thing that can happen and that whoever shall write the Story of your Lordships life after you have finished your Mortality will have cause to say of you as Mr. Fox p. 411. mentions that one who writes of Wicliff recorded of him that he persevered in his Religion ita ut cano placeret quod Iuveni complacebat that the same thing pleased him in his old Age which did in his youth Nor do I indeed doubt but that when your Lordship shall be upon your passage to the other World you will take your long leave of your friends in the Style with which Dr. Holland the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford was observed commonly to bid his friends farewel viz. Commendo vos amori Dei odio Papatus and that your Lordship who hath been so successful an Agonist against Popery will share in the Glories of that Promise from Heaven To him that overcomes will I give the Morning Star and that as the Morning Star is the same with the Evening one and in the Morning is call'd Phosphorus and in the Evening Hesperugo so the Protestant Religion will appear in the Evening of your Life with the same brightness that it did in the Morning thereof and so continue till you shall arrive at that Region where all the Morning Stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy How unreasonably rigid are they who when the Ministers of Princes are studying and procuring the ease of Mankind as your Lordship hath done will in spight of fate disquiet themselves in rendring the lives of such Ministers uneasie a temper that I think shewed it self over much in a late Speech in the House of Commons of Sir W. I. who if my Information be true did not reverently use the power of his Popularity when with much Acrimony reflecting on some in the Kings Council he was supposed to have aimed at your Lordship in words to this effect There is another in the Council a Noble Man too among the Kings Ministers and a Lawyer but if we cannot reach him do not impeach him intimating that he would have been glad of any being able with Articles and Proofs concludent to have reached your Lordship in order to Impeachment There is another Honourable Person who is your Collegue in the King's Council a Great Man and a Lawyer too whom I was sorry to find by the printed Votes of the House of Commons that were sent into the Country so many persons were endeavouring to reach with matter of Impeachment I mean my Lord Chief Iustice North. It seem'd to me a thing worthy the name of News that the advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions should be thought a sufficient ground to proceed upon to an Impeachment against him for high Crimes and Misdemeanors The security and quiet of Kings and their People are to be so tenderly regarded that the drawing one Proclamation after another to prevent the blowing or breathing in the Kings Face I allude to the words in one of the Articles against Woolsy by Tumultuous Petitioners a thing punishable at Common-Law and likewise by the severity of the Council-Board seems strangely imputed as a Crime to a Judge and Privy Councellor The people petitioning in Multitudes are so far from being like the Horse not knowing his own strength that their coming in such numbers shews they have Calculated it and perhaps with more nicety than the Author of the Discourse before the Royal Society concerning the use of Duplicate Proportion had Calculated the strength of Animals the which strength he saith is as the square roots of their weights and substance and if 1728 Mice were equiponderate to one Horse the said Horse is but 1 144 part as strong as all the said Mice and so might easily strip the Horses Neck of the Thunder that God and Nature according to Iobs expression have cloathed it with and their petitioning in numbers being a real Proclamation of their power it was the part of so good a Councellor of State and Mathematician to advise his Prince and his Country not to be taken in a Trap by the Petitioning Mice and it was worthy of so knowing a Iudge to forewarn them of being entrapped by the Law and as the Millenary Petitioners were forewarn'd in King Iames his time What occasioned the Proclamation referred to by the House of Commons I know not but by what I have observed of his accurateness in the administration of Justice in his great Sphere and of his Mathematical Genius even not receeding from it self while on the Tribunal he in every Cause demonstrates the rationality of the Laws of England and makes Justice there in its Arithmetical and Geometrical proportion so visible to all and by what I have seen of the serenity of his temper in having had once or twice the honour of his Conversation I believe that as a Privy Councellor he would too as much occasionally assert any Legal Right the Subject hath to Petition his Prince as he would the Right of the latter not to be illegally and with the apparent Menace of Members addrest to a way of Petitioning that hath so often and so lately been the Prologue to the ensuing Tragedy of War. I was very much pleased to hear how this Learned Iudge being once moved to grand a Prohibition to the Court Christian in a certain Cause and that the Council fencing with Presidents pro and con that came not home to the point his Lordship declared in words to this purpose that in any proceeding that was against Universal Reason he would grant the Writ and I think it was as proper for him as a States-man to advise a Prohibition in the way of a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions than which nothing can be more against Vniversal Reason But if a person who is so great a Master of that Reason and indeed of Universal Learning and of that part of it that deserves the name of Real and whose single Learning would serve to vindicate a whole profession from Erasmus his Aspersion of doctissimum gâ—nus indoctorum hominum and of knowing nothing of the Sense and Reason of the World beyond Dover and the brightness of whose parts hath given a Lustre to the Science of the Law and by whom if by any of this Age that may be thought possible to be done that our Great Lord Bacon advised King Iames to Crown his Reign with namely the bringing the Body of the Common Law or our jus non scriptum into a Digest I say if a person thus accomplished cannot have the skill to walk through the World free from Impeachment it will be sufficient to make all men of Illustrious Abilities and Godlike Inclinations to do good retire from dangerous Mankind and not adventure to Aid Princes who are Gods Vice-Roys in the Government of the World and to be happy in themselves without preserving it as the first being was before he made
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
against Wars and Rumors of Naval Wars when we are dejected with the shame of our Civil Wars having occasioned the Neighbouring World to augment its Naval Force and consequently too our own vast perpetual Charge in the augmenting ours is that by the necessary encrease of our industry we are capable of defraying it and herein Providence is but just in treating us in the Confinement to our Island as the Dutch do Idlers sent to their Work-houses where care is taken that if they do not the Work appointed them the Sea will come in upon them and 't is well for us that accordingly as is shewn in the 8th Chapter of Sir W. P's Political Arithmetick there are spare hands enough among the King of England ' s Subjects to earn Two Millions per Annum more then they now do and there are employments ready proper and sufficient for that purpose His expression of the spare hands of the English minds me how we who did before our Commotion only pay to our Kings the 6 th part of the spareable part of our Estates for that was what Mr. Vaughan afterward Lord Chief Iustice declared in the House of Commons to be the proportion that men were to be taxed in the old gentle way of Assessments called Subsidies were forced upon those manifold payments to the Usurpers that amounted to one entire Subsidy in each Week of the Year when as what we payed before exceeded not usually one Subsidy or 15 th in two or three years space And afterward when instead of the demanding of Five Members from the Parliament above 400 were forcibly secluded from it most Exorbitant Taxes were Levyed in the Name of a House of Commons in which instead of 508 Members as the legal Complement of its number and of 78 Knights of Shires for England and 12 for Wales there were no Knights of the Shire at all sitting in that House for these 26 English and 11 Welch Counties following viz. Bedfordshire Cornwal Cambridgeshire Derbyshire Devonshire Dorsetshire Essex Glocestershire Hartfordshire Herefordshire Lincolnshire Lancashire Middlesex Monmouthshire Norfolk Northumberland Oxfordshire Surry Shropshire Southampton Suffolk Somersetshire Sussex Westmerland Warwickshire Yorkshire Anglesey Brecknock Cardiganshire Carmarthinshire Carnarvanshire Denbighshire Flintshire Glamorganshire Pembrokshire Montgomeryshire Radnorshire and but one Knight of the Shire in each of the 9 following Counties Berkshire Cheshire Huntingtonshire Kent Leicestershire Northamptonshire Staffordshire Wiltshire Worcestershire and only the full number of Knights of the Shire in Buckinghamshire Nottinghamshire Rutlandshire Merionethshire And York Westminster Bristol Canterbury Chester Exeter Oxford Lincoln Worcester Chichester Carlile Rochester Wells Coventry had no Citizens in the House and London had only 1 instead of 4 and Glocester and Salisbury alone of all the Cities in England had their full Number and by a parcel of about 89 permitted to sit was the whole Clergy as well as Layety of England Taxed Nor is it to be forgot that after the great Usurper by his own Authority only laid a Tax of 60,000 l. per Month on us he afterward found a giving Parliament that Calculating the Charge of the Nation judged it in the whole to amount to 1300,000 l. per Annum whereof 200,000 l. for the Protectors support 400,000 l. for the maintenance of the Navy and Ports and 700,000 l. for the Army as we are told out of the History of the Iron Age printed in the year 1656 and that