Ages have done by some of his Royal Ancestors if they can but once persuade the People who are easily deceived or a considerable number of them that it is not for the Interest of the Nation that he should longer reign over them The least the People so persuaded would probaly say of their Majesties in a time of general defection would be in the Words of Dr. Sherlock Let them go if they cannot defend-themselves and when they were gone which all their faithfull Subjects pray God to forbid they would think it their Duty to shut the door after them for you and such as you would presently exhort them to study to be quiet and doe their own business and to be more concerned for their Countrey and Nation than to break the Peace of for the Interest of any single Man or Woman in it as their Majesties would then be styled Nay this great Concern of yours for our Country and Nation in opposition to the Interest of the Prince will justifie any thing as well as being quiet or sitting still It exposes him to Ehud's Dagger as well as Gideon's Sword to Assassins and Bravoes as well as to Rebels Deposers and High Courts of Justice for a Prince in your Arithmetick is but a single Man and if his Safety and Interest is not in Reality or Opinion consistent with that of the People they may dispatch or depose him any way it matters not how a Ravilliac or a Clement may doe the Work with a Steletto when a League or Association cannot doe it Princes at this rate can be no longer safe than they continue in the good opinion of the People Page 29. and are looked upon to be good Men and encouragers of true Religion As long as the Case is so you say they are not onely to be submitted to bus to be acknowledged as Blessings But by the Rule of Contraries If they come to be or which is all one happen to be thought bad Men by the People and Encouragers of false Religion as Henry the 4th of France and Charles the 1st of England were then they are no longer to be acknowledged as Blessings but to be resisted deposed or murthered as Curses and no Man ought to be concerned at it but to be quiet and let the Deliverers of the People doe their Word their own way for as you intimate the King is but a single Man and the Interest of the Countrey which others call the Publick Good is to be preferred without Exception before the Interest i. e. before the Welfare and safety of any Particular Man I profess my Lord I cannot but wonder that any Government should prefer Men that turn Subjects to it upon such loose and dangerous Principles as are equally destructive of all Governments and can secure none For this Doctrine upon which your Exhortation is founded undermines Senates as well as Kings for as a King my Lord is with you but a single Man so by the same figure in Politicks Senates are but a few single Men met together and so the People in parity of Reason ought at all times to be more concerned for their Countrey than a sew single Men. Nay my Lord by this Doctrine the minor Part in a pure Democracy can never want a plausible pretence of resisting the major in whose Determinations they ought to acquiesce for though they are the minor they may always pretend to be a sounder Part that are more concerned for their Countrey than for the Interest of any number of Men though never so great and so at this rate there can be no Peace in any Nation or Government but eternal Opposition without a powerful standing Army which is an uncertain state of Peace a Peace as long as it endures attended with Oppression Poverty and Slavery and not much better for the People than a State of War Nay my Lord you will find that this Principle of yours will ruine Bishops as well as Kings for when Sir George Mackenzy and others of the Episcopal Party defended the Bishops of Scotland in the Convention of that Kingdom What a doe said a Presbyterian Lord is here about the Bishops I think we ought to be more concerned for our Countrey than the Interest of Twelve Man It was of such Latitude as this of yours and such Latitudinarians as you are that Dr. Sherlock complained not long before he had taken the Oaths had ruined both the Church and State He then saw how such loose Doctrines as yours made them both Ohnoxious to an everlasting rotation of Turns and Revolutions and was not sparing in his Reflections and Invectives upon one whom he thought the Arth-Latitudinarian but as Dr. Collins said at Cambridge Then was then but now is now for since that he hath left the narrow for the wide and easie Way or it I may compare Principles as you do Religion to Cloaths Page 14. he hath changed his old streight uneasie Fashion for the never easie Mode he hath cast off the slavish Principles of strict and inflexible Loyalty to his Prince his Soul is no longer fettered with them but is as free as the happy Liberty of Obeying and Regnant Powers can make him It matters not with you or him my Lord what the King be lawful or unlawful real or titular rightful or wrongful provided he be in Possession of the Throne Thus let Twenty Kings supplant one another and you can