except this single one I will in requital freely grant him all his other Nine if that will do him any service though for what use he intends them in our present Enquiry I confess I am not able to divine however I am not at all concern'd in them and therefore if he can make any advantage of their service much good may they do him And now having driven the Nail thus home with hard Notions out of the School-men he clincheth it with Testimonies out of the Fathers and if I will not be born down by strength of Reason no nor Confidence he resolves to sweep me away with the Torrent of Authority But though he argues very ill yet he quotes much worse For you know it has been an old and beaten Controversie between us and the Church of Rome whether the written Word of God be the adequate Rule of Faith and in this both sides have hotly engaged with all sorts of Weapons viz. Reason Scripture and the Opinion of the Ancients to which last purpose many Protestant Writers have collected a vast variety of express Assertions out of their VVritings in behalf of the Protestant Opinion Now some of these our Author gravely transcribes for my Confutation and what they plainly affirm'd of necessary Articles of Faith he confidently applies to Ceremonies of outward VVorship Out of what particular Author he made bold to borrow them they are so common and trivial it is impossible to determine you may meet them all together with some other Company out of which he has cunningly drawn these to escape discovery in Chamier tom 1. Lib. 10. where he maintains the perfection and sufficiency of the Canon of Scripture for a Rule of Faith And the passages themselves do so plainly limit their own sense to this subject that they are utterly uncapable of any other Application and if you can prevail with your self barely to run them over that without any farther trouble will satisfie you of their wretched and palpable Impertinency for my own part I have neither leisure nor patience to waste precious time and good Paper upon such woful Trash Let him take his liberty in his own wild Rangings whilst he roves aloof off from my Concerns and therefore I am resolved without regard to his unnecessary digressions to confine my discourse only to those things that pretend a direct and immediate attempt upon my former Treatise § 9. In the Prosecution of this Argument I shewed this Principle to be so perpetually pregnant with mischiefs and disturbances that 't is impossible any Church should establish any Rules of Decency or Laws of Discipline or any setled frame of things appertaining to the Offices of external Religion that it will not of necessity contradict and abrogate in that there never was nor ever can be any Form of Worship as to all Circumstances prescribed in the Word of God because that has actually determined no exteriour parts of Religion beyond the two Sacraments and therefore as long as men lie under the power of a Principle so equally false and troublesom they can never want what themselves may apprehend a just Pretence to warrant Disturbance and Disobedience So that we found by experience that when once it was let loose upon the Institutions of the Church of England it worried every thing that stood in its way and turn'd its fury alike upon every Party that pretended to peace and setlement it was merciless as some bodies rage and lust and spared nothing that Sacriledge could devour And as by this the Puritans assaulted and ruin'd the Church of England so when they subdivided among themselves and mouldred into new Churches and Factions it was still the Offensive Weapon of every aspiring Party with it the Independents vanquish'd the Presbyterians with it the Anabaptists attempted the Independents and with it all the little Under-sects set up against the Anabaptists and with it as soon as they were born like the Dragons Teeth they fell foul upon each other and had they crumbled into a thousand farther divisions and subdivisions for nothing so endless as Phanatick Innovations it would equally have served both for and against all because whatever particular Customs and Rules of Decency they should have agreed upon in the Worship of God it was apparently enough impossible they should ever vouch and warrant their Prescription out of the Word of God the Reason is evident because that has prescribed and determined none at all And therefore after the Liturgy it sent the Directory with Church musick it silenced Sternholds Rhimes with the Cross it cashier'd sprinkling in Baptism and when it had at least in design pluckt down Cathedral Churches it fell upon Steeple-houses And what could ever stop the fury of so endless and so unreasonable a Principle for when it had wandred as far as Tom of Odcomb through a numberless variety of Changes and Reformations it would ever have been at as great a distance from its intended End as the foolish Traveller when he had compassed the Top of Olympus