they who grudged the best of Kings the ordinary yearly Revenue of less then half a Million were brought to settle more then double that Sum on the worst of Usurpers viz. 1,300,000 l. per Annum and that by their helping him into the Power to break the Ballance of Christendome as he did they have entailed on us and our Heirs a necessity of labouring hard for ever to expiate the Guilt and Folly of their idle Politicks The Plenty and Pride and Idleness here that occasioned our Civil Wars and the Tessera of one of the Roman Emperors Militemus and the various discriminating words and signs of Religion have brought us to the Tessera of another of them which will stick by us namely Laboremus But as 't is to be seen in Scobels Collection of Acts Anno 1656. cap. 6. in the humble Petition and advice of Cromwel's Parliament the 7th Paragraph which Enacts the Revenue mentions nothing in particular of the 1,300 000 l. yearly to be settled for the Protectors support but provides that as a constant yearly Revenue for the support of the Government and the safety and defence of these Nations by Sea and Land 1000000 l. be settled for the Navy and Army and 300,000 l. in general for the support of the Government I should not dilate on the Subject of those past Calamitous Times of our Country but that so great a Number of those who experimented them and were Actors or Sufferers therein is now dead that this Age wants the Poize or Ballast of their experiences to keep it steddy and secure from being overset by Waves of Sedition or Winds of Doctrine There are several Latine Sayings about War of which the Pedantly Citation is nauseous as was particularly Sorbiers valuing himself on the Motto of Pax bello Potior but there is another saying familiar to Grammar Schools whence the most Oracular Men in Cabinets of State may and indeed ought to take their Measures and Estimates of the probable Continuance of the publick Peace in any Country and that is from the Consideration of the Numbers of the Inhabitants that never felt the misery of War and that saying is Dulce bellum inexpertis a saying that was thought to give an Ornament to the Monumental Inscription of our Harry the 3 d among the Westminster Monuments the Epitaph of which Prince whose Reign moved so much in the bloody Track of War being there thus Tertius Henricus jacet his pietatis amicus Ecclesiam stravit istam quam post renovavit Reddat ei munus qui Regnat Trinus unus Tertius Henricus est Templi conditor hujus 1273 Dulce bellum inexpertis And long before that obtained as a Latin Adage it was one in Greek viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and it is well said in Vegetius De Re militari lib. 3. cap. 14. Nec confidas satis si tyro praelium cupit Inexpertis enim dulcis est pugna And in Pindar 't is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. dulce bellum inexpertis ast expertus quispiam horret si accesserit cordi supra modum the sense of this weighty Adage Horace applyes to the Contracting Friendship with Great Men Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici Expertus metuit And no doubt but the reason that induced the Romans to place their Tyrones in the Van of the Battel was that their not knowing all the uncertainties and horrors of War would contribute to their eagerness in the onset Partly to this purpose Mr. Hobs in his Behemoth or History of our
of the House of Commons on the 20 th of October 1680. and printed by Order of that House and in which Affidavit and Information he was Charged with Endeavours to stifle some Evidence of the Popish Plot and to promote the belief of a Presbyterian one and with encouraging Dugdale to recant what he had sworn and promising to harbour him in his House and that his Lordships Priest should there be his Companion and likewise watch him his Lordship being thereupon desirous that right should be done him by a printed Vindication was pleased to Command my Pen therein and I was the less unwilling to disobey his Commands because in that Conjuncture wherein so many Loyal and Noble Persons were sufferes by the humour of Accusation then regnant I held it a Patriotly thing to withstand its Arbitrariness Sir W. P. in an Excellent Manuscript of his called The Political Anatomy of Ireland hath one Chapter there Of the Government of Ireland apparent or external and the Government internal and he describes the apparent Government there to be by the King and Three Estates and with the Conduct of Courts of Iustice but makes the internal Government there to depend much on the Potent Influence of the many Secular Priests and Fryars on the numerous Irish Roman Catholicks and on those Priests and Fryars being governed by their Bishops and Superiors and on the Ministers of Foreign States governing and directing such Superiors and thus while England was blest with the best external Government namely of Monarchy and with the best Monarch and a Loyal Nobility and Commons yet after the detection of a Popish Plot several Persons under the Notion of Witnesses about the same made so great a Figure in the Government and were so Enthroned in the Minds of the Populace that the Office of the King's Witnesses was as powerful as ever was that of the high Constable of England and the internal Government of the Kingdom was then very much as I may say a Martyrocracy and by that hard name the Noisy part of Protestants Endeavoured to gain Ground as much as ever any peaceable ones did by the old known Name of Martyrology But as all external Forms of Government have some peculiar defects as well as Conveniences so did this internal Government appear to have and those too so dreadful that the Air of Testimony having sometimes got into the wrong place was likely to have made Earth-Quakes in the external Government and as the Militia that after the Epoche of 41 was called the Parliaments Army did before the fatal time of 48 produce the Revolution of the Army's Parliament so were we endangered after the Plot-Epoche of 78 to have heard of the Office of the King's Witnesses changed into another namely of the Witnesses Kings And whoever shall write the English History of that part of time wherein that Martyrocracy was so powerful and domineering will if he shall think fit to give a denomination to that Interval of Time and to found the same on most of the Narratives he shall read or the Sham-Papers that many Papists and Protestants after the Plot Attaqued each other with be thought not absurd if he gives the old Style of Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incertum or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulosum It was in the time of the most Triumphant State of this Internal Government that I undertook to weigh its Empire as I have done in p. 33 34 35. discussing the points of Infamous Witnesses and their Infamy and of their Credibility after pardon of Perjury or Crimes and Infany incurred and a bolder man than my self would hardly have dared in that Conjuncture to have sifted their Prerogative and as I may say to have put hungry Wolves into Scales and to have taken the dimensions of the Paws of Lions or to have handled the stings of Serpents without expressing against some of the Romanists Principles he thought Irreligionary all the zeal he thought consistent with Charity and Candour to the Persons of Papists which is so much done in the Body of this Discourse and without the expressing of which my Vindicating a Noble Person from being a Papist had been an absurdity However I have been careful in any Moot-points of Witnesses not to disturb in the least the Measures of the External Government about them and out of the tender regard due to the safety of Monarchs from all Subjects have in p. 205 asserted the Obligation of doing every thing that is fairly to be done to support the Credits of Witnesses produced in the Case of Treason and have there given a particular reason for it and have in p. 36. with a Competent respect mentioned Dugdale on the occasion of the Shamm sworn against the Earl of Anglesy as if his Lordship had undertook to have unjustly patronized him and have shewed my self inclined enough to belief credible Witnesses by the Concurrence of my thoughts with the Iustice of the Nation in Godfrey's Case and the fate of which Person and the Casuistical Principles that allowed it I had perhaps not mentioned but out of a just indignation against the infamous Shamms about it spread by some ill Papists to the dishonour of that Excellent Lord the Earl of Danby But there was another consideration that induced me to write with such a Zeal as aforesaid against such Romanists Principles and their effects and but for which the following Discourse had not swollen to a large Volume I observed that since the late Fermentation in England such a Panique Fear of the Growth of Popery and the numbers of Papists had been by Knaves propagated among Fools that made the English Nation appear somewhat ridiculous abroad and that during its Course many considerable Protestants were so far mis-led as to think the State of the Nation could never be restored to it self but by disturbing the Succession of the Crown in its lawful Course of Descent and therefore resolving to do my utmost to free the Land from the Burthen of another guess Perjury by the general Violence done to our Oaths Promissory I mean to those of Allegiance and Supremacy then that of any Witnesses in their Oaths Assertory I thought fit at large to shew the Vanity of any Mens fearing that Popery can ever humanly speaking be the National Religion of England and to direct them that they may not by the imaginary danger of Popery to come run with all their swelling Sails on the Rock of it at present by founding Dominion in Grace and out-rage those Oaths that do at present bind us without reserve to pay Allegiance to the King's Heirs after his demise And for any one who being concerned to see so many of his Country-men lying as it were on the Ground and dejected with unaccountable fears of the extermination of their Religion and themselves and besmearing themselves with the dreadful guilt of their great Oaths was resolved to endeavour to help them up and by perswasion gently to lead them
