countenanced and maintained by the same And I believe none will imagine that those Nonconforming Divines would take any Oath but in the imposers sence or Casuistically advise others so to do 'T is therefore no marvel if our later Presbytery being so unconformable to the Law of the Land and to the Tenets of the former Nonconformists soon grew weary of it self and did with its horrid Visage only face us and march off Your Lordship found that in another thing it resembled Popery namely in that it would be all or nothing and you helped it to the latter part of the Alternative Mr. Nye who made a great Figure in the Assembly of Divines hath in that Book of his forementioned p. 98 helped this Age to know how Arbitrary they would have been in delivering men to Satan for saith he there the exercise of Discipline in our Congregations was ordered by the Parliament but limited likewise to an enumeration of the Sins for which we might excommunicate exempting other Sinners that were as much under our charge This was looked on by the Assembly as a great Abridgment of their Ministerial Liberty and so great as they professed it could not with a good Conscience be submitted to as not being able to perform their trust which they receiv'd from Iesus Christ and must give an account of to him resolving to stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free So ridiculous were those Divines that tho no Pope ever arrogated a power to Excommunicate one but for the Crimes nominated in his Canon-Law and tho our Church of England never claim'd a power of excommunicating but for a Crime express'd in the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws yet those froward Disciplinarians would have been allow'd to shoot their Thunderbolts of Excommunication upon a Capricio But not only the Parliament but the whole Nation in a manner pronounced them Contumacious the people saw how Arbitrarily they would have interdicted the whole Land from the use of the Cup and Bread too in the Sacrament and have rail'd in the Communion-Table with fantastick Qualifications and they soon judged those Clergy-men guilty of Irregularity and the rather for that they had engaged so far in Causâ sanguinis and the same Sun of Reason and Knowledge that with the strength of its Beams had here put out the Popes Kitching Fire of Purgatory did soon without noise and insensibly confound their Dominions in the Kingdom of Darkness and those Divines themselves found that their destroying Episcopacy here had in effect by the Parliaments being their Superintendants enthroned Erastianisme that which indeed their Principles led them to hate more then Episcopacy it self Mr. Baxter in the Preface to his second part of the Nonconformists Plea speaking of Presbytery saith I do not hear of many out of London and Lancashire that did ever set up this Government and I know not of one Congregation now in London of Englishmen that exerciseth the Presbyterian Government nor ever did since the King came home c. And saith they have no National Assembly no Classes no Coalition of many Churches to make a Presbytery and I hear of none unless perhaps some Independants that I know not that have so much as ruling Lay-Elders Alluding to some expressions before applyed to Papists and Popery I may say that the Cato's of Presbytery came here on the Stage tantum ut exirent and that Government soon had its period here per simplicem desinentiam 'T was obvious that Presbytery as well as Popery directed men where to stand in a place divided from the Civil Government and so to shake the Earth and it appear'd very inauspicious to the Model of the Covenant that in its first Paragraph it should stumble upon implicit Faith by swearing to a Government and Reformation that shall be and to the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government the particulars whereof the Lay-Covenanters of England if not the Clerical also were far from understanding And tho in that Paragraph the Covenant binds its takers to endeavour to advance the Reformation of Religion according to the word of God a Clause that Sir Harry Vane declared to a very worthy Gentleman now living that he caus'd to be inserted into the Covenant after much debate about the same and opposition from the Scotch Commissioners with whom he was interested in the making of it and thereupon said That â—e was three days in getting the word of God into the Covenant yet that Covenant having almost extirpated Root and Branch those spiritual Guides from whom the people might expect a more Rational and Learned Interpretation of the Sense of the word of God then from the Presbyterian Divines they were soon sensible of their danger both as to the perverting of the Scripture and subverting of the Church from the new Correctors of Magnificat and found that such an Inundation of Vile Religionary Tenets was got into the Church that the Houses of Parliament ordered the 10 th of March 1646. To be set apart as a solemn day of humiliation to seek Gods Assistance for the suppressing and preventing of the growth and spreading of Errors Heresies and Blasphemies and that Mr. Vines on that day Preaching before the Commons p. the 4 th of his Sermon printed acknowledged That that day was the first that ever was in England on that sad occasion and p. 67 of that Sermon mentioned a most detestable thing then broach'd by the Press though yet in the way of Query namely what is meant by the word Scripture when it is asserted that the denying of the Scriptures to be the word of God should be holden worthy of death for saith the Author either the English Scriptures or Scriptures in English are meant by the word Scriptures or the Hebrew and Greek Copies or Originals the former cannot be meant with reason because God did not speak to his Prophets and Apostles in the English Tongue nor the latter for the greatest part of men in the Kingdom do not understand or know them Mr. Vines declared his just Abhorrence of that insinuation and saith If this dilemma be good what is become of the certain foundation of our hope or faith or comfort how can we search the Scriptures without going first to School to learn Hebrew and Greek And 't was obvious to every one to consider that if the English Scriptures are not the word of God there was an end not only of the Reformation according to it mentioned in the Covenant but the substantial one promoted by the Protestant Religion that help'd us to the Treasure of our English Bibles and that we should soon be stranded on the Shore of Implicit Faith. Nor could it long be hid from common observation that those Divines who exclaim'd so much against the Ceremonies of the Church of England as an oppressive Yoke would have imposed on us such a rigid observation of the Sabbath the great Scene
