and Captain General out of the Ballance of their Government Their breaking down the Banks of his Authority introduced the sudden inundation of the French Power among them that they had else been more secured against then the Assaults of the Ocean and not have so perfectly forgot the Art and Nature of Defensive War in their Frontiers and thô it may seem plausible that an Animal supposed to have most heads will have most brains and that Republicks are more apprehensive of their true interest then other Governments yet to the Reproach of such Politicks it appear'd that when the Regnant Faction in Holland were no more headed by a Captain General or State-holder and had thrown the poise of his Power out of the Scales they grew so vain as thô they had no Capital Ships yet to become aggressors in a Naval War against England that had Ships enow of that kind to affright the World and of which War the Result was the abolishing their great Navigation 〈◊〉 England from whence their forced frequenting of our Harbours still occasions their exporting more of our Commodities then we import of theirs But this by the way However so vast yet is their Navigation and the number of their Marriners that thô we need them not for our Carriers both Spain and France do and to which Kingdoms they have and probably will for some Ages to come have the honour and profit to be Carriers how much soever France is or seems to be fear'd by us and thus that Book of the Interest of Holland tells us viz. That the French have very few Ships and Marriners of their own so that almost all their Traffick for Holland some few English Ships of Trade excepted is driven by Dutch Ships and that when any Goods are transported from one French Haven to another they are laden on Board Dutch Vessels and that as to Spain that it hath so few Marriners and Ships that since the Peace between them and Holland they have used to hire Dutch Ships to sail to the Indies And therefore when I consider what that ingenious Author hath thus discoursed and that Sir W. P. in a Manuscript discourse in the Year 1671 2 hath Calculated the number of the Total of the Seamen who are Subjects of France to be 15000 and that a great and fatal diminution of the number of them since happen'd in the Year 1678 by so many of their then perishing under D' Estre in the West-Indies and that as the Author of Britannia languens saith The Dutch have at least 10 times as many Seamen as the English I shall venture to conclude that more then all the Millions of Mankind now living will be dissolved to Ashes before humanly speaking it will be possible for France to over-ballance either the Dutch or 〈◊〉 at Sea and whoever they are that pretend to fear the Contrary I think they do but pretend to fear it But at once to return to the consideration of the gain Holland hath from fresh Advenae and to take my leave of it all old Trades being there fully improved such new comers are forced to dig up a new Soile of Trade and Industry as I may call it for their subsistance and thus at the Charge of their Experiments the Country is enriched and many new Artists there bring with them their old experimented Arts and thus 't is known that an English-man from Yarmouth coming to be an Inhabitant among them taught them the rich Arcanum of the Fishing Trade and since they disused to pray to dead Saints in the way of Popery they have found living Saints praying to them to be admitted to live with them and have not only had the honour to entertain Saints but by being not forgetful to entertain Strangers they have unawares entertain'd Angels as the Scripture expression is and such who have proved tutelar ones to their Country and Religion No marvel therefore if the Learned Divine the Author of the Defence of the Zelanders Choice doth there so pathetically pronounce his opinion that if ever the Protestant Religion shall leave Holland that Country may be called Ichabod i. e. the Glory is departed from it And here I should be injurious to the Political Energy of the Reformation in England if I should not observe how vastly it has contributed to the encrease of the value of our Land and the number of the people and the extent of our Commerce and indeed of Commerce it self It was not long before the Reformation that the Kings and People of England maintained themselves chiefly by Sheperdry and the Kings and people of France by Tillage and their great improvement in Manufacture bears Date but from Harry the 4 ths time The great
after his manner with the fewness of our people and saith How insolent soever the English are they must confess that all the Brittish Islands laid together do not equal the half of our Continent either in extent c. or number of Men in Wealth in Valour Industry and Vnderstanding Mr. Iames Howel in his Londinopolis Printed Anno 1657 saith That in the Year 1636 King Charles sending to the Lord Major of London to make a Scrutiny of what Roman Catholicks there were in London he took occasion thereby to make a Cense of all the people and that there were of Men Women and Children above 7 hundred thousand that lived within the Barrs of his Iurisdiction alone and this being 21 years ago 't is thought by all probable computation that London hath more now by a third part then it had then In his Parallel of London there with other great Cities in the World he observes that the weekly Bills of Mortality in Amsterdam come but to about 60 a week whence saith he It may be inferr'd that London is about 5 times as populous more dying in a week commonly in London then 300. And as to the quantity of the people in London there is no doubt to be made but that if in the year 1636 there lived 700,000 within the Barrs of the Lord Majors Iurisdiction there lived then so many more in the other Parishes within the Bills of Mortality and that there live in this year within the Bills of Mortality more then double the number that did in the year 1636 and at that Rate their number would now amount to near two Millions But I am to suspect that there was no such return of any Cense of the people within the Barrs of the Lords Majors Iurisdiction in the year 1636 as is before mentioned and do suppose that Mr. Howel did in that point mistake partly for that I think him mistaken in his Allegation before as to the people of Paris being returned as above a Million of Souls at the last Câ—nse made there and do as to their number give more credit to the Bishop of Rhodes who in his History of Harry the 4 th written since the year 1660 saith in part 2d That there were in Paris when 't was block'd up only 200000 persons and that there were then retired thence 100000 of the Inhabitants so that in those times there were no more then 300,000 Souls in Paris whereas 't is now believed there are twice as many and partly because I find it mentioned by the curious Observator on the Bills of Mortality p. 113 and 114. That Anno 1631 Ann. 7. Caroli 1. The number of Men Women and Children in the several Wards of London and Liberties taken in August 1631. by special Command of the Lords of his Majesties Privy-Council came in all but to 130178 and finally because the said curious Observator for that name I give that Author after my Lord Chief Iustice Hales hath given or adjudged it to him in his Origination of Mankind having by rational Calculations proved that their dyes within the Bills of Mortality a thirtieth part or one in thirty yearly and that there dyes ordinarily there 22000 per Annum that if there were there according to Howel a Million and an half of people it would follow that there must dye but 1 out of 70 per Annum and that they must live one with another 70 years There is an ingenious Author and that is the Author of the present State of England who tells us in his 2 d part That in 1588 there went forth from the Queen Commissions to Muster in all parts of England all Men that were of perfect Sence and Limbs from the Age of 16 to 60 except Noblemen Clergy-men Vniversity Students Lawyers Officers and such as had any publick charges leaving only in every Parish so many Husbandmen as were sufficient to Till the Ground In all those Musters there were then numbred three Millions but of those fit for War about 600,000 I would scarce desire better Evidence for an Opinion that the people of England were in all 12 Millions then that 3 Millions of Males between 16 and 60 were then returned for the said Observator having by Calculation assured us that there are about as many Females as Males and about as many people under the Age of 16 as are above it the said opinion would stand firm and unshaken There is too another Author who much enlargeth the number of the people of England and that is Gerard Matynes in his Lex Mercatoria first Printed in the year 1622 and there in Cap. 46. he makes them to be 16 Millions and 800,000 but any one will hardly take his word for it who considers that he there makes the people of Scotland to be 9 Millions who are but about one Million and reckons 5500 Parishes in Ireland where there were never more then 2 thousand 2 hundred Parishes But 't is the fate of Nations to have their numbers sometimes inconsiderately Assigned by considerable Authors and thus it happened particularly to France from an error of Campanella who in his discourse of the Spanish Mochy C. 24. saith that France hath in it 27000 Parishes and 100 and 50 Millions of Souls At this rate there would be in the Parishes in France one with another 5555 Souls whereas Sir W. P. in a Manuscript discourse of his saith That a substantial Author in his Treatise concerning France sets it down as an extraordinary Case if a Parish in France hath in it 600 Souls We have too an Author of great Vogue for the Politicks Sir Robert Cotton who in his Abstract of the Records of the Tower touching the Kings Revenue hath these words viz. That London which is not the 24th part in people of the Kingdom had in it found above 800,000 by a late enquiry by the Order of the late Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth But so far have we been from enabling our Political Writers to satisfie themselves in the Numbers of our People that we have not done it yet as to the very Numbers of Parishes wherein Blunt tells us in his Law Lexicon that our Authors differ and we generally reckon them as they were before many new ones have been built One late writer has accounted the Parishes in England and Wales to be 10260 and Mr. Adams sayes in his Villare Anglicum p. 408. That he is of opinion that there are about 1500 Parishes in England and Wales not valued in the Kings Books and of which he can get no account so as to make the same perfect and 't will be difficult for him to do it unless the several persons concern'd in the particulars give an account of it Cambden in his Britannia Printed Anno 1607 when he reckons the Parish Churches in the Bishoprick of Durham and in Northumberland to be 118 adds praeter sacella plurima and saith in Yorkshire Parishes besides Chappels and Parishes to which many Chappels are
in that Quarter to put an end to that which begins in Nomine Domini and that they will not be the rather willing so to do in regard that the North made the World feel the Malignity of both those Proverbs by its old well-meant charity to the Bishops of Rome And since in the days of Popery here in Harry the 8th's time it did pass in Rem Iudicatam that the Pope had no more power over us by the Scripture then any other forrain Bishop it cannot now but seem ridiculous to scruple whether he can thence claim more authority here than any other forrain Prince and he who was exploded here formerly when the Critical Spectators were not so many for having ill acted the part of a King on our stage of the World would be thought mad for personating one after the Play is over Thus too in a less people World Bartolus the famous Lawyer pronounced it to be Haeresie to deny the German Emperor to be King of the Vniverse the which any one would now account Madness to affirm And if in France hundreds of Years ago its Monarch greeted the Pope with the terms of fatuus amens for claiming a Supremacy in Temporals there 't is impossible he can be otherwise thought there now prosecuting a claim to Supremacy in things Ecclesiastic for even his pretensions to that the Clergy of France have damned in their Declaration by setting a General Council above him and which Declaration the great Monarch hath there ratify'd by a perpetual and irrevocable Edict And 't is but with a Consonancy to the nature of things that the Papal Infallibility should be concluded against in that Declaration and since as the Author of the Policy of the Clergy of France relates the Roman Catholick Church there doth so much swarm with New Phil sophers there call'd Cartesians and Gassendists whose new Philosophy has been there by Zealous Catholics observ'd to have ruin'd the mystery of the Real Presence for so the words are in that Book 't is no wonder if the growth of the Messieurs les scavants encreasing with the Populacy of that Realm makes any man's belief of his infallibility pass for a degree of madness accordingly as Mr. Hobbes Chap. 8. Of Man well observes that excessive opinion of a man 's own self for Divine Inspiration and Wisdome becomes distraction and giddiness and this probably may be the final result there of the late fermentation about the Regalia c. and the Pope be tacitly thought so as aforesaid and his Power there insensibly evaporate and without any visible distrubance given to it by the ratio ultima Regum for no prudent person would declaim reproachfully against any of a quiet Phrensy or molest and vex such a one tho living near him and would much less project the disgrace or mischief of such an one living at a great distance tho he should assume to himself bigger Titles than ever the Kings of India or Persia did and call himself Son of the Sun or Lord of the Sea and Land or like some of the Roman Emperors challenge Divinity or be styled Dominus Deus noster Papa And thus may the Pope quietly go on longer to call himself Monarch of the World without being call'd Names for it in France just as the Dukes of Savoy style themselves Kings of Cyprus without any gainsaying from the Turk who likewise did not menace the Pope for causing the Brother of the Vice-Roy of Naples to be in Rome proclaim'd King of Ierusalem nor when that Gentleman in Requital of that favour from his Holiness caused the Pope to be in Naples proclaimed Caliph of Bandas was the Mogul aggrieved thereby And thus probably too will the Enthusiast's who assert a Millennium or Universal Reign of Christ on earth with that quietness and gentleness that the ancient Fathers before the first Nicene Council did pass off the Stage of the World but it will seem ridiculous not to bind such Fifth Monarchy Men in Chains as Mad-men who have in England and Germany endeavoured to biâ—d Kings so and Nobles with Fetters of Iron and who would again make Convulsions in the State by the Diseases of their minds as once Mahomet's Epileptic Fits shook the World and who by promising us a new Heaven and a new Earth would confound the old and only give us a new Hell broke loose But the World will not now be blunder'd into Confusion by such wild Reformers In the Book of the Apocalypse of which Bodin tells us in his Methodus ad facilem Historiarum Cognitionem that Calvin's Opinion being ask'd he answer'd Se penitùs ignorare quid velit tam obscurus scriptor it must be confessed that the Majesty of the Style is agreeable to that of the rest of the holy Text and that the predictions of the future State of the Church and of its splendor in the World are not grosso modo utter'd or attended with any irregularity but on the contrary that God appears there as the God of Order and applying all the exactness of proportion and number and its very fractions to the great things foretold After one Verse hath accounted the number of the Beast to be 666 the next mentions St. Iohn's Vision of a Lamb standing on Mount Sion and with him an hundred forty and four thousand The Bodies of the Witnesses are mentioned to be unburied three days and an half The 4 Angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour and a day and a Month and a Year for to sâ—ay the third part of Men. The Woman was to be in the Wilderness 1260 days and to be nourished there for a time and times and half a time Blood came out of the Wine-Press by the space of 1600 Furlongs There were Seal'd of all the Tribes of Israel 144000. And in the State of Babylon mentioned in Cap. 18th where the voice from Heaven is heard Come out of her my People though all the various Sects of Religion that thrust one another into Babylon will admit of no proportion in their revenge yet it is there say'd Reward her even as she rewarded you and double unto her double according to her works in the Cup which she hath filled fill to her double But near the end of that Book where the great Scene of The New Heaven and the New Earth opens and the Vision of the New Ierusalem is described a Golden Rod was given the Angel to measure the City and the Measures thereof are particularized And tho I pretend not to understand the meaning of any of these obscure passages of Scripture yet one thing seems to me there as Conspicuous as the Meridian Light namely That as the Divine Providence did found the Old World in Number Weight and Measure so it likewise will the foretold New One. The exactness of the Numbers described by St. Iohn in that Prophetick Book written in the Island of Pathmos hath assured us that his imagination was much above the Vapors that