with a Person of so great Morality and Vertue as the present Pope is and a Pope that would brand the sicarious Principles of those Ianizaries of former Popes the Jesuites and that he would be by so many Roman Catholicks called the Lutheran Pope and that the Papists numbers would be here so comparatively small long before this time as to render it absurd to think that without the Execution of Heavens Peanal Law of an infatuation upon them they will ever attempt any such desperate design against such vast Numbers protected by the best of Princes under the best of Governments Whatever Principles of Irreligion any particular dissolute Papists might by any be supposed to retain it is not to be supposed but that they who shew respect enough to Numbers and their weight in spiritual Matters and particularly in the Divine Concourse with the Majority of Numbers in the Election of the head of their Church and in the determinations of a General Council and in their valuation of their Church by its Universality will not contemn the power of Numbers in Matters Political and I believe it will never among their innumerable Miracles and Revelations be Revealed to them that numbers are by them in things Political to be dis-regarded But as I observed of Mr. Hooker's Prophecy in this Discourse viz. That he guessed shrewdly so one thing hath happened that may partly salve the Credit of this Prelate's Conjecture And that is that some Nominal Protestants but too justly to be thought Popishly affected having robbed the Jesuites of their Doctrine of Resistance and of their Principle of Dominion being founded in Grace Endeavoured to robb them of their Massacre and as his Majesty's Declaration of Iuly the 28th 1683 mentioned did plot an execrable Out-rage of that kind and some of the Dissenters that appeared to me for sometime after I began this Discourse only as Sheep straying from the Flock as they did to that Great Minister of the State who bestowed on them that expression were afterward turned ravenous Animals and as the effect of Nycippus's Sheep according to Aelian bringing forth a Lion in one of the Greek States was resented as portending a Change of the Government these mens producing the Principles of the Iesuites was to be much more regarded as an Omen of our Future Mischief than what any former predictions could import and it was shortly accompanied with a real design to have effected it and as I hope it will be with such a sense of shame in others of them when they shall survey the Circumstances of that bloody design notified in the King's Declaration as Mr. Iohn Geree an Eminent and Learned Presbyterian Minister of S. Faiths in London did express in a Dedicatory Epistle before a Book of his called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 published some Weeks before the Fate of the Royal Martyr and in which Epistle he importunes the Lady Fairfax to shew the Book to her Husband then Lord General to prevent his participating in the guilt of the Regicide then feared and saith O Madam let us fit down and weep over our Religion and we whither shall we cause her shame to go How shall we now look Papists in the Face whom we have so reviled and abhorred for their Derogatory Doctrine and Damnable Practices against Kings or any in Supreme Authority O study that it may never be said that any Person of Honour and of the Protestant Religion had any hand in so unworthy worthy an Action as the deposing and destroying of a King whose preservation they stand bound to endeavour by so many Sacred Bonds I have accorded with our timid Protestants that Popery may gain ground perhaps in some turbid Interval and how by the Divine Omnipotence and Iustice the Course of Nature in its continuing the Protestant Religion may be over-ruled and that on the account of our having justly deserved the Visitation of Popery we may reasonably apprehend the dangers of it p. 140. but have never recurred from shewing them the Future prosperous Estate of Protestants and Protestancy in England but to advance the more forward into the following Representations thereof But having thus with Compassion to the timid endeavoured to discharge my duty as to the Moral Obligation of Complaisance an Obligation that Mr. Hobbs hath so well shewn to be most clearly rising from the Law of Nature and which the Christian Doctrine so strongly inculcates and by vertue of which we are to bear one anothers Burthens and sometimes to the weak to become as weak I thought it afterward proper by the strength of Argument desumed from the nature of things to fortifie the minds of the Loyal against Un-Christian and Un-manly Fears But as to the Dis-loyal and Factious let them by my consent fear on I shall not trouble my self to bear the burthens of them who resolve to be Burthens to the Government and who would if they could load it with Presbyteries dead-weight while they give that term to our Bishops Let those who would have both Protestant Princes and their other Subjects fear them be laughed at for fearing of Papists and for not having a better understanding with the Persons of Papists when there is so good an understanding and coincidence between the Principles of such Nominal Protestants and that very part of the Principles of some Papists that is Irreligionary and subversive of the Rights of Princes and their Governments and when yet they seem not to understand that and let Papists by my consent afford themselves recreative smiles if ever in any Conjuncture of time that may come they shall behold the Factious Revilers of the Church of England to come under its Wing for shelter after their so long endeavouring to deplume it But because I have observed some well meaning and loyal Dissenters frighted both by Cholerick and Melancholy Expositions of the Apocalypse a good Book in which some ill men have found the obscurest passages to be the clearest for their ill purposes and in the dark places of which Book many having long lain in Ambush have thence sallied out to cut Throats and subvert Governments I have here rear'd up a Bull-wark of Nature that may secure them from the imaginary dangers of Castles in the Air or Visionary Armies in the Clouds of any Mens fancies and in compassion to the Loyal Protestants of the Church of England whose Melancholy Suppositions I had a while closed with both as a Friend and Wrestler that I might give them a fair and soft fall I thought it then proper to warn them of the danger of extravagant Suppositions and acquainted them that most Bedlams were founded on Suppositions and the thought of Quid si caelum ruat and of Peoples imagining Earth-quakes to happen in the State from falling Skies and have shewn them how irrational a thing it is to suppose that a lawful Prince how unlawful or heterodox any of his Tenets in Religion may be will injure his Laws and the Religion by
the exhalations of which may cast such Mists before Mens understanding Faculties as to hinder them from seeing their way in the observance of the Oaths they took and therefore as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or premuniment as I call'd it against our being future Enemies to our selves and against poor little Mortals as it were standing for the Office of Conservators of Gods glory while they are losing their own Souls by Perjury and against some Loyal Timid People troubling themselves with falling Skies and fears of Gods not upholding his Church just as Galen tells us of a Melancholy Man who by often reading it in the Poets how Atlas supported Heaven with his Shoulders was often in a Panic fear least Atlas should faint and let Heaven fall on mens heads instead of taking pains to uphold and maintain their Oaths which they swore to God in Truth and Righteousness it may perhaps be always of importance to our English World to have right Notions of the Obligation of those Oaths left behind in it When I have read many of the late Pamphlets against the Succession the Venom of which was stolen out of Doleman's alias Parson's Book and have often considered that the Government in King Iames's time might we ll be apprehensive of the mischief that Book might do with its Poyson and perhaps with its Sting in following Ages I have then wondered why none was employed to Answer it throughly a thing that I do not find was ever done unless it may be said that an Answer to the 1st part of it was in the year 1603 published by Sir Iohn Haward and that its 2d part hath been confuted by some Loyal and Learned Persons since the late Conjuncture of our Fermentation and in which time that Book of Parsons was Reprinted I am sorry that that Book and some others of Father Parsons were in some part of King Iames's time Answered as they were by the real Characters of severity that then fell on some innocent Papists and who I believe were Abhorrers of the Sedition his Books contained and on whom Dr. Donne's Pseudo-Martyr printed in the year 1610 reflects in The Advertisement to the Reader saying That his continual Libels and incitatory Books have occasioned more afflictions and drawn more of that Blood which they call Catholick than all our Acts of Parliament have done And with a just respect to the Learning in Sir Iohn Haward's Answer to the first part of that Book and by him Dedicated to King Iames it may yet be wished that with less Pomp of Words and greater closeness of Argument referring to the Principles of internal Justice and natural Allegiance and the lex terrae he had shewn the perfect unlawfulness of defeating the Title of Proximity of Blood in the Case and instead of so much impugning the Book by References to the Civil Law and old Greek and Latin Authors making for Monarchy in general or even by the places cited out of the old Testament favouring primogeniture and indeed I do not find among all our late Writers for the Succession that so much as one of them by so much as once quoting this Book of Sir Iohn Haward tho so common hath thence brought any Aid to their Noble Cause But however the Oath of Allegiance