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A61505
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James Stewart's answer to a letter writ by Mijn Heer Fagel, pensioner to the states of Holland & Wes Friesland concerning the repeal of the penal laws and tests.; Answer to a letter writ by Mijn Heer Fagel
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Stewart, James, Sir, 1635-1713.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing S5533; ESTC R5013
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18,365
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38
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his just consideration of the true Rights of God and Man and his tender and fatherly care of all his People to deliver us out of bondage and introduce us into a State of Christian Liberty This as it is his Majesties peculiar glory denied to all his predecessors ought the rather to be closed withal by his People And surely we are not justly blamable if neither the unhappy relicks of old Prejudices nor present Jealousies nor even future Hopes do hinder us from embracing the present opportunity of securing to our selves and to our posterity so great a Blessing The greatest part of what I have here said I know you will readily assent to and that it is only the Law of the Test which you judg to be both righteous and necessary that you would have still maintained And therefore referring my full Answer upon that head to its proper place I shall only here again put you in mind that the King is our Soveraign whose power goes far both as to the bestowing of Publick Imployments and also as to the continuing or restraining of our present Liberty at his pleasure That it is to me unaccountable how any Protestant should think the enjoyment of our present Liberty not to be more valuable than all our exclusive Laws and that as I have above given a hint of my own sense of all such human cautions so I hope it will easily be made appear that there is neither that security in the Test nor danger in its Repeal which some Men pretending in shew to keep up the Test against Roman Catholicks but intending in reallity to keep up the Penal Laws against Protestant Dissenters would gladly have you and other Strangers to believe on their bare assertion But further yet I would again humbly beseech you to observe that it is not a simple Repeal of Tests and Penal Laws that his Majesty proposes but really and principally the Establishment of an equal and fair Liberty which is the onely Secular Advantage as I have already said that true Religion requires Men talk ordinarily of the repeal of Tests and Penal Laws as if that were the only thing intended And thereupon their Minds are immediately over-clouded with this Prejudice That the Protestant Religion must needs be thereby divested of all Legal Security Whereas on the other hand if they would take notice how careful His Majesty hath been in His first Proclamation and in His Answer to most of the Addresses to declare himself for such a just and secure Liberty of Conscience as may for ever set us free from Persecutions and Impositions and how in His late Proclamation of the Twenty seventh of April last He publisheth his Resolution to use his utmost indeavours to establish Liberty of Conscience on such just and equal Foundations as will render it unalterable and secure to all People the free exercise of their Religion for ever They might easily rest satisfied that the Protestant Religion is to lose none of the Security she now enjoys by all that is intended save only the power of Persecuting and Imposing upon others which you your self do Condemn It is true you think the imposing of Tests upon all Persons in publick Imployments is no undue Imposition But whether it be so or not and whether the Law of the Test be that great and indispensible Security of the Protestant Religion which you indeavour to make it I shall now go on to consider And because in effect nothing can be added to what hath been so fully said and often repeated by others on this Subject I shall do it with all possible brevity You say then against the repeal of the Law of the Test and other exclusive Laws First That they contain no unjust Severity 2dly That such Laws are agreeable to the Right and Rules of all Kingdoms and Civil Societies and are used in all Christian Kingdoms and Common-Wealths And 3dly That they are the chief Security of the Protestant Religion in these Kingdoms and that the taking them away would expose both the Protestant Religion and the People of these Kingdoms to Danger and Ruin. As to the first whether the exclusive Laws contain any unjust Severity I shall not much contend It is known that within these few Years we have had in England Tests of several Fashions and for divers Perswasions and that some of them have been so severe as to throw Men not only out of publick Imployments but out of their private Callings and so to deprive them of their Daily Bread. A Man may also adventure to say that all things duly weighed Those pretended pious and political Tests have in our real Experience been more prejudicial to the true Interest of Religion and the Peace and Wel-fare of these Nations than ever their total Repeal can in the most strained rational Conjecture be hurtful to either of them So strange and unaccountable a thing is this humour of Testing But seeing you seem to confine your self to the Test against Roman Catholicks appointed principally for the two Houses of Parliament I shall add more particularly First that according to what I have above touched this appears to be but an extraneous unwarranted human Caution and that it may justly be thought strange that after Religion had through its own heavenly Power and Methods prevailed against all the human Laws Councils and other hinderances that stood in its way Men should relaps from such Divine Grounds of Confidence to their own weak Contrivances for its support and continuance And further that however innocent you may now judge this Injunction to be Take the Test or quit all publick Imployments Yet I am fully assured that If in the Primitive times a Prince or other Magistrate turning Christian had for the better Conservation of his Religion set forth an Edict to his still Pagan Subjects commanding them to Turn from vain Idols to serve the Living and True God or else to forsake all publick Places and Trusts He would have been Condemned for it by Christ and all his Apostles Secondly That the effects of such Exclusions in all times have been no better than their Causes and that instead of preserving and securing our Religion they have onely brought into it hypocritical and false Converts or provoked those that were rejected to a more froward Obstinacy and worse Practices who otherwise might have been gained by Gentleness and Patience which are the genuine Methods of true Christianity And Thirdly That those who by Birth-right have a real Title to all the Honours and Priviledges of Peerage And even All Men Who upon the like ground do naturally judge that they have at least an equal right of access to Places and Preferments in the Societies whereof they are Members with others of their Degree and Quality will never be perswaded to think that there is no unjust Severity in those excluding Laws which deprive them either of their acknowledged Priviledge or no less valuable Pretensions And since you are pleased to
