I cannot but return very many thanks to you Mr. Vicar for all your large and pertinent discourses which I must confess have fully convinced me not only of the danger of discontented persons if permitted any longer to meet thus in great numbers to the disturbance of our peace both in Church and State but also of the Obligation of mine Oath as a Justice of the Peace to put in execution the Laws against them And I pray God enable me to deny mine interest rather than so great and solemn an Obligation as an Oath is Vic. Trust God Almighty Sir with your Estate he will never bless you the less for the performance of your duty For if you be willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the Land but if ye refuse and rebel ye shall be devoured with the Sword for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it Isa 1.19 20. Trust Sir in God and do good and you need not doubt of being sufficiently fed Not only the welfare of the Church which is as glorious as it is great depends upon your activity courage and diligence but even the King's honour and the Kingdoms prosperity For if Laws that have received their Sanction are not put in execution it must be for one of these three Reasons either because they are imprudent and unjust in themselves and this will subvert the Legislators wisdom Or secondly because he that is to put them in execution has not power enough to accomplish the design and then his force being contemptible fear and dread will be withdrawn from the Subject Or lastly because there is a defect in his will for the accomplishment of what his Power is ready to assist him in and the Justice of the cause enforces the Obligation of the duty and either of these Reasons being granted and believed amongst the multitude will immediately lay a Kingdom waste and reduce Empires into heaps of Ruines For a Prince being thought to want wisdom brings his Person in contempt want of power in time raises his Adversaries and defect of will to resist and withstand them encourages them to proceed to victory and conquest Ald. I have nothing with which I can withstand your conviction God pardon my past neglects and I will be more sedulous for the time to come But methinks it should something abate our rigour to consider that they would tolerate us Vic. I see did not your Oath goad you the welfare of the Church and peace of the Kingdom would scarce prevail Shake off for once all your fear and do not love the honour more than the duty and burden of of your Office And then I will tell you that never any Party yet would plead for Toleration but whilst themselves were under restraint they had another note when the Sun shined different from what they have in a shower To my knowledge Toleration was accursed in their mouths who now thank God for a gracious indulgence The late times will afford you testimonies enough of their tyranny when they wore the Sword of Power and Force and we shall assuredly find their actions contrary to their specious pretensions should Rebellion ever be rampant to a victory Do but read over the Books I lent you and tell me then what hopes you have of an indulgence from them unless you once more turn to their Principles and Opinions But that I may use a Reason that must of necessity silence this Plea shall we suffer our selves to become the conquered Party only that we may experience the civility of our Adversary Will any man in his right senses make over his Lordship and Possessions to another that he may receive a Pension from it We can expect none other than the greatest violence from persons of their Principles and malice and therefore let him that standeth take heed lest he fall Ald. But if they should chance to have their designs accomplished and should either by strength or treachery gain a victory over us and so we should lose the day they would presently fall to pieces again and thrust their Swords in one anothers bowels Vic. This Sir will be readily consented to But as by their former Methods you collect this so by their present attempts you may without the help of Stars Prognosticate their barbarous designs of ruine to our Church And it cannot but be a strange piece of Policy for a Prince to permit the invasion of his Territories and sacrifice both himself and Possessions to the Avarice and Malice of his cruel Adversaries that they wanting an Enemy to encounter may sheath their Swords in one anothers bowels To be sure they will not disagree as long as they have a Common Adversary left alive and it will be strange pleasure for a dead Enemy that his Adversaries rage against each other I hope Sir your Arguments are all now spent for the Vessel I perceive is out by the dregs and Lees that run from it Let me now with all humility beseech your double care for the execution of what has been to our sorrow too long neglected and let a true repentance for your Omissions be evidenced both to God Almighty and the World by your future vigour and Activity The Night has now blotted out the Day and calls for a period to our Discourse The Laws will prove your best Director and your Oath and Duty the greatest Motive Let the gaping wounds of a bleeding Church beg your Charity to bind up the sores and the devastation and misery of former Wars and almost total subversion of Christianity amongst us beseech your endeavour to support that Church which a warm Sun would soon revive and a sovereign Balsam quickly cure That your duty to God may be faithfully discharged and the breach of Oaths may not burden your Conscience That you may prove both an obedient and loyal Subject unto him who gives you your Honour and Authority by your Office a faithful Assertor of his Majesties Power and Supreme Prerogative a stout Champion