was from touching the Sun For how should men with all their search and travel be ever able to discover that in the Word of God which the Word of God has no where discover'd in it self But 't is no matter for that our Author appeals to all mankind whether an issue and setled stability be not likelier to be effected by all mens consenting unto one common Rule whereby these differences may be tried and examined than that every Party should be left at Liberty to indulge to their own Affections and Imaginations about them In plain troth Sir I must take some severer course with this man if nothing else will reclaim him from this lazy Trade of Begging I had taken pains to prove both from the Nature of the Thing and the Experience of the World that this Principle carries disquiet and disturbance in its bare supposition because it stands upon demands impossible to be satisfied But this man without taking any notice of my Arguments replies like himself i. e. boldly and impertinently to my Assertion and gravely supposes there is or ought to be a common Rule established in the World whereby differences concerning outward Worship may be tried and examined which is the very thing in Question between us and all my Proofs to which this is intended for a satisfactory Answer are directly levell'd against the very supposition it self in that it invites and engages men to remonstrate to any setled Form of Worship upon such unreasonable grounds of Exception as it is impossible for any Church in the World either to avoid or to redress If indeed there were any such common Rule prescribed in the Gospel it would no doubt be a certain and admirable way to determine Controversies but in the mean while to suppose it against flat experience because we apprehend it convenient for our own Ends and Interests is just such another way of arguing as the Romanists insist upon to prove the
and govern all the Designs of the Princes of Christendom And his Mandates and Decretal Epistles must ever be flying about into all Parts and Provinces and when any doubt or difficulty arose away to Geneva to consult the Oracle that always return'd his Answers with the Confidence and Authority of an Apostle And thus did this hot and eager Man bear down all before him by the boldness of his Nature to attempt and indefatigable vehemence of his Spirit to prosecute what he had once attempted till he made himself at once both Pope and Emperour of the greatest part of the Reformed World All his Dictates were Articles of Faith and all his Censures Anathema's and every dissent from his least important and most unwarrantable Principles was Heresie and every Heresie capital and damnable All Schemes and Models of Truth were coin'd in his Name and warranted by his Authority it was his Decree that stampt them Orthodox and no Opinion that did not bear his Image and Superscription might pass for current Divinity And whoever was so hardy or so unhappy as to oppose himself to this bold and insolent Usurpation or but to demur upon the Infallibility of his Determinations he was immediately assaulted with Volleys of Anathema's and they pour'd upon him showres of Invectives and hated Names and he was shunn'd like Infection and dreaded as the Pest and Plague of the Reformed Communion and if they wanted power to persecute him with Fire and Faggot they would kill him with Noises and Anathema's And thus has this man and his followers intricated the way to Heaven with their own new Labyrinths and wild turnings trifling Questions and uncertain talkings they have smother'd and buried the Truths of God under the superstructures of their own foolish Inventions they have blended their own dreams and Visions with the Divine Oracles and then require the same Assent to their ill-spun Systems and Hypotheses as to the inspired Writings of St. Paul and obtrude pure non-sense and contradictious Blasphemies upon our Belief with as much rigour and boisterous zeal as the most indispensable Truths of the Gospel requiring as confident an Assent to the black Doctrine of irrespective Reprobation as to our Saviours Death and Resurrection and making it as necessary a point of Faith to believe that the Almighty thrust innumerable myriads of Souls into Being only to sport himself in their endless and unspeakable Tortures as that he sent his own Son into the world to dye for the Redemption of mankind Nay this they stick not to discard and disavow for its inconsistency with the Hypothesis of absolute Decrees This is the Fundamental Article of their Creed and all other points of Divinity must be so modell'd as to suit and accommodate themselves to this Foundation of their Faith And thus in most places did the design of Reformation degenerate into a furious Zeal for the Calvinian Rigours the seeds of which Doctrine have produced nothing but thorns and briars of Contention that have eaten out the life and power of true Religion and make