of the subtlest Stratagems of Interest Who I say knows but the Loss of so considerable a Church Regalia so dear an Ensign of Ecclesiastick Sovereignty as their Tormenta and Flagella their Tests and Penall Laws and so sensible a Diminution of their GRANDEVR their Diana GRANDEVR threaten'd by the Relaxation of those Laws might be so near a Concern to them that seing the Royal Indulgence to Religious Liberty daily more and more gaining upon the Hearts of the People and to stop the Carreer of so General a Compassion the Fatal Effects of so growing a Contagion their Denial of Reading so Pacifick a Declaration might possibly be one of the most exquisite Artifices to stiffle the generous Product of it into Abortion Their very Refusal being really no more than purposely to Court Sufferings to gain Proselytes as well fore knowing upon the least Punishment for it tho' ever so much their Due to have their Condoled and Pittyed Cause seen through those Popular False Opticks as should turn even Justice it self in Persecution And so by Alaruming the Old Ignorance into New Jealousies they might so harden that present too Universal popular Lenity towards Tender Consciences and more than probably so affect the Frightned Populace and thereby so far influence the next Election as to defeat the whole Royal purposed Clemencie and gain their own Point I should be sorry to be mistaken in this Suspicion but truly the shallowness of so Weak-reason'd an Obstinacie against so Innocent a Command of the King looks so very like some such sort of Ecclesiastical Polity that I am affraid the Consciencious stumble at so Diminitive a Gnat will at last be found a meer artful Piece of Priest craft to keep their Dagon from falling And what that Dagon is let the World judge for excepting the Engines of their Tyranny and the supporters of their Pride I know no strength the Penal Laws or Tests either have or can yield them But above all things that the Illegality of the King 's Dispensing Power should be a Specter that appeared so dreadful to their Lordships yet walks invisible to every Mortal Eye-Sight else is not a little surprising The very Straitest-laced Prerogative Men never denied the King his Dispencing Power in Cases of Offence only against himself Absq Damno alterius and wherein the bare Exercise of Religious Worship is or can be alterius Damno their Wisdoms would have been kind to inform us Or wherein any Minister or Officer qualified or not qualified by the Test in any Civil or Military Station for His Majestie pretends to no other Dispensation can be Damno Ecclesiae would be another piece of Discovery as kind as the other Wherein what has our Church or our Nondispensing Church-men suffered by all this Toleration Have they lost the least Particle of their Government Discipline Rights Priviledges or Possessions whatever Is there any of our Nontested Magistrates or our Vnpinion'd Dissenters in all this Freedom has wrongd our Church of so much as a Sprig of Mint or a Corn of Cumminseed that she can challenge Hers. Is she denyed either Law or Justice for so much as the claim of a Tythe-Egg And that this Dispensing Power may not look altogether so hidious What is the King 's Dispensing Power in Penal Laws really any more than his pardoning Power The Transgression of those Laws incurrs such a Penalty or Punishment and the Royal Clemencie is Graciously pleased to remit the Forfeiture And indeed what does his Declaration amount to more than a Noli prosequi only a more universal one the Common and daily Plea of the Crown His Majesty by his unquestion'd Right can pardon and what 's his Declaration truly more than that he will do it Our Great Crown-sticklers have to a very fair purpose so long Preach'd up our King's the Vizegerents of GOD to come at last to the denying them any part of the brightest Prerogative of the Divinity MERCY And as to the backing the Credit of their Assertion by their Parliamentary Authority of 72 c. I am sorry to hear our Divine Gamalels lay hold of so Weak a Handle as to set up a Transient Vote against a Fundamental Prerogative And as to their Insinuation that upon our conceding a Dispensing Power in the Case of the Penal Laws and Tests it must therefore follow that we should open an Inlet to lay aside All Laws both Ecclesiastick and Civil 't is an Ergo sequitur so strangely far stretch'd that they might e'ne as well have said and the Consequence have hung as well together too that because some of our Severe Fathers of our Church have Reasons of Conscience and Policy to support Laws for the depopulating of Kingdoms therefore the Gentler FATHER of our Country ought to have the same Reasons too I hope their Lordships if for nothing but the Reputation of their Wisdom and Learning did not tender these Petitioning Reasons to His