for the Church's Priviledges a just Fence to Propriety and Enclosures and a charitable Repairer of those breaches that Schism and Sedition have too long made upon us So shall you be a true Fence to the Fold of Christ preserving the enclosed from the mouths of Wolves and be a means of reducing those wandring sheep that through giddiness or wantonness have strayed out of their appointed Pastures amongst the wild beasts of the Forest And God Almighty direct all your undertakings and crown your Pious and Christian endeavours with success that your courageous resolutions and sacred Promises may never terminate or be envalidated through the subtilty of the Adversary or allurements of the World 'till your unwearied Performance publickly testifies that your Promise was not rash nor your Oath in vain Ald. Now Sir that you have answered my scruples and invalidated my reasonings I should be beneath the worth of mankind if I should not thankefully receive my conviction And I hope whatever liberty
carnal I could easily from this demonstrate that they must offer violence to their own Faculties when ever they attempt an alteration or change Ald. Pray do it then for my use for it is no absurdity for the greatest Politician to hear advice though perhaps at last he will make use of his own that so I may not joyn with them again to the prejudice of my Faculties too Vic. You know Sir that your Worship who has been so good to me may command any thing from me again and therefore I shall not at all refuse to remember you of what it would be arrogance to pretend an information That whosoever attempts the alteration of any Government it is upon assurance or at least presumption that the constituting of another becomes his particular Interest and that it will be better with him under that Authority he endeavours to introduce than it is at present under that which has the immediate sway But now these persons that we are discoursing of cannot place themselves in those Circumstances wherein they shall be freer from trouble or enjoy themselves or their Estates with less noise or burden than in that Condition in which they now are and therefore it must needs be an unreasonable attempt for this Party to endeavour an alteration of Affairs Ald. I understand the general drift of your Argument and you know the old Saying A word to a wise man is enough But methought I heard you offering at something but now to prove to me that those three Oaths mentioned by you and taken by me and my Brethren do not oblige and I the rather mind you of this promise because Oaths are such burdensome things that though I shall not so far depart from my Religion as with the Anabaptist and Quaker to deny the taking of any Oaths I would be eased of the performance of them Vic. I guess that by your Worships actions and therefore shall by Gods Grace set your Worship at liberty from those three but perhaps that may make way for the Obligation of others Ald. Well Sir I am willing to adventure that though to tell truth I liked those three better than some that I have taken since Vic. I am sorry your Worship has yet any kindness for Bell and the Dragon which besides that they are now generally looked upon as Apocryphal have devoured the substance of three Kingdoms and than which I think there were never more impious and unlawful Impositions Ald. But how do they appear to be such deformed and affrighting Monsters Vic. To float in generals were to adventure your Worship in a broad and dangerous Sea in a little Boat without Sails or Oars and might argue me what I never was a cunning Sophister rather than a rational and fair Discourser I must therefore first single mine Adversaries that so encountering them I may with the greater facility prove a Conquerour Ald. If you perform what you promise truly you shall have my vote for a better living not only because the sight of you will alwaies put me in mind of my Guilt and so detract from the pleasure of my life but also for your own advantage that a contracted maintenance may no longer hinder the enlargement of your knowledge Vic. I thank your Worship for your respects both to your self and me and shall with your good leave immediately draw up an Indictment against the Covenant Ald. Pray Sir be as brief as you can or otherwise our Dinner may give an Interruption to your discourse Vic. I shall not then take it asunder although there is in almost every bush a Thief and under every hedge an Ambuscado but shall endeavour to rout the main body and then the smaller Parties will separate of themselves The Covenant then is not only to be renounced but abhorred by all the peaceable Professors of Christianity First Because it is quite opposite to our natural Allegeance to our King by vertue of which we are obliged to preserve his Royal Person against not only Private Insurrections at home but Publick Enemies abroad and not to make our selves Judges of his Actions so far as with limitation and condition only to defend and preserve his Royal Person and Authority so far as his shall conserve and defend the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms as in the third Article of the Solemn League For if this Latitude be given to the Subjects of any Prince his Religion and Actions must of necessity be arraigned at the private Bars of those Subjects that are most inferiour as well as those that attend more immediately upon the Throne and every particular must plead a lawful and sufficient excuse for withdrawing from the preservation of his Prince if he shall either through Ignorance or Interest conjecture that the King does not preserve the true Religion or the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom which what they are is sti11 