having been enjoyned since the writing of Sir Iohn Haward's Book hath given an ordinary Writer the advantage of bringing the Cause of the unlawfulness of disturbing the Course of Succession to a quicker hearing and speedier issue in the Court of Conscience which is the point I have endeavoured to carry after the end of this Discourse leaving it to Candid Men to judge of the sincerity of my performance therein and of my fair stating of the Question and the deducing genuine Propositions from it so stated and which shall yet be reviewed by me when I come to Review this Discourse The truth is when I began it I observed the generality of Men who writ against the Exclusion-Bill with a great deal of good Law History and State-policy did shew both their Learning and their Loyalty and did very usefully set forth the dreadful Confusions it would introduce and perpetuate in the State and the Illegality and indeed Nullity of any Exclusion tho by Act of Parliament was by them likewise usefully shewn but yet I think it would have been some scandal to the present Age if it had passed away without transmitting to the next some instances of Protestants who had leisure to write writing of the unlawfulness of such a Bill with relation to our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and I was sorry to find that when the late Loyal and Learned Bishop of Winchester had afterward appear'd as the first Dâ—vine who in Print asserted That the Exclusion of the Right Heir was contrary to the Law of God both Natural and Positive and that such Exclusion was against the Law of the Land also his judgment in his Book called the Bishop of Winchester ' s Vindication given so Learnedly in the point seemed to so many of our new pretenders to Loyalty and to Conformity to the Church of England to be a kind of a Novelty But yet I observed that that Learned Prelate thought not fit there to strengthen his Assertion of the unlawfulness of such Exclusion by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Nor did I observe that among all the Loyal Writers for the Succession I had met with from first to last any one had surveyed the Question of the unlawfulness of the Exclusion resulting from our Obligation by the Oaths of Allâ—giance and Supremacy tho yet some few of them hinted the thing in general and were still answered with the haeres viventis till at last another Divine namely Dr. Hicks Vicar of All hallows Barking and Dean of Worcester honoured both himself and the Question by taking notice of it in his Iovian and in the Preface to a Sermon of his printed in the year 1684 and Entituled The harmony of Divinity and Law in a Discourse about not resisting Sovereign Princes and he in the 3d p. of that Preface observes That some men did pervert the meaning of the word Heirs in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy from its common and usual acceptation to another more special on purpose to elude the force and obligation of them which otherwise they must have had upon the Consciences of the Excluders themselves The Doctor had made himself Master of Law enough to Master the true notion of the point and did in his Preface exorcise the Fantom of haeres viventis a Noon-day Spright raised by one who was thought a great Conjurer and which had before haunted the Question and had affrighted so many from lodging their thoughts in it And tho no other of our Divines that I have heard of writ of the same nor any of the Layety otherwise than starting the Notion of it in Print yet considering the great weight of his Learning and Reason with which in
is for Arbitrary Power they will say a Papist And in cases where the people do not think fit to begin with Execution Common Fame goes for proof against such a Minister and the political whispers of other Great Men who inspire them goe for demonstrations and they think knocking down Arbitrary Power with Arbitrary proof is a good baculiâ—um argumentum ad hominem or rather a Monster of power for as such they look on one of the People who is so by the head higher then themselves I know none to have observed the constitution and customes of the Government of Venice better then your Lordship and there any one that is but Arbitrarily affected as our term is here Popishly affected is taken volly before he comes to the ground or at furthest at his first rebound and his head made a Tennis Ball before he comes to be bandi'd among the people I mean he is first Sumonarily dispatcht or made away and his plenary process is dispatcht or made up afterward Your Lordship hath in the course of your travels been there in person but my eyes have only beheld it as a traveller in Mapps and Authors one of whom namely Boccaline in his Raggnagli di Parnasse Speaking of Venice saith that the dreadful Tribunal of the Councel of ten and the Supream Magistracy of the State-Inquisition could with three ballotting balls easily bury alive any Caesar or Pompey who began to discover himself in that well governed State. And according to the Lawes of that Country any aspirer of the first rate so sunk by the shot of the ballotting balls may be said to be kill'd very fairly though there was no more Citation in the case then in that of the Martyrdom of Sir Edmond Godfrey who yet according to the principles of the Canon Law was likewise killed very fairly I here allude to the Style of the brothers of the blade who when sworn at a Tryal about one murthered in a Duel usually depose that he was killed very fairly And indeed I have by a Neighbour of mine who is a Civilian been shewn it in a Civil Law Book called the Second Tome of the Common Opinions in folio Book 9. p. 462. Printed at Lions that Rebellis impunè occidi possit tunc demum probari declarari quod erat rebellis And the Canonists do as I am informed by him all agree that valet argumentum à crimine laesae Majestatis seâ— rebellionis ad heresim and with good reason according to the Popish hypothesis for that he that is a heretic is a Rebell or Traytor to the Pope and therefore a Heretic by that Law may be destroyed before his Process is made But the Kings of England like those of Israel are merciful Kings and in the Laws of England Iustice and Mercy are still saluting each other and with as much kindness as they can possibly shew without embracing each other to death and the meanest Commoners Life in England becomes not a forfeit to the Law but after a Tryal by his equals and in this our Law agrees with that gentleness and equity inculcated by Grotius de Iure Belli Pacis Book 3. Chap. 14. Temperamentum circa captos § 3. where he saith Cato Censorius narrante Plutarcho si quis servus Capital admisisse videretur de eo supplicium non sumebat nisi postquam damnatus esset etiam Conservorum judicio Quicum conferenda verba Iob. 31. 13. I must confess I was very much shock't with one expression used in a long Speech by one of the managers of the House of Commons in the Trial of the Earl of Strafford wherein the saying That Beasts of Prey are to have no Law was applyed to the Earl. I am sure that Wolfs and Boars are Beasts of the Forrest as well as Harts and Hinds and in the Kings Forrests where they are in his protection they are to have Law and so likewise Foxes To this Metaphor of hunting of men in Parliament there is an allusion in the printed Letter of Mr. Alured in Rushworths Collections 4 o. Caroli where 't is said That Sir Edward Cooke in the House protested that the Author and cause of all their miseries was the Duke of Buckingham which was entertain'd and answered with a cheerful acclamation of the House as when one good Hound recovers the scent the rest come in with a full cry So they pursued it and every one came on home and layed the blame where they thought the fault was But yet by this saying of Alured it seems they thought they were to give him Law and 't is a brutish thing to suppose that wild predatory Beasts have in the Kings Forrests more protection and more exemption from being arbitrarily hunted down than his Liege people to whom he is sworn have in the whole Realm in general and in his Courts of Justice in particular That time seemed not so much 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But your Lordships knowledg in the Laws of the Land and in the Laws of Nations is so universal and profound that you can come to no Court in the World but will either find Law there or bring it and your great knowledg of the Parliamentary Transactions in all past Ages cannot but secure you against any apprehensions of not finding Law. For it hath been rarely seen that a House of Commons has gone to hunt any man down tho with the Law that was not a Nimrod a Mighty hunter of our Laws themselves and never was the House of Peers thought a Court of Rigor and Cruelty and as the Tribunal of Cassius was for its dire severity called Scopulus Reorum In the end of the famous Tryal of the Earl of Strafford the House of Commons foresaw that the Lords would acquit him and therefore they broke up the Judicial prosecution against him and proceeded by Bill of Attainder and shortly after broke in pieces on his Grave the Rule and Standard of Treason they proceeded by as Heralds break their Staffs at the Funerals of Illustrious Persons and cast them into their Tombes Had I been one of that Lords Judges I should have consented that after he had been hunted so long by the Prosecution for Treason and was not Judicially convicted of it he should have had the priviledg of a Hart-Royal proclaimed of which Manwood in his Forrest Law speaking saith That if the King doth hunt a Stag he is called a Hart-Royal and that if he doth hunt a Hart in the Forrest which by chacing is driven out and the King gives him over as either being weary or for that he cannot recover him then because such a Hart hath shewn the King pastime and is also Cervus eximius and that therefore the King would have him preserved he causeth Proclamation to be made in the adjacent Villages that none shall kill hunt hurt or chace him and hinder him from his return to the Forrest and ever after such a Hart is called a Hart-Royal proclaimed But