men barren in every thing but discords and disputations The woful effects whereof are visible in most Foreign Churches where Piety is exchanged for Orthodoxy and Devotion for speculation where their Religion is a zeal for a Scheme of Opinions and their Learning an Ability to maintain them § 13. But in the setling or modelling of our Reformation by the Providence of God and our Governours this mans assistance was refused and his advice rejected they understood him too well to admit him into their Counsels and resolved to keep up close to their first design of reforming the Church to the Apostolical simplicity Though afterward this Doctrine took root here by the industry of some zealous youths that had been train'd up at the feet of that great Gamaliel and return'd home Seminary Priests of the Calvinian Theology This was the only errand and design of Whittingham Travers Cartwright and others and the only original of all the Schisms and disturbances that have ever since infested the Church of England was the unseasonable zeal of these men to reduce its Doctrine and Discipline to the platform of Geneva And though they were immediately check't in their attempt upon the Discipline that they thought good to assault with fierce and open Violence yet as for the leaven of their Doctrine they insensibly spred and conveyed it into the minds of their Disciples and it grew and prosper'd mightily in all places because as it was cultivated with much zeal and water'd with much preaching so was it not encountred with any publick opposition the Church not having declared it self positively in any thing but against the Errors and Corruptions of the Church of Rome and as for all the other Disputes of Christendom she contrived the Articles of her Communion with that prudence and moderation as to take in all men of whatsoever different Perswasions in other matters into her bosom and protection She embraced Trojans and Tyrians with equal Favour and would not wed her self to the narrow Interests of a Party nor determine all the quarrels and differences of disputing men No she left them to the Liberty of their own Opinions only reserving to her self a power to quash and silence their Disputes for the ends of Peace and Government But this moderation was too cool for these warm and hot-headed men they thought it not enough for the honour of Mr. Calvin and therefore resolved to declare themselves expresly for him in defiance to all other Doctors and Heads of Parties But the Pulpits must make good this and they are resolved to make good the Pulpits and therefore they make them and the People to groan with nothing but the continual noise of Decrees and the depths of Election and Reprobation were always ratling and thundering in their ears The whole Circle of their preaching and practical Divinity was reduced to Calvin's Interpretation of the ninth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans And when they had scared and astonish'd the People into an admiration of these gloomy Mysteries nothing will satisfie their restless heads unless they may be voted the Doctrine of the Church and the cause of the Reformation And all the men of the first moderation must be branded for Apostates and the People let loose to rail at them as Papists or under some other hated name that they abhorr'd but did not understand And this is the Interpretation of our Authors malicious suggestion of his being aggrieved to observe such evident declerisions from the first establish't Reformation towards the old or a new and it may be worse Apostasie such an apparent weariness of the principal doctrines and practices which enlivened the Reformation i. e. A wicked schismatical Relapse to Popish Arminian Errors an Apostasie from the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches to worship the old Pelagian Idol Free-will with the new Goddess Contingency or an halting between Iehovah and Baal Christ and Antichrist admitting the Belgick
careful to admit and practise nothing in the Worship of God unless it comes in his Name and with Thus saith the Lord Iesus You know how many in this Nation in the days not long since passed yea how many thousands left their Native Soils and went into a vast and howling Wilderness because they made it so in the utmost parts of the World to keep their Souls undefiled and chaste to their dear Lord Iesus as to this of his Worship and Institutions So that they scorn to pretend any less Authority than our Saviours own express Warrant for any thing wherein they differ and divide from the Church of England And this is a ruder and more insolent Affront to our Christian Liberty than the most confident Jew could ever have been guilty of for though he might endeavour to enslave us to his own Customs and Prejudices yet they are such as once bore the impression of Divine Authority whereas these Men would stamp the Authority of God upon their own Dreams and