transfer you Allegiance to the later though you have recognized and sworn Allegiance never so solemnly to the former and declared that 〈◊〉 Power can absolve you from that Oath nay though you have made a vow to God of Obedience to him and he actually claims his Right and prosecutes his Claim and charges his Subject to keep their Allegiance entire for him yet notwithstanding all this you can turn Subjects to him that usurps his Throne though he got it and keep it never so unjustly like the Gentleman's Spaniel who forsook his Master and followed the Thief after he had knocked him down and got upon his Horse Thus with you and such as you my Lord whoever can mount Bucephalus will be your Alexander whoever can get into the Throne shall certainly be your Caesar if God should suffer a Cromwell to destroy their Majesties and seize the Crown you would own him and be Subject to him and pray publickly for him in the Regal Style because St. Paul hath said That every Soul must be subject Page 28. and hath bad us put up Prayers and Supplications and Intercessions for all Men especially for Kings and all that are in Authority without any distinction or restriction what Kings or what Persons in Authority we are to pray for and what not From these Words my Lord I presume to conjecture upon what Principles you took the Oath for being asked in Company some time since why you did not write a Book to persuade men to take the New Oath you replied to this effect That
AN APOLOGY FOR THE New Separation In a LETTER to Dr. John Sharpe Archbishop of YORK OCCASIONED By his Farewell-Sermon preached on the 28th of June at St. Giles's in the Fields MALACHI 11.7 8 9. The Priest's Lips should keep Knowledge and they should seek the Law at his Mouth for he is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts But ye have departed out of the Way ye have caused many to stumble at the Law ye have corrupted the Covenant of Levi saith the Lord of Hosts Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the People according at ye have not kept my ways but have been partial in the Law LONDON Printed in the Year MDCXCI To the Gentlemen of the Vestry of St. Giles's in the Fields SIRS I Here present you with some Reflections upon the Arch-Bishop of York's Farewel-Sermon which his Grace tells us he Published at your Request They are written in form of Letter to him and as I present them to you with as much Respect and in as much Christian Charity as he I believe presented the Sermon so I hope you will read them with as much Candour and examine impartially without any byass to Persons or Causes which is in the Right and whether the Things which you took upon his Grace's Authority be so or no. I must do him the Justice to acknowledge That he is an eminent Person in his Profession as well as in that station which he now holds in the Church and that he deserves that Esteem and Veneration which you have for him But then I must tell you That the Authority of no single Man or number of Men how eminent or great soever ought to signifie any thing with Church of England Men against the Authority of the Church I have seen her Articles and Homilies in many of the London-Vestries and if they be in yours I desire you to make them the Test of my Lord's Sermon and this Answer to it which I desire may be approved or rejected by you as it happens to prove by that Test See I pray you Gentlemen if you can find any thing in them to countenance transferring Allegiance from a living and claiming Legal King or daily Praying for his destruction See if you can find any thing in them that will justifie his Graces Exposition of 1 Tim. 11.1 2. or of Submitting or Praying for the Powers in being without distinction or regard to Titles which he says Is the very Doctrine of the Church of England Pag. 3. If it be you may surely easily find it but if you cannot find it or any thing like it then you may be sure it is not the the Doctrine of the Church though it may be the Doctrine Preach'd of late in the Churches and then you will have occasion to follow the Apostle's advice which is not to have the Persons of Men in Admiration and to remember what our Lord often inculcated to his Disciples to beware whom and how they heard There are some times in which his advice is more needful than others and this I think is such a time when our Church-men are divided in their Practice and about some practical Points and whether the greater or smaller number is in the Right you will never be able judge though it concerns your Souls to judge aright unless you will hear what both say There are Men of equal Eminence and Learning on both sides and if one side can pretend the Advantage Numbers the other can urge against it the interest of saving and getting more to depretiate the Number and Authority of their Examples together with a multiform variety of most different Opinions and Principles among them one of them complying in one sense and upon one Principle and another upon another This Book of mine is a short and summary Apology for the little suffering