left to the rashness or indiscretion of every ignorant and illiterate head This sets the Subject above his Prince and loosens and overthrows the very Foundations Nature it self and that Subjection which reason without the Obligation of an Oath sufficiently enforces must needs teach us the bold impieties of such an Oath that will banish Order out of the World and lay open Gods Anointed whom he has consecrated his Delegate to every bold usurping Traytor that will at any time adventure to drench a Crown in its own gore Ald. I easily see your first Pass made at the Covenant which seems to have given it some wound Let us see also your second assault Vic. I am glad to see your Worship so chearful at the wound of such a Friend I was afraid you would have wept for it now since I know you shed drops of bloud for it formerly Ald. That was in my younger years when bleeding was as necessary as my Victuals I did only a some are wont to do at the Universities when you have a great Creation of Graduates or when a multitude of Knights are Dubbed on a day set apart on purpose run in among the Herd But pray Mr. Vicar you promised some more reasons Vic. I thank you Sir for your recalling of a wandring thought The second Argument I have learned against the Covenant is That it is contrary to the Prerogative of Kings not only appropriate to them under the Old Testament but also as soon as they became Christian under the New that is to have the power of reforming Religion in their own hands and this was sufficiently expressed in the Oath of Supremacy which I question not but that you had before taken where the King's Majesty is acknowledged and under the most Sacred Obligation owned the Supreme Ruler and Moderator of the Kingdom governing all Persons and Causes Ecclesiastical and Civil And not only so but you added an Oath to confirm and make your promise Sacred and Inviolable to defend and preserve as much as in you lay his Jurisdictions Priviledges Praeeminencies and Authorities
whatsoever either granted and commended to the trust and managery of the Kings Majesty or else joyned and annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Kingdom Part of which there is none that understands any thing of the State of his Country or Religion but immediately reckons Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction for correction and amendment of all Errors and abuses in Church Affairs To enter therefore into a League and Covenant contradicting and violating a former Oath that plucked also a choice Jewel out of our Sovereigns Crown and entrenched upon his Royal Prerogative is an Action to be abandoned by Mankind and damned to that place to which it is to be feared it has condemned many a Promoter Ald. These methinks are hard words and were it not a derogation to my Honour and a blemish upon my Grandeur I could almost be sorry and sigh for my taking it But I hope as I was saying but now I shall pass still among the Herd Vic. Truly Sir without repentance it must be amongst the Goats then and I would advise you and if in any thing I may inform then in this to be serious where Eternity will be the measure either of your bliss or misery Will you be pleased that I shall proceed to the third reason Ald. Yes to any thing so as I may be rid of those I have already heard Vic. Then thirdly your Worship must easily grant that it was not imposed by a sufficient power For an Oath cannot lawfully be taken by a person subject to another in relation to those particulars in which his subjection is due or to constitute any thing or confirm it by such a Solemn Sanction concerning those matters in which he is lawfully subjected without the leave and permission of his Superiour First Because in this he does an injury to another and obliges himself to injustice by an Oath because he determines and disposes of those matters and affairs that are totally dependent upon anothers Commands And Secondly because every one in those things in which he is subjected to a Superiour is bound to attend and obey his Will and be passive only in relation unto his disposal to whom he has been obliged either by Nature Contract or a precedent Oath which no subsequent can disanul And though these Reasons are ponderous enough to weigh down whatever can be produced to the contrary yet if you try them by the weights of the Sanctuary you will not find a grain deficient For the thirtieth of Numbers is throughout the whole a compleat confirmation of this particular where if a woman remaining in her Fathers House whilest she is under his tuition and Government vow a Vow unto God and bind her self by a most Sacred Bond that Bond and Vow though never so solemn was to be null and void if her Father disallowed it Ald. But the Holy League I hope was no such thing that was cloathed with such unluckie Circumstances Vic. Yes Sir that it was For first the King not only disallowed but protested against it so far was he from giving it the least Contenance or Sanction And had he indeed consented to that he knew he should seale his own ruine as well as violate his Coronation Oath and make a Deed of Gift of all his Prerogative Ald. Then it seems this way a Net that would have entangled and catched both King and Subject Vic. It was a Net Sir that was fit to fish with in troubled waters for had not the Rivers been stained with bloud and the Clouds of Heaven as well as the Mud of the Earth darkned the Waters it is impossible that so much fish should have come to net the Web being so monstrously big that all that had eyes would have seen the Snare but so it was that it had fatal Circumstances attending it that it might prove a ruine to such a People that were out of love with their own beauty murmured