pity'd but no Man will in all probability be able to help them How Universal and Catholick soever their Religion may be in other places I am sure they are Fanaticks in England under a Civil Consideration and therefore that they have all the reason in the World to be State-Whigs and as such only will ever be impartially used by us I think nothing that I have said has depretiated the Doctrine of Passive-Obedience I do not pretend to determine who is in the Right in that Controversie much less to handle it as a Religious One But give me leave to tell an admirable Story concerning Dr. Colvil a great Man in the Kingdom of Scotland but one that was thought not to understand clearly the Principle of Non-Resistance The late Earl of Middleton having him once at Dinner asked him Whether there could be no Case in which Defensive Arms were Lawful The Doctor replied It was fit for the People to believe them unlawful and for Kings to believe them lawful It was an admitable Repartee upon a sudden Question But perhaps had he thought of it he would have said likewise That it is fit for the Ministers of Kings to believe them lawful too and I presume the present Earl of Middleton set down that additional Instruction to the Apothegm For tho' to the eternal shame of the Judges who now sit upon the King's Bench they violated our Laws in the continuance of his Imprisonment it must be allowed for his everlasting Honour that that Noble Lord was as cautious of making the Law the Limits of his Ministry as if it were lawful to rise up in Arms whenever the Laws were broken But I must Answer your Postscript wherein you tell me that you neither know how the King can be restored now the Prince of Orange is in possession nor what will become of the Prince of Orange if we should restore the King nor what Security we could have from any Conditions the King could make with us I Answer that if the Prince of Orange is not kept in possession by English men he may soon be brought to Reason and I do assure you that there are many Jacobites that desire rather to see the Prince of Orange return to his Station of Stadtholder again in Holland than wish him any personal Injury And as for the Security you require for any promised Conditions you must forgive me if I think you a little insincere if not trifling when you place so much Weight upon the Pope's giving King James an Absolution for any Promises he should make You might have said this artfully to the Mobb but you cannot suppose that I would believe you were in earnest though you make such a clutter with it I allow as you say that our Histories tell us of some Kings that were absolved by Popes but you know that Bulls Absolutions and the Pope's Excommunications were like to go farther with the Nation in Popish Times than they are like to do now And yet by your very instance of King Henry the Third you might be convinced that the People of England never would even then let a King be at rest till he had performed his Promises I will not write a long Confutation of a thing that I know cannot stick with you or any wise considering Man And besides I do not go about to perswade you to take up with a Constitution that will depend either upon a King's Temper or Religion Honour or Veracity Make a Government that is easie to all and it will be the Interest of all to preserve it But if you would do so you must bring the Right Line into it you must nicely preserve the Church of England as the National Church and yet you must remember that the Kngdom of Heaven is not of this World You must take care in your Civil Compacts that Priestcraft does not spoyl all at last You must take care even of a Protestant in Ordine ad Spiritualia and let the Tares and the Wheat grow up together But farther although you have such wild accounts concerning the Jacobites there are amongst those that serve King James Men that know what you are a doing that know you are looking far and near for a Deliverance that know how impotent you think the Prince of Orange is to Rule how that you depise him as much as the Nation misliked Richard Cremwel before the Restauration that know your extravagant Projects and more temperate Thoughts and yet have accounred for all things and will as things ripen find ways to give you satisfaction if any thing will We know that Maud the Empress even when King Stephen was a Prisoner and though her Title was indisputable and though the Nation was all Catholicks lost the Crown because she was refractory and haughty and denied to the Londoners Edward the Confessor's Laws And I assure you there will be Men that will lay before the King the Necessity and Wisdom of giving Satisfaction to all your Reasonable Demands If you do not ask too much Counter-security things unfit for an English King to grant there are Jacobites that will not only deliver but second your Petitions A Good and Settled Monarchy you may have and a Common-wealth is scarce practicable will be hazardous at present and cannot be lasting I know there are some amongst the Jacobites who are otherwise Men of great Honour and Worth and yet suspect every thing such as you promote is to make the King a