Majesty as intended for Convincing ones For truly by the strength both of their Alledging and inferencing this part of their Petition if not all of it I am affraid looks more like Written for the Reading of the Rabble than of the King. But to conclude As the fore-mentioned are all our Dangers from their Repeal wherein are His Majesties Demands unreasonable in asking the Repeal of the Penal Laws in which almost the whole Vox populi Witness the late Numerous Adresses joyns with him and the Principles of Nature Humanity and Conscience plead for him Or in asking the Repeale of the Test for the asserting of his own Honour and the Recovering the Birth-Right of a King by endeavouring to shake off the most shameful Vassalage that Monarch ever truckled under And why must his Endeavours of doing his People so much Right in the first and Himself so much Right in the last be so poorly mis-interpreted by the unnatural Surmises of his Vngrateful People But let us Blush and mend and by giving up these Laws do Equity in Return of Clemencie and MERCY FINIS
year of Q. Elizabeth she asserts her Spiritual and Ecclesiastick Supremacy in all Things and Causes whatever and creates an Oath to be tendered her Subjects for confirmation of that Power In the fifth of her Reign grown warmer in that Supremacy she imposes the Oath upon all her Ministers and Officers of the Government even to Lawyers Atturneys c. and particularly to be taken by ever Member of Parliament And the second Refusal of taking it after a first tender of it three Months before is made High Treason In the 13th of Her Reign All persons taking upon them by Colour of any Bull Writing or Authority whatever to absolve or reconcile any persons or grant or promise to any person or persons within Her Majesties Dominions any such Absolution or Reconciliation by any Speech Preaching Teaching Writing or any other open deed and if any person or persons shall willingly take or receive such Absolution or Reconciliation shall suffer pains of Death And also lose and forefeit all their Lands Tenements Goods and Chattels as in Cases of High Treason A very soure sort of Grape to set their Childrens Teeth an Edge with In the 23d of Elizabeth This Act is explain'd and confirmed and in fine the Person reconciling or reconciled to the Church of Rome Priest or Lay-man are Equally declared Traytors and so onwards till the very taking of Orders from Rome is High Treason and doomed to suffer as such Ay God knows a very just sentence if the Indictment be but true But I desire to know by what Legerdemain is this Reconciliation made High Treason Is either the Life or Dignity of the King or the Government struck at by my being a Member of This or That Communion by my believing This or That the Way to Heaven Can Faith in God be Treason against Man For that 's the Result of the point Can a Christians best Endeavour to save his own or his Brothers Soul be a Machination to destroy his Prince or his Country or can my praying or not praying to a Saint my adoring or not adoring the Eucharist render me a true or not true Leige-man If Errours in Faith can amount to High Treason and the Government is in Conscience obliged to treat 'em as such Lord have mercy upon us how came the Jews to live with that Impunity in the Common-wealth that instead of misbelieving in points of Doctrine believe not so much as in the Gospel or Christ himself No no the Sophistry of the matter lyes not there 't is not the Doctrine of a Romanist as to Godwards makes him a Traytor but his belief of the Popes being Head of the Church in Derogation to the Ecclesiastick Supremacy inherent to and Lodg'd in the Crown and so religiously asserted and maintained by the Protestant Laws of the Kingdom Hinc Illae Lacrymae There lyes the Apostacy the hideous yawning Gulph that swallows all Faith Duty Honour Loyalty and consequently calls for Axes Halters Gibbets and what not Is this the Treason then 't is well we have fixt it there tho' upon true Inspection the Impeachment will be found full as feeble here as before For this is but meer matter of Faith still all this while nor carries in it the least shadow of a Breach of the Subjects Duty to the Soveraign For Instance when this Law was made suppose a poor Roman Catholick of those Days by an Invincible power of perswasion rooted and grounded in him by an Article of Faith how rightfully is not the matter received from Age to Age and Generation to Generation in favour of the Pope cou'd not possibly believe her then She Majesty by her Accession to the Crown to be instantly the Spiritual Head of the Church in all matters and Causes whatever that otherwise before was utterly incapable even of so much as a Subdeaconship in a Country Parish and if St. Paul may be believed not so much as qualified for