phantastick Conceits and vouch their humour and their ignorance with a Thus saith the Lord Iesus and so would bore the Ears and enslave the Understandings of all Christendom to their own folly and confidence And certainly there never were greater Tyrants and Usurpers in the Church of Christ than these exact and curious Judges of Divine Rights with what Confidence will they prescribe Truth to Mankind and adopt their own uncertain Problems and Scholastick Fooleries into the Fundamentals of Religion With what Assurance of Authority will they restrain all Mens Faith to the Standard of their own Apprehensions How briskly will they warrant this Opinion and explode that And how dogmatically will they assign the precise bounds of Orthodoxy All their Sentiments are the Decrees of the Medes and Persians all their Rules of Worship are Obligatory as Apostolical Canons all their Opinions are Oracles and had they sate in the Infallible Chairs of Rome or Geneva they could not have been more confident and peremptory in their Determinations But thus is the Church of England requited for her modesty and because she does not abuse the Consciences of Men to a rigid Observance of her Institutions under a false pretence of Divine Authority the gentle and moderate exercise of her own lawful Jurisdiction is by these Men branded with Tyranny and Usurpation whilst themselves in the mean while are not ashamed to obtrude their own Fancies and little Conceits upon their credulous Proselytes with the counterfeit Seal of Heaven and inslave their Consciences to their own imperious dictates by exhibiting forged Commissions from God himself and then the People dare not murmur against their unreasonable Impositions for that reverence they bear to that Authority which as they are told is imprinted on them But this has ever been the subtilty of these Men as it is of all Malefactors to rail most at their own Crimes and to avoid the suspicion of their own Guilt by deriving its imputation upon some of their innocent Neighbours But once more to return to our Authors Inference If then he means that the Church of England imposes her Ceremonial Institutions with an Opinion of their antecedent Necessity and so it is apparent he is willing enough to be understood 't is a bold Calumny if he means that they become consequentially necessary onely by virtue of their Institution 't is a woful impertinence and is no other infringment of our Liberty than what is inseparable from the Nature of Humane Laws And so all the Civil Laws of Commonwealths are apparently as chargeable with this sort of Usurpation as any of our Ecclesiastical Constitutions And therefore by the way I would willingly be satisfied that seeing the Judicial as well as the Ceremonial Law of Moses was annull'd and abrogated by the Establishment of the Christian Faith and seeing by consequence it was part of their Christian Liberty to be freed from its Obligatory Power what imaginable Reason can be assign'd why Authority should more invade the Rights of our Christian Liberty by establishing new Ecclesiastical Canons than by enacting new Civil Constitutions Or why the Common Law of England should not as much infringe that part of our Gospel-Priviledges whereby we are exempt from the Judicial Law as the Canons and Determinations of the Church do that other part whereby we are rescued from the Ceremonial To this Enquiry they will never be able to return any tolerable answer but by shifting the matter of their plea and then they forsake their hold of Christian Liberty and shelter themselves in a new Pretence Perhaps they may plead that God has reserved the Appointment of the way manner and circumstances of his own Worship to his own immediate Jurisdiction but has vested Civil Magistrates with a power to govern the secular Affairs of Common-wealths But then this is an open Flight from our present Engagement and now the thing pleaded in behalf of their Disobedience is not their Christian Liberty or their exemption from the Law of Moses but their Christian Duty or their subjection to the Law of Christ. Though when this Refuge comes to be attaqued it will be found more weak and defenceless than this that is already demolish'd and you may well expect wise work when they are urged to produce Testimonies of Scripture that restrain the Civil Magistrate from enacting Ecclesiastical Laws and Constitutions for the due government and performance of external Worship Here their Pleas are so horridly vain and ridiculous that in comparison of them the Celebrated Text of the Romanists super hanc Petram in behalf of the Infallibility of the Papal Chair is as Impertinent as it is Reason and Demonstration But after this I suppose we may have occasion to enquire elsewhere In the mean time 't is enough that we have beaten down this Paper Fort of Christian Liberty in which if men may be allowed to take sanctuary for their disobedience to the Churches