that have been since augmented Yet however I doubt not but that if it had been Gods will further to have lengthen'd the last reign the Course of Nature would then have operated as I have mention'd And if it shall appear that those natural Considerations I have urged shall have the success of such further Parliamentary Supplies to His gracious Majesty as may tend to the further greatning of his Character and that of the Kingdom I shall account my claim the more equitable to have the pardon of my fellow Subjects of what Religionary Sect soever for any thing in this Discourse that may disgust them And as an eminent Protestant Divine hath in a Printed Sermon thus said viz. that man is not worthy to breathe in so good a Land as England is who would not willingly lay down his life to cure the present divisions and distractions that are among us I shall say that any Subject deserves not to live here under the Indulgence of so good a Prince who for the helping him to money by all due means for the defence of this good Land would not wish himself as well as his Bigottry a Sacrifice and who would not as to any Extravagant dash of a Pen lighting on his Party and bringing Money to his Prince cry foelix peccatum rather then such Divisions and Distractions and Diffidences of the Government and stifling of Publick Supplies should still live as were formerly known in some Conjunctures and when the Art of Demagogues appear'd so spightful in endeavours to frustrate the Meetings of Parliaments But our Prince having freed all his dissenting Subjects from their uneasiness under Pecuniary Mulcts for Religion and the Members of the Church of England from the uneasiness of imposing such Soul-Money will I doubt not when he shall please to Call a Parliament find from them such necessary Supplies for the support of the Body of the Kingdom as may ease him under the weight of his great Desires for it and that it will then appear to all as absurd to Crown such a Head with Thorns as hath taken the Thorn out of every man's foot in England and that his pass'd Sufferings for his Conscience and others of his Communion having too suffer'd for his Conscience bespeaking us in those words of the Apostle Fulfil ye my joy that both his and theirs will be then Consummated and as the Ioy of those of the Church of England and of all nominal Churches in England hath been fulfill'd by him and that as Luther was pleas'd in a Christian-like transport of good Nature to Profess in his Epistle to Jeselius a Iew Me propter Unum Judaeum Crucifixum omnibus favere Judaeis we shall for the sake of one of the Roman-Catholick Communion who hath formerly suffer'd so much for his Conscience and since done so much for the freedom of ours shew all those of that Communion our favour to such a proportion as may compleat his and their Ioy. My Lord I am here obliged to acknowledge that tho while the several Parts of the following Work were written in the times the Government charged both Papists and Anti-Papists with Disloyalty and Plots I express'd my sense of the Non-advisableness to have the Penal Laws against them repeal'd pending such Charge and Plots I desire the Reader to look on me as very far from insisting on any thing of that nature in this Happy State of England now that the Corner Stone and that some of the Builders rejected hath thus successfully united the sides of the Fabrick of the Government in Loyalty My Lord It is near a year since I writ my Thoughts at large concerning the Subject of the Repealing those Laws and they are in the Fourth Part of my Work about The Dispensative Power of which the two first Parts conclude this Volume ready for the Press and reserving my poor Iudgment in this great Point till the Publication of the whole I think I shall then set forth my Opinion as founded on Medium's that have not appear'd in Print from other Writers and which I believe will not only not give offence to any Member of the Church of England but be of general use in allaying the ferment the Question hath occasion'd And if as they who were long fellow-Passengers in a Ship among violent Tempests and Hirricanes do usually from their being Participants together in the danger and horror take occasion to raise a friendly esteem and well-wishes for each other such of the Loyal whose belief I referr'd to as imbarqued with mine in that of the Plot during the late Stormy Conjuncture shall be the more favourable to what I write I shall be glad both for their sakes as well as mine but do further judge that what I have so largely in the following Discourse asserted and by Reasons taken from Nature concerning the Moral impossibility of the belief of the Tenets of the Church of Rome gaining ground here considerably on the belief of the Doctrine of the Church of England will tend to secure any one from fears of our losing our Religion by any loss of the Test that may happen a thing that none I think will fear who are of the Iudgment of the House of Commons in their Address to the late King on the 29 th of November 1680. that I have referr'd to in my Fourth Part and where they say that POPERY hath rather gain'd then lost Ground since the TEST ACT and make that Act to have had little effect I have in the following Discourse referr'd to that Act as represented to have had its rice in the year 1673. from the alledged petulant Insolence of Papists in that