ever errors they fell into as I should be if I heard any Principal speak unkindly of his Second who contending for him in loco lubrico or fencing on the Ice did slip and shall be as apt as any to wish and hope that now such have consulted with their Country as the Agonothetae and know their opinions better then formerly that they will take other measures and especially when they see the present State of Christendom importuning us to be quiet more then formerly and thus in the old Agnonistic Games many of the lapsi athletae came to be Crown'd The Rule in those Games was that the Agonists were to make three Attaques on each other and he that did slip or go back in the first and second if yet he overcame in the third On-set was lawfully Crown'd and good luck say I have they with their honour who having an opportunity of a third Assault against Popery shall out-do not only others but themselves and I have the Charity to believe that what the great Athletae did in the Exclusion Bill was thought lawful by them and that they thought therein they did not transilire metas And 't is but with Justice that the generality of the People of England seem as Agonothetae to have judged of the temper of our Prince in this Religionary Certamen and I believe whatever time can cause that yet among all composed and sedate Minds his Majesties deportment in the late Conjuncture will never happen to be forgot and particularly his wrestling with his Parliaments as I may say by several Gracious Offers and Messages relating to the security of the Protestant Religion and to the making of English Men everlasting Comprehensors of the same He notified it to them by the Lord Chancellor on March the 11th 78. That this is the time to secure Religion at home and strengthen it from abroad by strengthening the Interests of all the Protestants in Europe c. The results of this Council seem to be decisive of the fate of this Kingdom c. And I must confess I wish that tempus acceptabile as I call'd it before had been accepted of that great Critical Moment of time when the curious needed no intelligence from that Oracular States-man of the measures taken abroad to extirpate Protestancy and when its Enemies in some Countries thought they had the life of that Religion as sure within their gripe as he had that of the Bird when out-braving the Oracle he ask'd if the Bird in the hand were dead or alive and when all his Majesties real acceptable offers were thus reiterated to all the noble Contenders and offered like the water of life to prevent their fainting in their Race and that without Money and without Price And because his Majesties Title hath appear'd as due to his Agonists Crown as to his Inheritable Royal one for having in the several periods of his life at home and abroad contended so earnestly for the Protestant Faith and purchased an immunity from Envy it self and that according to the right of that Law in the Code that restrains the obtaining of Immunities only to such a one who hath striven per omnem aetatem cum coaevis and hath to the Athlotletae given proof of his valour from his youth and who hath at least in tribus agonibus been Conqueror I think the rather that a Crown of Iustice is laid up for him both in time and in eternity for his preserving the property of his Line in some of those his earnest Messages aforesaid and for that he did not by the infringing the Legal Rights of that as I may say transilire lineas or by doing any thing of the Justice whereof he doubted and much more of the Injustice whereof he was fully convinced As the figure of a Crown must be entire so must every good Action consist of entire Causes that is to be rewarded with it and any Prince who doth deliberate of the doing a thing in it self unjust has need of the Caution given to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia hold fast that which thou hast that no Man take away thy Crown and indeed for a Monarch to do an Act of Injustice is a greater misfortune to him than to be deposed the latter being but the evil of punishment and the former of sin I reading lately in Klockius de aerario was ashamed to see the 41. Summarium of Chap. 109th Book 2d to be this viz. A Iustitiâ licite in parvis subinde variariut in majoribus inviolata sit and ashamed to find in that Chapter Tacitus quoted by him for it and saying Habet aliquid ex iniquo omne magnum exemplum and Plutarch cited for saying A justitia in parvis rebus nonnunquam abeas si salvam eam voles in magnis But honest Cicero tells us better things and that Nihil honestum esse potest quod justitiâ vacat and the Christian Morallity I am sure prohibits the doing of one unlawful Act tho the effect of it would be the restoring the whole Creation in integrum to its first State in Paradice and it enjoyns the fortitude of not fearing those that kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul as our Saviours words are in St. Math. 10. 28. and where he doth not say fear not those that can kill the Body but who do actually and frequently kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul implying that unjust men often labour to do that and would do it if they could and their cursed sollicitude therein is not capable of being practised more then by endeavouring to prevail on Men by fear of imminent bodily danger to warp from principles of Justice and the Scripture doth annex the Crown of Life to the condition of being faithful unto death and to not fearing the things to be suffered as 't is said in Rev. 2. 10. the ominous Text Preached on at the Coronation of the Royal Martyr And as it is a saying that Must is for the King so he that Rules over Men must be just ruling in the fear of God as part of the last words of King David assures us and must not by fear of Man do any unjust thing that would imply his intermitting the filial fear of Heaven which is justly punished by being abandon'd to the Servile Fear of Man and to that fear bringing a Snare as that Kings Son hath in his Proverbs told us and when otherwise he might have made his own wrath as the roaring of a Lion as Solomons words are And 't is when exact Justice is as it should be fixed in the Firmament of a Princes Mind that its brightness is above being Ecclipsed by any popular temptations or fears that it resembles the fixt Stars whose great height dazles the eyes of gazers and which Stars cannot be eclipsed by the shaddow of the whole earth The Populace and their Multitudes and Commotions are in the Scripture frequently compared to
Petition yet the Impartial Thuanus doth it and in Book 135. and on the Year 1605. going to relate the History of the Gun-powder Treason he saith Ad libellum supplicem pro libertate Conscientiarum à Majorum Religioni addictis i. e. the Papists in proximis Comitiis oblatum à Rege rejectum fama erat alium his proximis quae jam aliquoties dilata erant porrectum iri qui non repulsae ut prior periculum sed concessionis vel ab invito extâ—rquendae necessitatem adjunctam haberet Itaque qui regni negotia sub principe generoso ac minime suspicioso procurabant nihil pejus veriti in eo laborabant ut petitiones iis adjunctam necessitatem eluderent Verum non de gratiâ de quâ desperabatur decimò obtinendâ sed de repulsâ illà vel cum regni exitio quod minime rebantur illi inter conjuratos agebatur And as to the Puritans Petition to King Iames The Resolution of the Lords and likewise of the Iudges assembled in Star-Chamber shortly after doth I think refer to it in the 3d § viz. Whether it was an offence punishable and what punishment they deserved who framed Petitions and Collected a Multitude of Hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick Cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King that if he denied the Suit many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented where to all the Iustices answered that it was an offence finable at discretion and very near Treason and Felony in the punishment for they tended to the raising of Sedition and Rebellion and discontent among the People to which resolution all the Lords declared that some of the Puritans had raised a false rumour of the King how he intended to grant a toleration to Papists c. And the Lords severally declared how the King was discontented with the said false rumour and had made but the day before a Protestation to them that he never intended and would spend the last drop of Blood before he would do it I remember not in the Millenary Petition any such expression as the insolent intimation that thousands would be discontented if it were not granted but do on the occasion of this ruffianly way of petitioning by Papists and Puritans remember what Alexander ab Alexandro speaks of the Persians who worshipped Fire that they did once in their supplicating their God threaten him that if he would not grant their Request they would throw him into the water I was therefore no imprudent Act of the Nonconforming Divines who had been deprived of their Livings to publish voluntarily such a Protestation of their Tenets as aforesaid after the detection of the Papists Gun powder Treason Plot and by which Act the Government was diverted from putting such a Cautionary Test on their Party as was on the Papists by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Certain it is that both the Parties appeared very rude in the manner of their Petitioning In the Decrets where the Text saith that a thing is done Contra fidem Catholicam the gloss explains it to be Contra bonos more 's and so it may be said that both the Petitioners for the Roman Catholick Faith and for the others alledged Catholick Faith were injurious to each by their unmannerly Petitionings as well as to their Prince and their being both such frequent Aggressors against his quiet gave occasion for the Question to vex his Reign viz. Which were the worse of the two or whether they were not equally bad and so many may carelessly render them according to the saying Rustici res secant per medium What Bishop Elmore the Bishop of London thought in such a Case I have said and yet that Bishop as Fuller tells us in the Church History was