Number against the Arguments and Accusations of the Arch-Bishop who is now at the head of the other Party and if it can prevail with you to look more narrowly into the Controversie in which you have engaged his Grace I shall think my self sufficiently recompenced for my little Pains in Writing of it and in Hopes that you or some of you who have most leisure and ingenuity will do so I Subscribe in all Sincerity Gentlemen Your most Faithful and Humble Servant AN APOLOGY FOR THE New Separation MY LORD I Once had the Happiness to hear you preach an excellent Sermon in which you spoke many excellent things that were true and just with all that serious Air and Authority that could become a sincere Preacher I often had occasion since to wish it had been put in Print it was preached at St. Margaret's Westminster on the 30th of January was two years before the Gentlemen of the Convention and remembring the excellent Discourse you then made and pressed upon the Consciences of the Conventioners I had a great Desire and Curiosity to read your late fare-well Sermon to see if you stood firm in these times of Defection to your former Principles But to be plain and serious with you I find you so altered like many of your Brethren from your self that though Dr. Sharpe is still the same Person yet I do not find that the Dead of Norwich and the Archbishop are the same Man For then my Lord you preach'd with great appearance of Zeal and Sincerity against the resisting and deposing Doctrines for which you had the Honour to be censured by many of the House but now in the very Phrase and Language of those Authors who have taught the World those damnable Doctrines Page 30 you tell us that we must be more concerned for our Countrey and Nation than the Interest of any single Man in it A Saying certainly in the sense you must needs mean it fitter for a Bishop of the Romish than the English Church which conformably to our Laws and the eternal Reasons of them teacheth her Children That the Interest of the People is wrapt up with the Safety and Interest of the Prince and that they can never be happy without him This our Ancestors have often felt and confessed upon Experience particularly Mr. Pryn in his Preface to Cotton's Abridgment to whose Words I refer you But you my Lord contrary to all Law Reason and Experience have taught the People in this Sermon to set up a separate and distinct Interest against that of the Prince and by consequence to resist or depose him to turn or keep him out of his Kingdom be he who he will even the present as well as any of our former Kings You cannot but know that there are a party of Men among us who are more concerned for another Interest than the Interest of the King I mean the Comman wealthsmen and they thinking that Interest which I assure you is a growing Interest the Interest of their Countrey they may upon your Principles do as much for his Majesty as the Pretenders of Publick Good in former
thus if the Turk should happen to over-run the Kingdom of Poland and deliver the People from Popish Tyranny this were an Extraordinary Providence and the Grand Seignior would presently became the lawful Sovereign of that Realm and that which the proud Mahometan little thinks by virtue of a Position made at Cambridge above Twenty Years ago I have considered it as well as I am able and cannot make the Doctor 's Providentia Extraordinaria to signifie any more in effect than what they call Mr. Hobbs's Potentia Irresistibilis and then the Doctor and he and our Author have been the only Three for ought I know that have perfectly agreed in this uncouth and 'till of late unheard of Point that unsettles the Foundations of the Earth and gives a liberty to every bold Usurper that invades the Crown at least legimates his Claim if he can be but Successful enough to place it on his own Head But Mr. Jenkins must know that though this assertion be a good Expedient to secure ones Neck under an illegal and tyrannical Power yet it never can make him a faithful Subject to his natural and lawful Prince or it robs him of Title which he hath by Inheritance and justifies every thing by Event onely It adds Affliction to the Misery of unfortunate Kings and flatters the prosperous Traitor as if he were the Darling of Heaven Nay you cannot but be conscious to your self that two Years ago you were not of opinion at least you were not fully persuaded that the Text allowed us to pray in behalf of a King de Facto against the King de Jure or in behalf of a King in Possession against the legal King as you and Dr. Sherlock still acknowledge King James to be though he is out of Possession or else why did you at his House in the Temple express so much dislike and dissatisfaction at the Prayers in the Office of the first general Fast But the World is since well mended with you and what was matter of Difficulty to you then is no so now for since that time you have better Studied the great Apostle at Canterbury than you did at Norwich and plainly discovered that he is and always was for the Vppermost and