the being of a Deity saith Nec sanè multum interest uâ—rum id neget an Deos omni procuratione atque actione privet mihi enim qui nihil agit esse omnino non videtur He there moreover acquaints us with the origine of the word Superstition saying that Non enim Philosophi verùm etiam Majores nostri superstitionem à Religione separaverunt nam qui totos Dies precabantur immolabant ut sui liberi sibi superstites essent superstitiosi sunt appellati quod nomen patuit posleà latiùs qui autem omnia quae ad Deorum Cultum pertinerent diligenter pertractarent tanquam relegerent sunt dicti Religiosi ex religendo c. But those things that those antient Heathens carefully discriminated many Modern Christians as carefully Confound namely Superstition and Religion and by the innate pride of Humane Nature leading men to worship the Gods that they make rather then the God that made them and which enslaved the ancient Jews almost with a Continuando to the Adoration of stocks and stones and to the neglect of the worshiping the God that delivered them from the House of Bondage degenerate Christians adore the Births of Religion in their own fancies and having there Model'd a Deity do Act over the old Superstition with Anxious wishes and Formal Prayers that those their monstrous Births may out-live them and do outgo all examples of the heathen World in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immolating Nations by War to those Children of their imagination and thus Popish Superstition within our Memory turn'd Ireland into one Akeldama and Enthusiastick Superstition converted England into another and as Lipsius tells us that the gladiatory Combats did in some one Month cost Europe 30000 mens lifes to divert the old Romans so fanatical have some that call themselves Protestants been as to afford sport and diversion to the new Romanists and even the very Iesuits by Superstition having made so many of us Gladiators against one another and as if we were Brute Animals we give them the recreation of seeing us like Cocks attacking each other with the keenest anger when they please and give the Arbitrary Power to the Iesuits to make our Land their Cock-Pit But the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of the superstition of Popery here being come and the worst thing in Popery being its Fanaticism and Holy Church being the great Asylum of that as our Learned Dr. Stilling fleet hath taught the World in his Book of the Fanaticism of the Church of Rome 't is in vain for Popery or Jesutisme to save-themselves from the blow of Fate by standing behind Presbytery The Conclusum est contra Manichaeos before mention'd that is now the Vox populi doth with its full cry pursue Presbytery as well as Popery for the making duo summa Principia in States and Kingdoms and claiming an Ecclesiastick Power immediately derived from Christ and not dependant on the Civil and 't is in vain for any Principle that an awaken'd World pursues as a Cheat to try to save it self by changing its name There is no observation more common then that Popery and Presbytery that seem as distant as the two Poles yet move on the same Axle-tree of a Church Supremacy immediately derived from Christ and Mr. Hobbs his Leviathan might have passed through the World with a general Applause if no Notion had been worse in it then in Chap. 44. The making his Kingdom of darkness to consist of Popery and Presbytery The measures that the Genius of our Nation inclines it to take of things from experiment will Naturally Perpetuate its aversion from Presbytery as well as Popery For tho the Divines of the Protestant Churches abroad that are fautors of the Presbyterian Form of Church Government own not the doctrine of Rebelling for Religion and tho thus on the occasion of a Iesuite's formerly Printing somewhat in defence of his Order and alledging that several Protestant Writers had allow'd the Rebelling of Subjects against their Princes and instanceth in Buchanan and Knox yet Rivet the Professor of Divinity at Leiden in his Answer to that Jesuite saith that all other Protestant Writers Condemn that doctrine and he ascribes the Rashness of Buchanan and Knox praefervido Scotorum ingenio ad audendum prompto and tho the persons who in Holland and France live under that Form of Church Government have pretended to no authority from Christ to resist Soveraign Powers and that the Loyalty of the French Protestants hath been so signal under all their Pressures that D'Ossat in his Letter to Villeroy from Rome Ianuary the 25 th 1595 having discoursed of the horrid attempt against the Life of Harry the 4 th acknowledgeth Concerning the Hugonots il's n'ont rien attenté de tel ny contre lui ny contre aucun de cinq Roys ses predecesseurs quelque boucherie que leurs Majestez ayent faite des dits Huguenots i. e. They have attempted nothing of this Kind either against him or against any of the five Kings his Predecessors notwithstanding the butchery or slaughter that their Majesties made of those Huguenots yet is it too notorious to be denyed that that sort of Church-Government having in Scotland in the time of our former Princes been accustomed continually to hold their Noses to Grind-stones which was a preparatory way to have brought their Heads to Blocks and that Nation invading us with a Covenant the very entring into which and the imposing it without leave from the King so to do and much more against his Command was a thing that perhaps to the Associators themselves seemed illegal and contrary to the Petition of Right which provides against the administring of any Oath not warrantable by the Laws and Statutes of this Realm there was by that means a Coalition between the Presbyterian Divines of our Nation and theirs in principles of Enthusiasme and Rebellion Principles that our Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time here abhorr'd for in the Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by those Ministers and Published Anno 1605 the conclusion of their 4th Tenet is That the Supremacy of Kings is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it and their 9th Tenet is We hold that though the King should command any thing contrary to the Word unto the Churches that yet they ought not to resist him therein but only peaceably to forbear Obedience and sue to him for Grace and Mercy and where that cannot be had meekly to submit themselves to the Punishment and their last Tenet is We hold it utterly unlawful for any Christian Churches whatsoever by any Armed Force or Power against the will of the Civil Magistrate and State under which they live to erect and set up in publick the true worship of God or to beat down or suppress any Superstition and Idolatry that shall be
Coin in infinitum I mean its outward polity and denominations rather then that the Crown it self should be once more so fatally melted down by any of those denominations as formerly And as the Covenanting Divines of Scotland by at last consenting that some things in their Presbytery which whether tolerabiles ineptiae or substantially good I now enquire not should be preserved by Episcopacy's being the Paramount National Church Government have done that which would make it appear ridiculous for them ever again to attempt to replant Presbytery and extirpate Prelacy as formerly so likewise have the most eminent sort of our Presbyterian Divines who were associated with them by desiring since the King's Restoration to submit to Dr. Vsher the Archbishop of Armagh's Form of Episcopacy done the self same thing over and above their being then reordained by Bishops who had before received Orders only from the hands of the Presbytery and especially when it shall be considered that that Form of Episcopacy as described by that Learned and Pious Archbishop Courted them and was refused by them before our Civil War began wherein they were the Trumpeters and before three hundred thousand men were slain in England as Mr. Carew Reynel in his Book called the true English Interest Accounts the number to have been 'T is therefore with the justice of Fate that our old Presbytery too is gone among Pancirolls Res Deperditae and if it could be supposed that there was any Order of Forraigners whose avowed or known design it was by force or restless artifices and retaining Pensioners to revive that Government here in spight of our Laws I shall think the term of hostes with justice applicable to them too But there is another thing beside the Coincidence of some of the Principles of our Presbyterians with Popery that we have now too loud a Call to think of and that is that the great real part of the danger that we now are in of the inundation of Popery and its idolatrous worship is to be imputed to their having broke the Banks of the Regal Power and enforced the Royal Issue for the Safety of their Persons to be exiles abroad in Popish Countries for many years and where they might be in danger of the Poyson of Popery conveyed into them in the Vehicle of the Civilities they received from Popish Princes after they had been so barbarously treated by their Protestant Subjects who after they had by secret whispers calumniated them for being Papists here did in effect by the loud outrage of their Actions bid them go and be Idolaters there When I think of the cruelty in the late Usurpation they shewed to his Majesty in his being thus not led but driven into temptation by his Subjects I am minded of applying to it part of those words in 1 Samuel c. 26. v. 10. of David to Saul If the Lord hath stirred thee up against me let him accept an Offering but if they be the Children of Men cursed be they before the Lord for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the Inheritance of the Lord saying go serve other Gods as to the meaning of which words I shall consult no Commentators among the Critics but shall rather take it from the Assemblies Notes and I may say that in their Comment on it they write their own Commentaries and they thus à propos say I am now driven so as I cannot be present in the Tabernacle to worship God and enjoy those holy Priviledges but am forced to wander from place to place c. saying go serve other Gods that is tho not verbally yet really they have done it and as much as in them lies they have compelled me to Idolatry by forcing me an Exile to fly into idolatrous Countries c. It cannot have escaped the observation of a person so curious as your Lordship that among the many allow'd ways of Punishment among the Iews banishment was not one and the reason thereof is supposed among the Rabbinical writers to be this the Laws of the Iews and their Religion being the same thing to have banished men from their Country and the benefits of its municipal or Civil Law there had been to have banish'd them from their Religion and the means of their salvation and from doing with the Iews were so averse that even the Excommunicate among them were not removed from all parts of the Temple and were admitted there to a peculiar place But this cruelty to Souls unknown even among the stiff-neck'd hard hearted Iews was by such Christians as pretended to the greatest tenderness of Conscience practised toward their Soveraign and that to such a degree that as if they designed that the Lords Annointed the Breath of our Nostrils should be only in the infectious Air of Popery after they had exiled him from his own Protestant Realms they effected by the power of the prevalent Faction in Holland that he and his R. H's and their Adherents should be banish'd thence also nay out of France where the Air was less infected with Popery into one more pestilential I mean into the Dominions of Spain If therefore there is any number of men in these Realms that owns the old Scotch Plat-form or Presbytery and the former Methods to advance it here who shall be excessive in aggravating our danger of Popery I shall think that herein they practise a great deal of Self-denial and do not consult their own rest while they disturb that of the World and are of all men the most obliged to speak softly of that Subject But more then enuf hath been said to argue the paucity of the number of such in England The Bishops Survey of the number of the perverse Opiners in Religion mentions that two or three are called Self-willers professedly and by that number of that Sect for ought I know may be meant so many of the lovers of the old Plat-form and no name can better fit any who would maintain the Garrison of an opinion after their Commanders have slighted it then Self-willers But so much gratitude doth Popery now shew to Presbytery and to those who are call'd Presbyterians that because they magnifie and enlarge the Numbers of the Papists on all occasions the Papists do the like for them And because 't is now the mode of many timid Protestants to value themselves upon their Timidity's and on the fear of the Papists and their numbers being falln upon them as if Christ who commanded his little Flock not to fear could be pleased with his great Flock of Protestants here being in continual fear of Antichrists little one I shall now entertain your Lordship with an Account of the present number of the Papists here and some little historical Glanses about the gradual decrease thereof in this Realm in several conjunctures of time since the Reformation and in every one of which the highest tide of their numbers hath been but introductive to their lowest Ebb. Of all Nations the
you are bold to brag that at this present there are within the Realm more Catholicks and Catholick Priests then there were forty years since Math. Kellison in his Survey in the Epist. dedic almost at the latter end They afterward in their Supplication use the word Catholickly affected to make it comprehensive of both parts of Parsons his distinction of Papists more open and close and therein have the honour of the Invention of the Phrase of Popishly affected that hath so much gall'd them since and at this day continues to do and I shall accord with them that the Number of Papists or of Popishly affected was apparently grown great in the juncture of time after King Iames came here to the Crown but 't is not deniable that after the Epoche of the Gun-powder-Treason it did more sensibly decrease for they cannot say that by the intended blow from the Gun powder they designed to make him Catholick in order to make him continue a King. The Dean of Bangor in his excellent Sermon in Print and Preached at St. Martins on the 5 th of November 1678. Speaking p. 29 of the Conspirators in the Gun-powder-Treason saith judiciously For the Number I believe the design it self was known to few but that there was a design was known to many more King James himself tells us so in his works p. 291. A great number of my Popish Subjects of all Ranks and Sorts both Men and Women as well within as without the Country had a confused Notion and obscure knowledge that some great thing was to be done in that Parliament for the Weal of the Church tho for Secresies sake they were not to be acquainted with the particulars And no doubt but that great Number took occasion to slip their Necks out of the Collar of Misprision of Religion as well as of Treason thereupon and a vast encrease of the Numbers of the Protestants was thereby occasioned But there afterward appeared another Conjuncture of time in which the Catholickly affected did in his Reign multiply in the which however implicit faith could never come so much in fashion but that as Gondomar observed in the Kings Chappel when ever the Preacher quoted Texts of Scripture the Auditors would immediately turn to their Bibles to find them Mr. Pryn saith in his Introduction to the Archbishop of Canterbury ' s Tryal p. 13. That the number of Priests and Popish Recusants enlarged out of Duress by King James if we may believe Gondomars Letter from hence to the King of Spain or the Letter of Serica that Kings Secretary Dated from Madrid July 7 th 1622 to Mr. Cottington was no less then 4000. He had before in p. 10. and 12. set down the Petition and Remonstrance intended to be sent to King James by the House of Commons in December 1621 where among other things 't is said That the Popish Recusants were then dangerously encreas'd in their Numbers and complaint is made of the swarm of Priests and Iesuites dispersed in all parts of the Kingdom 'T is probable that not many Papists except Priests were then imprison'd and it may be conceived that the Number of Priests who escaped the Net of Imprisonment was more then double to that which was took therein and that the Number of Lay-Papists was very growing in that Conjuncture Mr. Iohn Gee's Book of the Foot out of the Snare of 4th Edition Printed in London 1624. mentions the Names of many Romish Priests and Jesuites resident about