Doge of Venice But there are others who have compared and taken in pieces and viewed in parts all the Models of Government who if you would rectifie and not change either the Name or Nature of ours will receive very kindly any thing you offer will instruct you how to make it palatable to the King and shew him how consistent it is both with his Honour and his Interest Let the manner be decent and your Propositions allow King James to have the Ballance that an English King should have and must necessarily have in our Constitution And I assure you many of the Jacobites know no other but such an English King to be our Supreme Head and Governour But after all if King James is called home by the Nation we need no other Security than a well-chosen Parliament The present Parliament may call him home when they please without any other Force but their own denial of Money And the King 's being of another Religion will in some measure check the effects of a Revolutionary Joy and prevent our Excesses And if sober and honest Men would in all Corporations instead of all other Projects instruct all the Populace That all those that drink upon their Members Cost hazard being Slaves for that Draught and that it is time seriously to take Care of Themselves and their Posterity by choosing Men of Virtue rather than the Favourites or the Factions of any Opinion whether they are Jure Divino or Original Contract men Men that are as well Loyal
Church of England would not give Liberty of Conscience the State-Whigs set up Presbytery The next Consultation I must make you acquainted with are the Debates of the above-mentioned three last Parliaments of King Charles the Second and you may easily recollect they were for Liberty of Conscience to all Protestant Dissenters nay they made some Votes that were thought extravagant in their favour some suspending dispensing Votes for they resolved it as the Opinion of that House that it was contrary to the Interest of the Nation to put the Laws which were then in being in execution against them But you will say they did not Vote as much for the Papists You must consider the Season Besides that the Papists have been esteemed errant Courtiers ever since the Reformation The Pacliament then thought they had a Popish Plot on foot they thought that Plot was not a Plot for Liberty to worship in the Popish Way but to introduce Popery by the Destruction of all our Civil and Religious Liberties You know at the beginning of my Letter I charged my Country with National Intoxications We can at some times believe Invisible Pilgrims Black Bills St. Jones's Gridirons and that three thousand Irish can Massacre all England And when that Popish Plot was prosecuted so violently the generality of Men looked upon the Papists as Banditti and Misanthropi in relation to the Protestants they looked upon them as the Partizans or Janizaries of the Court Propagators of Civil as well as Religious Superstition and Idolatry And if these Men had a mind to ruin the Papists at that day it was not because of their Prayers and Beads but because they thought them Enemies to our Constitution not only from their dependance upon the Roman See but for a mischief that was nigher at hand their excessive flattery of the Court and Crown whereas the Dissenters being avowedly tender of Liberty and Property were not only favoured by all those Parliaments but influenced great numbers of those who were not of their own Communion at the respective Elections of each of those Parliaments So that the Principle of Liberty of Conscience was perfectly prevalent though they held a strict hand over the Papists out of the Principle of Self-preservation and consequently a trulychosen Parliament will make the Papists English-men where they find them so In farther proof of this last Assertion I must beg you to remember how King James's Declaration of Indulgence was at first entertained I know the Universal Joy with which it was first received lasted but a little while but I know that tho' the Whigs misliked that it should be put out upon a Dispensing Power yet believing it a Preface to Comprehensive Measures and Latitudinarian Politicks they forgave that blemish in its Birth and every where so unanimously embraced it that those narrow Spirits of the Church of England who had a mind were ashamed if not afraid to oppose it Liberty of Conscience would have made K. James the Second Memorable and Glorious in our Histories had not Sunderland's Artifices such Speeches as Mr. Alsop's and such Pampalets as Can there come any Good out of Galilee spoil'd the Noblest Project any English Monarch ever set on foot which was A separation of Religious from Civil Interests I confess we can make Popery a Ball-begger when we please and that ought to teach the Papists Moderation bue the Liberty and Property-men can also call off the Mob when they please For you see at this time the Nation finds no fault with the Emperor's and the Duke of Bavaria's Idolatry and Persecution no nor with the Spanish Inquisition whilst they fancy tho' wildly and falsly they are by their help supporting their own Civil Rights They fall not upon the Papists