Conjuncture and I took notice of a learned Lord since deceas'd as vouching somewhat in Print of such temper among some of them And a Proclamation that year charging the Papists therewith I was implicitly guided thereby to take the thing for granted and as to the which considering since the publick Passages in that Conjuncture I have otherwise judged But as I think no loyal Roman-Catholick should in that Conjuncture have suffer'd any Prejudice for any ill Behaviour of any other of that Communion then much less ought any such thing be now and when there appears so noble and general a spirit of Emulation among all men of sense in the Diffusive Body of the People about who shall make the Head and all Members of that Body most easie and for the doing which we may well hope that the People representative and the other Estates of the Realm will come with all due Preparation of Mind when it shall please His Gracious Majesty to assemble them My Lord I have nothing further to add but my begging your Lordship's Pardon for this trouble and my owning the many Obligations I am under to be My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Earl of Anglesy having shewed me an Affidavit and Information against him delivered at the Barr
Popery but some of their old stock Tho some Presbyterians have not hitherto learned that Modesty and Policy from the Papists as to leave off their unjust valuing themselves on their Numbers yet as I know not of any number of Gentlemen that would choose to live in any Parish in England under the severity of that Church Government and who would not rather desire to be exterminated from their Native Country than to live in it with Presbytery Paramount so neither do I believe that Presbytery would be endured by many of our illiterate Mechanicks now more than heretofore if they were taught its rigour And tho likewise another Sect of Dissenters more Gentlemanly than that of the Presbyterians I mean the Independants do in the little Pamphlets they write trouble us much with proclaiming their Numbers and as if they were not only the sober but the major part of the Nation they are very ridiculous in trying to make themselves that way dreadful contrary to what is in Fact true I believe that the number of those who in the late times listed themselves in the particular gathered Churches and subjected themselves to their Laws and Contribution to their Pastorage was always inconsiderable and as an Argument of that 't is in this Discourse mentioned that the Pastors of the most Opulent of those Churches in London did most readily quit their Posts when they could obtain Head-ships of Colleges and that in a Conjuncture when Independancy was in a manner the form of Church Government owned by the State. These Churches were always very few in the Country and are now fewer and scarce visible unless we will call the Bands of Quakers by the name of Churches and a name I do not hear they think fit to use I am of opinion that under the Christian Religion so much â—uller of Mystery than the Pagan Iewish and Turkish its Divine Planter did necessarily make Christians loving one another the Characteristical Mark of their being such and under the noble freedom allowed by the Protestaâ—ts Religion to try all things and to trust no Religionary Tenets but what they have tryed a Heterodoxy as to some speculative supposed Tenets of the Church of England may among some inquisitive persons have long gained ground and still do so There was in London an Independant Church under Cromwel's Government and Mr. Biddell was their Pastor and among other Tenets denominable as those of Religion they owned these following viz. That the Fathers under the old Covenant had only Tempâ—ral Promises and That the Vniversal Obedience performed to the Commands of God and Christ was the saving Faith and That Christ rose again only by the Power of the Father and not his own and That justifying Faith is not the pure gift of God but may be acquired by mens natural Abilities and That Faith cannot believe any thing contrary to or above reason and That there is no Original Sin and That Christ hath not the same body now in glory in which he suffered and rose again and That the Saints shall not have the same body in Heaven that they had on Earth and That Christ was not Lord or King before his Resurrection or Priest before his Ascension and That the Sainâ—s shall not before the day of Iudgment enjoy the Bliss of Heaven and That God doth not certainly know Future Contingences and That there is not any Authority of Fathers or General Councils in determining Matters of Faith and That Christ before his death had not any Dominioâ— over the Angels and That Christ by dying made not satisfaction for us and 't is possible that such Religionary Tenets as these which are far from being de lanâ caprinâ and are contrary to the Articles of our Church may not be extirpated tho yet I believe there will never be any Fermentation in our Church or State produced here by them if in course of time any of them should happen to be the Sentiments of any of our Princes and much less that any Prince if so opining would consute others as Hereticks with Fire and Sword and as Calvin coâ—futed Servetus There was likewise in our Metropolis another Independant Church of which Mr. Iohn Goodwin was the Pastor and by which Church the Tenets of Arminiâ—s were received and which tho they have ceased to ferment the State yet the opinions of men equally pious and learned will in all likelihood be always different about the same and as to these Tenets the Questions are not such as are called Questiones Domitianae or of catching of Flies But there is a sort of Questions that is little better and that in our busie World will not usurp the time they have done and that is such as are of the Nature of that I have spoke of toward the Close of this Discourse that made the fermentation in a Church of Separatists that went hence to Amsterdam namely Whether Aron's Ephod were blew or Sea-green and tho I have asserted it That mens liberty of professing Religionary