London in that year and begins with the Bishop of Chalcedon and shortly after him mentions Collington the Titular Arch-Deacon of London and Wright Treasurer for the Iesuites and Smith Vicar-General for the South parts of England and Broughton Vicar-General for the North parts of England and Bennet Vicar-General for the West parts of England and the whole Number of them there named together with the places of their Lodging is two hundred sixty one and the number of the Iesuites out of that Total is 72. Moreover out of that Total he mentions only 3 as having been formerly in Prison in England and but one who was at that time in Prison At the end of the Catalogue of the Priests there he saith These be all the Birds of this feather which have come to my Eye or Knowledge by Name c. yet above four times so many there are that overspread our Thickets through England as appears by the empty Nests beyond Sea from whence they have flown by Shoals of late I mean the Seminary Colledges which have deeply disgorged by several Missions of them as also is gathered by particular Computation of their divided Troâ—ps when as in one Shire where I have abode sometime they are reputed to nestle almost three hundred of this Brood In the following Pages he there Prints a Catalogue of Popish Physitians in and about the City of London and makes the Number of them 27 and no doubt but that in that Conjuncture of time the number of Papists encreasing there were enow Patients of that persuasion to afford Livelyhoods to so many Physitians In that Book immediately after p. 116. he Prints a Catalogue of such English Books that he knew of to have been Printed reprinted or dispers'd by the Priests and their Agents in England within two years last past or thereabout viz. 156. So fortunate was that Conjuncture to the Papists then that the odious Name of Puritan was bestowed on any of the Magistrates that went to put any Laws in execution against Popery as we find it from Sir R. Cotton in his serious Considerations for repressing of the encrease of Iesuites Priests and Papists without shedding of blood p. 33. his words there are There is no small Number that stand doubtful whether it be a gratful work to cross Popery or that it may be done safely without a foul aspersion of Puritanisme or a shrew'd turn for their labour at some times or other c. In the Petition and Remonstrance of the House of Commons in December 1621 before mentioned among the Causes of the growing mischiefs here the fifth Paragraph assignes one what would make Popery very prolific with Proselytes here viz. The strange Confederacy of the Princes of the Popish Religion aiming maiâ—ly at the advancement of theirs and subverting ours c. and another is assigned in the 6 th Paragraph viz. The great and many Armies raised and maintained at the Charge of the King of Spain the chief of that League and another in § 8th The interposing of Forraign Princes and their Agents in the behalf of Popish Recusants for Connivance and Favours to them But in fine in King Iames his Reign the gross of the Number of the Protestants was generally reckoned to be ten times greater then the Papists the which is hinted in the Posthuma of Cotton who then said To what purpose shews it to muster the Names of the Protestants and to vaunt them to be ten for one of the Roman Faction In the
could not have been conducted so far as it was by any private persons the Book called Popery absolutely destructive to Monarchy printed in London in the year 1673. shews the danger of ordinary Magistrates intermedling with the numbers of Papists in particular Parishes by instancing p. 115. how when the long Parliament was first call'd Iustice Howard was ordered to deliver up a Catalogue of all Recusants within the Liberties of Westminster to prevent which Mr. John James a Zealous Popist stabb'd the Iustice in Westminster-hall and Sir George Wharton in his Gesta Britannorum saith Anno 1640. November 21. Iustice Howard assaulted and stabb'd in Westminster-hall It seems that Iustice of Peace as well as Iustice Godfry found what it was to anger St. Peter and so has that Noble Earl done I believe by some Papists murdering his reputation and shamming the Blood of Godfry on him in vallanous Pamphlets of which I hear that 32000 were dispersed in one Week and that it appeared at an Honourable Committee that no inconsiderable quantity of them was dispers'd by Celier 'T is probable that the time that was taken for discovering the number both of Papists and other Dissenters was most proper in regard that the Declaration of Indulgence visiting them as with a Sun-shine after the Rain invited them out of their Recesses to appear abroad visibly and as the words of the Scripture in another sence are To move out of their holes like Worms of the Earth And as if any man would give himself the trouble to essay the numbring of the Worms that are in the Earth the properest time for that his affected Curiosity would be after the Rain making the earth soft and the Sun then warming it had invited those Animals to come out of the Earth the which lye within a few Foot of the Surface of it so for the above reason was the investigation of the numbers of the Papists most properly timed I am therefore of opinion with the aforesaid Dr. That the number of the Papists was near the matter retain'd with truth and that their number is still waining and will be so more and more but in some accidental Conjunctures of time A late Author hath publish't it That in England in these twenty years last past 250 Families of the Gentry and 12 of the Nobility have quitted the profession of Popery And if any one shall affirm as some considerate Papists have done that the number here of secret Papists and who go not to Mass is as great as the number of the professed ones I shall say that the number of the people of England having been in this Discourse represented so much greater then it was in former Estimates the number of secret Papists cast into that of the known ones will perhaps signifie little more then the dust in the Ballance of the Nation Their Numbers that did somewhat encrease in the beginning of the Conjuncture of their petulant Insolence that went before the time of the Popish Plot as the Purples Small-pox and other Malignant Diseases fore-run the Plague did sensibly and suddenly decay by the change of the Air that the Loyal long Parliament and its Act of the Test made just as the Observator of the Bills of Mortality hath let us see that by the reason of the changes and dispositions in the Air the Plague doth by sudden Jumps start back in a very few days time from vast numbers to very small ones insomuch that presently after the breaking out of the Plot they took the advantage of the detection of the paucity of their Numbers that the Earl of Danby's aforesaid Prudence had made as thence to raise an Argument ab impossibili that they should design a Plot to turn the Tide of Nature in the Nation And thus as Men once pass'd the valuing themselves on the Charmes and Vigour of Youth do it for the Reverence of their Old Age and hope to be the better treated as Guests in the World for the shortness of the time they are to stay in it they did resemblingly too look big upon the smallness of their Numâ—eâ—s The Author therefore of the Compendium printed Anno 1679 tells us à propos p. 85 That there are not 50000 of the Roman Catholick Religion in England Men Women and Children and that agrees well enough with the Surveys of the Numbers of those of that Religion in the Province of Canterbury of the Age of Communicants and admitting the Total of such to be doubled on the account of Papists below the Age of Sixteen an account that ought to be admitted the Observator on the Bills of Mortality having taught us as aforesaid that there are in nature about as many under the Age of 16 as above it and with the making the Total of all the Papists in the Province of York according to Fuller equal to that in the Province of Canterbury the number of the Papists throughout England will appear to be probably near what the Author of the Compendium hath estimated That their Numbers did considerably decrease after the fermentation in peoples minds relating to Religion followed the Declaration of Indulgence and after the severity of the Parliament to Papists thereby occasion'd a convincing Argument may be had from the Letters of Mr. Coleman the which did confute several impâ—tations of it in Mr. Marvel's Growth of Popery to the King's Ministers better than any Apologies could have done and has enabled Fame to Trumpet them forth to Posterity as Confessors whom Envy here whisper'd to be Traditors and let the present Age see that their alledged Closing with Popery was but in the way of contending Wrestlers and not of friendly Embracers And no doubt then but the many Dependants and Followers those Ministers had and the Candidates for their favour and expectants of Offices thereby were then Enemies to all implicit Faith but only for what they thought the Religion of their Chiefs In his Letter to le Cheese of September 29 1675 He saith That the Lord Treasurer Lord Keeper and Duke of Lauderdale were become as fierce Apostles and as Zealous for Protestant Religion and against Popery as ever my Lord Arlington was before them and in pursuance thereof perswaded the King to issue out those severe Orders and Proclamations against Catholicks which came out in February last by which they did as much as in them lay to extirpate all Catholicks and Catholick Religion out of the Kingdom And he in his Letter to the Internuntio of the 5th of February 1674 5 tells him That the King had sign'd a Proclamation last Wednesday to banish all the Priests Natives of this Kingdom to forbid all Subjects to hear Mass in the Queens Chappel and at the Houses of Ambassadors to bring home all the Youth that is now out of the Kingdom in any Popish Colledges to prosecute all Persons as to their Estates according to the Laws which are so insupportable that 't is impossible for any that is reach'd by them
most vital part Sincerity hereby in danger to be exterminated For as 't is a thing well known to Merchants and Goldsmiths and Mint-Masters that if the Par as they call it or exact Proportion between Gold and Silver be not observ'd in any Country either the Gold will carry all the Silver out of it or the Silver all the Gold so it may be affirm'd too That if there be not a Par or Proportion observ'd as to Religion and Profit or Wealth either the Religion of a Country will carry out all the profit or Proventus of it or the profit will carry out or exterminate Religion I will not therefore here Prophecy that the World will never but say that it can never be fixed in a quiet and orderly State and free from the Importunity and Sedition of Hypocrites till its Present State be such that Men can neither get nor lose by Religion And till the World recovers this Golden Age namely that Gold cannot carry out our Religion and People us with Hypocrites or our Religion Gold the World will be but a great disorderly House and scarce worth any Mans being Monarch over it As the Irish call their last Rebellion by the name of the Commotion so some have happen'd to call the Present State of Peoples Minds in England which is so disorderly by the name of a Fermentation and this Fermentation can never be over in our English World till there shall here be neither profit or loss by Religion and that no Man shall be more or less Rich by more or less Combining with any Party to cry up or decry any Religionary Tenets or Propositions One would wonder that since Religion and particularly the Christian with its Credenda doth Crown the reason of Man and likewise annex by the exuberance of the Divine benignity a Crown of Glory hereafter to the Believers that any Men should for their belief of Propositions not contrary to reason and wherein the credit of the propounder was supported by Miracles expect to be rewarded in this World a humour that hath been regnant even among Christians from the time of our Saviour's being on Earth to the present Age and a humour that so poyson'd the Iews of old that they thought it not Tanti to have their minds freed from the slavery to Error unless the Messias would have deliver'd them from the servitude of the Romans and because he did not and did decline the being made an Earthly King when the Iews with their Hosannas were tempting him to it they Accused him Capitally for saying That he was a King whenas it was not he but they that said it and they put him to Death reverà because his Kingdom was not of this World and a humour that would not quit the Stage when the first Christians did but boldly still faced the World as appears by the notion of the Millennium having been so much applauded by all the Fathers of the Church and the Christians before the first Nicene Council But methinks from the Example of the Christians of old who did Ambire Martyrium to such a degree that St. Gregory saith Let God number our Martyrs for to us they are more in number then the Sands as if the work had been too hard for another Archimedes with his Arenarius to Calculate the number of the Martyr'd Christians and one Author accounts that excepting on the first of Ianuary there is no day for which Records do not allow 500 Martyrs at least and that for most days they allow 900 and who did ennoble the Christian Religion by shewing to the World an Example of Contempt of Death and even of Life beyond that of the Ancient Romans I say from the Example of those Christians who did in shoals dye daily for their Religion Ours may if they please be taught the modesty not to expect daily livelihoods from it and to account they have very fair play if they do not lose their livelihoods by it 'T is moreover observable that under the Iewish Theocracy Providence had then so ordered things that no Man should get or lose by Religon The Tribes had then their shares of the good Land by lott and the Levites only had that affluent proportion of the Proventus of the other Tribes that I have before Calculated and which would have tempted many of the other Tribes to have march'd over to the Officium and Beneficium of the Priesthood had not God their Monarch provided against that by the confinement of the Administration of the Priesthood to one Tribe and its descendents by natural generation But as to the notion of getting or losing by Religion I shall recommend to your Lordships reading a small Pamphlet printed in two sheets of Paper in Folio and call'd The great Question to be consider'd by the King and this Parliament c. to wit How far Religion is concern'd in Policy or Civil Government and Policy in Religion c. On the disquisition of which a sufficient Basis is proposed for the firm settlement of these Nations to the most probable satisfaction of the several Parties and Interests therein and subscribed by the name of Philo-Britanicus Who the Author of it was I cannot learn but do easily find by the Book that he is a Man of great Acumen of thought and that Matters of Religion and State especially relating to this Kingdom have been very much thought of by him and that the Author was certainly neither Papist nor Presbyterian and so far from being a favourer of the Church of England that he doth interminis make the publick Maintenance of the Clergy to have been the Bone of Contention in these Nations p. 8. and there saith It will be found to stand on the same foot with Abbies and Nâ—â—neries and their Lands and there further as a propounder would give all the Church-Lands to the Crown and the Tithes to the People and then tells us That all Fears and Iealousies and Animosities on the account of Religion will be pluck'd up by the Roots That Author in p. the 5th doth very acutely observe That Popery hath two Parts the one is that which is meerly Religious that is which relates properly to Religion or Conscience and which is peculiar to them such as the believing of Transubstantiation Purgatory Adoration of Saints and Images yea and the superiority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churchmen all which and those of this kind may be believed and professed without prejudice to Civil Society and as being matters relating to Conscience come not properly under the Magistrates Cognizance the other part is the opinion of the Pope's Power over Princes and States his obsolving the people from their Obedience his giving them dispensations to kill Princes and destroy them and allowing them not to keep faith to Hereticks and such like which as they are destructive to Government are truly no part of Religion but a politick contrivance long hatch'd by the Bishop of Rome and his dependants