and repined at their own plenty and were willing to abandon their blessings and felicity Ald. Well Sir I have no reason to say much agaiast what you reply but I can bear witness to the Old Proverb that it was good fishing in troubled waters But pray make good your second particular that the matter of the Covenant was not within our own power Vic. That I shall make good to your Worship too But first I must take notice by the by that your Worship would make a good Pope for that you have I perceive got a special Argument to prove your self St. Peters Successour because you have catched such fish as brought money in their mouths Ald. I tell you Sir I had rather have my Shop full of them than of Red Herrings Vic. Well there 's salt however in a Red Herring but I never knew your Worship so covetous before however let us throw aside the fish for the present and take up the Net The matter of the Covenant was not within your own power because those very things which you Covenanted to alter and extirpate and what you swore to defend and maintain were all contrary to that duty and subjection which before both by Birth and Oaths you owed to his Majesty Ald. How so Vic. But that I must allow to your Worship the infirmities of Old Age and account your memory as short as your days I could else tell you that but just now it was plainly evinced to be quite opposite to our Natural Obligations to our Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy and not only tended to the diminution but the total destruction of the Kings Prerogative Ald. You are something zealous in your cause Mr. Vicar Vic. Not so zealous as your Worship was formerly in yours my Zeal is neither so hot as to boyle over into raging fury nor yet so blind as not to see its own Object and yet I hope I shall obtain your Worships pardon if so much discourse begins to make me a little warm Ald. I hope this Town stands in an Air that is able to cool you and therefore pray make your last particular a little plainer Vic. I shall chearfully undertake that task and I most humbly thank your Worship for your patience You know omitting the Proem and Conclusion the Covenant consisted of six Articles Every one of which is quite opposite to that obedience you before were engaged for to his Majesty besides the forfeiture of that Religion your Fore-fathers died for Ald. I would fain hear this proved Vic. That you shall certainly Sir without injury to any thing but your own patience As to your Religion the two first Articles do so palpably offer violence to that it not only demolishing the present structure of our most famous Churches but utterly extirpating that pious and most ancient Order of Bishops without which some doubt whether the Christian Church can have its being and by this means leaving us as much as in it lies without any future hopes of a true Priesthood Ald. But how does it oppugne that obedience
that we were before engage to perform to his Majesty Vic. That your Worship may with great facility discern when you shall consider that you were before obliged to preserve and defend not only his Majesties Person but also all his Praeeminencies and Prerogative part of which is notoriosly known to be Ecclesiastical as well as Civil Government and consequently the power of reforming Religion and therefore the offering at an Alteration without him attempts the destruction of that blessed mixture that Lawyers inform us is in his Person and violates his Royal Prerogative besides the diminution of his Revenue by abolishing of the Hierarchy from whose First-fruits and Tenths he reaps no small advantage nay finally it makes part of a Parliament contradict and abrogate what the whole had before by several Acts and Statutes established fixing Prelacy by Laws that cannot justly be repealed by a power less than what at first established it Ald. Truly I did not think so much could have been said against what carried such specious or pretenses but it seems there lodged a Snake in the midst of those sweet herbs Pray Sir proceed to your reflections upon those other Articles that remain unconsidered Vic. I would not have your Worship to conjecture that my discourse will be so much as a Breviate and Epitome of what many persons have writ in Folio For there have scarce been more hunters of the Beast in the Revelation whose exact number a melancholly person once found out in the words of the Covenant than there has been of this Scotch Monster however that we may see also how great friends they are to his Majesty we need travel no further than the third Article which engages us to preserve the Kings Person only in the conservation of true Religion and the Liberties of the Kingdom which laies him open as I hinted before to every Traytor or Enthusiast that has either malice or madness enough to conclude him an enemy to both or either But what may be worth your observation in the same Article in which the preservation of the King 's naked Person stripped of all his Royal Prerogative is limited care is taken that the Priviledges of Parliament and the Liberty of the People be strictly maintained without an interpretation or restriction at all which loudly proclaimes to the whole World what friendship this League designed for his Majesty Ald. Methinks I begin to withdraw my affection from that which I had once a kindness for and I fear this wound to his Sacred Majesty was but a kind of Prologue to that Tragedy that succeeded it Vic. Although I cannot but very much rejoyce to see your Worship confirming that Act with your Judgment which the Penalty of a Law then only seemed to extort to wit the renunciation of the Covenant Yet I shall further I hope enhance your abhorrency of this strange Beast