directs us to pay our Allegiance and Devotion without enquiring into Titles to the King in the Throne I wish for the Honour of our Religion and the better Settlement of the Nation that these Notions had still remained among those without and not obtained admission within the pale of the Church more especially I wish for the Honour of the holy Order that they had never been taught in Pulpits at least by our Bishops and Dignified Church-men who are the more conspicuous Lights and upon whom the Reputation of the Clergy depends Certainly my Lord such insecure Doctrines to Princes when once they come to understand them cannot be very acceptable to them nor can they much value such Protean Subjects as will how the Knee to them to day and do the same to their greatest Enemies to morrow if they can get into their Thrones I doubt not but their Majesties when they have leisure to reflect will be sensible how much such Men impose upon them and how little Security they have in their Allegiance though they pretend to transfer it all unto them because it is a temporary and a moveable Allegiance which they can transfer in infinitum and vear backwards and forwards or come about to every point of the Compass like the Weather-cocks upon their Church steeples as the Wind shall blow My Lord one Jacobite cou'd he turn to their Majesties upon his own Principles would be worth an hundred such Subjects as you and Dr. Sherlock and whenever Providence shall remove the Obstacles which lie in the way of their Allegiance to them they will have reason to value them as so many Jewels of their Crown My Lord I cannot deny but that I like the Conversation of the Men cause they are Men of Conscience and Honour and discourse and write like Scholars and Christians though Dr. Sherlock calls then little Writers this makes me keep Company with them and so I do with some Men of Parts among the Republicans and so I would do with Aristotle Plato and Socrates were they alive and see how they liked your Principle of tying Allegiance to actual Administration I will not tell you what they say of you at Richards for I am afraid it might ruffle your smooth Temper to let you know how unmercifully those Gentlemen tear your Rocket without any regard to your venerable Character but the Jacobites are more respectful to it upon Principle and I will spend the rest of my Time and Paper in letting you know what they reply to every thing you have said against them from the 25th Page to the end of your Sermon in which you have exposed them as on a Stage first to your Parish and then to the whole Kingdom They observe then my Lord Page 26. that you might have exhorted your People to study Peace and Vnity and endeavour in their several Stations to promote the publick Tranquillity without pointing at them as disturbers of it and they say they have reason to think that you have done it with a design to provoke both the Government and People against them and to that end they suspect it is that you represent them as a Faction more especially as a Faction in Religion Page 29. and tell the World they ground their Faction on a State-point or as you afterwards explain your self upon a mere State point This my Lord is the great Charge you draw up against them and they pretend that it is none of the things of your Text as being neither True Honest nor Just and they wonder they could be so falsly charged by a learned Man who can distinguish very well though common Readers and Hearers cannot betwixt a State-point and a mere point of State These two things they say are very different though you fallaciously confound them together and therefore they distinguish betwixt a State-point which is purely such and a State-point which happens also to be a point of Morality or practical Religion and in its Nature affects the Consciences of Men. As for Example The Spanish Match say they in the time of James the First was a State point i.e. a mere State-point which had it been effected could not have obliged any Man in Conscience though the Clergy preached against it to refuse Communion with the Church or Subjection to the State The Vote of Non-addressing was also a State-point but then say they not a mere State-point but such an one as was withall a matter of Morality which many of the Members thought in their Consciences a great breach of their Duty to concur with and therefore left the House Wherefore my Lord they appeal to you and the whole Casuistical World if a Safe point and more particularly a point of Government