for the establishing to himself a firm Monarchy in the World and therefore ought to be guarded against and punished by the Magistrate not as errors in Religion but as destructive to the Government The Author of Omnia comesta à Belo as great a Calculator as he would go for was yet but a Blunderer in respect of the Author of this discourse in which there is so much smoothness of words and plausibleness of notion that if it were possible he would deceive some of the very Elect and that too of their Established Maintenance But whatever the Sentiments of that Author were I must affirm that as ample as the Revenue of the Church of England shews if compared with that of other Protestant Countries it is yet so far from excess in its proportion as to ward off all inconveniences from the State of mens getting by Religion The over ballance of Land here was so much on the Churches side in the times of Popery that it was then in our Provincial Constitutions sulminated as a Menace to the Layety that in case of some particular Contumacy none of their Children should be admitted into the Clerical Calling for three Generations But how Nugatory would such a threatning now be There are few or none of the inferiour Clergy but might have in inferiour Callings arrived at greater Incomes and with less charge of Education and the most envied of our dignified Clergy might in the other two of the great professions viz. in Law and Physick raised their Estates and Families on better and easier terms then they now can And that the Men of the most eminent natural parts would be losers by Religion I mean by the Clerical Profession but for the encouragement of these Dignities we have an indication from the quality of the Divines in the late times who were generally so unlearned that Learning it self then seemed to have retreated from our Vniversities to the Colledge of Physitians in London Notwithstanding the great Sums of Money by the Usurp'd Powers employ'd in the Augmentations of Livings one may well suppose that all of the 10000 Livings in England except 600 needed for that was the number of the Livings in England as beforesaid averr'd to have afforded a Competent maintenance for a Minister the dearth of Learning and Learned Men still continued insomuch that the teeming press then brought forth few Learned Discourses relating to the faculty of Theology but what was published by Dr. Hammond Dr. Taylor Dr. Sanderson and some other Divines born and bred in the Sunshine of the Church of England And I do believe that in Holland the Livelihoods for their Parochial Divines are better then those that our Livings at a Medium yield especially considering that the Dutch Ministers Widdows have 40 l. a year paid them during their Viduity but for want of such encouragement as our Dignities afford for the Educating their Natives in Learning they are constrained as Mr. Philip Nye observes in his Book called Beams of former light p. 152. To send to Forraign Parts to men to be their Professors in their Academies And I account that nothing less then the hopes of being Dignitaries could in the flourishing condition of the Church of England make so many of our Learned Divines take up with the poor generality of our Livings which are such that the Answer to the Abstract published by Authority in the Year 1588 mentions in p. 27 That surely if a Survey were taken of all Parish Churches and Parochial Chappels in England I dare affirm that it would fall out that there be double or treble as many more Livings allotted for Ministers under the true value of 30 l. a year ultra omnia onera reprisas as are above that Rate And that our Divines in the late Times look'd on such a yearly Sum as an uncomfortable pittance for a Minister we have an instance in the Story told in a History of the late Times in Print where a Patron desiring one to recommend to him a godly man for a Living of 50 l. a year he then had void was answered That a godly man could not be had to accept of a Living of so small a value It is moreover a lamentable thing to consider what an Excisum hath been put on the value even of our poor Livings by the Simoniacal Practices of Lay-Patrons and in their hands the greatest part of the Impropriations hath been computed to be Sir Benjamin Rudyard a Famous Parliament-man of the last Age in a Speech of his in behalf of the Clergy spoke in Parliament and Printed at Oxford Anno 1628 speaks there of the Scandalous Livings we have of 5 l. and 5 Mark a year and Cites Bishop Iewel for complaining in a Sermon before Queen Elizabeth That the Simony of our Lay-Patrons was general throughout England and that a Gentleman cannot keep his House unless he have a Parsonage or two in farm for his Provision And how generally a Simoniacal disposition hath continued to infect our Gentry appears by the vile Bonds that have been so much by Lay-Patrons imposed on the Ministers they presented viz. to resign their Livings again to them at pleasure and it is for the lasting Glory of the Lord Chancellor that he hath in Court declared that he will on occasion Null all Bonds of that sort and no doubt but the accidental encrease of the poverty of the Gentry which hath tempted them to sell the same Land twice and to sell the same Living once will tend to the encrease of Simony Moreover when it shall be considered that the Case of a Minister is such that tho Lay-men are secured by the Great Charter from being punished for Contempt of the King's Commands otherwise then with the saving of their Contenement and Free-hold yet that he holding Virtute Officii is lyable by the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws even for those things that in the Layety are no offences to be deprived of the Free-hold that the Law supposed him as Parson or Vicar to possess and that he by the Artifice of the said Bonds hath had the benefit of his Free-hold in effect during the Patrons leâ—eplacitum and further that every New Political Conjuncture threatens him with New Subscriptions from the Magistrate and New Nic-names from the Mobile and that on any change of Religion he is sure to be put in the forlorn hope and that he tho continually thinking of Divinity which is his profession hath not yet that freedom to speak all his Sentiments of the controverted part of it which a Lay-man enjoys and that he is still exposed by constant thinking to prey on the Membranes of his own Brain to find Notions for sensless people methinks after he has all his life before been constrain'd to take these bitter Pills as they are in themselves none should repine at their being gilded for him in his declining age and if among Ten thousand of these twenty six shall in their old Age have the Revenue of Bishops
Office and for my part I shall never give my voice for any ones serving in Parliament that will not be willing to move for the discharge of the Debt to the Clergy before mention'd as soon as the State of the Kingdom will bear it Sir Benjamin Rudyard in his aforesaid Speech p. 3. mentioning the danger we are in of being upbraided by the Papists for being willing to serve God with somewhat that would cost us nothing hath a saying that I have often heard Cited in discourse as anothers namely He that thinks to save any thing by Religion but his Soul will be a loser in the end And this Notion of his of not saving by Religion doth fortifie my affirmation of the publick inconvenience accruing by the getting by it as to which I have so opened the present State of the Clergies maintenance in England as to represent them rather losers then gainers When 't is considered how many there are in England of the Layety who gape for gain by Religion and are ready to devour one another for it as well as Religion by it I am sure none can with reason think the Quota of the Clergy's Maintenance should be such as in the time of the prosperity of the State to render them losers How scandalous and how ridiculous nay how ridiculous by Poverty it self many of our Lay-Popish and Protestant Religion-Traders have been I have already evinced and do suppose that nothing can blacken that Trade in the fancies of the People more then the discovery of the Traders who must needs appear more odious then they who are the Mercenary Brokers for the debasing of Humane Nature by Lust since the Hypocritical Religion-Traders do for Rewards prostitute the Honour of their Creator and as much as they can make the Divine Nature subservient to the diabolical Art of their Hypocrisy Before the late Market for Converts in France I have not heard or read of any Nation in the World wherein great Parcels of the Layety have gain'd Mony by Religion but only in England I believe that in Amsterdam whereas Des Cartes saith in one of his Epistles Nemo non mercaturam exercet there is not one Religion-Trader tho yet all Religions are there tolerated Nor yet is any Lay-man of that Trade in Paris who is of any other And in the Policy of the Turkish Empire 't is provided for as a Fundamental that nothing shall be there acquired by Religion insomuch that all that Emperor's Subjects as well as himself being by their Law enjoyn'd to be able to practice some Manual Trade when any are call'd out to discharge the Office of Priests or Celebraters of the Publick Religious Worship there such exact Care is taken that they shall get by the exercise of that Office just so much and no more as they did by their Manual Trade for which purpose an Excellent Person who was the King's Ambassador at Constantinople related to me That he complaining to the Visier of some injury done by a Turkish Priest to one of his Servants the Visier deprived him of that Holy Employment and that the Priest being afterward sent to Petition to be restored to his place he answered that he would not being as well content to work on in the Mechanick Trade to the exercise whereof he was returned since his said deprivation But this Trade and sort of Traders that hath so long pester'd our Kingdom is now about to expire and dye a natural death and which it could not before be brought to do by a violent And as the Trade of sturdy Beggars the which is as much a Trade and as much conducted by Laws among themselves as is any incorporate one that hath the stamp of the Great Seal could by no Legislation be extinguished but would soon be so by peoples voluntary forbearing to be their Contributers thus too will this sturdy Religion-Trade have its Period Our Fifth Monarchy-men who thought to inherit the earth without giving sixteen years Purchase for it and who pretended to follow the Lamb wheresoever he went but really out of dreams of a golden Fleece are by all exploded The condition of Britannia languens and that too very much occasion'd by the former insolence of the Papists being understood at Rome will make the old Gentleman there think 't is vain for him to hope to be possess'd of the Abby Lands without giving for them many Millions of Pounds Sterling and the Papists here will I believe so soon penetrate into the present State of our Poverty that they will find no way effectual for the delivering them from the vexatious Prosecutions of Protestant Informers but the Removal of that decay of Trade and general dearth of many that has necessitated so many to be Informers and who cause them to spend upon under Sheriffs more Money then they save by not being high Sheriffs and which decay of Trade hath sunk a 4th part of the value of their Lands and which can never be cured but by the dissolution of the Religionary one and finding the Credit of the Iesuites Society crack'd as I have before express'd will find that their Iourneymen Calumniators as Mr. Sergeant calls them in a Paper of his I have seen must necessarily break too and it being found that not only our Enthusiasts are forced by necessity of Nature to desist from expecting any gain by Religion but all Protestants whatsoever the Popish Traders therein will be the more content to give over one of their Trades and the fare of them will be like that of the Associated Jesuites to march out of their Spiritual Corporations insensibly like the captious Scribes and Pharises in the Gospel of whom 't is there said Being convicted in their own Consciences they went out one by one beginning at the eldest even to the last c. Tho as I said no man in Holland doth get or lose by Religion yet since the Reformation there was a Controvery of Religion I mean the Armiminiâ—n one which made an extraordinary fermentation in their State and which Controversy tho Knaves there frighted Fools with as if it were stirred by the Remonstrants with an intent to bring in Popery yet the knowing few easily understood that neither side of the Question could produce that effect and they likewise understood that the profession of the belief of the several opposite Points of that Controversie among the opposite Parties there serv'd only as Ribbands of several colours to distinguish Parties that are against each other in Arms. And yet that very great Controversie in Religion which divided Holland and distracted our Kingdom in the time of the Royal Martyr and the substance of which perplexed the Trihaeresia of the Iews the Saduces Essenes and Pharises and likewise three sorts of Christians the Pelogians Calvinists and Arminians and that of old divided the Sects of the Philosophers and hath many years raged among the Turks and likewise among the Iesuites and Dominicans after its having for so
the Invention of the double bottom'd Vessel and a rude Description of it being sent me for News into the Country I easily guessed that such a Ship bearing much more Sail then other Ships must needs go a great deal faster before the Wind but I was not inform'd of the Provision that the excellent Artist had made against the danger of Divulsion it being obvious that in some Tempests 't is as much as one entire body can do to preserve it self against the â—ury of the Sea. This hath been the condition of Popery with its double bottom of Principles namely to bear a great wide spreading Sail and it has heretofore in a quiet World sail'd apace before the Wind and in fair weather but the Tempestuous Debates its Principles have raised here and abroad in the Sea of the People have made this old double bottom'd Ship of St. Peter in such danger of Divulsion that especially with such Pauls Marriners as it employs it can hardly escape I doubt not but the Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturb'd worshiping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the Blood of Christ for Religion being Mens Priviledge as well as Duty just as the Romans did account that they endowed any place with a Priviledge when they gave them their Laws they may thank their great Redeemer for being restored to it By the vertue of his Blood the Papists stand seiz'd of a good and indefeisable estate of Christian Liberty and they are bought with a Price and are therefore not to be the Servants of Men and one is their Master even Christ who is the Lord that bought them and they are therefore to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free Socinus saith he went on his Knees to God to find out the meaning of the 58th V. of the 8 th of St. Iohn And should I chance to over hear any one Member of Mankind at his Private Devotions and importuning Heaven to illuminate his mind with the knowledge of some point in Religion that he conceived necessary to his Salvation and acknowledging it to the praise of the Divine Goodness that excited him to the use of all means whereby to discover it that he had so far through the Efficacy of assisting Grace practised the Truths his understanding was possest with as to satisfie his mind that he was a serious Supplicant for its being the depositary of more I should be so far from wishing this man delivered over to Satan from differing for me in any controverted Point of Religion that I should think that if the truth he was in quest of imported his Salvation God would send an Angel to explain it to him But as to one part of the double bottom of Popery tho we should grant it laden with fundamental truths yet 't is notorious that the other is overladen with Fundamental Errors and such as are apt to undermine the Foundations of States and Kingdoms and there is no need of an extraordinary Messenger from Heaven to tell one embarked therein that the Pope is not to absolve Subjects from the obedience of their Princes nor to cause an eternal fermentation and inquiâ—tude in the World through his Kingdom that should not be of it at all yet being unbutted and unbounded by him in all the parts of it I will likewise tell any Soeinian that his great Master Socinus made such a double bottom of his Systeme of Notions that it hath forfeited its right to the Name of Religion by one Tenet complicated therewith and that he ought to throw that off and simplificare se ipsum Let any one if he pleaseth call the Socinians denying of the Trinity in Unity and Original Sin and the Baptism of Infants or the Divine Prescience and many other of their Notions by the Name of Religion but there is own of their Tenets that their Master needed no long wrestling with Heaven as a Supplicant to find out the truth of and which Notion when really believed is as pernicious to Crown'd Heads and their Subjects as the lawfulness of any ones sometime killing the next man he meets and that is that my Prince and I may not defend our lives against the next Invader who comes to take them away for as to that great Question An bellum offensivum vel defensivum fit licitum the Socinians answer is negatur which any one may see who pleaseth to consult the Themata F. Socini de officio Christi p. 7. Inter breves tractatus F. Socini and likewise his Epistle to Christopher Morstias p. 498. among his Epistles And thus let the well-willers to Presbytery call that erroneous opinion of their Church Government being founded on that Divine Right and the immediate Command of Christ and his Apostles a Tenet of Religion but to confront the Laws of Kingdoms in the settling it and to eradicate any part of those and especially to root the inheritable Monarchs Power in popular Election or Approbation and to make him but the Peoples Attorny and his Authority as revocable by them as a Letter of Attorney is abusively call'd Religion and is only properly to be term'd Sedition or Rebellion I have been so copious in insisting on the necessary separation of all Tenets that are denominable as Religious from those that are really Irreligious and Seditious under the gross name of the Religion in any Party as a thing perfectly just in it self and necessary for the quiet of the World and do hope that the Age that is so much addicted here to the improvement and polishing of our Language will incline it to do it self that right as not to give false Names to Things and Names of a contrary signification We know that the Standard of England in the Mint refers both to weight and fineness and tho a piece of Money may have the Royal Stamp on it engraven with all possible curiosity yet if it be not standard 't is so far from being allow'd the Name of any Species of the Kings Coyn that 't is instantly to be broken in pieces and as this is but just so is it but necessary for the quiet of the People who else detecting it would suspect the whole credit of the Mint as well as of that Species of Money and would either not take it or else with a Clamour raise the price of their Commodities for it And thus it is too a thing unreasonable and troublesome to the World for Men to Coyn false words or false denominations for any Tenet in Religion intrinsecally defective what curious stamp of the artifice of any Party soever it may bear its reprobate Silver is not to be call'd Religion and it makes Religion it self lyable to suspicion among the inquisitive it will trouble every hand it passeth to and from and in giving a value to it the People will raise the price of their tolerating it and
