by Some non-Papists I know not My Author for it is Mr. Iohn Gee Master of Arts of Exeter Colledge in Oxford in his Book 4 to Call'd New Shreds of the Old Share p. 103. Printed at London in the Year 1624. In any such wretched Contention between the faex Romuli and any of the Protestants here who should become most impure by Calumny as the Protestants being much more Numerous than the Papists would be able to out-shamme them and to make the more plain detections of the Shammes contriv'd by their Adversaries it would likewise go the harder with any Sect that the Majority of Numbers would thus run down with Shammes in this Nation at this Conjuncture of time when the many swarms of those who offer at Wit and think they merit the being call'd Witts by doing the exercise in a Coffey-house Call'd Baldring that is with a serious grave face telling idle feign'd Stories farced with particular Circumstances to ensnare the belief of the Credulous which kind of ungenerous triumphing over weak Understandings by ridiculous Shammes is a false sort of wit and humour below not only the gravity of the English Nation but the levity of the French and used by none but Fools who stand for the place of being Knaves There is no doubt but the talent of these foolish Shammers as their interest and dependances or humors incline them to wish well either to Popery or Protestancy extending to abuse the belief of the unthinking Vulgar with little romantic Stories concerning those Religions helps to Convey them into the Press which gives wings to these Shams presently to fly round the Kingdome If the Papists think the Press hath not in any of the Pamphlets it dayly spits charged them with Calumny and of Such a Nature as to bring universal odium on them by alarming the Kingdom almost as much as it could be by forrain invasion and occasionally laying a Tax on men to buy what Arms for their defence the Law allowes I will ask them what they think of one of our printed Intelligences that Came out on the 26 th of February 1680 1 wherein 't is said Last Fryday came a Letter from Stafford directed to one Bacchus Tenant to the Lord Stafford from one Wilson in Cheshire but ordered to be left with one Finny of Stafford to be sent to the said Bacchus but Finny observing Letters so directed to pass through his hands and apprehending they might relate to some dangerous Correspondence took the liberty to Open this and therein to his great surprize found directions to Bacchus for burning of Stafford and several great Towns upon which making a speedy discovery to a Magistrate Bacchus was sent for who after some evasions did confess he had received Letters to that purpose And just now the said Wilson is apprehended and committed and confesseth he was by the order of a Certain Lord to fire Stafford Drayton Shrewsbury Nantwich Chester Congerton New-Castle Under-Line and two more and that he was to have 900 l. for fireing those Nine Towns. I having never heard of any Proclamation or proceedings either of the Magistracy or Lievtenancy of this Kingdom after such an alarm of public hostility and of a Rebellion hatch'd in the Kingdom nor of the last punishment inflicted on the pretended Certain Lord that was the General of those Incendiaries did look on them under the Notion of an Army in disguise But whatever ground the Protestant Religion hath got or shall get by these poor means I desire that it may go to the Next occupant for not only the ayr it exhales is Pestilential but it includes that ayr in it which may produce Earthquakes which dangers therefore the New Popish or Jesuited Religion must be exposed to by the ayr of Shams and Calumnies My Lord I shall here entertain your Lordship with somewhat very Remarkable out of the Book of Father Parsons of the Succession whereby you will see that instead of Allowing the oportet esse haereses he doth in effect tell us that while the Kingdom has two Religions in it oportet esse Calumnias that great Jesuite having with much agility danced on the high rope as to the Casuistical part of the Question of the Succession affects to do it too in the Politics but miss'd his Center of gravity in his motion both as a Divine and a States-man and did shamefully fall in either Capacity as your Lordship will find by the reading of his words He saith p. 217. being near the Conclusion of the first part of his Book And thus much now for matter of Conscience But if we Consider Reason of State also and worldly Policy it Cannot be but great folly and oversight for a man of whatsoever Religion he be to promote to a Kingdom in which himself must live one of a Contrary Religion to himself for let the bargains and agreements be what they will and fair promises and vain hopes never so great yet seeing the Prince once made and settled must needs proceed according to the Principles of his own Religion it follows also that he must Come quickly to break with the other party tho he loved him never so well which yet perhaps is very hard if not impossible for two of different Religions to love sincerely but if it were so yet many jealousies suspicions accusations Calumniations and other aversions must needs light upon the Party that is of different Religion from the State and Prince under whom he lives as not only he Cannot be Capable of such Preferments Honours Charges Government and the like which men may deserve and desire in their Commonwealth but also he shall be in Continual danger and subject to a thousand molestations and injuries which are incident to the Condition and state of him that is not Current with the same Course of his Prince and Realm in matters of Religion and so before he be aware he becomes to be accounted an Enemy or backward man which in Mind he must either dissemble deeply and against his own Conscience make