Tenets may be reckoned as a part of their Purchace by Christ's Blood yet methinks to make the Son of God leave the Bosom of his â—ather and take a Journey from Heaven to Earth to impress on it right Notions about the lawfulness of signing Children with the Cross or of mens kneeling at the Sacrament or standing at the Creed or bowing at the name of Iesus or of placing the Communion Table in the East or of wearing Surplices Tippets Lawn-sleeves or square Caps or of keeping of Holy-days or singing Psalms to Organs and to resolve the World in some plain points as namely Whether the Soveraign Power may not lawfully enjoyn the observance of the external Circumstances of Divine Worship which every man doth in his own Family or Whether it be not as lawful for the Sovereign Power to enjoyn kneeling at the Sacrament as 't is for private Persons to command their Flocks not to kneel and the resolving who doth most hurt by Christian Liberty either the Magistrate who commanding me to kneel telâ—s me the thing is in its own nature indifferent and that he doth not and cannot change the nature of things in themselves or my private Pastor who shall tell me That my not kneeling is necessary to salvation and the resolving the Question Whether I may lawfully â—oyn in a set form of Prayer with a Congregation when 't is plain that another man 's conceived or extempore Prayer is as much a form to me or to another as any printed Prayer can be or the resolving what Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots calls a frivolous Question as made by some Separatists viz. What Warrant have you to use this or that Form of Prayer or to pray upon a Book and to which he answers That it is Warrant sufficient that we are enjoyned to use Prayer Confession of Sin and Supplication for Pardon c. No set Form thereof determined therefore any fit Form warrantable this Form that we
Religion under a Lutheran or Calvinian or Popish Successor and that all might be really afraid of dishonouring God and wounding their Consciences by prejudicing the Inheritable Rights of those Princes Successions it is thus further determined by the 7th Article of the Instrumentum pacis Caesareo suecicum § 1. viz. Vnanimi quoque Caesareae majestatis omniumque ordinum consensu c. 'T is likewise thought fit by the unanimous Consent of the Emperor and all the States of the Empire that whatever right or benefit both all the other Constitutions of the Empire and the Peace of Religion and this publick agreement and the decision of all Grievances therein do allow to all Catholick States and Subjects and to those addicted to the Augustan Confession the same shall likewise be allowed to those that are called the Reformed i. e. Calvinists with a Salvo to the States called Protestants i. e. Lutherans as to all things Covenanted and agreed between themselves with their own Subjects and as to all Privileges and other dispositions whereby Provision was made for Religion and its exercise and the things thereon depending by the States and Subjects of each place and with a Salvo to each for the freedom of their Consciences Now because the Controversies of Religion which are in Agitation at this time among the forenamed Protestants have not been hitherto reconciled but have been referred to a further endeavour of agreement so that they still make two Parties therefore concerning the right of reforming it is thus agreed between them that if any Prince or other Lord of the Territory or Patron of any Church shall hereafter change his Religion or obtain or recover a Principality or Dominion either by the right of Succession or by virtue of this present Treaty or by any other Title whatsover where the publick exercise of the Religion of the other Party is at present in use it shall be free to him to have his Court-Chaplains of his own Religion about him in the place of his Residence without any burthen or prejudice to his Subjects but it shall not be lawful for him to change the publick Exercise of Religion or the Laws or Ecclesiastical Constitutions which have been there hitherto in use or take from those their Churches whose they formerly were or their Schools or Hospitals or the Revenues Pensions and Stipends belonging thereunto or apply them to the men of their own Religion or obtrude on their Subjects men of another Religion under the pretence of a Territorial Episcopal or Patronal Right or under any pretence whatsoever or bring about any other hinderance directly or indirectly to the Religion of the other Party c. In fine here hath been a great Pacification and the same agreed on to be a perpetual Law and pragmatick Sanction and as strongly binding as any Fundamental Law or Constitution thereof comprhending in behalf of the Emperor all his Confederates and Adherents first the Catholick King and House of Austria the Electors and Princes of the Empire the Hanse Towns the King of England the King of Denmark and Norway and all the Princes and Republicks of Italy and the States of Holland and others and in the behalf of the Queen of Sweden all her Confederates the most Christian King the Hanse Towns the King of England the King of Denmark and the Dutch States c. Well but yet it may be by our timid Protestants objected that all these Roman Catholick Princes thus projecting the Peace of Germany and that of Christendom did in this great Instrumentum pacis and the pacta Conventa referred to but reckon without their Host I mean the Bishop of Rome and that one Bull against it from Rome would thunder it to nothing and render it voidable or void and that all the Concessions to Heresie and Hereticks and hindring their Extermination were nugatory and that such a written Treaty carried in it it s own deletion and that of Hereticks and that the Bulla Caenae every Maundy Thursday Excommunicates and Curâ—es all Lutherans Calvinists Hugonots and their Receivers Fautors and Defenders and that the many immunities granted to Hereticks by this Peace as likewise Lands and Territories and the Erecting of Bishopricks into Secular Principalities and settling them on