to be walked on in a Frost after a Thaw We are told by the Conformist in the Friendly Debate in p. 112. That he has heard some of the Nonconformist Divines acknowledge that they did not scruple what the Conformists do but thought it unhandsome for them to do it c. And the meaning was in plain English that they were ashamed to confess their error But if some of those Divines whose low Education conducted them perhaps from being Servitors in the University to domineer in their Cures and who through the Track of their Lives might be traced by the slime of their Pedantry and whose Trade was or should have been the Study of Divinity the Precepts of which and their fragments collected out of Augustinus and Aquinas as well as the example of the former obliged them to retract those Errors publickly that they had so utter'd I say that if they were yet so Picquez d' Honneur that they would not let their fallibility appear in Villages and even the falsity of those Principles of theirs by which as many Hundreds of Thousands here were slain as were bare hundreds murder'd in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary they have true Cause to think it dishonourable for them to restrain their Compassion from any high born Prince the brightness of whose great Martial Atchievements has dazel'd the Universe and will continue to do it when he is in the shades below and one who may say as the Pope did to the Iansenists that he had never studyed Divinity and they are very unfit to Cashiere him from the Church Militant if he doth not in the view of Mankind appear to make a Retreat at the Call of their Trumpet which has been known to give so uncertain a sound and such may be ashamed to dispair of his finding out any false Notions he may have received in Religion and to conclude that he hath not privately discovered them because he doth not openly recant them and to expect that after perhaps he hath erred in the Tenet of Confession he should yet presently make the World his Confessor about it and grant him nothing of the Guard of Honour in the Case but Monopolize the temptations from honour to their sinful obscure selves But as no man can take the measures of anothers Sins without taking those of his temptations so none but a Prince can know the temptations of a Prince Dic mihi si fueris tu Leo c. The like Pedantry therefore in the great St. Ierom was inexcusable as to that sharp saying of his Miror si aliquis Rex salvabitur and that Satyrical fancy of his hath since met with its Match by some that have sent St. Ierom to the Devil as fantastically for so I find it said in Dr. Donnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After so many Ages of a Devout and Religious Celebrating the Memory of St. Jerom Causaeus hath spoken so dangerously that Ratio 5. Campian says he pronounceth him to be as deep in Hell as the Devil Moreover I think it great injustice to any Prince who has changed his Religion of Protestancy for Popery that Protestants should at the same time be jealous of his retaining no tincture of his former Principles that the Bigotted and Jesuited Papists are jealous of his scarce retaining a tincture of his new ones and by jealousie too as cruel as the Grave as appeared by the fate of Harry the 4 th who because he did not and indeed could not devest himself of that humanity toward his Protestant Subjects that was riveted in his nature after he was absolv'd by the Chair of Infalibility and reconciled to the very Scorners Chair of the Iesuites yer merely because he had not a window to his breast through which every capricious Priest might look in at and might thereby put in what Principles he pleased they were resolved to cut one there and after Iohn Chastel had begun to practice his incision an execrable Apology for it was Published in which Apology Printed in Latin at Lyons Anno 1611. the Assertion or Head of Chapter 3d Part 2d is Chastel had no purpose to kill a King and of Chapter 4th there Henry of Burbon cannot be called a King by reason of his pretended Conversion and of Chapter 8th there Neither can he be King tho absolved by the Pope and of Chapter 9th Neither can he be called a King by the Right of Succession and of Chapter 11th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones are Juâ—e Divino Humano to be put to death and of Chapter 12th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones may be killed by private Persons if it cannot be done otherwise The Assassination of Harry the 3 d of France bears with it a Memento mori to any Roman Catholick Prince who will not be thorow paâ—ed in obeying the Precepts of Bigotted Priests against Hereticks and to this effect runs the Clamour of the Actions of such Bigots either you must go our pace to Heaven and Travel by our Mapp see with our Eyes and let us ride you when we will and make you ride over your Heretical Subjects or we will precipitate you to the Devil I mention'd it before out of D' Ossat that it was known at Rome that Queen Anne the Wife to King Iames had some inclination to the Roman Catholick Religion and no doubt but she was perverted to it in some measure by some of the Romish Priests who were then as since insolently over officious to tempt Princes to change their Faith and tho none of our Histories mentions any thing of her being a Papist or inclining to be so yet D' Ossat as I said relates how Villeroy supposed her to have turn'd Papist but our Historians unanimously mention one thing that she was designed as well as the King and Prince and others to be blown up by the Gun-Powder-Treason a thing that may give one who turns Son of the Church of Rome cause to say Mallem esse Herodis porcum quam filium No doubt but the mind of any Popish Prince coming out of the cool and sweet Air of a benign and rational Religion to that of such a torrid Zone and Shambles of mans flesh as the Doctrine of Popery presents will be oftener in his thoughts travelling back to that Religion then the prying World can know But the Gentleman my friend is not any way tempted in point of honour to delay his Return to the Church of England and he lately mentioning to me his wishes of the speedy Arrival of your Lordships Papers told me that possibly he and I should be both gainers thereby and that I should gain the Victory and he the Truth and that he would never account those Priests of Rome to be the Missionaries of Christ who if their Doctrine be refused shall instead of shaking off the dust of their feet in any house reduce it to Ashes and further affirmed that it were less absurd and extravagant to wish there were no Religion
Oxford Antiquities said to be Dr. Bate the late Eminent Physitian in p. 49 estimates That the Revenues of King Queen Bishops Deans and Chapters and Delinquents in the hands of those Vsurpers were almost one Moiety of the Kingdom besides many rich Offices c and as to the multiplicity of Offices then a very ingenious Pamphlet written in those days call'd the City Alarum with a Treatise of the Excise mentions in p. 33. That 't was easie to demonstrate that more then 200,000 l. per Annum was then consumed by superfluous Officers which by the way sufficiently shews the ill Managery of the publick Treasure in those days and tho I have put the rate of the Heirs of such above that of common Inexperts yet I am not without hopes that possibly some what like a sort of Experience that many of those Heirs have from the latest Histories and Traditional Accounts had of the breath of the People having blown away that mighty Ballance of Land out of the hands of the unjust Possâ—ssors and all their Models of Government built thereon and of many of their Ancestors who had by their Swords acquired ample shares of the Spoyles of the Crown and Church and Cavaliers Estates growing ashamed of their unjust Victories and the Yoke they have brought upon themselves and the Kingdom and affraid of their Estates and Liberties not being ensureable under a fluctuating Military Oligarchy thought it the best of their Game to aspire with their All to the feet of their Lawful Soveraign and to be his Restorers without Capitulation may incline a considerable part of such and who are not desperate in their Fortunes and have perhaps inherited the Blessiing of their Ancestors penitence by their Peaceable Morals to make such an exception in this case as may confirm the Rule and make them according to the expression before used become sound parts of the State. Another momentous thing cannot but be obvious to the thoughts of the Considerate among them and all Orders or Parties of men here that if the devesting the unjust Proprietors of about half the Land of England by the necessary Course of the Law at the Kings Restoration did in making so many persons and their dependants Paupers and useless in the improvement of the Land and many to be Nusances in it as troublesome Sollicitors and Barrettors and many likewise to withdraw to our Forraign Plantations and to our insula Sanctorum call'd Ireland unavoidably make the price of our Land sink to the proportion it hath since done that if any Sons of Belial and disloyal persons should be ever able by a new Commotion to introduce the old Confusions among us and dispossess the Proprietors of about half our Land as formerly that England it self would turn Ireland and our Land perhaps be valuable but at ten years purchase And tho the Experts now in being among us are comparatively few yet is the work of the Loyal part of them so easie to demonstrate to their Vicinage every where the dreadful inconvenience of essaying to mend the World by War that one Harvy could not more easily among the judicious propagate a general Notion of the Circulation of the Blood then may a thousand of these shew to Millions of others the impious folly of Blood guiltiness again incircling our Land and especially when all our Blood and our Treasure is necessary to be preserved for the Defence of the Realm in a Conjuncture that hath put Christendom in procinctu and therefore 't is but according to the Course of Nature that in such a season the generality of Peoples minds here should manifest such an Abhorrence of both the Irish and English in 41 and that the Religion-Trade which had us at its feet being now at ours if it should again struggle to get uppermost as formerly is to expect from so many to find the salute of the rising blow And as I love to think of these things without asperity or offering the least Violence to the Sacredness of the great Established Amnesty so do I observe the same inclination to be very prevalent among the weightier persons of the several Parties The smalness of the Number of Persons now living that wanted that Amnesty makes men generally concur in not esteeming it taâ—ti to wish it broken but tho most of our former Empirical State-Physicians are covered with Earth their Errors are not and People seem generally sensible that both the present and in likelyhood the future State of England will not allow of Political Physicians trying more Experiments on us and particularly the former churlish ones that succeeded ill and especially in a Conjuncture when nature is by necessity leading us to a Convalescence As in Boccalines Politick Touch-stone Where the Monarchy of Spain is represented throwing her Physician out of the Window and Apollo desiring to know the Cause of it she told him how about 40 years ago she asking Counsel of her Physician he prescribed her a tedious and chargeable Purge of divers Oyls of Holy Leagues of Insurrections of People of Rebellions of Cauteries and other very painful Medicines that had wasted and weakened her spirits and that he prescribing just such another Purge as before was therefore thrown out at Window so would such Purges and such Purgers as we were troubled with forty years ago be here deservedly dealt with now How ridiculous will any Demagogue now appear that should in an English Parliament harangue it against supplying the King in such a manner as Sir Iohn Elliot and Mr. Pym did 4 to Caroli who then as Rushworth's Collections tells us moved in the House of Commons not to yield the King Tunnage and Poundage till they had first settled Religion touching the Points of Ariminianism They might as well have moved that the King might have no Money till they had found out the Longitude and likewise discovered the Quadrature of the Circle and they by that motion would have ensured to him the name of Pochi-Dinari that my Lord Herbert in his Harry the 8 th says was given to Maximilian the Emperor for his famed want of Money But that wantonness of Popularity did shew the worse in those two great Demagogues of their Age for the ingratitude it carried with it they moving so in the House of Commons as they did so soon after the great Royal Concessions as to the Petition of Right and might well excuse the Great Earl of Strafford's then quitting their Company But I shall here observe to your Lordship that after the discovery of the Gun-powder Treason viz. 3 Iacobi the Parliament gave him three Subsidies and six Fifteenths and Tenths of the Layety and four Subsidies of the Clergy all which by estimation amounted to 453000 l. and it was but just in them then so to supply the Crown after the detection of that Conspiracy because it appeared by several Examinations That if it had taken effect an Association of Forraign Roman Catholick Princes by a Solemn Oath