shew to favour and set forward that which in his heart he doth detest which is the greatest Calamity and Misery of all other tho yet many times not sufficient to deliver him from suspicion or else to avoid this everlasting perdition he must break with all the temporal Commodities of this life which his Country and Realm might yield him and this is the ordinary end of all such men how soft and sweet soever the beginning be This Iesuite who was before mention'd to have been Call'd one of the greatest Men that his Order has produced was here it seems a States-man in his heart and no More and has very honestly foretold all Protestants that shall live under a Prince of another Religion how dishonest Roman Catholics will prove to them The Jesuite was here an Almanac-maker who predicted nothing to Protestants but Lightning and Thunder and too the Continual Raining of Snares upon them during such a Conjuncture and
defensive arms to hurtful animals by whom they often Suffered and sometimes by their very Shepherds who in Sheering them would cut their Skins Apollo told them that no Beasts were so much the Favorites of him and of men as they for that whereas others with great anxiety were forced in the Night the time of rest and sleep to seek their Food that they could not do with safety in the day Men the Lords of the Earth bought at dear rates pasture grounds for Sheep and that tho men did make Nets feed Dogs and lay snares for hurtful Beasts they employed Shepherds and Dogs to guard Sheep and that no Shepherds could deal ill with their Flocks without being chiefly cruel to themselves and that therefore their security lay in not being able to fright their Shepherds Thus every one is naturally abhorr'd who attacks a Naked man and from such a one Lions themselves either through fear or generosity have made their Retreat The holy Writ affords us a memorable Instance of the Divine displeasure in the 38 th of Ezekiels Prophesie against Gog and Magog who are there branded as the Invaders of a defensless City 'T is there mention'd in v. 10 th and 11 th Thus saith the Lord God it shall also come to pass that at the same time shall things come into thy mind and thou shalt think an evil thought and v. 11 th And thou shalt say I will go up to the Land of unwalled Villages I will go to them that are at rest that dwell safely all of them dwelling without walls and having neither Bars nor Gates and in v. 12 th to take a spoil and to take a prey to turn thy hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited and upon the people that are gather'd out of the Nations which have gotten Cattel and goods that dwell in the MIDST or navel of the land But it then follows v. 14. Therefore Son of man Prophecy and say unto Gog Thus saith the Lord God in that day when my people of Israel dwells safely shalt thou not know it that is thou shalt know it to thy sorrow and by thy bitter experience of my wrath what it is to disturb my harmless and quiet people in the World. The Comparing of the following 16 th and 18 th v. shew this to be the meaning of v. 14 th And I believe if any of the people of Gog and Magog were allowed by the Law to live apart by themselves they might in any defenceless City be as secure from danger or fear of the Protestant Israel as they pleased It hath been well observed by a great Enquirer into humane Nature That a restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death is a general inclination of all mankind and the cause of this is not alwaies that a man hopes for a more intensive delight then he has already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present without the acquisition of more And from hence it is that Kings whose power is greatest turn their endeavours to the Assuring it at home by Laws or abroad by Warrs But as much as it is the inclination of the unthinking or brutish part of Mankind that power should be like the Crocodile alwaies growing the soberer few do know that power will destroy it self if it shall be still ascending and hath not a Center wherein to rest and be quiet just as fire would perish in nature and destroy it self if there were not an Element allow'd it wherein to leave burning And that therefore Augustus wisely designed a Law de cohibendis imperii finibus And that the experience of Antient and Modern times hath taught the teachable part of mankind That great Empires have sunk under their weight and have lost the length of their power by the widening it and that Kings whose power is greatest as was said sometimes turn their endeavours to the Assureing it at home by Laws which by giving it some bound are like letters about the edges of our coyn Decus tutamen to it the which makes it so Sacred that 't would be both Treasonable and Ridiculous to clip it and that as the Bees by their King have given the world an instance in Nature of Kingly power so they have likewise another of Kings governing by the power of Laws 'T is a common observation That tho Bees are little angry fighting Creatures upon occasion and leave their stings in the wounds they make Rex tamen apum sine aculeo est the King of the Bees is without any sting and the curious work of the Hive goes on with a great deal of Geometry and idle Drones are thence as it were legally expel'd who would there invade property Nor need the King of the Bees say the Naturalists have a sting for the whole Hive defends and guards him as thinking that they are all to perish if their King be destroyed And this would be the case of the Papists if they would be content so to part with the sting of their Power that it could not hurt either King or Kingdom and might not come to lose it self by so doing they would have the Posse of every County to defend them they would have the Laws and the whole Hive of English men