Heretical Princes and their Heirs forever whereby so much prejudice accrued to the Roman Catholick Religion and the Apostolick Sea would probably engage the Pope some time or other to quash it as null and to damn both the Peace and all that made it I answer that within two days after the signing that Peace the Popes Nuntio at Munster protested against it declaring that he made that Protestation by the Pope's express Commands and on the 26th of November 1648 Pope Innocent the 10th issued out his Bull against it from Rome called Sanctissimi Domini nostri Innâ—centii divina providentia Papae X. Declaratio nullitatis articulorum nuperae Pacis Germanicae Religioni Catholicae sedi Apostolicae Ecclesiis aliisque locis piis ac personâ—s juribus Ecclesiasticis quomodolibet praejudicialium ad aeternam Rei memoriam And he therein blames the Emperor and his Confederates and the most Christian King on the account of the perpetual abdication of some Ecclesiastical Goods and Rights possessed by Hereticks and for their permitting to Hereticks the free exercise of their Religion by that Peace and their being further Authorized by it to bear Offices and enjoy not only Church Livings but Bishopricks and Arch-Bishopricks and in fine that Pope having made it null and void further declares That if any have sworn to observe the Articles of that Peace such Oath shall not bind them But what did this Declaration from his Holyness signify in that Case No more than one from Prester Iohn would have done The Emperor and Princes of Germaâ—y did gloriously stand to their Pacta conventa and took care to see the same solemnly ratified and executed notwithstanding the Papal Declaration of their Nullity They knew the Pope's Nuntio would soon protest and the Pope himself declare against the Peace and had therefore in Terms therein agreed That no Canons or special Decrees of Councils or Concordats with Popes or Protestations or Edicts Rescripts Mandates or Absolutions whatsoever should in any Future time be allowed against any Article of it And they likewise knew that the Pope's Declaration of the Nullity of that Treaty would contain no Threatnings of Excommunication or Damnation against their Persons but only Quelques choses or things of Course or to speak more properly Nullities of Course and that while all Christendom was embarqued in that Treaty and going with full Sail and favoured with a strong Gale of Nature into its Haven of Rest and being to pass by the Popes Fort and had resolved against lowering their Flag to it the Pope would of Course fire some Bulls of Nullity at them Charged with no significant Shot and as it is usual for the Forts of Princes to do to Ships that pass
Treaty cited in the Margent of the Author of The Reasonable Defence as I have mentioned the thing with Historical Truth Arch-Bishop Brambal in p. 178 of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of that Peace and how thereby freedom of Religion was secured to Protestants and Bishopricks and other Ecclesiastical Dignities conferred on them and that many Lands and other Hereditaments of great value were alienated from the Church in Perpetuity and yet the Popes Nuntio protested against it and having there in his Margent referred to the aforesaid Bull of Pope Innocent saith yet the Emperor and the Princes of Germany stand to their Contracts assert the Municipal Laws and Customs of the Empire and assume to themselves to be the only Iudges of their own Privileges and Necessities And moreover Sir William Temple in his said Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire writ in 1671 mentioning The Domestick Interest of the Empire to be the limited Constitution of the Imperial Power and the Balance of the several free Princes and States of the Empire among themselves saith that those Interests have raised no doubt since the Peace of Munster While the Iesuites make the Pope infallible and some Anti-Papists generally make him a meer natural Agent that must always Act Ad extremum virium I fear not to take a middle way and to suppose him to be a rational Animal and one that knows when the Papacy is not to exert its former Principles against the Power of Kings and lives of Hereticks and for this reason namely Quia deerant vires and one who will not do it for the Future in all places Quia deerunt vires He is not to learn the reasonableness of that Gloss in his Canon Law that Canes propter pacem tolerantur in ecclesiâ and especially when the Heretical Dogs are there the most numerous nor needed he or the Popish or Protestant Princes of the Empire to have been minded of the Dutch Proverb so well known there viz. Veel Honden Zyn de' haez dâ—ot i. e. Many Dogs are the Hares death and that the old sport of hunting down Hereticks with Crusado's was hardly practicable when both Popish as well as Protestant Princes were weary of it and that therefore according to the saying Difficile est ire venatum invitis Canibus Nor was either the Pope or the Popish Princes of Germany to be taught that if ever there was to be that wild thing of a Crusado against Hereticks again better use might be made of them then by killing them and that it would turn to better Account to deal with them as Mathew Paris tells us on the year 1250 the time about which Crusado's were most in fashion and when Popes that had a mind to ravish the Regal Rights of Princes would take an opportunity to do it by sending them on Fools Errands to the Holy Land that the Pope dealt with the many Pilgrims who were Cruce signati in an Adventure for that Land namely that he very fairly sold those crossed Pilgrims for ready Money as the Iews did their Doves and their Sheep in the Temple And if the 100,000 Hereticks that I mentioned out of Bellarmine as slain by one Crusado had been sold but for 20 l. Sterling each a fond might have been thereby provided for the incommoding the Turk very much more than by the taking from him the Holy Land. But the Pope and those Popish Princes are sufficiently sensible of their want of Power for any such Nonsensical Outrage and I wish that