we are told it in townsend's Collections very great masterly skill was shewn in Debates as to the proportioning the Taxes and particularly by those great Masters Sir Walter Raleigh Secretary Cecil Mr. Francis Bacon and when Cecil accurately Calculated in the house how much a Levy came to wherein the Respective Quota's laid on Land and Goods were mentioned by him and more skill was really shewn in Proportions and Estimates of the Publick Money to be raised then has by some Parliaments in this Age been endeavoured after or perhaps so much as pretended to The long Parliament of 1640. seem to me in their Taxes in London and the Associated Counties to have provided only that their concern in the Kingdom might vivere in diem but hath occasioned the disproportionate and immoderate weight of the Taxes in some places of those Counties to be perpetual And the prodigious Taxes laid on the Inhabitants of London during the War after 41 did not end with it insomuch that Lilly the Astrologer in his vile Book of Monarchy or no Monarchy in England Printed in the Year 1651. saith in p. 92. My proportion in the Ship-money was 22 s. and no more but now my Annual Payments to the Souldiery are very near or more than 20 l my Estate being no way greater than formerly In the Parliament in Anno Domini 1605. and Anno Reg. Iac. 3. there was passed an Act for the granting 3 entire Subsidies and six fifteenths and tenths granted by the Temporalty to his Majesty with the Reasons why granted and the great advantages his Majesty hath been to the Kingdom And in the Act it is inter alia said A first and principal Reason is that late and monstrous Attemps of that cursed Crew of desperate Papists to have destroyed your Excellent Majesty the Queen and your Royal Progeny together with the Reverend Prelates Nobility and Commons of this Land assembled in Parliament to the great Confusion and Subversion of this Kingdom The barbarous Malice in some unnatural Subjects we have thought fit to check and encounter with the certain demonstration of the universal and undoubted love of your Loyal and Faithful Subjects not only for the present to breed in your Majesty a more confident assurance of our uttermost Aids in proceeding with a Princely Resolution to repress them and to furnish your Majesty against Hostile Attempts both by Sea and Land but also for the future times to give their Patrons and Partakers to understand that your Majesty can never want in this Kingdom means of defence of your Rights Revenge of your Wrongs and support of your Estate They had immediately before said We do further think fit to add and express these reasons special and extraordinary which have moved us hereunto lest the same our doing may be brought into precedent to the prejudice of the State of our Country and our Posterity As hidebound as King Iames found Parliaments afterward for as I said he in his Speech in Parliament Anno 1620 mentioned That in all his Reign he had but 4 Subsidies and six Fifteenths yet their Belief of that Popish Gun-powder Plot fired the Zeal of their Supplyes and as I may say too made their Money burn in their Pockets and pass with speed into the Exchequer and with a Salvo to the Caution about not drawing that Act into a President c. Had I been in the Parliament that sate after the Discovery of the last Popish Plot I should have moved that the belief of that Plot might have shewn it self by works of supply to the King especially considering that the Protestant Interest was then abroad inter sacrum saxum and do hope that the belief thereof will so shew it self in any Parliament his Majesty shall call that we shall that way Expostulate with the quare fremuerunt Gentes abroad against the Protestant Religion And such a golden Age do I expect for the Crown from future Parliaments that I believe that nothing of Prerogative that safeguards the Kingdom will be ask'd as the price of any Supplyes and that as I thought it very absurd in a Country Fellow when he called for a quantity of an Opiate Medicine his Doctor had prescribed to ask angrily shall I have no more for my Money when as if he had had more it would have poysoned him it will generally appear as absurd on any Supplies to swallow up so much of the executive part of the Regal Power as would prove in effect destructive to the Body Politick We shall have so much occasion to come for shelter under the Branches of Regal Power that we shall not be tempted by any leisure to lay its roots bare And considering that even in Republicks both Ancient and Modern there hath been a Parenthesis of Dictatorian or Monarchic Power in times of War and that all the times that all the living now in Christendom are to be fencing with all the way in their March to the Grave may perhaps be times of War I may well account that the Sir Politics will every where appear ridiculous who shall trouble the World with Models of Republicks Agrarian Laws and Rotations and spending time in the contrivance of Ballotting Boxes and raise a dust in mens eyes with the Ballance of Land at home when we shall be forced still to look out sharp to keep the ballance of Power exact in the whole World abroad and shall think time better imployed in notions of the building great Capital Ships to defend our Interest in and by the Ocean then in furnishing such little wooden ware for a Fantastick Oceana and shall essay from an Oceana or Vtopia to introduce an Establishment of one Assembly only to propose and another only to Enact such things as the other shall propose a thing that an English House of Commons would naturally as much loath as to be tyed from eating any meat but what a House of Lords should chew for them and yet is this divided or double-bottom Supream Power of the two Assemblies by our Airy Dreamers made essential for the preventing the Divulsion of their Government I lately mentioned the proponentibus legatis to be the thred of Controversie that ran through the whole Council of Trent and he who reads all Father Pauls History of it will find that question to animate the whole and to be there tota in toto and as it were all in every part of it The chiefest of the Cardinals were the Popes Legates in that Council and they were by their Interest tied sufficiently to propound nothing but what should promote the Papal Power but in Book 6th 't is said That the Pope had advice from his Nuntio in Spain that the most Catholick King was much displeased with the Style of Proponentibus legatis allowed in the first Session and that the Pope excused it as introduced without his privity but that however he would not quit it nor have it permitted that every turbulent person there might propound what
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
employed to feed perhaps about 20 pair of the hurtful Carnivorous Beasts nay which is more that Heaven should permit such great slaughters of its little Flock to feed the very vitiated fancies of the worst of men as was before insinuated But who can without shame for depraved Mankind and a heart inwardly bleeding think of the result of the Popes Gift of America to the King of Spain where so many Millions of the poor Natives having had no promulgation of the Law of Christianity and were accountable to God only for the violation of the Law of Nature were so unnaturally murthered by the Spaniards that it would seem incredible that God having made of one blood all Nations as 't is said in the Scripture and there being a natural Cognation between all Humane kind as the expression is in the Digests they should depopulate that part of the World of a greater number of Souls than is now living in the flourishing Kingdom of France if that Famous Spanish Bishop Bartholomaeus de las Casas hath made a true Estimate of the Spanish Cruelty in the West-Indies namely that in about 45 years the Spaniards by several monstrous Cruelties put to death 20 Millions of Indians At this rate of murderous Mankinds thus outraging one another the World would seem to be likely to end before it was as I may say to purpose begun I mean the purpose of God Almighty But the thought of the shame of being outwitted by our Neighbour Nations and the fear of being outdone by them in strength populousness and riches and our certain knowledge as was partly before hinted that toward the latter end of the World by the growing populousness of Mankind we must naturally and without any eye on prediction in Scripture more and more hear of Wars and rumours of Wars and the shame of our encouraging a few Traders in Contraband Religions to hope they can ever destroy the Peace and Trade of the Kingdom again must supposing Heretics to be men naturally make the former Mode of killing them appear not more barbarous then ridiculous Sir W. P. having in his excellent Manuscript called Verbum sapienti made excellent Computations of the wealth of the Kingdom and of the value of the People and of the several expences of the Kingdom and of its Revenues and in his last Chapter there considered how to employ the People and with what great industry doth like a Noble Philosopher conclude it with these two Queries and their Answers viz. But when should we rest from this great industry I answer when we have certainly more Money than any of our Neighbour States tho never so little both in Arithmetical and Geometrical Proportion i. e. when we have more years Provision aforehand and more present Effects What then should we busie our selves about I answer in ratiocinations upon the Works and Will of God to be supported not only by the indolency but also by the pleasure of the body and not only by the tranquility but serenity of the mind and this exercise is the natural end of man in this World and that which best disposeth him for his Spiritual Happiness in that other which is to come The motions of the mind being the quickest of all others afford most variety wherein is the very form and being of pleasure and by how much the more we have of this pleasure by so much the more we are capable of it ad infinitum And thanks be to Heaven we have no Isthmus in Nature to dig through which yet by our many hands might be done 'T is but the removal of the broken Fence and bowing Wall of a Religion-Trade which we can well look over and easily see through as now broken and bowing and which is the more loath'd for having so long and so much debarred us from real Trade and real Knowledge and too from real Religion and this flowry Coast will be as free to the feet of us Northern Heretics so called as 't is now to our Eyes and we through the effects of our populousness and being necessitated to industry be secured from any fear of sharing in a Prophetick Calculation that might be called The Burthen of the North made by a late Author of a Discourse of Trade That the French without the use of their Iron will command all the Silver of the North and sweep it away thence by the over-balance of Trade But after all the Souths raillery on the North they will find that the Northern half of the World hath more Earth more Men more Ships and Sea-men more Stars more day and more light of the Gospel and I may add more good nature and frankness more bodily strength and fewer Plagues and Earth-quakes then the Southern And where most people are 't is no Heresy nor Enthusiastic Prophecy to say that there will in time be most Trade which appeared by England's not being afraid to throw the Die of War against both France and Spain in the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr As the over-balance of Trade is insensibly lost in any Country it is likewise so regained and in time will appear regain'd and like health in the body of a man of a strong Vitals after his being seized by and recovered from a Chronical Disease and of the time of the beginning and ending of which by unforeseen Accidents no shadow of a Dial or sound of a Clock could give the indication I shall assign an instance of this in our own Kingdom The Author of Britannia languens calculates 2,50000 l. per Annum to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years brought into England by the balance of its whole Trade in the World. Committees of Parliament have worthily laboured in several Sessions to model and draw Bills for the making us wear our own Woollen Manufactures and many who have writ Books and Proposals about Trade have very honestly endeavoured to perswade us so to do But as the saying is accidit in puncto c. an Accident too low for our States-mens consideration hath for several years caused England to gain more then it did by the aforesaid Balance of Trade viz. the said 2,50000 l. at a Medium for 76 years and this Accident is the general fashion of Womens wearing Crape And because I have conversed with none who has observed the effect of this Accident and which tho seeming small is very momentous and appears as many things in Trade do like great Weights hanging sometimes on small Wires I shall divert your Lordship by Calculating en passant what England gains thereby in such a way as the Nature of the thing will bear and may passable serve to have it done in A pound of Wooll makes 15 yards of Crape Each Female one with another may be supposed to wear about 10 yards of Crape in her Apparel There are in London probably about 100,000 Females that wear Crape It may be supposed that in all England and Wales there being
pieces of Linen Cloth of 40 Ells in a Piece and 4 Thousand 6 Hundred and 25 Hundred weight of Linen Yarn then were thence exported The Account I mentioned is as followeth viz. An Account of Linnen-Cloth Canvas Linnen-Yarn Hemp Flax and Cordage Imported into the Port of London from Michaelmas 1668 to Michaelmas 1669. viz. Holland Linnen Ells 764465. Cambricks ps 7614. Canv with thred ps 1856. Ditto with Silk ps 866. Holland Duck C Ells 1047. Packing Canvas C Ells 329. Old Sheets pr 42890. Linnen Yarn 1 6880. Steel Hemp C wt 1211. Rough Hemp C wt 1325. Rough Flax C wt 2731. Cordage C wt 601. Flanders Linnen Ells 598349. Cambricks ps 3601. Damask tabling yds 1093. Damask Napkin yds 2440. Diaper tabling yds 4387. Diaper Napkin yds 19974. Linnen Yarn l. 5600. Rough Hemp. C wt 1266. Â Â Â Â Germany Broad Germany C Ells 11783. Narrow Germ. C Ells 21172. Packing Canvas C Ells 407. Barras C Ells 3066. Hinderlands C Ells 1910. Sletia Diap tabl yds 16089. Sletia Diap napk yds 76198. Damask table yds 3148. Damask Napkins yds 11437. Sletia Lawnes ps 5505. Linnen Yarn l. 353690. Rough Hemp C wt 302. France Lockrams ps 23581. Vittry Canvas C Ells 6265. Normandy Canvas C Ells 3128. Quintons ps 1433. Died Linnen ps 557. Diaper tabling yds 7604. Diaper Napkins yds 33896. Old Sheets pr 2820. Poul Davies Bolts 50. Cordage l 15. Â Â Eastland Hinderlands C Ells 146. Packing Canvas C Ells 2491. Polonia Linnen C Ells 271. Quinsbr Canvas Bolts 1899. Poul Davies Bolts 90. Linnen Yarn l 9700. Rough Hemp. C wt 27251. Rough Flax C wt 5720. Â Â Â Â Russia Muscovia Linnen C Ells 256. Linnen Yarn l 3600. Rough Hemp C wt 237. Cordage C wt 30. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Scotland Linnen C Ells 1420. Linnen Yarn l 23680. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â East-Indies Callicoes ps 251986. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â That little sowing of Hemp and Flax here that hath been hath already met with as much encouragement as this comes to namely that 't is all bought up by the years end and in our way to the Manufactures of Hemp the above Account doth so far encourage us as to let us see that almost all our Cordage is made in England and since by some Accounts I have seen of the Importations in Amsterdam almost as much Hemp and Flax is there brought in yearly as into the whole Kingdom of England the necessity that will be driving us on to the Linen Manufacture will be accompanied with this comfortable Consideration that as 't is possible for us to overtake France therein so we may Holland at least in the making of Sail-Cloth in regard we may if we will have as much Hemp and Flax growing in our own Soil as they send for to Riga and elsewhere abroad The French Protestants at Ipswich have lately made finer Linen than ever was made in England namely of 15 s. the Ell and for which tho they had their Linen Yarn from France yet afterward they sowed Flax near Ipswich whereof to make Yarn and it was observed to grow so high that the People resorted from all parts adjacent of the Country to see it they having never seen any so high before A Judgment so penetrating as your Lordships will easily find how the said Account may be many ways useful to the publick in point of Trade as for example the Consideration is obvious that those Countries we receive no Hemp or Flax or their Manufactures from we may profitably in the way of Traffick hereafter carry them to and by that means know our proper Markets as particularly Spain Italy Portugal c. That great Bankrupsy in London that hath thence like a Plague infected so many of our Country Traders and laid there too so much Land in some sort desolate will by natural necessity oblige them to countenance this improvement of the Realm by new Commodities and Manufactures and that which hath in many of our poor Idlers Created such an Aversion from the sowing of Hemp and Flax namely the toyle of beating the same will soon cease by the acquainting them with the Invention of a Mill near a Rivolet by which as much Hemp may be beaten in a day as can be by two hundred men and they who have been incessant in complaining of others being French Pensioners and thought themselves slighted because they were not so shall by the Protestants of that Nation thus leading us by the hand to a rich Manufacture find France to have thus sent Donatives to our whole Land. And from the example of their innate Loyalty to their Hereditary Monarch and thankfulness to ours for their protection I doubt not but many of our Male-contents will imbibe principles of obedience to Government and a sense of their safety under that Asylum and such persons whatever their pretensions are will deserve ill of the Kingdom and its Trade and Manufacture who by their excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery and of the Fantome of that pretended Religion frighting us out of our Laws shall really deter more such Protestant Strangers from planting among us But as men may be said to be deterred by shame from fearing any thing in throngs and where they are secure from robbery and can suffer only by petty Larceny so I believe will this populous State of our Country insensibly wear off the excess of our fears and do expect such a future State in England as will make men ashamed of their past fears and their former deference to ill bodeing Prophets Gassendus in his Works tells us that all the Astrologers of France concluded that by reason of the great Conjunction of watry signs in Piscis and Aquarius in the Year 1524 that there should then be another deluge in that Realm and in Germany in the Month of February a rainy Month and that many of the People thereupon went with their Goods and Cattel from the Low Lands to the hilly Country and yet that Month proved the driest Month that ever was known and thus do I expect that many of our Melancholy Prophets in England will be toto caelo mistaken in their auguries And if natural Considerations did not induce me thus to foretel good to my Country another Consideration might tempt me to predict ill namely the warding off all the risque of a false Prophet for among the Iews if a man prophesied of future ill to a Person or State and it came not to pass he was not therefore pronounced a false Prophet by reason of the infinite goodness often inclining the Divine Nature to avert its threatned Anger but if he Prophesied of good Success and it happened not he was then reputed a false Prophet for that they said Heaven never cancelled a Decree of Mercy Considering how often things at random predicted have come to pass and tho like Seeds carelessly thrown