to guard them the very Anger of the Protestants would be a defensive Wall of Fire round about them 'T is true that wild Animals are by their constant fears of danger habituated to more cunning then Tame ones of the same species but all their little cunning renders them not so safe as the great wisdom protection of the Law doth the other and ranging and out-lying Deer thrive not so well as those that are in the Forrests And here it falls in my way to observe that the Kings cautioning by the Law of the Forrests that the Mastiffs shall have the Power took from them of hurting the Deer may well insinuate into us the reason and equity of all our Laws that hinder its being in the power of a man to be a Wolf to another and of the Power inherent by the Law of Nature in all Soveraign Princes to restrain any undue Power of Subjects from violating the Public peace As the Law of God and Nature command both Iustice and Mercy to be shewn to Beasts so doth the Law of England provide that any mans person and Estate should be seized into the Kings hands in case of some wild cruelty to his Beasts for he would appear in the eye of the Law an Idiot or a Lunatic that should put his Horses or Asses to the Sword. That which I mention'd of the Laws providing that the Mastiffs of any Inhabitants in Forrests shall not have Power to hurt the Deer is called by the Forrest Law Lawing of Mastiffs or the Expeditating them that is the three Claws of their Fore-foot to the Skin
staking his title to a Heaven and a Crown of Glory I have then such a concern for another as I have when I see a great Ship just launching off the Land into the water and do then apprehend an immortal Soul launching it self into the great Ocean of Eternity and am afraid of its being overset But when I think of a mans having honestly sworn already and in the greatest concern namely in the detection of a Conspiracy against his Kings Crown and Life and consequently having invoked the Omnipotent God to be conditionally his Revenger his Executioner as well as Judge and further think of any one that shall tamper with such a witness and offer him a great Sum of money as his viatical expences to hell to swear contrary to his former oath and by that New Oath to renounce his expectation of a Crown of Glory in Heaven and to endanger his Princes Crown and Life on Earth and to attempt a Mortal wound on Gods Vice-Roy in the dominions of his Soul I mean his Conscience I have both all possible horror overwhelming my thoughts on such a tremendous instance of the degeneration of Mans Nature and I have all the compassion imaginable for your Lordship on one of Mankindes pretending to think it possible that your house should with your consent be turned into a denn for such a Monster An Areopagite was discharged from the Seat of Judicature because he threw away from him a small bird that fled to him from the pursuit of a great one and it was therefore supposed that such a judge alwaies carried cruelty in his breast for that charissimum Deo animal call'd Man and such is the compassionate tenderness of your Lordships mind toward injured and persecuted Mankind that one of those may be allowed to Nest within your house as freely as a poor bird without it But birds of Prey I mean Romes Vultures and either suborners or witnesses suborned to recant have no plea for your Shelter and I am confident rather then your house should be a cage for any such unclean birds you would be content as the expressions of the Prophet are that the Satyr should there cry to his fellow and that the Schrich Owle should rest there and that the wild Breasts of the Desert should also meet there Your Lordship sees what a preferment the Papists designed you for that after according to some of the Narratives of the Plot Sir W. G. was designed Lord Privy-Seal you were to be a providore for a suborned cast witness and a Iackal or provider for the roaring Lion that walks about seeking whom he may devour In fine my Lord they designed your Lordship to be an entertainer or an Host for the Devil But your Lordships name being taken in vain by those who would have retained Mr. Dugdale to take Gods so and the Devils tempting any to undertake for your house being a Sanctuary to a devil are not new things for wonder when you please to consider that the Devil presumed to undertake for Almighty Gods protection when he tempted the Son of God. It seems the shewing to Dugdale the several Kingdoms of the Earth where he should be safe could not prevail with him to be a fugitive from his Conscience and tho it appeared in several Trials and particularly my Lord Staffords the temper desired to have him and that he was sifted winnowed as wheat Yet neither his Faith nor the faith of his Testimony failed him after all the cribration thereof and all that was gained by the endeavour'd suborning him against himself as well as others against him was only the fate of the Thrush who is sometime birdlimed and took by his own excrements Is it not then an example of rare modesty that the diabolical tempters should be the accusers of the Brethren I mean of some of the Kings witnesses that would not be Bribed from attesting the truth in the case of their Political Father The Age wants not the instance of an honorable Person who courting a Lady in order to marriage thought her at last not worthy his farther amours yet who because he did once profess to love her he fought one who reproach'd her vertue But his example is not more herocial than is the practice infamous for such who courted some of the Kings Witnesses both by importunity and gold to espouse their interest and when both were totally and finally rejected make it the the most study'd part of the Romance of their Lives to dishonour them and to shamme inventions of New Tragi-comic Plotts