speaking in a Religious Assembly yet nevertheless this Roman Catholick lived under her Government with all the Allegiance and Fealty in all Respects of Obedience and believed himself in conscience so obliged to do as much as any other of her more believing Protestant Subjects would it not be a little severe to adjudge him a Traytor And that the Romish Opinion that the Spiritual Supremacy lyes not in the Temporal Prince is meer matter of Faith is demonstrable from the very Soveraign Power it self when so many successive Kings never believed they had that Supremacy themselves For Prerogative is of its nature so jealous that tho' never so considerable a Jewel in a Crown had they had Faith to have challenged it theirs they would have had wit enough to have worne it too What if our Protestant Kings and their Parliments for them believe that Supremacy wholy lodged in the Crown must their Roman Catholick Subjects be Traytors because they cannot be of their Belief If the Princes Belief must be the standart of the peoples Loyalty by the same Equity the Catholick Kings might have made it High-Treason in their Reign to assert that Supremacy in the Crown Then as the Protestant Kings do to deny it there now and consequently the Protestants then if such there had been might by Equal Justice have been Traytors too If Crown'd Heads must necessarily be believed the Spiritual Heads of the Churches under their Obedience I wonder what strange stretch of Faith those Thousands of Christians must have that are born and bred Subjects to the Mahometan Grand Signior But that the Members of the Church of Rome may not look altogether so black for this unhappy Part of their Belief and that their asserting of that Spiritual Supremacy in their Pope does not any ways threaten either the Crown or the publick peace That wise and prudent Monarch King James the First shall be their Compurgator For as many Laws as that Prince made for the Defence of the Establisht Church of England and as great Industry as he used for the extirpation of the Romish Religion he was nevertheless pleased to allow the Pope tho' not Vniversal Head of the Church yet Patriarch of the West in which precinct of consequence must England be included And if so zealous a Protestant King thought it no Diminution to his own or his Churches Dignity to be of that Opinion and to grant the Pope that Prerogative what mortal High Treason against the Crown of England do the Members of the Popes own Church commit in throwing him in the East too a part of the World not much relating to us into the Bargain and so making him Vniversal Patriarch Jacob. Contr. Perron But some People will tell you 'T is almost an Impossibility to fancy any such things as Principles of Loyalty in a Romish Subject to a Protestant King. I shall not endeavour to confute this uncharitable Censure by the Vniversal Heroick Examples of that Parties Loyalty in the Battels of Charles the First so truly may I call it
from an Ordinance of Forty eight much less an Act of Parliament But for our less Wonder at it we are to consider 't was Hatch'd in the same Republick Nest for no less than the great old Patriot of Three Names sate for the brooding of it I think I need not raise Arguments to prove how little those Gentlemen of Honour the Courtiers I mean of any Religion whatsoever in that innocent Station are or can be concerned in shaking either Church or State. It is enough to say that greater Indignity under the Sanction of a Law was never impos'd upon a Crown'd Head. The meanest Gentleman in England whilst this Test keeps Footing has a Prerogative above the King. For the choice of his Steward Bayliff Attorney or Solicitor c. are in his own free Election But these were Priviledges thought too large for a King and therefore he is Stinted and Bounded to such Elections as the more Imperial Wisdom of His Great Masters in Parliament judge fittest for him Monarchical Rule is said to be like that of Heaven where the Primum Mobile acts altogether by inferior Sphears and second Causes And so Majesty by its Officers and Ministers as so many Vehicles by which the Influences of the Royal Power are Convey'd to set the Great Machine a moving But truly this Ascendancy the late Law-makers judged too great for the King of England and therefore they found an Expedient to render the Monarchy little more than precarious making the whole Ministers of the State the Creatures of the Test and not of the King. Now I desire to know how in Reason we can imagine that a King in himself the Fountain of Honour and Original of Power though in his Nature the Mildest and best Temper'd of Princes though without the least Thought of Unhinging the Frame of the Government or Disturbing the Settled Church of his Kingdom to blast his own Glory and lose his Subjects