our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance and who with Bellarmine have agreed in that being the Cause of the Primitive Christians not attempting to shake the Empire namely because they had not strength to do it were but as sensible as the Papacy is of their wanting strength to do it in England No marvel therefore that the Iupiter Capitolinus in his Bull of Nullity did not discharge the old Artillery of the Lightning and Thunder of Anathemas and the greater Excommunications against the Emperor and Roman-Catholick Crown'd Heads and Princes concerned in the Munster Peace as I have shewn nor according to the Expression in the Reasonable Defence damned them to the Pitt of Hell for it No both the World and the Papacy were so Metamorphosed and their old fashions so far passed away that those Popish Crown'd Heads found that there was in this Bull only what partly resembled that which Ovid tells us of in his Metamorphosis viz. Est aliud levius sulmen cui dextra Cyclopum Saevitiae flammaeque minus minus addidit irae Tela secunda vocant superi c. But as I just now expressed my wishes that some of our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance were as sensible of their wanting strength to subvert the Rights of the Monarchy in England as the Pope was of his wanting it to break the Measures of the Crown'd Heads relating to the Munster Peace I have in this Discourse expressed not only my hopes but belief that nature it self which is thus always Acting to the extremity of its Power will overpower the Arts by which they have been seduced to Principles for endeavouring it and will render the Principles of many of our Protestant Recusants coincident with those of the Primitive Christians instead of those of the Jesuites and that this Storm which the World hath brought on the Irreligionary part of their Principles as well as of the Iesuites both of which have brought so many dismal Storms on the World will make them come to an Avarage and to submit to the casting many of their Principles over-board as well as the Iesuites have been obliged so to do by the Pope as Master of the Vessel commanding the same And as in a Storm the very Victuals of the Mariners are often according to the Maritime Law cast into the Sea to lighten the Vessel it may resemblingly be expected that many of our Dissenting Religionaries will now part with some of those Principles that have in their Religion-Trade afforded them a Subsistance and that when they shall consider how this present Pope notwithstanding the Privilege of a Master of a Ship by which he may refuse to begin the Iactus by throwing out first his own Wares and Goods did about a year before he threw out the Lumber of the Iesuites and Casuists throw over-board a vast Treasure of Papal Indulgences and by which the Ship of the Papacy was formerly victualled It was by the Popes Decree of the 7th of March 1678 that a Multitude of Indulgences was suppressed and the Names of 14 Famous Popes are there mentioned as having granted some thereof and great numbers of others are by him quashed without mentioning the Popes by whom granted and there was a particular Clause in the Decree that did shake the whole Body of Indulgences And tho the Virgin Mary hath been by many of the Vulgus of Papists oftner pray'd to in Storms than the Trinity
we have of late found cause to judge that that Doctrine and those Principles have been believed and practised by others of them and with such Artifice to amuse and divert the incautelous Loyal from the apprehension thereof as was practised by several of the Papists a little before the Gun-powder Treason for as at the end of the Papists supplication to the King and the States of the Parliament in the year 1604 they undertake that as to the Loyalty of their Priests they shall readily take their Corporal Oaths for continuing their true Allegiance to his Majesty or the State or in Case that be not thought assurance enough that they shall give in sufficient Sureties one or more who shall stand bound life for life for the performance of the said Allegiance and further that if any of their number be not able to put in such Security that then they will all joyn in such supplication to the Pope for recalling such Priests out of the Land and thus by the Offer of Security attempted to lull the State in a secure sleep and dream of their Loyalty so have many of our Protestant would-be's by the publication of their NO PROTESTANT PLOT so lately before their plotted Out-rage done what was tantamount to keep our Country from being awake to observe the March of their Principles till it should be surprized with the suddenness of Sampson's Alarm when it came to be said The true Protestants are upon thee I mean those who falsly call themselves so I know no true Son of the Church of England owning a greater propension to afford favour to Heterodox Religionaries in points denominable by Religion than what my natural temper and habitual inclination prompt me to And tho some men are apt to have a sharper regret against others for differing from them in judgment than for a material injury I am naturally so far from such an humour as to be more pleased with and to think my self better diverted by the Conversation of the Learned whose Sentiments differ from mine in most points Philosophical and in many Theological than by theirs who perfectly agree in opining with me therein and do fancy to my self that I have the fortune hereby for my hâ—mour to accord with that of the generality of men of the gayest temper in the Age how different soever their Religions are and do suppose that if such a captioâ—s fiery Bigot as Bishop Bonner were now living the ingenious Maimbourg would scorn to keep him Company But the present State of Christendom making Loyalty a Vertue of Necessity here in England as I have shewn in this Discourse I would abhor the Conversation of any Dissenter I thought Dis loyal as of a Person not only wicked but stupid and on this Rock as I may say of Loyalty being likely so long to continue Essential to our continuing a Nation