upon them but Plots so damn'd dull as to be seen through in the opening of the first Act and Plots that were most thin where the Actors cryed to themselves like Bayes in the Rehersal Now the Plot thickens and where nothing of the three Vnities was regarded and which no marvel if they brought such confusion still to the Actors as the Story makes to have once happen'd to the old Red-Bull Players at the Tragedy of Doctor Faustus when they complained that they had one Devil more than their Company and when they said a quarter of the house was carried away Your Lordship out of a generous indignation that such Whifflers in Politics should think to lay a tax upon the belief of the Kingdom both without Act of Parliament and without Sense and indeed contrary to the sense of several Parliaments did during a Paroxysme of the Gout cause your self to be carried by your Servants to be present at Councel when the Papists pretended Presbyterian-Plot was there to be considered And if it be true what Mr. Hobbs saith in his ingenious History of the Civil Wars of England That Monsieur du Plessis and Dr. Morton Bishop of Durham writing of the progress of the Popes power and entitling their Books one of them The Mystery of Iniquity the other The Grand Imposture were both in the Right for I believe there was never such another Cheat in the World the Mercury of that cheat being sublimated into the invented cheat of that Plot was too nauseous and strong for the belief of the Kingdom to be able to swallow We may therefore be very well allow'd to put the old great interrogtory of Cicero to these Catilines How long do you abuse our patience especially considering how much to windward we are of them by the detection of their real Treason and do see both the smoke of our gunns and those of their own they fire at us annoying them and while we have had the just advantage of Plaintiffs against them and whereby their recrimination against some of our great number has seemed only dirt thrown in their own defence and at worst but Catilines accusing of Cethegus and considering that we know it only proper to he Religion to justifie the Maintaining the dignity of holy Church by Lies and calumnies Thus Guymenius a famous Popish Doctor ex tractatu de Charitate Proposit. 7. p. 176. cites Bannez 2. 2. quaest 70. art
the Earth and scandals to Heaven I mean all Religion-Traders whether Popish or Fanatical those vilest of Nominales who cheat in nomine Domini and such likewise who disquiet States by assuming the Trade of World-menders and everlasting Propounders that are like busie Insects flying in the Eys of Mankind and whom Sir E. Coke in the 85. Ch. of his Institutes which is entituled against Monopolists Propounders and Projectors deservedly brands and Atheists that would reform a Church Bankrupts in their particular Trades that would advance Trade in general Defiers of Justice who would amend the Law and wasting that time as Censors of the Manners of Kings for not paying their Debts which they should employ in acquiring Assets to pay their own In fine Undertakers to Cure Church and State as Confident as the Quack who said in his Bills He Cureth all Diseases both cureable and incureable All these sorts of men whose Trade is talking and whose talk is cheat will only come to be Bankrupt by being heaved out of all places by the Generations of Useful Traders multiplying there Nature that has been long laying its Siege to such Idlers in places of resort will then at last carry on its works so far as to leave them no Earth to play their Engines upon and such unprofitable people will be as naturally extruded out of our Towns as are Women and Children out of Places besieged nor can all the humming of their Propositions procure them more continuance in such places of business then the noyse of Drones entitle them to a residence in the Hive and it will as little quit Cost to have them planted in our Cities as for a Gardiner that pays a high Rent to have beds for weeds Of the Improvement of great quantities of Land by Gardening the Ilands of Iersey and Guernsey are examples and we have a Pleasant and Profitable Prospect of such Improvement near our Metropolis and other Great Cities and I doubt not but England may flourish so as to become the Garden of the World and do as little doubt of any Course of time bringing the Pope again to say as Matthew Paris tells us he did Verè hortus Noster deliciarum est Anglia as I do of that honest Monk's sleeping till the Resurrection or Mr. Coleman's having any more Dreams of a Paradise in the Gardens of Wooburn 'T is hard for a Visionaire not to fancy any thing possible but he who shall pronounce that England can from its present improvement and populousness be driven back ad primordia rerum and that the many cultivated understandings in it and who have reduced Knowledge ad firmam by calculation can be reduced to the Calculation only of Beads and be imposed on like the Indians to part with their Gold for Beads and that half the Land of England now inhabited by three Millions of People as all estimates make to be the least that half of it contains will be delivered up to 50000 Regulars and to persons that the Laws in being allow not so much as a Foot of Earth for Graves and that it is not of equal detriment to a Country to have half the Land made unprofitable and become Bog or the like as to be long in perpetuity to unprofitable people and that such as make property their God which they who over value the things of this Life do and are the Majority of any Country will idlely sacrifice it to those real Impropriators who make but a Property as I may say of God I mean those hypocritical Idlers who only by a Religion-Craft without any service useful to Mankind claim a great Quota of the Profits of others labours