no less than confirm your last consequence and deduction when I shall remember you that the next Article besides that it assumes a most Absolute Tyrannical and Arbitrary Power in bringing men to what we know not who shall deem condign punishment does countenance and encourage and not only so but bind men by the Solemnity of an Oath to Parricide Regicide and any the greatest Villanies in the World How easie was it by vertue of that for Husbands to ease themselves of unpleasant Wives or Wives to divorce themselves from those Husbands that they found their affections either out of wantonness or curiosity to decline from How easie a way was this for the Son to enquire into his Fathers years before nature gave period to his life that so he might be the present Possessour of what he was only heir to before Nay for the Subjects to arraign and condemn their Prince since it was without respect of persons could they but once affix the Title of Incendiary Malignant or obstructer of the Reformed Religion upon him The definition of each particular of which was left in their own breasts to inspire Ald. These Inferences cannot methinks but startle all us that have swallowed down such poyson the regret that is in my Conscience makes me sit very uneasie Vic. I could willingly allow my self as well as you a breathing time were it not for fear that what I have all this time pursued would be too long at rest and recover strength Ald. Nay I would not have you by any means give an interruption to your discourse for I have already given order that they should not expect us at Dinner but provide some repast for us against the Evening Vic. I thank your good Worship not only for your patient condescention in admitting so much familiarity all this while but for your great care both of your self and me though indeed I should not alwaies be so bold an Intruder Ald. He never intrudes that is invited Bagpipes you know will not go at all if they are quite empty Vic. I thank you Sir for that Metaphor for nothing but that could so well have reminded me of the Covenant We have already dispatched half the Articles and condemned one more to make them even and the fifth is nothing but talking of Peace in the midst of War and boasting of strange effects of reconcilement when all know there was no such thing and therefore here the failing of the Saints was superadded to the Perjury of the Sinner And finally as to the Sixth Article it only supposes in general terms what we have already refuted in particular that the cause of this Covenant was the defence of Religion together with the Liberty and Peace of the Kingdoms that the whole tended to the glory of God the Publick Advantage and the Kings Honour and therefore the Jurors here swore to remain constant in the pursuit of the Design against all opposition throughout the whole course of their lives Thus did it not only ensnare a Nation with good words to dig out their own Bowels to rage against Nature it self and sheath their Swords in their nearest Relations to pull down and ruine the most glorious Church in the whole World and force it to be truly Militant but what may supperadd the Complement to all it s deformed dashes it made the King a Slave to his Subjects divested him of all his Royal Robes and made him sacrifice his Head to preserve his Crown which it would also have deprived him of but that his Martyrdom eternized it Ald. Why do you think then that the Covenant murdered the late King of ever blessed memory Vic. No Sir I should be strangely uncivil if I should draw such Conclusions for in that your Worship would be concerned but this I shall be bold to say That the threefold Cord tied him to the Block and left him there for another Party to cut off his head But I expected your Worship should after all this digression have required me to discover the strengeh of the Argument by reducing the whole to some short Form Ald. Truly
present Contract and consequently to testifie against both your injustice and unfaithfulness if you do not perform it but by your own mouth you curse your self and pray God to observe both your promise and performance and punish you severely if you do not faithfully discharge this Obligation This is included in the last Clause annexed to your promise So help you God by the contents of the Book which you then kiss to seal the truth both of the one and of the other Now then if your bare promise in the former case where your interest was concerned was concluded by you not only sufficient to oblige to its faithful performance but also to supersede all future engagements that did attempt to null the former Obligation much more must it be argumentative and convincing when to a promise there is superadded an Oath in which not only your own Concerns both in relation to your Estate and Liberty as a Subject of England and in relation to your Soul as liable to an account before a future Tribunal but also the King and Kingdoms welfare in relation to the interest of Church and State are wrapp'd up Much more I say must this oblige to a full and faithful performance and discharge and be a bar against either the lawfulness or obligation of any future Oath to the contrary Ald. Your Argument must of necessity now be convincing and I must be unfaithful to mine own faculties and not only so but what we account a great deal worse reject mine own interest and concerns should I again have my belief so imposed upon as to conjecture that an Oath or Promise is vacated by any thing of either kind to the contrary that may be subsequent to what went before and therefore I now see that the Covenant and Engagement those accursed impositions and destructive gins to ensnare souls oblige to nothing but