Selected quad for the lemma: prince_n
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A41194
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Whether the preserving the Protestant religion was the motive unto, or the end that was designed in the late revolution in a letter to a country gentleman as an answer to his first query.
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Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.
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1695
(1695)
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Wing F766; ESTC R35674
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40,307
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48
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that was which I have now mentioned can have no other Designs concerning either the Protestant or any Religion but the making it a Stale for the better compassing his own Ends. And suffer me upon this occasion to entertain you with a Passage of Benting who is the Earl said to be made on the new Foot of merit that I have mentioned to a certain Gentleman in a private Conversation between them For the Gentleman having asked him why they did not discover and make appear the Illegitimacy and Supposititiousness of the Prince of Wales Seeing as the Belief of it had served more to draw the Nation into the Interest of the Prince of Orange than any thing else so a Legal and Parliamentary proof of it would inseparably link most Men to him and preserve them in a perpetual Alienation from King James Benting told him by way of Reply That they neither questioned the Legitimacy of the Prince of Wales nor were concerned about it for that the Prince of Orange was now got into the Throne and was resolved to keep it so long as he lived and cared not who ascended it when he was gone Nor did his Letter to the Army and Fleet for debauching them from their Duty and by which he courted them to revolt from the King savour of or stand in consistency with any Religion but proclaims him both highly Impious and Atheistical it being not only to countenance breach of Trust and Disloyalty but to advise and authorize Perjury And whosoever tempts others to forswear themselves have been accounted by all Nations as Despisers of a Deity Supplanters of the only Ground of all human Commerce and Conversation and the Subverters of the Foundation upon which all Societies are established And his inviting those to desert and forsake his Majesty who not only eat his Bread and received his Pay but who stood bound to him both by their Allegiance and Oath of Fealty as they were his Subjects and by a military Oath as they were Souldiers enrolled under his Banners shews his own Irreligion that advised it as well as theirs that hearkened unto him And may be it will sooner or later return upon him wherein not only God will be Righteous but those that forsake the Standards of the Prince of Orange Justifiable provided they do it from a just and penitent Sense of their Crime in violating the Lawful and Righteous Oath they were under to the King from the Sanction and Obligation whereof no human Power can ever acquit them and also from a Conviction of the Unlawfulness of that Oath which they have taken to the Usurper I might add That the pretending to have come hither for the Safety Honour and Interest of the Protestant Religion will appear the most shameful Banter that ever was put upon the Understandings of a whole Nation if we consider the Treaty at Ausbourg and with whom the Prince of Orange concerted the Invasion that was to be made upon the King For they must have forfeited common Sense as well as moral Honesty who can be prevailed upon to allow that the many Catholick Princes who approved of that Undertaking could design any good to the Protestant Religion or believe that any Advantage would accrue unto it by that Attempt It is to Buffoon us and treat us in Ridicule to endeavour to impose upon our Belief That the late Prince Palatine who together with the Prince of Orange was the original Contriver of a Descent upon England or that the Emperour King of Spain Elector of Bavaria c. who concurred unto and countenanced it or that old Odiscalchi and Innocent the XI who winked and connived at it though against both a Catholick Monarch and the first of the Romish Communion that hath sat upon the Thrones of Great Brittain for above these hundred Years could do it in Kindness to the Protestant Religion or foresee that it was undertaken by the Prince of Orange upon any Motive relating to the Safety of it No they very well knew that there was nothing of Religion in this Case but they were willing to make use of the Ambition of the Prince of Orange to seek their own Revenge against France and to raise a War of Interest and State upon his haughty Aspirings after a Crown and on our being bubbled into it through a foolish Credulity that it was entered upon in behalf of our Religion Nor is it unworthy of Remark That the last Duke of Brandenburgh who was both one of the wisest and bravest Princes in Europe and one of the sincerest and most zealous for the Protection Glory and Advancement of the Reformed Religion would neither embark in a Design against the King of England nor suffer the Prince of Orange to enter actually upon it so long as he lived Which made his Death to be received and entertained at the Hague as a happy and seasonable Providence in that his Son who succeeded would not have the Prudence to avoid being ensnared unto it being withall under the Influence of those mighty Expectations he stands entitled unto as he is the Prince of Orange's Cousin German and thereupon Rightful Heir to all his Personal and Hereditary Estates And to put it beyond all reasonable Contradiction that the Prince of Orange did only Sham Abuse and Banter Mankind in pretending to come hither upon Motives of Favour and Kindness to our Religion than that the only Two Protestant crowned Heads in the World did neither antecedently concur unto it nor have they to this day engaged in the War against France which was the immediate and natural Consequence and Effect of that Undertaking But to advance a little farther Does not the whole Tenor of the Prince of Orange's publick Government as well as his personal and private Conduct lie in a direct Contradiction to his being under the Impressions of any Religion and much more to his being under the Efficacy of what we call the Protestant I am not at leisure to give you the full History of his Usurpation which some are pleased to stile his Reign but there are those who will do it to purpose in due time it being necessary that the vertuous Memory of the Hero and of our Folly should be recorded for the Instruction of Posterity All therefore I shall do at present is to bestow a few Strictures upon his Administration there being no more needful to my purpose Let me then ask Whether he hath done any Thing for bettering our Laws and enlarging our Liberties which were some of the main Things he came hither for Or hath he not on the contrary more avowedly superseded and departed from our known Laws and put more Negatives on publick Bills prepared by both Houses for the Royal Assent than any of the Kings that went lately before him did Has he performed any one Thing he undertook and which was expected from him that he could avoid the doing of Hath he kept one Promise he ever made that he has been in a