and that when we are going on so fast toward the exactest culture by Gardening which excludes all Weeds the old inimicus homo shall find six Millions asleep to give him an opportunity to sow Tares and to ask half the Land for his pains I say he who shall pronounce as aforesaid is one that looks but at few things and so de facili shoots his Bolt and is one that we may think to be a fool without being in danger of Hell Fire and Holy Churches great work of the Conversion of three Kingdoms to the end that it may Convert half the Land again to its use is likely to prove as fruitless as the Christian endeavours to recover the Holy Land. There is such a strong Rampart of living Earth against the assaults of Popery in this kind I mean the Number of our Protestants and particularly of those employ'd in Tilling the Land that Popery cannot dissolve and let it pipe never so plausibly we shall be like the deaf Adder stopping our Ears by laying them against the Earth we are possest of My Lord They who have observed the Intervals of your pleasure when you have had some breathing times for retirement from the fatigue of Affairs of State know that the contriving the improvement of your Ground by Tillage and Planting and Gardening hath been at once your care and your delight And I believe Cicero's Cato Major doth not describe the pleasure of old Age in the improvement of the Earth with greater hight then your Lordship is able to do and your example in this thing may Crown both that of Tully and the Aged Hero's by him there commemorated for delighting in Husbandry and indeed it may be supposed but natural for old Age being so near the Earth its Center to move with a quicker sort of delight toward it and especially among Christians to whom the dull Earth Aided by the acuteness of St. Paul I referr to his similitude of the Corn is so kind and greateful for their culture of it as to Court them with an Embleme of their Resurrection and to teach them a surer way then Galilaeus had found out to Transplant the Earth into Heaven But now methinks to one that has so curious and perfect a Sence of this solid and manly pleasure that the Culture of the Earth affords as your Lordship the very Idea of England's Degeneracy from its thriving State of Agriculture to poor solitary pasture how unpracticable soever the thing is must necessarily carry some horrour with it to be imagined and the very telling it to you that some vain Popish Projectors would rob us not only of the Culture of Learning but even of that of the very Earth must give your thoughts a Nausea instead of such a Noble Extacy as fill'd the whole Soul of Erasmus who in his old Age in a Letter to Budaeus speaking of Sir Thomas More 's and other mens Works that did then begin to beautifie the World with Learning cryes out Deum immortalem quod seculum video brevi futurum Vtinam contingat rejuvenescere And as I am sure you would not desire to Renew your Youth like the Eagle only to live in an Age of buzzards so you know too much of the course of nature to wish your Life a day shorter for fear of the
when Mr. Prynn could not have forgot what had happen'd to those Conspirators and that the very Principles of many of that wild Sect are for the legitimating the most desperate Out-rages and Rebellions imaginable but out of Justice to Humane Nature will never render any man ill upon ill Proofs and such as are contrary to the Nature of things as for example one Argument which is so prevalent with many for their concluding that London was designedly burnt by many Popish Persons namely because it was apparently true and not denyable that the Flames did break out in several places of the City at the tops of several houses which were at a considerable distance from the Fire doth not in the least move me so to conclude for 't is obvious in Nature that as the heat of an ordinary Fire will put combustible light matter that is at a small distance from it into a flame a heat proportionably greater must do the same thing at a greater distance and this appear'd in Fact conspicuous to Thousands while the Fire then broke out from the Timber-work in the Tower of the Old Exchange when the great Conflagration was a quarter of a Mile distant from it Nor yet would I venture in discourse with any Papist about the aforesaid Tenet to call it either Tenet or Principle chargeable on the Church of Rome as approved by it if it were only deducible in the way of Inferences from other Tenets as for example If one should say the Papists hold that 't is lawful to burn the persons of Hereticks and much more therefore to burn their Houses and to burn the Nest as well as to kill the Bird and that the Goods of Hereticks are ipso iure confiscate and therefore their Houses and accordingly I told my Roman-Catholick friend that I would never raise this Principle of Fire against his Church by Collision of Arguments but by the help of your Lordships Quotations referring to the Canon Law as well as Canonists shew him the Pope claiming the Power in terminis terminantibus to fire whole Cities as aforesaid and that long before his Power received so much accession of Territory as I may call it of Prerogative by those great Students of Crown-Divinity and Assertors of his Fifth Monarchy the Jesuites I do intend to entertain only this my particular friend at this Season with the Passages I shall receive from you concerning this Tenet because 't is in me an habitual temper not salem nitro superaddere or to afflict any afflicted Lay-Papists who may retain some unsound Notions of Religion and yet be sound Members of the State and I shall not desire either by words or writing to imitate the ungenerous Practice of the Sons of Iacob toward the Sichemites in attacking them when they were sore And moreover reason is thrown