a Learned Man and a strict and stout Champion for Disciplinâ— and on which account was more mock'd by Mar-Prelate and hated by the Nonconformists then any one And a great Son of the Church and Minister of the State hath judiciously in a publick Speech inculcated the different regard to be had to those who stray from the Flock and those who would destroy it Moreover a great Iustitiary of the Realm in the Tryal of one of the Popish Plotteâ—s took occasion to observe That Popery was ten times worse then the Heathen Idolatry And Dr. Burnet in a printed Sermon having said That in many places Lutherans are no less and in some tbey are more fierce against the Calvinists then against Papists adds like a strange sort of People among our selves that are not ashamed to own a greater aversion to any sort of Dissenters then to the Church of Rome I hope the Authority of that great Divine and excellent Person will in the point of this Comparison help to allay such a mistaken Aversion to some mistaken Dissenters I care not who knows the great deference I have to the judgment of that great Historian of our Reformation and whose History of which as the House of Commons has done right to by one of their Votes so likewise hath the highest Judicatory in England I mean the House of Lords by a late Order of theirs by which the Thanks of that House are given him for the great service done by him to this Kingdom and to the Protestant Religion in writing the History of the Reformation of the Church of England so truly and exactly and that he be desired to proceed to the perfecting what he further intends therein with all convenient speed c. As the words in the Iournal are My reading lately ten small printed Controversial Discourses between two Baronets of Cheshire near of kin to each other in which are many references to Historical Antiquities concerning the Illegitimacy of one Amicia Daughter to one of the Earls of Chester and my observing that one of those Authors blames the other for not better learning the duty to his deceased Grand-mother as his words are then by divulging the shame of her Illigitimacy and saith there is no Precedent in Scripture of any man that did divulge the shame of any person out of whose loyns he did descend except the wicked Ham and that the other Author thinks himself on the account of truth and for its sake to assert her Illegitimacy those many Tracts passed about that Controversy from the Year 1673 to 1676 occasioned my thinking that thus have some Writers that would take it ill perhaps not to be thought legitimate and true Sons of the Church of England took too much pains to prove the Birth of its Reformation to be illegitimate to the great Applause of the Papists and that our Reverend Historian of it did seasonably come in to Aid his Mother Church by publishing the very Records that would secure her from a blush on that account and leave that Mauvaise honte as the French call it to be Enemies and hath appear'd by his very laborious and judicious Writings to be a
mens judgments or fancies to appropriate so much the meaning of that word to fleshly Lusts. The Devil is called an unclean Spirit in the New Testament though not supposeable to use bodily Lusts or to confine his temptations to them The filthiness of sin is mentioned by St. Paul to Timothy and St. Iames 1. 21. commands the laying aside all filthiness c. A Sentence obtain'd from a Judge that was given by Bribery is said to be lata per sordes and for the turpitude of such a judgment a Judge was long since brought to a shameful end in this Realm and in his Enditement for Bribery 't was said that he did violare sacramentum Domini Regis and the reason thereof was that the Oath of our Kings relating to the doing of Justice to their People such corrupt Judges did by their injustice do violence to that Oath of our Monarchs and in like manner all Kings generally being by their Coronation Oaths bound to protect and defend their People I ask what King on earth can do it if either an outragious Pope or the General of the Jesuites shall secretly cause men to be killed by their Emissaries and what Subject can any were enjoy the benefit of the Tacit Paction between him and the Law to the effect of fac hoc vives if he must hold his life by the Tenure of a Jesuites Caprice This Orders sicarious Principles must therefore be naturally as fatal to it as those of their Calumny beforementioned and indeed this their affected Arbitrary Power over Hereticks lives is liable to the Battery of fear and shame from the other Papists for if such believing the Justice of the Pope's Decree shall speak ill of the Iesuites Contumacy and on that account render that Society disobedient to Holy Church and scandalous to the same will not Tenet the 30 th condemned by the Pope viz. It is lawful for a Person of Honour to kill a man that intends to calumniate him if there is no other way to avoid that Reproach render the lives of such Papists forfeitable to the Jesuites Assassins and again will it not render the Jesuites lives forfeitable by their own Principles to such Papists and thus our Popish Layety and the Iesuites be in a State of War instead of such Layety being amicable Disciples and bountiful Patrons to them Neither the Law of God or the Land do trust the punishment of Malefactors to private persons but as Tolosanus de Repub. tells us l. 13. c. 132. Processum fuit judicialiter sententiâ excommunicationis contra vermes radices segetum edentes in diocesi Curiensi constantiensi and he there sets down such a Sentence of Excommunication pronounced against those animalcula so much more ought such Locusts tho now as to the Pope they have no King I allude to Solomon's words The Locusts have no Kings yet go they forth in Bands and tho their Principles would eradicate the Lives of our Hereditary Kings and their Subjects to have the legal benefit of Judicial Proceedings but the turpitude of such Principles and Practices as pollutes the Land with Blood and may bring a Curse upon it is likely to bring them many an extrajudicial Curse from the Popish and Protestant Populace and if as Tully tells us in his Offices that there was a Law at Athens that ordered publick Execrations against all that did viam erranti non monstrare such Confessors as by insinuations put people out of the right way by vile irreligionary casuistical Principles so fatal to Souls and Bodies must naturally be anathematized by them Thus likewise by shame and fear in our populous English World must all Bloody and Rebellious Principles own'd by any Persons that assume the the name of Protestants be naturally hated and if any are not ashamed or afraid togive just occasion of Jealousie concerning such Hostile Principles being secretly harboured in their minds others will be ashamed and afraid to keep them Company and as if there were some speedy Judgment impending on those who conversed with them according to that Proverb of the Jews Migrandum est ex eo loco in quo Rex non timetur The last prefatory Paragraph before the Bishops Survey is that the Heads and Preachers of the several Factions are such as had a great share in the late Rebellion Such men tho like the Trumpeter in Alciat they made part of the fighters and had been fairly dealt with by the Amnesty if they had not been permitted any more in their profession to have lifted up their voices like Trumpets again or trusted to make any harangues to the People in publick yet at the time of that Survey were very few and are now generally as silent in the Region of the Dead as Meroz was when they curs'd him and themselves are according to my Calculating Observation turn'd to Earth whose Voices like Air in the wrong place made such Earthquakes in Church and State and both fear and shame might teach them how in bello non bis peccare if their being Experts of the inconveniences of War had not naturally excited in many an aversion to it but with the surviving Experts there doth undoubtedly a reminiscentia which Mr. Hobbs calls a re-conning survive how that the long Parliament had not formerly more fears and jealousies of Popery then of Presbytery and of some of the Divines of that perswasion designing to trouble every Parish with a New Court-Christian after the tremendous example in History of the Inquisition for Heretical Pravity being first committed to the Orders of the Dominican and Franciscan Fryars and without any Tribunal and which by their zeal in preaching they afterward obtain'd with a vengeance and to the Scandal of Humane Nature and how that that Parliament as Fuller observes in his Church-History would not trust the Presbyters to carry the Keys of Excommunication at their Girdle so that the Power thereof was not intrusted to them but ultimately resolved into a Committee of eminent Persons of Parliament in which Thomas Earl of Arundel was first named and moreover how that England was then turned into such a common shore of Heretical Opinions that one of the most Learned of the Presbyterian Divines Mr. Iames Cranford in a Sermon of his called Haereseo-machria preached before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen at S. Pauls on February the 1 st 1645. and printed in the following Year saith there in p. 47. In eighty years there did not arise among us so many horrid opinions and blasphemous Heresies under Episcopacy a Government decryed as Antichristian as have risen in these few years since we have been without a Government He had before in p. 5. said it is lamentable what success errors have had among our selves in these last 3 or 4 years of Ecclesiastical Anarchy and Conâ—â—sion whether we respect the numbers of Errors of the erroneous Amsterdam Poland Transylvania Places most infamous for Heresies are now righteous if compared with England London