Constitutions it will not only be a plausible Refuge for all Schismaticks and Male-contents but an eternal Annoyance to the Churches Peace and a perpetual Nursery of incurable Schisms and Divisions For all parts of outward Worship save only the two Sacraments being left undetermined in the Word of God and some particular determinations being absolutely necessary to prevent Disorder and Confusion and these being not capable of any force or obligatory Power and by consequence of any Usefulness to their proper End but by vertue of the Authority of the Civil Magistrate It follows unavoidably that if laying Restraints and Injunctions upon men in the outward Exercise of Publick Worship be a violation of their Christian Liberty that 't is absolutely impossible to make any effectual Provisions for the orderly and regular performance of the Worship of God or to provide any security against eternal Tumults and Seditions in the Church of God And whenever Phanatick spirits have a mind to be peevish and humoursom they have here a sacred and
take it ill in good earnest if we only deny them the Liberty and free Exercise of their Religion till they are willing to give us some security of their being governable § 12. The second part of Protestancy is the Reformation of Doctrine and here the design was to abolish the Corruptions and unwarrantable Innovations of the Church of Rome and to retrieve the pure and primitive Christianity It was not their aim to exchange Thomas Aquinas his Sums for Calvin's Institutions or Bodies of School-Divinity for Dutch Systems but to reduce Christianity to the prescript of the Word of God and the practice of the first and uncorrupted Ages of the Church to clear the Foundations of our Faith from all false and groundless Superstructures and once more recover into the Christian World a pure and Apostolical Religion And therefore the only Rule of our Churches Reformation were the Scriptures and four first general Councils She admits not of any upstart Doctrines and new Models of Orthodoxy but all the Articles of her Belief are ancient and Apostolical and if she her self should teach any other Propositions she protests against their being matters of Faith and of necessity to Salvation And for this reason she imposes not her own Articles as Articles of Faith but of Peace and Communion Nor does she censure other Churches for their different Confessions but allows them the Liberty she takes to establish more or less Conditions of Communion as the Governours of the Church shall deem most expedient for peace and unity And she only requires of such as are admitted to any Office Imployment in the Church subscription to them as certain Theological Verities not repugnant to the Word of God which she has particularly selected from among many other to be publickly taught and maintain'd within her Communion as necessary or highly conducive to the preservation of Truth and prevention of Schism and for this reason she passes no other censure upon the Impugners of her Articles than what she has provided against the Impugners of the Publick Liturgy Episcopal Government and the Rites Ceremonies of Worship because they are all intended to the same end the avoiding Disorders and Confusions These then are the conditional Articles of the Communion of the Church of England and they are necessary and excellent provisions for peace and unity For among all the Disputes and Divisions of Christendom it is but reasonable she should take security of those Mens Doctrines and Opinions whom she intrusts in publick Imployments to prevent her being embroil'd in perpetual Quarrels and Controversies So that Subscriptions to the Articles is required chiefly upon the same account as the Oath of Supremacy whose Penalty is That such who refuse it shall be excluded such places of Honour and Profit as they hold in the Church or Commonwealth And 't is very reasonable that Princes should be particularly secured of the Fidelity of those Subjects that they entrust with their publick Offices And thus all the punishment that the Church of England is willing to have inflicted upon Dissenters from her Articles is to deprive them of their Ecclesiastical Preferments as being unfit for Ecclesiastical Imployments For though she is not so careless of her own peace as to impower Men in the exercise of her publick Offices at all adventure so neither is she so rigorous as to make Inquisition into their private Thoughts And therefore we are not so harsh and unmerciful as somebody you wot of who would be thought a warm Bigot for Toleration and yet has sometime profest he would give his Vote to banish any Man the Kingdom that should refuse their Subscription But as for the absolute Articles of the Faith of the Church of England they are of a more ancient date they were not of her own contriving but such as she found establish't in the purest and most uncorrupted Ages of the Church and