and Doctrines of Politicks that they that dwell on the Earth shall wonder at them as at the Beast in the Revelations when they behold them One of them as I am told hath been at the pains to compare Dr. Sherlock's Notions about Politicks with those of Julian Johnson's and can make it appear from that Collation that Julian is much the better Church-man and the more Orthodox Apostate of the two In short my Lord in answer to this Reflexion upon them as Coiners of Nations about Politicks they stick not to say that you are the Statists and Polincians who with your humane Policies have corrupted your Religion defiled the Priesthood dishonoured the Church scandalized her Friends and caused her Enemies to triumph In the next Paragraph you say That it is very grievous for those that promote a Separation Page 27. who have always declared themselves Friends to the Church and Enemies to Schism To this Reflexion they reply That they are still as much Friends of the Church and Enemies of Schism as ever but then by the Church they understand the True Old Church of England with all her venerable Doctrines of Faith Justice and moral Honesty and all her strict Decrees against the resisting deposing and forferting Doctrines the Church of England with all her plain Primitive Doctrines of Christian Honesty and Simplicity against Equivocations and Mental Reservations the Church that always abhorred Treason and Perjury as well as Idolatry that never allowed her Children to do any moral Evil for a good End or with a good Intention In a word the Church that equally condemus both the Parts of Popery that which teaches us to be false to Men as well as that which is injurious to God that which pollutes our Morals as well as that which pollutes our Faith and Worship This pure Virgin Church which they think is now driven once more into the Wilderness they say is the Church which they adhere to and to which they think you ought to have adhered with them and that you have separated from her and them and not they from you For they say they are just where they were when you were last with them and have not budged a Foot since from that Church and that you cannot say they have broken from you unless you will affirm that when a Ship breaks from the Shoar where she lay at Anchor the Shoar removes from her and not she from the Shoar And then as to the next Reflexion of being distasted at the establisht Worship for which they were zealous before they say they are as zealous for it as ever as far as the Matter of the Prayers is the same but the Matter of some of the old Prayers they say is changed and this Matter with that of all the New ones being the subject Matter of the New Oath of Allegiance they have the same difficulty of Conscience upon them as to saying of these as taking of those Wherefore in Answer to your fallacious Question about the Liturgie and Prayers they desire to know if you put the Question of the whole Liturgie and all the Prayers in it or not If not then the Question is not to your purpose but if you indeed mean the whole Liturgy and all the Prayers in it as you would be understood then they say they must tell you that the Liturgy and Prayers are not the same they were and by consequence that the Proposition implied in your Question is false For as Changing the Name of God for the Virgin Mary in the invocatory part of any Collect in the Liturgy would change the Object of Worship and make it not as it was a Prayer to God but to the Virgin so changing the Name of a Man for that of his Enemy in the petitionary part of any Collect makes it quite another Prayer not for the Man as it was before the Change of Names but for his Enemy and by consequence alteration of Names alters the Matter and Intention of the Prayer and makes it as different from it self as the two Men and their Interests happen to be They suppose that if a Man should raze the Names out of a Petition to their Majesties and put the French King's Name in their place that it would no longer be a Petition to them but to their mortal Enemy and therefore in Reply to the next Question which follows about the same Liturgie they say this change of Names has changed the Prayers in the Liturgie and that this change disgusts their Consciences and helps to drive them from your Churches being one cause of their Separation from the Publick and but one for as I just now shewed your Grace there was another of which you were pleased to take no notice Ay but you say they proceed so far as to declare open War and set up separate Congregations in opposition to the publick To this they say for the foresaid Reasons That they did not begin this spiritual War which on their side is purely Defensive because they are driven from the Publick and that the same Reasons that will justifie their Separation from it will also justifie setting up separate Meetings in opposition to it in which they think the pure Church of England with her pure Worship may be seen and heard like the Church of Jerusalem in the first persecution of Christianity in the upper rooms And in reply to the great Emphasis which to supply the want of Argument you put upon Separating from the Publick and Setting up Congregations in opposition to the Publick they pray you to consider That the Multitude or great Majority which usually makes the Publick is often in the wrong You will not deny but the Multitude or Publick are now the Schismaticks in Scotland they were so under the Donatist Bishops in Africk they were so in England under the Popish Marian Bishops they were so under Aaron in the business of the Calf they