repentance and I must seriously put my mind upon an undissembled godly sorrow for that I was so rash and unadvised as to admit such guilt and blemishes upon my soul by such manifest Villanies and horrid Perjuries and God grant that my Repentance may be as true as my Conviction powerful Vic. I am heartily glad to see your Worship so flexible and that upon a rational conviction you recant your Error Indeed I have sometimes met with men whose hearts have been hard when their heads were soft But you are too much the Master of Reason and consequently of your own passions to think that a shame which is a Crown of glory and either through an affected bashfulness or proud resolution to abandon and forsake your own Bliss I hope God will bottle up your tears for your former Crimes which by your future Loyalty testifying the reality of your Recantation I hope will be converted into lapses and escapes and being nailed to the Cross of our blessed Saviour will not only be suspended in relation to their future Acts but be dead to their Motions and Inclinations Is there any thing else that you will command my assistance in before we leave this Subject of our discourse Ald. Since you are so civil in relation to that Office I bear in the Town and so industriously studious of my welfare and satisfaction that you enquire after what proves your own work and burden I shall not at all complement you to a forbearance though I thought indeed out of respect to you as well as in relation to mine own affairs to have put a period to our present discourse Vic. I had hoped that your Worship had by sufficient testimony of my Zeal and Inclination to the discharge of that pleasant and most honourable function that the disposal of Heaven and the Laws of this Nation have instated me in been fully perswaded of my chearful undertaking of any task that might conduce to the discharge of the Obligation of that Office that God Almighty by his Delegates has entrusted me with And therefore I shall not only forbear any censure or imputation of incivility if you please to give occasion to lengthen our discourse 'till the night interrupt us but shall make it my humble and cordial request that your Worship will be pleased to propose such doubts as yet to you may remain unsatisfied Ald. Truly Sir I am no less delighted with our present Conference than you seem to be with the discharge of your duty and therefore I hope you will dispense with mine Age and Place if I shall farther enquire into what though it has been already treated yet is not well fixed either in mine understanding or memory Vic. Pray Sir what is that Ald. You were sometime since urging this as a reason against taking Oaths contrary to ours of Allegiance and Supremacy because we were not then in our own power and therefore could not oblige our selves Vic. Very right and I think it to be a good Argument Ald. So it may perhaps if I did understand it but I would fain have you to use the same way in this that you did in the explanation of the former reason Vic. What! by Similitude Ald. Yes Sir that is the way I mean Vic. Then I shall travel no farther than your own Shop for a Comparison to explicate this which is but an easie Riddle You have I know an Apprentice or two Ald. Yes Sir that I have for they are according to my management as good money as any Commodity I have in my Shop I had three of them 'till one of them ran away from me and in another place bound himself Apprentice to another Master Vic. And do not your Worship look upon him as your Servant and obliged to serve out his time still Ald. Yes and I can in Conscience and Equity as well a in Justice and Law force him to come hither again Vic. But it seems he has since contracted with another Ald. That is nothing his former Indenture is still good Vic. But will not his last Contract null and vacat his former relation Ald. No For if it would we shall not dare trust our Apprentices out of our Shops Nor give them any correction when they deserve it nor make that gain upon them which we usually do by a thrifty way we have of dealing with them but immediately they would desert our service and oblige themselves by Contract to another Vic. These are Inconveniences bad enough especially to you who it seems drive a Trade in Apprentices but there must be some formal reason why your Servants Contract with another does not vacat his Praecontract with you Ald. Methinks your own reason might dictate an Argument sufficient to you Vic. You know Sir that I have been respondent all this while and now I would fain become the Catechist Ald I will not quarrel at that word for your continual testimony of your civility and submission give an uncontroulable evidence that you do not think you have boyes to deal with Vic. I wish we had only those to Catechise for then
but gall them we could then have an opportunity to prove Chirurgeons to them and apply our Plasters to their sores and should have that advantage of perswasion that we have when we visit sick men who are then for the most part in a serious posture and are willing to embrace those instructions and exhortations that in time of health they scorned and refused But now if the Clergy should be made the only Authors of their punishments they would hate the hand that had given them the wound so much that they would not endure them to apply any Medicine to effect a cure and it would at best be looked upon as no other than breaking the head and giving them a Plaster Ald. I cannot but acknowledge you speak a great deal of reason in this and I think it will prevail with me as much as any thing you have said yet to be active in mine Office against these men Vic. As much as any thing Sir but your Oath you should say for that