than come in sneakingly afterwards under the Security of the desired Repeal Especially when it cannot be doubted but that both by the Fundamental Laws of Government and also by the force of his Majestie 's Prerogative from which no Successor will willingly derogate those that are or shall be imployed are in all Events secured And that at least it is incontravertibly as safe for a Man to accept of a publick Imployment as to go to a Conventicle Fourthly The most material Consideration on this Point seems to be much by you neglected viz. That we are not in the condition of an absolute free choice but under the limited offer of a plain alternative I mean Either that the present Liberty shall be continued on condition that the restraints of Tests be also taken off from Roman Catholicks or else if this be denyed that the other shall at least become more precarious Now whether a true Protestant having the fear of God as you express it in this Conjuncture and in a just view of all our Circumstances may not very allowably think that the free Liberty of the Gospel as being Gods way is more valuable as to the Interest of the Protestant Religion than the exclusion of a few Roman Catholicks from having Place in Parliament for to this narrow Compass we see it plainly brought which is but Man's way and whether this last may not well be consented to for the establishing of the first let all Impartial Men judge You tell us that If the Protestant Dissenters should upon this acceunt be deprived of their Libetty the Roman Catholicks are only to blame for it Who rather than be restrained from having a share in the Government do chuse to have both themselves and the Protestant Dissenters ly still under the weight of the Penal Laws But if the proposal made to the Dissenters be fair and their complyance not sinful you must of necessity grant that for them to be dispossessed of their Liberty the great concern of their Souls and the best method of supporting true Religion is but poorly repaired by telling them that the Roman Catholicks are to blame for it Fifthly Your frequent supposing That the Roman Catholicks will be still attemping to overturn the Protestant Religion and disturb the Kingdoms Peace and that they will get into all places of Trust and press the King in Conscience and give Him no rest until they accomplish their Designs appear to me to be too manifest improvements of a melancholy Jealousie For as hath been often said It is not a simple Repeal of Penal Laws and Tests but the Establishment of an equal Liberty whereby the Protestant as well as the Roman Catholick may be secured against all Persecution that his Majesty designs So that it is not possible that you should judge the Repeal of the Test to be the licensing of Roman Catholicks to attempt the ruin of the Protestant Religion unless you think that the Protestant Religion can never by Law be secured against the attempts of others if it be not at the same time armed with a Power to persecute them Sixthly You tell us That Roman Catholicks are not shut out amongst you from Military Imployments and that it had been hard to have done it both because the good Services they did you in the Wars for defence of your Liberty deserved that Recompence and because their Numbers being but few any Inconvenience arising from their admission might easily be prevented Now by this you plainly acknowledge that this whole matter is subject to a Rational Deliberation and is to be determined by the weighing the Conveniencies and Inconveniencies that attend such an Admission or Exclusion without entering into any deeper reflection about the Lawfulness or Unlawfulness thereof And further I must tell you that his Majesty has not only the same Considerations that you mention to move Him in Favour of his Roman Catholick Subjects but all things considered I think it may very well be asserted that the admitting of Roman Catholicks with you to Military Imployments is much more unnecessary than the admitting of them with us to place in Parliament upon the Conditions declared can be dangerous and that if the Adventure be on this side more hazardous yet it it compensated with counterbalancing Advantages that render it much more excusable than your unnecessary Practice Seventhly Tho you are pleased according to your ordinary Prudence and Moderation to propose your Fears with much Modesty yet others there are in your Parts as well as here who speak out the Devices of their own Imaginations more plainly and tell us That if the Test were taken away his Majesty might by a new Creation of Peers and by bold Returns into the House of Commons get a Parliament of such a Temper as would absolutely forbid the Exercise of the Protestant Religion Revive the Act De Comburendo and make yet greater Alterations in the Government But how vain and groundless to say no worse these Apprehensions are may appear by what his Majesty hath already done in putting a stop to our late Persecution which in the opinion of many might have carried on that change in Religion more effectually because more easily and insensibly than the Act De Comburendo and all the Fires that it kindled Besides whatever be the Security that Men ascribe to these Excluding Laws it is only from the force they have as Acts of Parliament that it arises Why then should not the same force of a Law as well secure the Protestant Religion in its just Liberty without the Power of persecuting as now its thought to do with it And as for the Facility the King may have to fill both Houses with Roman Catholicks when the Test shall be abrogated Why may he not as well first fill them in that manner and abrogate it afterwards For it is judged by many to be no less than a Fundamental in our Government that the King 's Call with the Peoples Choice and the Lords and Commons Assembling thereupon with his Majesties Approbation are all the Essentialls of a Parliament and that no Parliament can so pre-engage and limit another by any Act or Oath that it cannot Act as a Parliament until it first comply therewithal If such a Power of Limitation were admitted One Parliament might by an Oath framed for the purpose restrain weaken and even make void the Power of all succeeding Parliaments for ever So long indeed as Oaths and Tests appointed by Acts of Parliament do stand unrepealed they are undoubtedly binding But to think that One Parliament can so bind up and prescribe Rules to Another that tho it may repeal the very Act so binding and prescribing yet it hath not Power to do so till first it submit it self by Oath unto the Rules prescribed and then perjure it self by the Repeal is an Absurdity against the very Essence of Parliaments But Lastly As matters ought not to be strained on either side especially when all things concur