for Bread would have the Impudence to justify themselves in when they write to purchase the Applauses of the gaping Mob and much less when they purpose to gain the Clappings of those in the Pit and Boxes But after I have borrowed for a while these Gentlemens Pencils and only dipt them in Colours more natural and better adapted to the Figure and Complexion of the Prince of Orange I will challenge all Mankind who have not abjured Truth and common Honesty to believe any longer or continue to avouch That his coming into England was out of any other Respect to our Religion save making it the Cloak and stalking Horse to his towring and ambitious Designs I need not tell you with what alienation from Gratitude contempt of Justice scornful regardlesness of a Deity as well as disgrace of all Religion he first came abroad and set up in the World when he thrust himself into the Statholdership of his own Country by Perjury and Murther of Two of the best Patriots of the Dutch Republick of one of which namely John de Witt the late Pensionary Fagel was heard and known to say after he had examined all his Papers and searched into the whole of his Conduct during his Ministry That the great if not only Fault he was guilty of was his ardent Love unto and his steady and unshaken Service of his Country Nor shall I do more than briefly refresh your Memory how being of no Religion he can personate any when it lies in a Subserviency to his Interest and that he would with the same Readiness and exteriour Shews of Zeal have acted the part of a Roman Catholick to have obtained a Sovereignty over any Kingdom of the Papal Communion as he hath done that of a Protestant to get into the Throne of Great Brittain and to be admitted unto a Domination over these Nations For his having been oftener than once at Mass and that not as a Spectator out of Curiosity but as communicating in that Worship and Devotion is known to so many Persons of several Qualities as well as of different Religions that it will not be gainsaid by any who are acquainted with Passages and Transactions some Years ago in Flanders And should any be so ignorant of matters of Fact at a distance from their own Doors or live in enmity to all Truths disagreable to their Humours and Interests so as to deny it there are those both at Brussels and Antwerp who can testify it and have not been heretofore shy to do it It was K. Charles's having no Children and the Duke of York's having no Male ones that lived and his own Marriage with the said Duke's Eldest Daughter and therefore coming into some probable and nearer Prospects of arriving sooner or later at the Sovereignty over these Kingdoms that made him put on the Vizard and Mask of a Zealot for the Reformed Religion having before lived in all the Coldness and Indifferency in that matter that was consistent with his keeping the Posts he held in Holland I am loath to subjoyn how impossible it is that that Man should be of any Religion and much less act upon real and sincere Motives for the good of the Protestant who can and doth indulge himself in the Practice of such Abominations as are repugnant to the Light of Nature and to the Ethicks of Pagans as well as to the Doctrines and Precepts of the Bible and which are made Capital by the Laws of all Nations Nor can I do it unless I would offend the Eyes and Ears of modest Persons and give occasion to the infecting and defiling the Imaginations of Men and Women by mentioning such Crimes in Paper For as they are such heinous and provoking Abominations as have brought Fire from Heaven upon whole Citys and Societies so they are of that strangeness to our Climate and so little heard of and much less practiced under our Meridian that our Law took no knowledge of them till the 25 of Hen. 8. when they were made Felony without benefit of Clergy They are Ultramontane Crimes lately transplanted into our Soyl and in which to the Credit of our Country they have not much throve nor grown But I do reckon it unbecoming both you and my self to enlarge upon this nor is it necessary to descend to proofs of it in a City and about a Court where your Kapples are known and where it is sprung up into a Proverb In hunc modum fiunt Comites Anglicani It is enough to tell you That it is the Entertainment of Societies of People of the best Fashion where the rallying upon it has a thousand times made the modest fair and tender Sex to Blush and hath filled the masculine and virile with Contempt and Hatred of themselves for enduring a Catamite to rule over them Only I would have those that are the great Theological Artists in painting Blackâ—moors white to try their Skill whether they can make a beautiful and religious Stroak of this in the Pictures they draw of their Prince And whether by all the Chimistry of modern Priesthood they can extract out of it an Apodictical and Convincing Argument of their Master's Zeal for preserving the Protestant Religion or Distil from it a Plea in Law to justify his driving his Father in Law from his Throne and Kingdoms But it may be nothing is impossible to those Gentlemen save to speak and act consistently with their own Principles and to practise conformably to the Doctrines they have taught their People and pretended themselves to believe and undoubtedly they may do this I have named with the same Ease and by the same Rules of Philosophy that they have inferred Rebellion against the King from the Article of Non-resistance and their Deposing their Rightful and Lawful Sovereign from their celebrated Tenet of Passive Obedience To which it may not be amiss to add the Antipathy which that Man must unavoidably live in to all Religion who after his Declaration prepared and printed at the Hague for wheedling the credulous People of England into a Belief that he came to save them from Popery and Tyranny and in which he makes the Supposititiousness of the Prince of Wales or at least the Questionableness of his Legitimacy one of the mighty Grounds of his Quarrel with the King and the chiefest Provocation upon which he was about to invade his Kingdoms yet that even then and until a few days before he actually Embarked on that Design he had the Royal Babe prayed for in his own Chapel by that Distinguishing and Princely Title And as I will never henceforth think it strange that he should allow himself to hoodwink impose upon and mislead Nations who durst with that open Boldness mock and deride the Omniscient Almighty and Righteous God both to his Face and in his own instituted Worship and Service so it satisfied me and may do all others that one who could be guilty of so much publick Atheism as well as Hypocrisy as