away on men in Passion and during the Paroxysme of Passion in either any Papists or Dissenters there is no frighting them from an absurdity by Arguments for there can be nothing more absurd then their very Passion and while that lasts they are as insensible of the wounds that are made in their Principles by objections as some in a Battel are of wounds they receive there But I am not without hopes of a more pacific Conjuncture that may come wherein our Vn-Iesuited Lay-Papists may discriminate their Principles and Notions from the troublesome ones of others of them that vex the knowing part of Mankind with their Implicit Faith like Flies blind in one Season of the year getting into Mens Eyes and when all empty Religion-Traders will no more like the Merchants of Tyre pass for Princes of the Earth after they had with a bulk of words so long enslaved the World and its Princes and themselves too and made Religion but the word as I may say to discriminate Parties in War and to know who and who are of a side and that by the Mutual Consent of reasonable men of all Parties the word Religion will not be put on what is really Irreligion and that a handful of men will think it in vain to strive to keep up the acception or signification of any word or words when the currency of the age and that justly too hath damned the former sense thereof and that all men must speak in the Sense of the Rational Age or not speak intelligibly and as he who seems to be Religious and bridles not his tongue his Religion is vain it will be in vain too for him to think to have ought call'd Religion against the sense of the World and as the Licence was vain and ridiculous granted to a Book of Physick wherein the Licencer said Nihil reperio in hoc libello fidei Catholicae contrarium quo minus typis mandetur so likewise will the Vogue of granting any Liberty to any thing of Catholick Faith that has Treason and Sedition in it be as worthy of Laughter and then will the Publishing of this Tenet be prevalent probably with Papists and prove like a word in season and tend to the abolishing the abuse of the word Religion when they shall be argued with in the cool of the day as our first Parents where after the fall and their Fiery Principles be then exposed and then may each of them whose Religion so call'd excited their angry Prophets to desire the destruction of Heretical Cities as the Choler of Ionah at last animated him tho not to destroy yet to wish the Destruction of Niniveh be as he was seasonably expostulated with dost thou well to be angry and dost thou well to be angry with others who will not call thy firing their houses Religion when thou seest the World begin to laugh at the impertinence of the calling it so The Author I cited before of the great Question to be considered begins his discourse with a Patriotly kind of Sagacity thus viz. That this Nation and the Nation of Scotland and Ireland concerned with it are at present in such a posture and under such Circumstances as give just reason both of fear and care more then ordinary both to Rulers and People is so without doubt that it needs no Proof and that we are in a dangerous Feaver in regard both to our Civil and Religious Interest all in their wits must know which Disease albeit it be now in the opinion of most come to a Crisis yet few can determine whether it will end in a natural cool or prove a distemper yet more dangerous and deadly But when I consider the great number of those in the Kingdom who are at their ease therein either by substantial Fortunes or Professions or Trades and who would account it both trouble and shame to get by Religion as an adventitious Trade as much as a great first-rate Practitioner in Law who had a Receit for the Curing the Tooth-Ach or Gout would to get Fees thereby and to have a Mingle of Clients and Patients together and which sort of Mankind that by
into the Field of Time have yet grown up and how many even of the higher Class of understandings have been tempted to believe the predictions of the illiterate and that such could read the Book of Fate who yet could read no other as appeared by Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop Fisher being tainted with some belief of the holy Maid of Kent's Sayings or at least seeming so to be and that the prediction of things as I partly before hinted may help as a Natural Cause to give them Birth I wishing so well to my Country and its Religion by Law Established have however adventured from Natural Causes to give my judgment for the future State thereof as I have done not despairing of its influences on some present Despairers And moreover the Class of Magna nomina who have faulter'd in their measures of Prophecy is so great that an obscure mistaken person may well hope to hide himself among them Father Parsons aliâ—s Doleman in his Book of the Succession doth p. 258. give his final Conjecture of the great future Event of the Succession after the death of Queen Elizabeth saying My opinion is that this Affair cannot possibly be ended by any possibility moral without some War at leastwise for sometime at the beginning and gives his reasons for that his opinion And how all our hot Apocalyptick Men and Teazers of Anti-Christ have erred in the times of the great Changes they have predicted in the World is obvious and therefore the most sagacious of that sort of Expositers have made the things they have foretold to be far distant in time and before which they knew they should long be in the number of Non entes doctores as one calls the Schoolmen and thus likewise the ingenious Author of the Treatise of Taxes and Contributions printed in London 1667 doth p. 23. say that Before five hundred years we may be all transplanted from hence into America these Countries being over-run with Turks and