Obligation still remains sacred and solemn and you renounce your interest in that Gospel you then kissed when you entred into those potent bonds not to be broken without the penalty of severe repentance or damnation and torment in the other World if you do not discharge your promise Ald. You see Mr. Vicar I am almost perswaded but you do perpetually rub old sores and gall me with the Obligation of my Oath you have not yet heard all that I have to plead in bar of so strict an Obligation Vic. I hope you are already convinced that you ought to endeavour what lies in your power to fulfil your promises made to God especially those that are sealed and confirmed by the bond and solemnity of a sacred Oath And that everlasting chains become due to you if you voluntarily break those Cords that you have at present bound your self to God Almighty with Ald. I am not so forgetful of your discourse nor so insensible of mine own Obligation But impossibility of performance does as well disoblige me from the engagement of mine Oath as illegality has voided the bond of the Covenant It is impossible to do any good upon these people by the execution of Laws and therefore in vain to attempt it Vic. I am sure Sir you have already taken Gods name in vain if you do not attempt it and as far as is within the compass of your power to execute it too But I cannot but wonder that you should suppose your Oath impossible to be discharged I fear you have not yet much attempted it or else the Essay has been attended with imprudence or impatience you have either failed in the manner of your administration or some trouble or inconvenience to your self hath directed your intention and put a stop to your Justice Ald. We did Sir when the King was first restored to the possession of these Kingdoms which he had before an undoubted right to vigorously execute the Laws against these discontented persons and we found that our Prisons were always full to very little or no purpose and there they would preach out at the very Grates and disturbe the ears of all travellers and gather Conventicles at the Prison doors Vic. Truly Sir 't was an easie matter to give the losers leave to talk and by my consent they should have exercised thus 'till they had been weary both of prating and restraint Why did you then discharge them and not constantly persevere in making them endure the Penalty of the Laws To shew Children the Rod only and never giving them the sense of its lash does but the more harden them in their stubbornness Those persons when they had felt your Justice and seen your Resolution would in time have been weary of their own sufferings and others would have been sufficiently deterr'd by their examples from future molestations of Law and Justice or provocation of that Sword which they perceived to be so sharp and keen You could not I believe but observe a difference betwixt their carriage then and their deportment now Those that now with confidence enough desert our Assemblies were devout then at the reading the Liturgy But when they see they may with impunity provoke Authority and contemn Government they separate then out of humour of being singular or by reason of the least disobligation from the Minister or perhaps any other in Communion with them nay if Authority does but punish any one for Vice or Debauchery away they will immediately run to a Conventicle and desert their Religion to be as they suppose revenged of their Adversary Nay after a little while we shall scarce have a Whore carted or an impudent Scold put into the ducking stool nay a Drunkard or Blasphemer set by the heels but to contemn that Authority that sentenced them to their most just punishment they will present themselves at the next meeting place that from malice and revenge they may break the Law in another place where by reason of the neglect or cowardize of those that should maintain its force and resist the breach it becomes weak and easily assaulted and overcome since they were beat back by due chastisement from the former onset and battery Had you but continued as well as you begun at his Sacred Majesties first arrival you should not have had the tythe of what trouble you must now expect nor they the tenth of what numbers they have since secured nor any of us those present fears that hourly encrease and daily invade us Ald. But will the Fanaticks receive such persons that out of such wicked humour and from principles of revenge fly from us only because justice has reached them Vic. If they are women they will not at all be scrupulous especially if they are indifferently handsome for because Mary Magdalen proved a Saint therefore they would have all Saints to be Mary Magdalens The more Devils have been cast out the greater is the glory of the Exorcist But if they are men they will sometimes a little shrive them for fear at last their rational soul should domineer over their sense and they should return by the way from whence they came and discover all their deeds of darkness and relate the Saints failings to the wicked But not to divert our present Discourse which must now draw towards a conclusion with the day suppose what opposition you will in the execution of the Laws upon these Gamesters in Religion that play all hazards upon their Bibles yet your Oath as a Justice still obliges you and if ever you will ascend God's holy hill though you swear to your own hurt you must not change Ald. True Sir if an impossibility did not attend my Oath and consequently discharge me Vic. Was your Oath impossible to be kept when you first took it Ald. No no then it had been utterly unlawful and then I must have repented for what was impious and unjust not to be made the matter of an Oath Vic. Is