they may be justly presumed to do whensoever opportunity serves and that they see it conducible to their Interest to do it Thus likewise Iudges of Ecclesiastical Courts when the consideration of the Nullity of a Marriage by reason of fear resulting from threatnings is before them do carefully regard this point concerning the Menacer an solitus est minas exequi a thing the Iesuites have not been wanting to do when Power and Opportunity have not been wanting and there is no doubt but the Iesuites by reason of their 4th Vow to the Pope over and above the Implicit Obedience they have sworn to their Superiors are to execute whatever he shall command nor is it doubtable but that when it is said by the Canonists that the Pope hath power to burn Heretical Cities he will reduce that Power into Act when he sees convenient and as Dr. Donne in his Pseudo Martyr well notes the Lawyers teach us that the word potest doth often signifie actum for which he quotes Bartolus on the Digests I believe the truth of his Computation where he saith in p. 228 of that Book That the Iesuites are in possâ—ssion of most of the Papists hearts in England but I likewise believe his other Computation in that Book where in p. 127. he saith quoting Rebadenira that in the Year 1608. the whole number of the Society of the Iesuites were 10581. and that tho their number is much encreased since there are not so many in England as were when the Book was printed viz Anno 1610. and the Dr. whose Style was as the Oxford Antiquities say of Mr. Foxes in Romanenses satis acerbus tho I think neither of their Styles was so a jot too much doth in Chap. 10th of that Book very learnedly and largely shew that many Eminent and Popish Writers have bitterly inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decretum of the Canon Law. No doubt that Law was never in gross received in England in the times of our Popish Ancestors and so neither did nor doth bind English Papists in the Court of Conscience more than the Council of Trent doth in some Popish Countries where it never was received and I find Bellarmine cited by the Dr. for saying that there are many things in the Decretal Epistles which do not make a matter to be de fide but only do declare what the opinions of the Popes were in such cases I believe that no un-jesuited Papist nor perhaps some sober Party in that Order will think the worse of me for calling the Decretum of the Popes Canon Law by reason of its empowering him thus to burn Cities hâ—rrendum Decretum and it may perhaps appear ridiculous as well as horrid in the Pope in that Law to rake in the Ashes of sweet St. Cyprian for fire to burn Heretical Towns and to make him who was in a manner Excommunicated by the Pope for rebaptizing such as were baptized by Hereticks to be the Founder of that wild Tenet of converting guiltless Lime and Brick and Timber to rubbish because they had afforded dwelling places to People that differed in judgment from Rome and to make him who in the Year 258. was a Martyr for not being an Idolater to be the Author of burning Cities that would not adore the Host. But moreover it may be said that in the Decrets made by the Pope to Ape the Pandects and to consist chiefly of Canons of Councils sayings of Fathers and Constitutions of Popes as the Pandects do of the responsa prudentum c. Gratian's founding a Tenet on Cyprian or any places out of other Authors giveth it only the weight that Cyprian and they had in their proper works and the Stream of Authority from their Writings in Gratian is not to be supposed able to rise higher than the Spring and thus the Canonists agree on this as a Rule that the things quoted in Gratian Vim legis habent quatenus reperiuntur illic unde depâ—ompta sunt and they tell us that if any things that are said to be impia hiulca barbara sine ratione falsa fideique Historicae adversa are found there they are to be passed by as Gratian Dreams ut nec confirmatio Pontificum generalis ad ea sese extendere possit And on this Account his Glâ—ssographer Andreas himself doth often turn his gloss into an Animadversion on his Master for that name he bestows on Gratian and saith sometimes Magister hic non tenetur meaning Observatur and sometimes Superficialis est magistri argumentatio and elsewhere with a strain of Ruffianism fateor te plane mentitum Gratiane And if any one will read Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith Dedicated to the Lords of the Assembly general of the Clergy sitting at Paris in the Year 1645. he will find he saith as for Gratian 's Decrees and the Gloss they can claim nothing of Faith the Author being a particular Doctor and Subject to many mistakes even in the Citation of Authors nor doth he pretend to any such thing much less weight hath the Gloss than the Decrees where many silly and ridiculous passages are discovered As for the Papal Decrees contained in the body of the Canon Law or published since none of them do constitute an Article of Faith c. Bellarmine makes no difficulty to acknowledge Errors in several of them as for example where the Canon out of Gratian is objected quod proposuisti extracted out of Gregory the 3d where 't is said that if a Woman should be sick and by that means unable to render her duty to her Husband the Husband if he have not the gift of continency may take another Wife he replys thus that the Pope failed through ignorance which we do not deny may happen to Popes when they do not properly define but only declare their opinions as Gregory seems here to have done And no doubt but every Papist laughs at the definition of a Whore in the Decrets i. e. Quae multorum libidini patet and at the gloss there making by multorum to be meant 23000. My Lord I discoursed frankly of all these last mentioned matters to my Roman Catholick Friend who I said would joyn Issue in the Plea about Religion if the Pope's Power of firing Heretical Cities were a Tenet chargeable on the Church of Rome and have perhaps said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope or his Canon Law in the infliction of such dire Vengeance on whole Cities as they would wish said and do think my self indispensably obliged when I discourse with any of Mankind about any Quaesitum relating to natural truth and much more to Theological with all possible candour to say what the matter will fairly bear on both sides as accounting any mans Judgment given ex parte to be of little or no value and esteeming him a falsarius who conceals any thing of truth But this Gentleman being a close pursuer of truth
under the Gospel and tho no Presbyterians that I know of were here Arraigned for any design to fire our Metropolis and some Fanatical Fifth-Monarchy men only were Arraigned Convicted and Executed for such a design and whose Names I think might on that account have been properly enough engraven on the City Monument yet of the out-â—age of our Presbyterians having actually fired the Church and State with an intestine War the whole Kingdom is a Monument and where now their Principles are so seen and seen through that I believe any other such inhumane Ecclesiasticks as many of our former Presbyterians were will be ashamed to appear among us Their Assembly is adjourned to the Grave and no Divines will I believe in any future Course of time find the People of England willing to have 4 s. a day the wages of each in the Parliaments Synod allowed to them for endeavouring to bring our Consciences under the Mosaic Pedagogy and the noise of the World from Hammers of Hereticks either in any Presbyterian Synod in England or in any new Popish General Council beyond Sea will I believe be utterly over And tho perhaps the Centum gravamina did heretofore cause the last pretended General Council to be called I mean the Famous Tridentine one I may looking on the Course of Nature conclude that there will never be any General Council more and that not only for that the Pope hath been hors de page since the breaking up that of Trent but because that having been Revera a Council of Pensioners and having stood the Papacy for Pensions in 3000 Crowns a Month i. e. in 750 l. Sterling and having put the Popes to that Charge during its sitting for 18 years as it is easie to Calculate how much in pounds Sterling that Council cost the Popes in all so it is as easie to foresee that if the Pope should have occasion for the fellow to that Council he would not have that quantity of Money to spare for the same There is another thing that I may from the Course of Nature fortel much quiet to my Prince and happiness to my Country by and that is the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty and of an inglorious Loyalty-Trade as well as of a Religion-Trade and mens not thinking they are to have Offices or Donatives for not being Villains or that by Monopolizing to themselves the name of the Loyal they should expect therefore a lucrative Monopoly the which would stain their Loyalty indeed and make it as null and void as any Monopoly for the word Loyal being used for Lawful he is not homo legalis in one sense who is bought to be just The apparent vast number of the Kings Subjects rendring them too many to hope all for largesses and the too great probability of the Future State of England according to my Notion requiring for the support and defence of the Government all that to be employed in order thereunto what giving Parliaments can well give will make People ashamed to cling to the Royal-Oak like Ivy and by preying on its vigour make it the less able to give shelter by its branches I was overjoyed with a piece of News a Gentleman sent me namely that he discoursing once at dinner with the Lord Hide the first Commissioner of the Treasury concerning the Insolence of some mens expecting to be rewarded by the King for not doing mischief to his Government or Revenue his Lordship occasionally mentioned somewhat to this effect viz. that the Trade of â—â—ch men was now broke there will now be no more taking off of men as the word was and if by his Lordship's Advice to his Great Master the resolving against taking off of men by Pensions and Rewards was settled as a new Fundamental Rule in the English Politicks as I am informed it was I shall think his Lordship deserves to find an everlasting Triumph in the History of the Age and to be more honoured by England than if as Commander of an Army he had vanquished very many Thousands of its Enemies for that the taking off of Hydra's Heads by Gifts as was beforementioned would be an endless work and the ill effects thereof inclusive of so much Hostility to the publick would be innumerable But God be thanked the King by the Political Conduct of this his Minister is now made Victorious over all those Enemies and if I had heard that any near his Majesty had moved for a day of Thanksgiving by reason hereof I should not have wondered at it the thing being of so great importance to England And no doubt but the shame of any mens diminishing the Royal Revenue by begging from the Crown will be the greater when the necessary improvement of our Land by our numerous People shall have enriched as many as deserve to be so and when to all who are industrious there will every where be multiplex praeda in medio posita and the effects of diligence fill all hands with profit and eyes with pleasure This is one kind of a New Heaven and a New Earth that perhaps we may shortly see in old England and when men shall by enquiries about Religion design only lucriferous experiments and not luciferous as my Lord Bacon's Phrase is and men shall improve their fortunes by the improvement and culture of the Earth and to this effect we find the Prophecies of Prosperity to the Iews in the old Testament expressed by the Trees yielding their fruit and the Earth their encrease the Seed shall be prosperous the Vine shall give her Fruit and the Ground shall give her encrease the Earth shall hear the Corn and the Wine and the Oyl c. And they who are now by seducers that augment wild fears and jealousies directed to look up for strange Prodigies to the Sky will need no Monitors to behold with joy the unusual fruitfulness of the cultivated Earth and therefore I think that one Philosopher looking on the Future State of England may well say to another Aspice venturo laetentur ut omnia saeclo Then shall men on the account of Profit turn their Swords to Plough-shares and the Religion-Trading false Prophet baffled by fate shall then say as 't is in Zachary Non sunt Propheta agricola sum I do not wonder at some mens menacing our English World with ill news from Fate It is no irrational thing to suppose that the false Prophets in all ages did often find it turn to their private account to foretel evil rather than good to Kingdoms for that many might hope to mend their fortunes by the publick ruines and would therefore be well pleased with the Predictors of ill to the publick and would celebrate the Predicters and therefore it was not without cunning contrived that the prolation of Events by the ancient Oracles should be in a double sense sometimes because it might then be a moot point whether the Party of those that desired the quiet or disorder of great Bodies of People was
may have who shall believe it nor of the Doctrine of Consubstantiation under any Prince of the Lutheran perswasion nor of Calvin's horrendum decretum relating to reprobation as 't is call'd under any Prince that may believe the Doctrine of Calvin tho yet till the Peace of Munster the timid People of the Lutheran and Calvinian Religions hating one another more than they did Papists abroad in the World were so much imposed on by fears and jealousies in Case a Lutheran or Calvinian Prince should by the right of Lineal Descent come to rule them But the Munster Peace has taught them better things and should I ever hear that any Roman Catholick Prince here did according to the power by Law reposed in him relax some of the Penalties of the Law in Case of Recusancy that as things now are Recusancy would not be thereby rendered considerably prolific with Converts Tho I have given my opinion as beforementioned concerning the Fact of the encrease of the number of the Papists in the Conjuncture of the Declaration of Indulgence and do not think fit to alter it yet I can tell your Lordship that a Person of great Sagacity who I believe considered the State of their Numbers here then very carefully and entirely believe what he published thereof in Print I mean the Author of the Catholick Apology with a reply c. there saith that during the Year 1672. and which he calls a year of Peace there was not one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England than in the Year 1663 1666. or any other time of trouble I have in this Discourse spoke of such a perfect hatred against Popery as may always consist with a perfect love to Papists and cinge not a hair of their heads more than a Lambent fire I have acknowledged the great mortifications austerities and zealous devotions not only among many of the Religious Orders of the Church of Rome but of the common People and have allowed a sober Party to the Iesuites themselves and have reason to believe that Bellarmine himself that hammer of Heretical Princes as his Works shew him was yet of so soft and gentle a disposition as would not permit him to hurt a Fly or tread on a Worm and I have reflected on no other Principles of the Iesuites with any sharpness than what the present Pope hath done and which the Court of Inquisition at Rome or elsewhere would have allowed me to do and I have been as I still am so free from any thing of rancour or acerbity in my Principles relating to the usage of the Papists that an English Priest of the Church of Rome the Author of the remarkable Book beforementioned called the Advocate of Conscience Liberty or an Apology for toleration rightly stated published in the Year 1673. and the most considerable Book that had for several years been writ in favour