made wast as the Seats of the famous Eastern Empires at this day Mr. Herbert our pious Vates made Religion standing a tiptoe to take its flight thither many years ago And the ingenious Author of the Zelanders Choice hath therein told us that the French would never part with Vtrecht and that our King's Declaration of Indulgence would never be recalled but the contrary happened in both Cases and the Vote of the House of Commons in order to his Majesties recalling the latter was carried by the Party there favouring the Nonconformists and could not have been without them which that Author did not foresee and that those Nonconformists would be well neither full nor fasting and therefore their reflections on the King's Ministers for denying Indulgence to them since ought to be very gentle Mr. Fox in his Martyrology in one Volume p. 694. gives us this conjectural prediction that the Turk will seize Rome and founds one of his reasons for it on the 18 Ch. of the Rev. and that he shall consume it with fire and Ribera the Iesuite in Chap. 14th of the Rev. saith Romam igitur non tantum propter priora peccata conflagratarum esse magno incendio sed etiam propter illa quae extremis illis temporibus commissura est ex hujus Apocalypsis verbis adeo perspicue cognoscimus ut ne stulâ—issimus quidem negare possit Neither Mr. Fox nor the Iesuite name any particular time when Rome shall be consumed with Fire but many whose Enthusiastic fancies have played with the fire of Rome adventured to lay the Scene of its ruine in the Year 1666 and to assert this a Latin Book was professedly writ and called Romae ruina finalis Anno Dom. 1666. and printed in London in the Year 1663. in the Title whereof 't is said that Rome shall be incendio delenda in the Year 1666. And no doubt our many Prophetic Writers that read that Sentence as from Gods Tribunal that Rome shall be destroyed that year angered the Conclave there and they might well think that to such hot heads there belonged incendiary hands and accordingly as it was before cited out of the Pampâ—let called The Arts and pernicious designs of Rome wherein is shewn what are the Aims of the Iesuites c. the Author makes the Conflagration of London in case it were a practice of Humane Contrivance to have been caused by Rome and the Consistory there and the Iesuites as being willing to signalize that year of 666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some that predicted Romes utter destruction then 't is possible that they might grant against our City the reprisal of performances for our Prophecies against theirs which if they did was a Revenge very disproportionate for according to that rule of the Pharisees revenge namely an Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth they should only have equipped Airy Prophecies against us and not Fire-ships and by a little obvious Art have hounded the number of the Beast 666 upon us And though I am sufficiently convinced by the Quotations out of the Canon Law and the Canonists referred to in Gundissalvus that the Tenet of burning whole Cities if the Majority thereof are Hereticks is chargeable on the Church of Rome as approved by it and tho the Lord Chancellor and two Houses of Commons and the Magistrates of London have given their judgment of the Causers of that Fire as aforesaid and tho one of our great Divines and whose Name all Protestants in our Land must mention with great honour Dr. William Lloyd Dean of Bangir hath in his Funeral Sermon of Sir Edmund Godfrey p. 38. speaking of the incredible patience found in the Citizens of London at the time of its Conflagration as an effect of the Protestant Religion further said Tho so many believed and very few much doubted whence it came that it was from the same hands which we justly suspect for this wickedness meaning the Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey yet was there no Tumult rose upon it no violence done that extended to the life of any Person yet shall I never without the knowledge of convincing proofs of such a Fact projected or modelled by some in Authority in the Church of Rome and the Spiritual Guides of our Lay-Papists charge the Odium of the Fact on more of them than make the least of numbers nor yet the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists here at home or abroad in the World and would say that as infallible as the Pope was he knew not what spirit he was of when he thus in his Law called for fire on Heretical Cities I allude to our Saviour's words to the Disciples that importun'd him to call for Fire from Heaven to burn the Samaritans I know the Roman Catholick Author of the forementioned Pamphlet called the Arts of Rome c. in the Epistle of it saith of the Jesuites and Fryars that what they hold lawful to be done
know that neither the Decrets nor Decretals were ever as such received as Law in England yet the Pope and Jesuites saying that they ought so to have been and that they were and are obligatory upon us it will follow that by reason of an unlucky Proverb of Ben Syrah Quantulus ignis quantam materiam accendit and which is used by the Apostle St. Iames saying Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth and for that there are some little People ready to apply that little fire when the Pope or Jesuites would have them the Majority of the Papists here being Jesuited as was observed and that part of them not being of the Gentry would not be byassed by generous education and temper against the Commands of the mercenary Pope or Jesuites and for that even in the Jesuited Gentry here there were Bigots found to plot and to prepare to execute the Gun-powder Treason it is apparent that the Pope may if he will be very troublesome to our Cities with his Writ de Civitate comburendâ and that he or the Jesuites can