were so in Israel under Ahab and the Idolatrous Priests and lastly they were so under the Arian Emperours and Bishops throughout the whole Roman Empire In short my Lord they say when the Publick is in the right and gives no just cause of separating from it that then it is a great Sin to set up private Meetings against it but when it is in the wrong and gives just cause of separating it then becomes innocent and a Duty to doe so though the Publick be in Possession of all the Churches as it usually is when Safety Honour and Riches attend the erring side I hope by this time my Lord you understand what their Meaning is in Setting up separate Congregations for it is the Cause and not the local Churches and Revenues that make say they a true Church and therefore in Answer to your Question they pray your Grace to consider that Men that have been branders of Schism may think it not onely innocent but their Duty to separate from the Publick or publick Worship without changing
against the better Title becomes not only a Condition to the Clergy of exercising their Ministry but also a part both in Prayers and Sacraments of the daily Offices of the Church This my Lord is their Opinion and had this ever been the Case of the Primitive Christians as you wrongfully suggest it was they doubt not but their Practice would have been answerable thereunto For the Primitive Christians say they were Christians all over who served God faithfully in the most difficult as well as most easie parts of Religion they were as zealous for the practical as the speculative Doctrines of Christianity and stood up as much for probity of Life as purity of Faith and Worship In a word they were as Righteous towards their Kings as towards God and would have suffered as much for the Third Fifth Sixth and Eighth Commandments as for the First or Second or any Doctrine of the Creed I have now my Lord repeated all the Answers which I have heard your Adversaries make to your Querres and I must needs beg so much favour from you as to consider me as the bare recite of them for the sufficiency of which it is their part to undertake and not mine But if they chance to prove sufficient Answers to say no more of them then to espouse the Party of those Men will not as you tell your Parishoners be to espouse a Faction or a Communion which is not the Communion of the Church But you tell them how uneasie soever some of them may be in joyning with the altered and additiona Prayers then it seems some are uneasie at the Prayers and what is the reason of that that but they will be ten times more uneasie in separating from you which may be true say they with respect to outward ease but not to the ease that is within And truly my Lord they themselves are a sensible Example of what they say for you may read perfect Contentment in their looks and perceive by conversing with them that they enjoy their Deprivations more than ever they enjoyed the Possessions of which they are depriv'd Oh! my Lord had you seen Him of Palsgrave-Court after his Extrution you would have seen him look more Chearful and Great and Venerable than ever and I seriously profess to you I had rather have his inward Peace and Satisfaction than his Throne with all its Revenues and be in his Condition rather than that of any arrogant intruding Politician who can scoff at him now to whom he would have formerly cringed and from whom before the Revolution he would have counted a smile a great favour I wish the time may come when both the insulting Scoffers may repent of it least another time should come upon them like travel a Woman when they shall say in anguish of Spirit O let me die the Death of That righteous Man and let my latter end be like his Fathermore you tell your Parishoners of the Heat and Turbulency the Passion and Peevishness the bitter Zeal and Vncharitableness that the being of a Party doth naturally engage Men in This my Lord they acknowledge to be true in all Church and State Divisions especially with respect to them that are engaged on the wrong Side It is not my undertaking now to determine in this Division of our Church-men which Side is in the right but this I can say by experience from their Conversation that those who have separated from the Publick have for the kind as few and for the degree as little of those troublesome Passions as any sort of Men in the World I appeal to your worthy Successor in St. Giles's-Parish if one of the new Bishops was not in a very disturbed and uneasie paroxism of Spirit about accepting his Bishoprick and whether in a great heat of Passion he was not ready to go to her Majesty like Dr. B. to desire to be excused None of the deprived Bishops parted with their Bishopricks with half that reluctancy that some of the accepters took them The Episcopal Seals were bespoke and unbespoke and at last after many Agonies and Fluctuations finally bespoke again But the deprived are calm and smooth and uniform within their Hearts are fixt on God and their good Principles they are as free from bitter Zeal as from Shame and Remorse