of the Roman Catholicks and a Book our Learned Dr. Stilling fleet refers to in a very excellent printed Sermon of his p. 43. and called The Reformation justified and Preached before the Lord Mayor of London doth me the honour there to adopt as his own several Sayings of mine he found in a printed Discourse of mine that was disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion and gave me occasion when I read some passages in his 14th 25th 26th 34th 43d 54th 55th 62d 94th Pages there to call to mind that I had read them elsewhere and much good might any thing in my Writings do that Author and he was as welcome to them as if they had been his own and I am sorry that his not citing an Author where he should have done it was accompanied with another misfortune of citing one where he should not I mean his in p. 225. citing of D' Ossat He might have cited another passage of mine against Hereticide as being impolitic if he had pleased to have took notice of it among its fellows and where I observed that the putting of the Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion and that that Faith was given to the Assertors of Popish Opinions because they were dying which they could not have drawn from me but by raising the dead I still own what in p. 93. he partly cites of mine as said by another Author That if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private Iudgment in things of Religion 't will be hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Romish Church from the guilt of Schism c. and if any Papist shall as to any Tenet that can properly come within the denomination of Religion tell me that his private Judgment guides him to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome and that therefore I a Protestant ought not to be inclined to bear hard upon him on the account of such adhesion to his private Judgment I shall own the Argumentum ad hominem so far as to tell him that I am not inclined eo nomine to he severe to him And now my Lord because it hath been so â—ustâ—mary in the Authors of large Discourses to bestow on them a short REVIEW that it would appear sullenâ—ess in me not to follow them and because it would be an irreverence to your great Judgment in me to present any thing for you to view once that I had not resolv'd to view twice I intend to improve some Intervals of leisure hereafter in reviewing of this Discourse and shall explain some passages therein on occasion and add others and if I doubt of any thing particularly in the various matters of Calculation herein contained and of many of which few or none perhaps have written or shall alter my opinion therein or in any thing else I shall acquaint your Lordship why I do so and do as much value my self on my natural temper of acknowledging a quick and ready assent to any proposition of Reason that convinceth my understanding how contradictory soever the same may be to any former Notion of mine as any man can value himself on his thinking he never erred or on his Abilities either by Eloquence or Sophisms to make others think so and to make them erre with him and do still account this to be one of the best properties in the best Ship namely the soonest to feel its Rudder and do think that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunces are positive My Lord after the Efflux of the various Intervals in which this Discourse was written it having happened that the Papists are to the general satisfaction of impartial Judges of Men and Things become as found a part of this Nation as they were and are of the Dutch States and as throughout this Discourse I always supposed them capable of being and that the Body of them is as Loyal as can be wished and likely forever so to continue and that none but the Factious would have them now to groan under the Penal Laws
it saith Concessimus Deo hac praesenti charta confirmavimus pro nobis HAEREDIBVS nostris in perpetuum quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit habeat omnia jura sua integra libertates suas illaesas and whereby the British Churches are secured under a Prince of any Religion from Foreign Arbitrary impositions But indeed the Style current in Magna Charta is that our Kings for themselves and their Heirs forever did grant the Customs and Liberties contained in that Charter to our Ancestors and their Heirs for ever Our Ancestors had no occasion to spend time in seeking Knots in a Bull-rush or hidden Sense in the words HEIRS and the King's HEIRS when so anciently as by the Oath of Fealty which every Person above fourteen years old and every Tythingman was obliged to take publickly at the Court-Leet within which he lived they were sworn to the King and his HEIRS and that Oath was taken a fresh every year by all the Subjects under Edward the Confessor and William the first and is thus set down by Pryn in his Concordia Discors viz. I A. B. do swear that FROM THIS DAY FORWARDS I will be Faithful and Loyal to our Lord the King AND HIS HEIRS c. The instances are innumerable of Allegiance anciently Sworn to our Kings and their Heirs and this one for example occureth to me as Sworn in the time of Edward the 4th viz. Sovereign Lord I Henry Percy become your Subject and Leige-man and promit to God and you that hereafter I Faith and Troth shall bear to you as to my Sovereign Leige-Lord and to your Heirs Kings of England of Life and Limb and of Earthly Worship to Live and Die against all Earthly People and to you and to your Commandments I shall be Obeysant as God me help and his Holy Evangâ—lists 27. Oct. 9. Ed. 4. Claus. 9. Ed. 4. m. 13. in dorso Mr. Pryn likewise in that Book of his beforemention'd saith that there was an ancient Oath of Fealty and Allegiance both by the Subjects of England and Kings Bishops Nobles and Subjects of Scotland made to the Kings of England and Their Heirs as Supreme Lords of Scotland in these words viz. Ero fidelis legalis fidemque legalitatem servabo Henrico Regi Angliae haeredibus suis de vitâ membris terreno honore contra omnes qui possunt vivere mori nunquam pro aliquo portabo arma nec ero in consilio vel auxilio contra eum vel Haeredes suos c. which Oath he saith William King of Scots and all his Nobles Swore to King Henry the second haeredibus suis sicut ligio Domino suo and John Balliol John Comyn with all the Nobles of Scotland to King Edward the first and his Heirs He there likewise gives an account how the Nobles of England Swore Fealty to Richard King of England and to his Heirs against all men and how the Citizens of London Swore the like Oath and That if King Richard should die without Issue they would receive Earl John his Brother for their King and Lord juraverunt ei fidelitatem Contra omnes homines salva fidelitate Richardi Regis fratris sui as Hoveden relates And he moreover cites the Record of the Writ issued to all the Sheriffs of England soon after the Birth of Edward the 1 st Son and Heir to King Henry the 3 d. To Summon all Persons above 12 years old to Swear Fealty to him as Heir to the King and to submit themselves faithfully to him as their Liege Lord after his Death This form of the Oath in the Writ is there mention'd to that effect viz. Quod ipsi salvo homagio fidelitate nostrâ quâ nobis tenentur cui in vitâ nostrâ nullo modo renunciare volumus fideles eritis Edwardo filio nostro primogenito ita quod si de nobis humanitus Contigerit eidem tanquam Haeredi nostro domino suo ligio erunt fideliter intendentes eum pro domino suo ligio habentes And he there shews how they were Summon'd and Sworn accordingly and further how in the Parliament of H. 4. The Lords Spiritual and Tempâ—ral and Commons were Sworn to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King to the Prince and his Issue and to every one of his Sons severally succeeding to the Crown of England And he there mentions more Oaths taken to our Kings and their Heirs of the like Nature The Consideration hereof would make any one wonder at the Confidence of a late Learned Lawyer and positive pretender to Omniscience in our English Antiquities and Records who in his Detestable Book called The Rights of the Kingdom and which contains a farrago of Impious Anti-monarchical Principles and Printed in London 1649. and there to the Scandal of the English and Protestant Name lately Re-printed by some Factious Anti-Papists hath averred That our Allegiance was of old tyed to the Kings Person not unto his Heirs and for the Kings Heirs saith he there I find them not in our Allegiance And he mentions the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance as enjoyn'd in Queen Elizabeth's and King Iames's time respectively to be the first that were made to the Kings Person and his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS But to return to the Cause in hand 'T is sufficient for the Obligation I press that HEIRS and SUCCESORS are so clearly expressed in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy And tho the Statute of 1 â— Elizabethae in the Clause of the Annexing Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction to the Crown useth the style of Your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm shall have full Power c. as the Statue of the Supremacy 26o. Henry 8th runs in the Style of our Sovereign Lord his Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realms shall be taken accepted and reputed the only Supreme Head and tho the Oath in the 35 th H. the 8 th Cap. 1. that relates to the bearing Faith Truth and true Allegiance to the Kings Majesty and to his Heirs and Successors c. be further thus expressed viz. And that I shall accept repute and take the Kings Majesty his Heirs and Successors when they or any of them shall enjoy his place to be the only Supreme Head c. and tho' the old Oath of the Mayor of London and other Cities and Towns throughout England and of Bayliffs or other chief Officers where there are no Mayors runs in the style of Swearing That they shall well and Loyally Serve the King in the Office of Mayor in the City of L. and the same City shall keep surely and safely to the use of our Lord the King of England and of his Heirs Kings of England might give occasion for that great empty and big-sounding Sophism of Sir W. I. in his famous Speech wherein he said That we are Sworn to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors but not Obliged to any during
Contention between the words Heirs and Successors tho with as little sense as was in Sir W. I's fancy of Treason whereby he would have set the Assertory and the Promissory Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy at variance nay the Promissory Clause at variance with it self There was a Book writ by a late Lawyer called Historical Discourses of the Vniformity of the Government of England first printed in the Year 1647 and reprinted by some Factious Anti-Papists since the Epoche of our Fears and Iealousies of Popery and with that former year in the Title which was an ill ominous sign of the fatal time such Persons would have driven us back upon if they could where in p. 279 of the 2d part ill reflections are made on the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy which Oaths saith the Author do make much Parly concerning Inheritance and Heirs but that they do not hold forth any such Obligation to Heirs otherwise than as supposing them to be Successors and in that Relation only His design is too plainly express'd viz. to strike at the Rights of our Hereditary Monarchy and to invite Parliaments to interlope in controuling the Succession of the Crown and he saith That the Doctrine he there insinuates doth not go down well with those that do pretend to Prerogative aided by the Act of Recognition made to King James and the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and I shall say that I hope it never will and 't is pity but a Book that in so many places of it impeacheth the old known Rights of the Crown should in this Conjuncture of Loyalty find some Person at leisure ex professo to make Animadversions on it and the rather for that the Author doth in the Vehicle of somewhat like Witt and his affectation of which is by People of middling Capacities who generally make the greater part of Mankind judged to be Witt dispense his Poysons Yet as to the signification of HEIRS and SUCCESSORS he had before in his first part saved any one the labour of shewing their Identity for there in p. 109 and in his Chapter of the Laws of Property of Lands and Goods under the Saxons he quoted Tacitus about some of the Customs of the Germans which he judged remain'd here with them and which shewed that HEIRS and SUCCESSORS passed then as current Coyn for the same thing according to the words of Tacitus HAEREDES SVCCESSORES cuique liberi nullum est testamentum and thus Englished by that Author viz. the HEIRS and SVCCESSORS to every one are his Children and there is no Testamentary Power to DISHERIT or ALTER the COVRSE of DESCENT which by CVSTOM or Law is setled And as was shewed the Term of LAWFVL annexed to SUCCESSORS hath nailed the Canon of that Sophism and exposed the ridiculousness of any Cavilling or Calumnious Interpretation about Heirs and Successors tho yet without the interposal of the word LAWFVL the plain sense of the words Heirs and Successors in the Oaths would clearly enough have obliged us to the same Persons We say that id possumus quod jure possumus and none are to be construed Heirs or Successors but such who are so in the Eye of the Law and with reference to Proximity of Blood i. e. they who are meant for such by the Law in the Due Course of their Descent But I hope that England's happy Future State will so far influence Loyalty as to incline all Conscientious Protestants to leave of all senseless Cavilling about the sense of the plain words in those Oaths and to agree to employ their most serious and constant thoughts about the extent of the Moral Offices that relate to their bearing True Faith and Allegiance to the King his Heirs and Successors and other very important matters in the Promissory Clauses most clearly expressed in order to the discharge of their Allegiance and the duties of Loyalty viz. DEFENDING him and them to the uttermost of our Power against all Conspiracies that shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity as the Oath of Allegiance runs and to our ASSISTING and DEFENDING to our Power all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors There are no unweigh'd and idle words in the Promissory Clauses and we are to make it our business with the judgment of discretion to consider the sense of the same and to retain it in our Memories and mens not doing which hath been the Cause of the Ebb of Loyalty in some Conjunctures According to the Degrees of mens intellectual Talents and particularly the Talent of understanding beyond other men the Laws natural and positive and the Lex terrae some are beyond others morally bound to defend the particular momentous points relating to all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences granted or belonging to the King and his Heirs and Successors and therefore a disloyal Divine and a disloyal Lawyer are things that do particularly hear very ill But as there is a great part of the Moral Offices expressed in these Oaths sufficiently plain and obvious to vulgar Capacities and which with their Native Light do strike common understandings so the extent of these Offices ought to employ the Meditations of all the Takers of these Oaths and how low soever their Talents lie they are to use all the means they can and particularly that of the Consilium peritorum as any occasion shall offer it self for their defence of any of the Privileges or Preheminences belonging to the Crown Our duty in this kind is very well expressed by Sanderson in his third Lecture where speaking of the Subjects Obligations by Oaths of this Nature he saith Doubtless the Subject to his Power is obliged to defend all Rights which appear either by Law or Custom Legitimate whether defined by the written Law or in force through the long use of time or Prescription that is so far as they are known or may Morally be known But he is not equally obliged to the Observation of all those which are controverted Thus therefore as to any Iurisdiction Privilege or Preheminence of the Crown that might seem doubtful the swearer is many times bound to the use of means that it may be Morally known to him as Sanderson's words are Yet what I have urged in this sixth Conclusion as Obligatory to us by virtue of the Oaths is sufficiently plain and there is no occasion for employing a great Genius and penetrating Understanding and Witt to discover that it is one of the Privileges of the Crown to be Hereditary and that the Taker of the Oaths is indissolubly bound to defend that Right There are several explicatory Notions of the word DEFEND and its extent that often occur in the Authors that treat expressly of the Ius Protectitium seu defensorium among whom I account Magerus de Advocatiâ armatâ or of the Right of Protection given by Sovereign Powers to be instar
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
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have