in the times nearest to the primitive and Apostolical simplicity That is the measure of her Faith and the standard of her Reformation here she fixes the bounds of her Belief and seals up the Symbol of her Creed to prevent the danger of endless Additions and Innovations But as for all other matters I say with the late Learned Archbishop as he discourses against Fisher If any Errour which might fall into this as any other Reformation can be found then I say and 't is most true Reformation especially in cases of Religion is so difficult a work and subject to so many Pretensions that 't is almost impossible but the Reformers should step too far or fall too short in some smaller things or other which in regard of the far greater benefit coming by the Reformation it self may well be passed over and born withal And withal by virtue of this Fundamental Maxim may in due time and manner be redrest By the wisdom and moderation of this Principle the Church secures her self against the Prescription of Errour So that if she should at any time hereafter discover any defect in any particular instance of her Laws and Constitutions and in a work so great so various and so difficult 't is not impossible as the Archbishop observes for the greatest caution and prudence to be overseen in some smaller things she has reserved a just power in her self to reform and amend it This in brief is a true and honest account of the Protestancy of the Church of England But so it hapned that beyond the Seas there arose another Generation of pert and forward Men the vehemence of whose Zeal and Passion transported them from extream to extream so that they immediately began to measure Truth not by its agreement with the Scriptures and the purest Ages of the Church but by its distance from the See of Rome and the Apostacy of latter times whereby it so came to pass that they did but barter Errours in stead of reforming Corruptions and in lieu of the old Popish Tenets only set up some of their own new-fangled conceits But above all the rest there sprung up a mighty Bramble on the South-bank of the Lake Lemane that such is the rankness of the Soil spred and flourish't with such a sudden growth that in a few days partly by the industry of its Agents abroad and partly by its own indefatigable pains and pragmaticalness it quite over run the whole Reformation and in a short time the right Protestant Cause was almost irrecoverably lost under the more prevailing Power and Interest of Calvinism That proud and busie Man had erected a new Chair of Infallibility and enthroned himself in it and had he been acknowledged their Supreme Pastour he could not have obtruded his Decrees in a more peremptory and definitive way upon the Reformed Churches Nothing can be rightly done in any Foreign Church or State but by his Counsels and Directions He must thrust himself in for the Master-workman where-ever they were hammering Reformation He must be privy to all the Counsels
Conditions of Society and will be preying upon the Lives and Liberties of their fellow Subjects they become publick Enemies to the common Good forfeit all Right of Protection and put themselves out of the benefit of the Laws Such is the outrage of these haughty men they are not content with their own just priviledges but assault those of their Neighbours and will not endure others to live in society with them unless they will yield up the Liberty of their Understandings to their imperious folly and no man shall be suffer'd to live in peace and quiet unless they may be allowed to usurp and exercise a supremacy of Power over the whole Communion and this is a direct subversion of the Authority of Government and a manifest violence to the Fundamental Laws and Conditions of Society and by consequence a Forfeiture of all Claims to its rights and priviledges And yet notwithstanding this savage and insociable humour they suffer not for that but only for their incorrigible stubbornness against the Laws of Government and Rules of Discipline And if they would learn to be modest and yield to be govern'd by any thing but their own intolerable peevishness they would seldom feel the severity of the Churches Discipline for the unmannerly rigour of their own Doctrines these are matters of our mutual forbearance and whatever may be the Opinions of private men our Church does not dogmatize in scholastick speculations and we must never expect to see peace re-enthroned in the Christian world till other Churches shall suffer themselves to be brought to the moderation of the Church of England to have as little Faith and as much Charity as the Primitive Christians But to contend for the same ease and indulgence as these men do in the Laws of Discipline as in the broils of Disputation is to cut the Nerves of all Ecclesiastical Government and remonstrate to all the Conditions of Church-Communion For it leaves every man at liberty to except himself from