here that they may not displease the Confederates abroad so that Popery is not so dreadful as Property and Privileges are dear and charming And now since I have been proving that Interest governs the World however Men may mistake what is their own Interest I think my self obliged in the third place to shew that it is the Interest of the King and every sort of Men that he should be Restored upon Civil Securities and that it is not the Interest of the King or any sort of Men to endeavour that the Restauration should be put upon any other Foot Whilst I shew that it is the King's Interest I shall answer the Objection of those who say the Whigs won't think their Properties and Privileges sufficiently secured unless the King part with some of his Prerogative I am sure whilst he is dispossessed he has no Prerogative or at least no exercise of and benefit by it and the Chance of War is too doubtful to know whether he shall have any unless the People please He is outed of his Estate and can in all probability only have it upon Composition which if he will not make with us the Nation will try to the last to keep the Possession and it has those eleven points of the Law Nor are all things Prerogatives that flattering Lawyers have called so in Westminster Hall and some well-meaning and other self-designing Ciergy-men have believed so in their Closets or preached for as such in their Pulpits They can see farther than I that expect to do any thing without an Accommodation I think it impossible he should be Restored or were he that he should keep his Throne without it I think it impossible for One Man to govern the People of England unless they have a mind he should and they will never have such a mind unless he sometimes gives way to their Impetuosities But farther His Age and the Minority of his Son are the highest Inducements imaginable for him to endeavour to leave a settled Government to quiet the Minds as well as suppress the Insurrections of the People There is likewise another Reason why as a Man of Conscience he must be yielding for be cannot but be willing that his Son should be educated in his own Religion and if he will let the Kingdom be secure of their own Religion and of their own Laws notwithstanding that the Crown should be of one Religion and the People of another I am satisfied that the People of England will be little sollicitous which way our Kings think the best to Heaven This has Argument as he is a Religious Man But I must again inforce Condescentions as the Interest of the King under a Natural Consideration Good Securities will make the Nation own the Legitimacy of his Son more than all other Proofs and without out good Securities there will be pretences that his Birth is disputable though I affirm it impossible for any thinking Man to question in his own Mind the Prince of Wales's being born of the Queen's Body Compliance with the People made Queen Elizabeth's Title unquestioned so that those that flatter the King with His Right and seem to despise our Rights take the most infallible Course to destroy both the
to their Country as their King and to their King as their Country Men that have good Nature Estates Honesty Sense and moderate Minds Such a Parliament would be an healing Parliament might not only end but take away all occasions for Strife and Changes And Establishment Virtue and Liberty are a Nobler Happiness than excessive Riches pompous Buildings and all the other Glories that a People can possess How is the Excellency of the Spartan Institution every where and every day applauded tho' all their Pleasures seem to be nothing else but Hardships and Self-denial But we may add Plenty to our Peace increase our Trade and our Strength and by our Naval Force and a perfect Union amongst our selves be again considered as the Arbiters of Europe But I am unawares launching into a spacious Subject It is time to conclude I wish all English-men would consider how to do it and I wish there could suddenly before we are undone a method be found out to reconcile the King and his Nephew and all his Children both Natural and National a method found out to adjust all our Interests and bring us all to our respective Duties I beseech God so to order things that all Sects and sorts of English-men may think it a National Good to restore our King I have read our Annals I wish every body had Could I here delineate the Scars and Woulds the Bloodsheds and Distresses that the Violation of the Hereditary Title which will hover over all Usurpations and all Forms of a Commonwealth have 〈…〉 could I paint out the Executions and Extinctions of Noble Families that the Wars between the Two Houses have occasioned they would represent but an horrid Prospect a doleful Scene Oh Blessed God! Visit not this Land for its Iniquities with Destruction but in Judgment remember Mercy Let Righteousness and Mercy Restore Him to it and on them establish the Throne of thy Servant JAMES Teach Him to go in and out before this great People which by our Laws and Oaths and His Inheritance thou hast committed to His Charge Let His Children Honour His Subjects Obey and His Nephew be Just to Him