Hearts for that would be all the Crop 't would yield him I wonder I say how we can imagine that the Best and most Gracious of Princes tho without the foremention'd Designs could nevertheless brook so Vnprincely a Yoke as the Test And truly to justifie his Majesties heartiest Endeavours against both Penal Laws and Test in not labouring to abrogate the first as they stand in Force against the Lives and Liberties and how unjustly has been proved before of the Members of his own Communion he would be the most unnatural of Men and in not labouring to repeal the last as standing so egregiously in force against the Right and Prerogative of His Crown and indeed originally forged in Affront to himself he should be the most Dishonourable of Princes Nor will it serve to object that His late Majesty whatever diminution to the Prerogative it might be by passing it into a Law has alienated that Power from the Crown For to answer that Argument we are assured that whatever Alienations of that kind the Easiness of the present Possessour of the Crown or any other Reasons may induce him to make are no ways truly binding to the Successor Now to come to the last Point the Qualification of Members in Parliament by the Test And first I shall not so much insist upon the notorious Invasion of the Birthright of the Peers by this Exclusion from Parliament as being a Point already so well handled by better Pens and never yet answered nor shall I so much insist upon the Illegality and Vnreasonableness of Tests in general of any kind as was once argued in Parliament by the Lord Delamere in opposition to a Test proposed by the Earl of Lindsey a Test which though not thought legal to be imposed as such contain'd no other than the highest Obligations of Loyalty that every Subject owes to his Prince But if the making of Tests in Parliament which with the Sovereign Consent as Kings are but Men and sometimes the Exigence of Affairs may extort the Royal Fiat lyes in the Majority so to do Suppose the Forgers of this Test for by the by they were none of the best Friends of the Church as now by Law establisht had follow'd their Blow and form'd a second Test to deny Episcopacy to be Jure divino a Dispute much bandyed in those days Here had the Bishops been thrown out of the Parliament if not the whole Hierarchy out of the Kingdom And so by Tests ad Infinitum how might the Basis of the whole Government been overturned and the very Houses of Parliament dwindled at last to the scandalous Dimensions of the old fashion'd Rump For if one Test to exclude a Score why not another to lop off a hundred And indeed how are our present Parliaments the comprehensive Body of the Nation when so many of the Peers not there by Representatives are shut out Nay how much is the Dignity of the Laws they make and the very Constitution of our later Parliaments themselves impair'd and lessen'd by such an Exclusion But to come to the main Business viz. to obviate the greatest and terriblest Clamour of Fear and Jealousie against the Repeal of the Test viz. If the Test were destroy'd who knows but Parliaments may be so managed as to turn out the Church of England and set up Popery even by Law it self This indeed is the Gorgon that frights half Man-kind out of their little Senses But where or how is this Popish Parliament to be gotten for a Protestant one will hardly be so Complaisant But to search out every Cranny that this imaginary Danger is supposed to creep in at Let us examine the House of Lords and try their Inclinations that way If the Test were laid aside and the excluded Lords restored what would their Number signifie At our last Parliament the Protestant Peers amounted to 160 and the excluded Romish Barons nor are they much increased since were not a Tenth of their Number So that here 's an absolute want of a Prodigious Creation of Romish Barons to rise to a Majority Nay and of so many Estates too to support the Grandure as possibly would stagger imagination it self to find a Treasure enough to purchase for so many New Dignifications especially of Gentry or Landed Men to start up Lords among so thin sown a Party would put 'em damnable hard to it But for once grant such an Extravagant Donation of Honour and such Golden Mines to maintain it might form a House of Lords capable of over-ballancing on the Popish side where shall the House of Commons be had for without both they do nothing They would go nigh to find such a Dead Weight in the Lower House as all the Tuggs of Rome would never be able to stirr and this stupendious Parliamentary Subversion of the Church of England a Phoenomenon only in Nubibus A Popish House of Commons too Alas they 'll tell you very easily Has not the King for instance got a new way of Regulating Corporations Nay has he not or will do before next