the Laws of the Society and therefore to conclude hereafter let them not tell us of their being Protestants unless they will satisfie us of their being governable And when that is done they may be secure to find from us more tenderness and moderation in case of their Dissent as to matters of Controversie and Opinion than we ever have found or ever expect to find from their waspish and cholerick humour As for what remains of my Discourse It is says the bold Objecter all resolved into a supposition that they who in any place or part of the world desire Liberty of Conscience for the Worship of God have indeed no Conscience at all For it is thereon supposed without further Evidence that they will thence fall into all wicked and unconscientious Practices This is down-right forgery too but yet 't is weak and modest if compared to the Boldness of his former Calumnies For 't is a small thing for him to pervert my sense by an ill-collected supposition that has wittingly falsified my express words and laid to my charge lewd Assertions of his own pure Contrivance However 't is a popular surmise and suited to the folly of the common People and that is enough to his purpose though the wise Surveyor himself can never be so short-sighted as not to see that the only supposition upon which I all along proceed was founded upon the clearest and most unquestionable experience of mankind viz. that all men are either not so wise as they would seem or not so honest as they would pretend that 't is a familiar thing even for well-meaning Persons to mistake humour and passion for Conscience that Fanaticism is as incident to the Common People as folly and ignorance and yet more mischievous to Government then Vice and Debauchery with divers other common and easie Observations of humane life from whence it is an obvious and natural deduction to conclude that men may easily run into tumults and seditions under mistakes of Conscience though they do not wittingly and out of design abuse its Pretences to wicked and mischievous practices but purely for want of knowledge and understanding in the nature of good and evil and the moral reasons of things whence it comes to pass that there are so few who do not or at least may not mistake their Vices for their Religion and mix their passions with their Zeal But because this suggestion is one of the great burthens of our Authors Complaint and is so pertly glanced at almost in every Paragraph and so industriously pursued upon every occasion I think my self obliged before I conclude to entertain the Reader with some farther Account how Conscience and Religion are the aptest and most suitable instruments to be employed for creating Publick Disturbances 1. First then they are the most usual mask and most plausible pretence to cover the basest and most unworthy ends Sacriledge and Rebellion ever shrowd themselves under the hatred of Superstition and Idolatry bare-faced villany has but an ugly look and has not confidence to shew it self to the World but in the disguise of Reformation The blackest Enterprizes could never have been attempted had they not put on the fairest Pretences for men cannot as the world now goes gain the opportunity of attempting any more enormous Wickedness but under popular shews and affectations of Sanctity and all the more exorbitant Crimes of Disloyalty that were ever committed in the World have shelter'd themselves under glorious Appearances of Godly Zeal The Cause of God is the best spur and stirrup too to the advancement of Ambitious men and there is no such easie way for them to exalt themselves above their Superiours and to trample upon their Equals as when they do it for the Glory of God Nothing else could have so long supported the Credit of his late Highness through so many Murthers Perjuries and manifest Villanies but his great dexterity in Praying and Preaching his counterfeit way of whining his dreadful Appeals and Protestations to Heaven and his great and extraordinary Communion with God And therefore this specious piece of Hypocrisie being so absolutely necessary to give reputation to the basest and most disloyal Actions Princes are thereby sufficiently warned to be jealous of those Designs that are usher'd in under this popular and plausible Pretence of Reformation and to be more watchful to suppress their Attempts than open outrages because it does not only disguise but gives Countenance to any mischief and makes the ugliest Projects appear fair and plausible to vulgar eyes It naturally dazzles and lures in the wild Multitude to any design and there is no way so easie to infuse into their heads an ill opinion of the present State as to inveigle them with conceits and jealousies of miscarriages in or designs upon their Religion No however they may out of a sense of the great duty of Obedience suffer Princes to waste and subvert their civil Liberties yet they must not endure them to encroach