and if you do not envy the Felicity of their Deprivations I dare say they do not envy you their Revenues and think you no reproach to them if you do not think them so to you But farther my Lord be the Passions never so great on both or either side upon the account of the Separation Who must answer for that Casnists say that those that are the Cause of any War must answer to God for all the Blood that is shed and all the Devastations that are committed in it and so I think those that are the Cause of any Separation must answer to the God of Peace and Unity for the Division and all the Heats and Passions and irregular Zeal and Uncharitableness on both sides that 's occasioned thereby When there is Pope against Pope Bishop against Bishop there will be Feuds and Animosities this is now the sad Condition of our other World and let them look to it who have set up the Seconds who in the Judgment of the African Church are none at all But you call the deprived warm Men and some that is a few warm Men. But as for their fewness my Lord they say as the Orthodox or Catholicks used to say to the World of Arians That no Cause is to be tried by Numbers that the Number is often in the wrong and that they are but some that will be saved for the Truth of this I refer to their former instances with which you used to stop the Mouths of the Papists when they boasted of their Numbers but I perceive from your Writers that Numbers and the Publick are now become excellent Arguments for Truth But then as for the imputation of heat as they think it signifies not much so they wonder you should reproach them as hot Men who apparently have so many Hot-heads among your selves Certainly my Lord had you called to mind your PP cks and T ns and P ns and F rs and H ns and W ms you would have spoken more respectfully of heat and not have been so ready to reproach the Jacobites as warm Men For the Philosophers my Lord that treat of the Passions and the Use of them tell us that Heat is the active Principle and as necessary in the moral as in the natural World and a very cool Man who since proved a Jacobite once saying to another Brother Brother God send you Patience Brother replied the warm Gentleman God send you more Passion I am zealously affected in a good thing and I wish you were so too And I remember your good old Friend Dr. Calamy reflecting on some Men whom you know who condemned others as Hot-heads for preaching against the Faction in the Popish Plot-time Discourse about a Scrupulous Conscience Epist Dedicatory preach'd at Aldermanbury 1683. said I am very sensible that in this Age we live in some are so extraordinary Wise and Wary as to censure and discourage all Men that speak roundly and act vigorously for the King and Church as being more forward and busie than is needful but I am also sensible that if some Men had not shewn more Courage and Honesty than those prudent Persons bot would have been by this time in far greater Danger than at this present thanks be to God they are But now my Lord to apologize no longer for Heat which is good or bad as the Occasion upon or the Cause in which it is used I appeal to your own Conscience Whether you do not know among the Jacobeans as cool and as considering Tempers as any you know among your Acquaintance who yet separate from the Publick upon the same Pretences which you tell the People some warm Men suggest I wish my Lord for the future you would take the Counsel of Gamaliel and let these Men alone for if this Counsel or this Work of theirs be but the effect of Heat or ‡ Page 29. unaccountable Humour it will come to naught of it self but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it though you may persecute them to destruction lest haply ye be found to fight against God I have now given your Grace an occasion to review your Faremwel-Sermon in which by the leave of the Gentlemen of the Vestry I must needs say I think you have reasoned very indifferently and-noot like your self And though those Gentlemen through the great veneration they deservedly had for you did not perceive the weakness of your Reasoning yet many others who can distinguish betwixt the Speaker and what is spoken did Nay I can assure you that some of the weaker Sex were sensible of it Madam said a Lady to another of great Quality You hear what my Lord says Yes saith she I have heard what be says as well as your Ladiship but he hath said nothing to convince me And if this be all he hath to say I shall be more confirmed than I was for I think I am able to answer all that I heard him say To this purpose spoke that Noble and most Vertuous Lady and I could do no less then tell your Grace of it that hereafter you may take care to print none but rational Sermons which it concerns you to do not only as a Person of most venerable Character but as a great pretender to Reason who in a certain time and place doubted if the Bishops then suspended were good Reasoners though you could not but grant that they were good Men. My Lord I am your most faithful Monitor and obedient Servant FINIS