and not any Religionary Regeneration and That the accession of the Crown purgeth all Obstructions And that that Prince did by the Oath of Allegiance design only to twist the Band of our natural Allegiance the stronger an Allegiance tyed not to Princes Faith of the Cross but to their Crown appears throughout his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance He likewise in his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 9. doth with some warmth of words reflect on the Malice of some who impudently affirm That the Oath of Allegiance was devised for deceiving and entrapping of Papists in point of Conscience and saith That tho the House of Commons at the first framing of the Oath made it to contain That the Pope had no Power to excommunicate me which I caused them to reform only making it to conclude that no Excommunication of the Popes can warrant my Subjects to practise against my Person or State c. so careful was I that nothing should be contained in this Oath except the profession of Natural Allegiance and Civil and Temporal Obedience with a promise to resist to all contrary uncivil violence From thence it appears that what looked like the Religionary part of Popery namely the Pope's exercising a Spiritual Power against him or the Notion as Aquinas delivers it That there is Potestas in summo Pontifice puniendi omnes mortales ratione delicti he intended not to whet the sharpness of the Oath against but only against the Irreligionary part of Popery beforementioned and as to which he might rationally depend on the Zeal of any Heir or Successor tho Roman Catholick concurring with his therein He having in the foregoing Page mentioned how that Parliament that was to have been blown up made some new Laws against Papists saith So far hath my Heart and Government been from any bitterness as almost never one of those sharp Additions to the former Laws have ever yet been put in Execution The Execution of some Laws of pecuniary Mulcts on Papists who in that Conjuncture believed the irreligionary part of the Papal Power might seem to carry such a Face of Justice with it as the practice of the Custom-house doth pursuant to the 13th and 14th of Harry the 8th c. 4. Whereby any English man or born Subject of England who shall swear Obeysance or live as Subjects to any Foreign Prince shall pay Aliens Customs but 't is a madness to think of any Prince's abdicating his Temporal Power and swearing Temporal Obeysance to any one and no man but he who has Laesa principia can suppose that King Iames who avowed in his Premonition That no man in his time or the late Queens ever died for his Religion nor yet any Priests after their taking Orders beyond Sea without some other guilt in them than their bare coming home and who p. 16. of his Apology avows and maintains to his own knowledge that Queen Elizabeth never punished any Papists for Religion but that their punishment was ever extorted out of her hands against her will by their own mis-behaviour could ever intend that by the withdrawing of Allegiance from any of his Heirs in the Course of their Lineal Succession on the pretence of any of their Religionary Notions or other pretence or ground whatsoever there should be a solutio continui or political death inflicted on the Hereditary Monarchy by the preserving of which the lives of all the People of England could only be preserved He in his Premonition and Apology discharged the Moral Offices of honouring all men with relation to Papists his Subjects and judgeth some of them to be of quiet dispositions and good Subjects and in p. 3 4. 46 47 48. of his Apology he makes a difference between many of his Popish Subjects who retained in their hearts the print of their naturâ— l Duty to their Sovereign and those who were carried away with that Fanatical Zeal the Powder-Traytors were and useth the expression of quietly minded Papists and Papists tho peradventure zealous in their Religion yet otherwise civilly honest and good Subjects and acknowledgeth That his Mother altho she continued in that Religion wherein she was nourished yet was so far from being superstitious or jesuited therein that at his baptism tho he was baptized by a Popish Arch-Bishop she sent him word to forbear to use the spittle in his Baptism which was obeyed and in his Premonition speaking to Roman Catholick Princes and wishing them to search the Scriptures and ground their Faith upon their own certain knowledge and not on the Report of others since every man must be safe by his own Faith but leaving this to God his Merciful Providence in his due time he further wisheth them to imitate their Noble Predecessors who in the days of greatest blindness did divers times courageously oppose themselves to the encroaching Ambition of Popes and acknowledgeth That some of their Kingdoms have in all Ages maintained and without interruption enjoyed their liberty against the most ambitious Popes c. and saith That some of those Princes have constantly defended and maintained their lawful freedom to their immortal honour and concludes his Premonition with earnest Prayers to the Almighty for their prosperities and that after their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth they may live and Reign in Heaven with him forever This Learned King did sufficiently thereby Proclaim himself an Enemy to the Papal Tenet of founding Dominion in Grace as to those Foreign Popish Princes and could not therefore but more abhor the effects of it in the Case of his Hereditary Successors and he having judged that those Foreign Princes who owned the Religionary Tenets of Popery did yet constantly defend and maintain their lawful freedom from all Papal Vsurpations to their immortal honour and with so devout a Charity pray'd for their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth and that they may live and reign in Heaven afterward could not but suppose that any of his Heirs who might be of the Roman Catholick Communion would yet disown any Tenet of Popery that was irreligionary and would Exterminate all Papal Vsurpation and that they might here expect a happy Reign on Earth and a happier in Heaven hereafter leaving it to God to open their Eyes as aforesaid in matters Religionary and to render them fafe by their own Faith. King Iames in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance doth incidenter prop up the Justice of the Oath of Supremacy and in p. 49 50 51. doth insert 14 contrary Conclusions to all the Points and Articles of which the Oath of Supremacy consists to denote the absurdity of the opposing that Oath and which Conclusions tho many Clerical and Lay-Papists among his Subjects might maintain yet he might well think it Morally impossible for a Roman Catholick Prince here to do so and he gives a very good reason for the inducing any one so to judge of his measures viz. That those Conclusions were never concluded and defined by any compleat General Council
overthrown and the Scope of the Book is to plant Loyalty throughout the Kingdom and to make the Oath of Allegiance be re vâ—râ a Premuniment in all mens Consciences against Faction and Rebellion The Sect of King Iames's old Enemies in Scotland the Puritans and whom he said he found there more dishonest than the Highlanders and Border Thieves is not named in that Book and he having cleared them from being participants in the Gun-powder Treason did with Justice as well as perhaps with hopes of their emendation after the Tenets of Loyalty that had been then lately published by the English Non-Conformists order that Sect not to be in that Book marked Nigro carbone But he could not but know their former Principles as well as Practices here as exactly as any one and in his Canons here published a Year before the Gun-powder Treason The impugners of the Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England were variously censured the Authors of Schism in the Church of England were censured by the 9th Canon and the maintainers of Schismaticks by the 10th and by the 27th Schismaticks were not to be admitted to the Communion The maintainers of Conventicles were censured by the 11th and the maintainers of Constitutions made in Câ—nventicles censured by the 12th and it refers to the wicked and Anabaptistical Errors of some who outraged the King's Supremacy and Regal Rights and who did meet and make Rules and Orders in Causes Ecclesiastical without the King's Authority and therefore as the King knew that such Persons who had made Schisms in the Church had thereby made Factions in the State and would make more the Church being necessarily included in the State and would be as dry Tiâ—der ready to take the Fire of Rebellion from such Republican Tenets as were in Parson's Book of the Succession and the Writings of Bellarmine and other Romanists and being justly apprehensive that such Antimonarchical Principles as had infected the Scotch Puritans might in time infect the English ones as well as that the Principles of the Powder-Traitors might infect other Loyal Papists he applied the Oath of Allegiance as a general necessary Antidote to the Consciences of his Subjects to prevent such infection In p. 109. of his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance he cited Bellarmine for the Tenets That Kings have not their Authority nor Office immediately from God and that Kings may be deposed by their People for divers respects and when such Writers did so spitefully with the Papal Power endeavour likewise to bring in the Sea of the People to overwhelm Kings it was time to raise the Bank of that Oath the higher against the same and for the Takers of that Oath to be obliged to bear Faith and True Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs c. and him and them to defend c. against all Conspiracies c. which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by reason or colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or OTHERWISE and to declare that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve them of this Oath When therefore I see any serious man disloyal who hath took the Oath of Allegiance and whom Necessity as we say doth not draw to Turpitude I still attribute much of his disloyalty to his not with intense and recollected thought dwelling on the view of his Moral Obligations in the clear Mirror of that Oath but to his cursory viewing them and as St. Iames's words are like a man beholding his natural face in a Glass but beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straitway forgetteth what manner of man he was How many outragious Acts of Disloyalty after 41 had been avoided if the Law of the Oath had been writ in the hearts of the Takers of it as it ought to have been As for Example since to Prorogue or Dissolve Parliaments was ever a known Right and Privilege belonging to the Crown could any Person who had sworn to defend its Rights and Privileges endeavour to retrench that particular one by the Act for the perpetuating the Parliament of 40 How easie would Princes find their Reigns and Subjects their Consciences if these would think of all the Royal Rights they have sworn to defend and how they are to defend them I have mentioned the great Law of Athens against any ones bearing Office under an Usurpt Power and the terrible Oath for the confirmation of that Law and I have likewise mentioned the Author of the EXERCITATION and Mr. Prynn as asserting the unlawfulness of bearing Office under our late usurp'd Powers by reason of the Oath of Allegiance having before obliged them to the King his Heirs and Successors The Author of the Exercitation doth very appositely to strengthen that his Loyal Assertion cite an excellent passage out of Tully's Epistles ad Atticum viz. of his doubting the lawfulness of his bearing the Office of a Councellor of State in such a Case Ec magnum sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 veniendumne sit in Consilium Tyranni si is aliquâ— de re bonâ deliberaturus sit Quare si quid ejusmodi evenerit ut accersamur quid censeas mihi faciendum utique scribito Nihil enim mihi adhuc accidit quod majoris Consilii est And the truth is the great thing that inclineth so many to desire Changes in Governments being the hopes of the Acquest of Offices it was but natural for the Athenian Wisdom to fence with sharp precaution against the lusciousness of Authority under an Usurper and to let every man know as I may say in terrorem that in the day of his eating the forbidden fruit he would die the death by the hand of every man and for the wisdom of the Government in King Iames's time by the effect and necessary Consequences of the Clauses in the Oath of Allegiance to tye mens Consciences from supporting any Vsurpation by bearing Office under it That Law and Oath of Athens were no doubt as almost all other matters of Learning known to King Iames and could he have foreseen how the guest after Offices occasioned the Demagogues to promote the â—ebellion of 41 for 't is known they were then mighty Nimrods after mighty Offices in the State and after what particular ones and how the several Vsurpations supported themselves here afterward through mens supporting themselves by Offices under them and how in this present Fermentation men have been tempted to Faction by hopes of Offices and in pursuit of which men were never generally so wary as iâ— this Conjuncture I am apt to think that in uberâ—orem cautelam for Loyalty and the making men appear perjured even to all of the grossest understandings who should bear Office under any Vsurper and consequently deterring them from projecting to altâ—r the Hereditary Government he would have inserted into the Oath a particular express Clause of not bearing Office here under any other But further to illustrate the intent of the Government
more and more And it was natural for our Divines in this Conjuncture thus to do when so many factious counterfeit Protestants were by their outcries making Papists of them and publishing infamous Pamphlets that expressly shook the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and of the Church by Law Established and with an intent to shake the same in that time when the Exclusion was designed and as appeared particularly by the reprinting for that purpose the Pamphlet of the Rights of the Kingdom and in which the Author did endeavour to prove the Peoples Right to choose their Bishops The Clergy therefore seeing such Nominal Protestants by that real part of Popery of founding Dominion in Grace thus bent on the ruine of Church and State were concerned to bend all their forces of reason in permonishing People of their danger from that part of Popery Thus as when a Light-house is set up to warn Navigators of a Bank of Sand if yet by the force of the Sea and Wind such Bank happens to be removed the Light-house must be removed likewise the same thing was accordingly done by the Justice and Prudence of our Divines giving us a notification of the Sands of Popery having shifted their place The late Experience that our Church had of its usage under the Great Vsurper and of his putting it out of his Protection as knowing the born and sworn Allegiance of its Church-men and likewise its Doctrine must necessarily make them true Adherents to the King's Heirs and Successors hath necessarily taught them that they cannot externally flourish under any Vsurper whatsoever They know that the Oath that Cromwel's Parliament Enacted to be taken by him was a Canting Oath and to which he was sworn to the uttermost of his Power to uphold and maintain the true reformed Protestant Christian Religion in the Purity thereof as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament to the uttermost of his Power and his understanding The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England was not to expect to be upheld and maintained by him nor can it be upheld or maintained by any Vsurper Dr. Gibbon the Author of the Theological SCHEME averred to me that Mr. Nye and he attending a Committee of Parliament in the times of the Vsurpation that Mr. Nye being desired by the Committee to give them a definition or description of a Minister of the Gospel then answered A Minister of the Gospel is one sent forth by the State to preach the Gospel receiving protection from them and maintenance under them and all others restrained and we know that he and others then treated the Church of England in words and things like an Ecclesia maligrantium and how they were then RESTRAINED ab Officio c. and just as the Faction and Schism of many Nominal Protestants began about 41 to call our Divines Names as I have observed so lately the Popish Plot was made the Vehicle of the Poyson of some Mens Calumny and neither Machiavel nor Iesuit did ever more sledfastly practise the Divide Impera than such men in that Conjuncture did that by weakening us with our Divisions they might at once destroy the Lineal Succession of our Hereditary Monarchs in the Realm and the Succession of Bishops in the Church and our Kings in their Coronation Oaths swearing to keep Peace and Agreement to the Holy Church the Clergy and People Factious and Schismatical Persons having broke their own Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy may be said to have endeavoured to break the King's Oath according to the old known form of the Indictment of some of our Iudges for Bribery in which it was said that our Kings being bound by their Oath to do Iustice to their People such Judges did Violare Sacramentum Domini Regis It hath pleased God by the fierce Zeal of several Non-Conformists for the Exclusion to open the Eyes of many Conscientious and Loyal People among them and to bring them thereby to the Bosom of the Holy Church of England for they seeing such Doubts and Objections as some had raised against the Obligations of our Oaths to be but Scruples and that considerate serious and devout Persons of the Church of England had soon thrown the Scruples away were naturally thereby induced to throw off other Scruples and it was likewise but natural to them to think that their very Doubts and Objections for their having separated from the Church of England were but Scruples And as to doubts tho the Rule is Quod dubitas ne feceris yet not only Sanderson but Ames hath told us that Scruples are not to be regarded for Ames in his Cases of Conscience l. 1. c. 16. viz. Of a scrupulous Conscience having said That a Scruple is a fear of the Mind about what one is to do which vexeth the Conscience as a little Stone in ones shooe troubles the foot he wisely concludes That Multi scrupuli cum non possint commodè tolli contrariâ ratione deponi debent quasi violentiâ quadam dum excluduntur ab omni consultatione and that Scrupulus est formido temeraria sine fundamento atque adeo non potest obligare He there mentions A man being said to be scrupulous in discussing his past Actions or in ordering his futuâ—e ones and I am confident that many of the Loyal late Non-Conformists when they consider their past Actings will now accord to say that many of the clamorous pretences they were tempted to urge for Liberty of Conscience ought to have been as Ames's words are laid aside with violence and I do likewise believe that many of the Pious Members of the Church of England who while the Formido temeraria and sine fundamento carried them to incline to think it lawful to shake the Foundation of the Hereditary Monarchy and the super-structures of their Oaths by new interpretations do with a pious horror think of the poor Vapours pent in their Imaginations that made such Temporary Earthquakes in their Moral Offices of Loyalty and might have made perpetual ones in the Kingdom And that because some of our English Princes long ago whose Titles were cloudy did de facto make use of the Legislative Power to render them clear to the People for any to think that therefore the Monarchy was not then de jure and jure Câ—ronae Hereditary and that therefore after the Liquid Oath of Allegiance made to statuminate the most clear Title of a Crown that can be supposed it could since be lawful for any Parliamentary Power to disturb the Succession and dispense with our Oaths can appear to the Considerate to be nothing but a Scruple unworthy their thoughts And moreover because some of our Princes heretofore desired their Parliaments to intermeddle in setling the Succession for any therefore after the Oaths to think it might be lawful to disturb their Prince with renewed importunities again and again to alter the Course of the Descent after his various Declarations