and GOD be Glorified be still Glorified in His and Our wonderful Deliverance that Wickedness may no longer prosper but Peace return to us and our Childrens Children to all Generations Amen Amen And God put it into the Hearts of all His Subjects to say likewise Amen to this National and Honest Prayer I find that my Letter has grown under my hands but if it tires you you must thank your self that you started so much Game a great deal has risen before me in writing that I have not followed tho' I hope I have writ enough to let you know that whatever Spirit you find some Jacobites in yet there are others that cannot disgust a reasonable Man and also that I am the same English-man you ever knew me as well as SIR Your affectionate Friend and faithful Servant POSTSCRIPT THE Letter I sent you last August being shewn to some that are yours as well as my old Friends and more so to England than to either of us it was at their importunity sent to the Press soon enough to have been published long before the Parliament met but when part of it was Printed the rest was stopped by some Accidents that are not so proper to mention and therefore some sew Expressions of it may not be altogether so seasonable as they were when I wrote it to you since the Money is now given however I hope in the main it may be of some use And now we have begun this Scribling Conflict I desire that in your next you will let me know when you can reasonably suppose this War and consequently Taxes will end And whether if the Confâ—deracy should break before you have thought fit to restore your Rightful and Lawful King or the French are more humbled as you call it than they are hitherto we should not indeed run a greater risk of our Liberties for the present after such a continued Provocation of the King than either you or I or any good English man could wish to see Tell me likewise whether those that are not of our Army or Fleet cannot if they have a Mind to restore the King upon a National Foot influence those Natives that are in both to restore King James as the Old Army did his Brother You have read History and know that an Army of Natives follows the inclinations of the Inhabitants you know the real Power your Party has in the Nation and that it is not the Tories who have broke in upon their own Consciences but you who have forsaken your Vnderstandings that keep the Prince of Orange as much as you every day ridicule him from being sent for good and all to Holland and though you do not know how to make him either value your Persons or see his own Interest yet you can soon find ways notwithstanding your own Latitude to make an English Army reflect upon their Oaths and Obligations to King James and their Usage under this Man nay you cannot but know they begin themselves to have these Reflections and therefore with very little pains you may prepare them Nationally to Restore the King which if they do with all due regard to him be it spoken he is as it were in our Power and he must grant those Concessions we really want and where a King whose Title is indispured frankly hears Advice from a duly-elected Parliament the genuine and united Sense of the Nation may be gathered up and a Natural Cure given to all our Troubles and only from thence can come an impartial Settlement Think of these things seriously and let not the Discourses of such Jacobites as you complain of who have as little Interest with the Kinâ— as you say they have with England either give you disturbance or make you any longâ—r willing to undergo worse things under this Vsurpation than you can have any just reason to fear if the King returns especiaâ—ly if you your selves Restore him Besides I must tell you I have good reason to believe the King of France himself with whom you fright the Mob is not politically an Enemy to a limited Monarchy in England and that he will agree to a reasonable Peace in Europe if the Restauration of King James is made one of the Conditions of it and that he will not be brought to any Peace unless we Restore him how much soever the Prince of Orange has flatter'd you that instead of the Vineyards and Spoils of Paris that he seemed to promise he will bring him to an honourable Peace I will only 〈◊〉 That whereas some of your Party do now as you did formerly raise malicious and unjust Calumnies upon the Queen I am fully satisfied that she is as desirous the King should comply with his People as the Noblest and nicest Patriots could be were King James upon the Throne She has a mind that the Struggles between the Crown and the People should be adjusted that so the Succession of her Son may be secured Think of all this seriously write me your mind freely and act as becomes a true Lover of England Be not over fond of your own Creation as a Williamite Meddle not with those who world yet farther change the Name and Nature of our Government and then fiercely as you are so now be Anti-Jacobite as long as you can Once again Adieu FINIS ERRATA DEdication line 12. for ever r. even Pag. 6. col 1. l. 40. r. Incroachments Pag. 9. col 2. l. 9. after this add part Pag. 11. col 2. l. 6. after prove add to l. 33. after time add in