have I built my Conjecture of the future happy State of England It is a possible thing that the serenity of its Future State may be for some little time over-cast by Clouds of Discontent if the Balance of Trade should long continue to be against us and that then forlorn Paupers instead of fearing Popery would for a while fear nothing at all for Nescit plebs jejuna timere But I have cited the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for accounting not above one in 4000 to have starved and I having in p. 185 cited the Author of Britannia languens for saying that he heard of no new improving Manufacture in England but that of Periwigs did give my Judgment that the Ebb of our Trade hath been at the lowest point and that Nature will necessarily hasten its improvement and having observed in p. 66 that after a long Age of Luxury a contrary humour reigns as long in the World again I have said that of that contrary humour I think we now see the Tide coming in and have assigned one late Woollen Manufacture by which England hath gained double as much as for 76 years it lately did by the Balance of Trade But if any one of our true Protestant Plotters should be supposed ever to inveigle any of the poorer Mobile to fly out into tumultuous Disorder or Commotion any such Commotion making an Exception from my general Rule of England's necessary future pacific State would both certainly firmare regulam and make the Odium of the Loyal Populace so keen against all Principles and Doctrines of Resistance as to exterminate the same from our Soyl for ever and to deter men as much from daring to propagate the same in England as in those two most Famous Receptacles of Heterodox Religionaries I mean Amsterdam and Constantinople Any one who will accord with me how necessary it was for the confounding of Dis-loyalty that I should point out the fatal time when our Trade was confounded viz. in Ianuary 1648 and any Reader of this Discourse will find the obvious way mentioned how a Child of ten years of Age may know when the Balance of Trade is against us and how long it hath been so tho not to what proportion and so whether I have been too sanguine in my fancy by predicting in effect that it will be for us and long so continue time will shew But if I am out in my Measures as to that point I am sure the Divines of the Church of England will gain Cento per Cento thereby as to the point of their absolute usefulness and necessary encouragement under a Prince of what resolution soever and upon a wanton supposition that they had all withdrawn themselves to the remotest parts of the Earth it would be any Princes interest to invite them back again at any rate and that for their persisting in the preaching up of Loyalty as they have done for several years and thereby so much helped to preserve us from weltring in one anothers blood It is excellently observed by Lucius Antistius Constans in his De jure Ecclesiasticorum that the CLERGY is necessary to console us with the World to come as to the hardships daily occurring to us in this as well as to direct us in our Course to that World. And if contrary to my expectation Heaven should think fit to punish the past Rebellions and present murmurings of so many of our Land by any future diminution of our Trade and when we should be enforced to work the harder for the necessary support of our Families and of the Government 10000 Preachers of Loyalty will be an useful Treasure both to the Prince and People Fuller in his Church-History mentions that in the year 1619 It was complained of that the Grantees of Papists forfeitures generally favoured them by Compositions for lâ—ght Sums But the famous Book of The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince printed A. D. 1617. saith in the Epistle Dedicatory to the English Catholicks You have this long time suffered as violent and furious a Persecution as ever the Jews did under an
making a Ruffian of the Pope himself But indeed long before the Edition of that trifling Book many things had occurred so far to shake the testimony of the Witnesses as that it grew generally the Concordant voice of the Populace that on a supposal of several of the same Persons being again alive to be tryed on the Testimony of the same Witnesses before the same Judges it would not have prejudiced a hair of the heads that were destroyed by it and particularly in the unfortunate Lord Stafford's Case I have in two or three places of this Discourse speaking of the Papal Hierarchy called it Holy Church its old known term and by which I meant no reflection of scorn nor would I laugh at any Principle of Religion found among any Heterodox Religionaries that the dying groans of the holy Iesus purchased them a liberty to profess But 't is no Raillery to say that the Artifices of any dis-loyal Popish and Protestant Recusants that have so long made Templum Domini usurp on the Lord of the Temple and his Vice Gerents that is Kings and Princes will support no Church and that as it hath been observed of some Free Stones that when they are laid in a Building in that proper posture which they had naturally in their Quarries they grow very hard and durable and if that be changed they moulder away in a short time a long duration may likewise be predicted to the Arts and Principles of reason applied to support a Church as they lay in the Quarry of Nature and where the God of Nature laid them for the support of Princes and their People and è contrà In fine therefore since the Principles of the Church of England are thus laid in it as they were in that Quarry none need fear that they will be defaced by time or that a lawful Prince of any Religion here will accost it otherwise than with those words of the Royal Psalmist viz. Peace be within thy Walls and Prosperity within thy Palaces AN INDEX Of some of the Principal Matters Contained in the following DISCOURSE IN ALETTER TO THE Earl of ANGLESY HIS Lordship is vindicated from mis-reports of being a Papist and an account given of his Birth and Education and time spent in the University and Inns of