command numbers of instruments to execute that his Writ as I may call it who will think that therein that they do as lawful an Act as if the four first General Councils had expresly warranted the same He said that the Popes Decrets and Decretals are in several Popish Countries so much regarded that to encourage men to study the same Academick Degrees are conferred namely of Doctores decretorum and Doctores decretalium That in France where the Canon Law was never in gross received as Minier the President of the Council of Aix did set fire on the Heretical Villages as such so he hath heard that Boerius an eminent Lawyer of France and President of a Parliament there and who has published a Volume of Decisions hath in Tractatu de seditiosis asserted this Tenet of the Pope's power to burn Heretical Cities That the Christians of old when they groaned under the heaviest weight of the Pagan Persecution abhorred this revenge against their idolatrous Enemies as appeared by Tertullian's Apology and their sense of the ease with which this revenge might have been executed Quando vel una nox pauculis faculis largitatem ultionis posset operari si malum malo dispungi penes nos liceret sed absit ut aut igni humano vindicetur Divina secta i. e. One night with a few Fire-brands would yield us sufficient Revenge if it were lawful for us to discount evil with evil but God forbid that the followers of the Divine Religion should either revenge themselves with Humane Fire c. That the very Heathens of old accounted there was turpitude in promoting not only their own profit but that of their Country in firing the Fleet of proclaimed Enemies as appeared in Athens when Themistocles by order from the Senate had privately Communicated to Aristides how he could destroy the Lacedemonians by privately burning their Fleet and Aristides had reported to the Senate that the project of Themistocles communicated to him was profitable for the State but was not honest they unanimously resolved against hearing it as Tully tells us in his Offices and much less would they have deliberated of its turpitude That the Athenians in the time of open War with King Philip and when their Priests offering their most solemn religious Sacrifices to the Gods for the prosperity of their Country did Philippum liberos terrestres navalésque copias atque omnem Macedoniam exitiali carmine diris imprecationibus detestari yet intercepting some Letters writ by him they returned them to him unopen'd That the Pope and his Trent Council having never disown'd this power nor branded this Canon nor yet by any index expurgatorius damned the Writings of Gratian or Gundissalvus or the Famous Canonists by him cited for this opinion it was plain that they might therefore be said to approve of the same that Qui non prohibet cum potest jubet That the Trent Council had gone far in the Confirmation of the Canon Law and that the saying used by the Fathers in that Council was here applicable viz. Omnia nostra facimus quibus authoritatem nostram impertimur In fine he saying that every one ought to withdraw from a Church while it in effect approved Doctrines in the Faith erroneous and in practice impious and asking me if some of the Great Writers of the Church of England as namely Bishop Iewel Bishop Andrews Arch-Bishop Laâ—d Bishop Sanderson or any of them had industriously published it in Print that we might lawfully employ Emissaries to burn Rome or any City where all or the Majority were Papists and that such Writing of theirs was never censured by Authority and impugned by any of our Divines tho yet by occasion thereof no Anti-Papists had ever been the Incendiaries of Popish Cities I would not however withdraw from the Communion of the Church of England till I saw such Tenet of those Divines publickly branded and till such Writing had received the usage that the Canon Law had from Luther when he cast it into the Flames I plainly told him that I would and the like he said he was inclined to as to Communion with the Church of Rome if he found that the Fact of that fiery Tenet against Heretical Cities was chargeable on the Pope in his Law and in the Writers thereupon as aforesaid And as little Credit as I wish all Mushroom Prophets and Prophecies may find I am of opinion if ever any clear discovery should happen in time to be made of that Fires having proceeded from the Councils of great numbers of Iesuites Friars or other Papists a thing I never Expect that Popery would thereby be loaded with such a lasting general Odium here and in Forraign Countries both Popish and Protestant as it would hardly breath under the weight of and the Prophets of the effects of the Year 1666 would cry that their predictions did hit right and boldly say to us their upbraiders that 66 in its effects is not yet past just like the Sooth-sayer who being rallied by Caesar going to the Senate-House and saying the Ides of March were come replied to him that they were not passed There is another happy effect I expect from the grown and growing numbers of our populous Nation and all mens errors being necessarily the more visible to each other by their close Vicinage namely that men will be ashamed to aggravate the supposed Political Errors of the Ministers of our Princes as formerly and much more not to take it patiently when their Princes pardon them How shameful a thing was it that the Kings Pardon was not allowed as good by the Lords and Commons to Arch-Bishop Laud when nothing but that could save them from the danger of the Laws for taking away any mans life by Ordinance of Parliament But so sharp and perfect a haâ—er is your Lordship of all Cruel and Arbitrary Practices that I think I have
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
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