Court and afterward in his Travels abroad Page 1 2 3. An account of his first eminent publick employment as Governor of Ulster by Authority under the Great Seal of England p. 4. An account of his successful Negotiation with the then Marquess of Ormond Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands p. 5. An account of his being a Member of the House of Commons in England and of the great Figure he afterward made in the King's Restoration ib. Reflections on the Popular Envy against the Power of a Primier Ministre ib. and p. 6 7 8. Remarks on the Saying applied in a Speech of one of the House of Commons against the Earl of Strafford viz. That Beasts of Prey are to have no Law ib. Reflections on the rigour and injustice of the House of Commons in their Proceedings against the Earl of Strafford p 9. The Usurpers declared that tho they judged the Rebellion in Ireland almost national that it was not their intention to extirpate the whole Irish Nation p. 10. The Author owneth his having observed the Piety and Charity of several Papists p. 11. The Author supposeth that since all Religions have a Priesthood that some Priests were allowed by the Vsurpers to the transplanted Irish p. 13. An account of the Privileges the Papists enjoyed in Ireland before the beginning of the Rebellion there and of the favour they enjoyed in England before the Gun-powder Treason p. 14. Observations on the Pope's Decree March the 2d 1679. Condemning some opinions of the Jesuites and other Casuists in Pages 15 41 50 51 52 53 201. The great goodness of the Earl of Anglesy's nature observed and particularly his often running hazard to save those who were sinking in the favour of the Court p. 16. The Authors observation of the effects of the hot Statutes against Popery and Papists in Queen Elizabeth 's and King Iames his time shortly ceasing ib. The Authors Iudgment that a perfect hatred to Popery may consist with a perfect love to Papists p. 19. He expresseth his having no regret against any due relaxation of any Penal Laws against Popish Recusants p. 20. An account of the Earl of Anglesy and others of the Long Parliament crushing the Jure-Divinity of Presbytery in the Egg p. 29 30. The out-rage of the Scots Presbyterian Government observed p. 29 The People of England did hate and scorn its Yoke in the time of our late Civil Wars ib. Remarks concerning infamous Witnesses and their credibility after Pardon of Perjury or after Crimes and Infamy incurred p. 33 34 35. at large and p. 204 205. The incredibility of the things sworn in an Affidavit by such a Witness against his Lordship p. 35 36. The Principle in Guymenius p. 190. Ex tractatu de justitiâ jure censured viz. licitum est Clerico vel Religioso calumniatorem gravia crimina de se vel de suâ Religione spargere minantem occidere c. p. 37. Cardinal D' Ossats Letters very falsly and ridicâ—lously cited by an English Priest of the Church of Rome for relating that the Gunpowder Treason Plot was a sham of Cecils contrivance p 38. Father Parsons one of the greatest Men the Jesuites Order hath produced p. 40. D' Ossat in his Letters observed to have given a more perfect Scheme of the whole design to hinder King Iames his Succession then all other Writers have done ib. Observations on the Author of the Catholick Apology with a reply c speaking of his not believing that Doleman's Book of the Succession was writ by Father Parsons and that Parsons at his death denied that he was the Author of it and on Cardinal D' Ossat in his Letters averring that Parsons was Reverâ the Author of it and that Parsons made application to him in order to the defeating King James his Succession unless he would turn Catholick p. 41. D' Ossat's observing that Parsons in that Book doth often and grossly contradict himself ib. D' Ossat's commending our English Understandings for so soon receiving King Jame and so peaceably after the death of Queen Elizabeth ib. The Author grants that Papists may be sound parts of the State here as they are by Sir William Temple in his Book observed to be in Holland p. 44. The vanity of some Papists designing to raise their Interest by Calumny and Shamm ib. The Pope's said Decree of the 2d of March accuseth the Jesuites and other Casuists of making Calumny a Venial sin p. 45. The nature of a Venial sin explained ib. The Jesuites Moral Divinity patronizing Calumny is likely to be fatal to their Order p. 47. 49. The
Amsterdam to the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter ib. The number of the Inhabitants of Venice in the year 1555 ib. An Account of the Political Energy of the Reformation in England p. 107. The Revenue of the Kingdom of England quintuple in the year 1660 to what it was at the time of the Reformation p. 108. A Calculation of the Revenue of the Church holding in the year 1660 the same proportion of encrease ib. The Customs of England when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown made but 36000 l. per Annum and were since 1660 farmed at 400000 l. per Annum and have since then made about double that Sum p. 109. The yearly Revenue of the whole Kingdom of England computed ib. Queen Elizabeth wisely provided for the enlargement of the Trade and Customs of England ib. The Numbers of the People of Spain p. 111. The knowledge of the Numbers of People in a Kingdom is the Substratum of all Political measures ib. An Animadversion on the Author of la Politique Françoise ib. There were about 600,000 Souls in Paris shortly after the year 1660 p. 113. An Animadversion on the Calculation of Malynes in his Lex mercatoria ib. Animadversions on the Calculations of Campanella as to the numbers of the People of France p. 114. Lord Chief Iustice Hales his Observations of the gradual encrease of the People in Glocester shire corroborated by the Author p. 115. The Author believes the Total of the People of England to be very much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it p. 116. Observations on the Numbers of the People of England resulting from the returns on the late Pole-Bills and the Bishops Survey ib. and p. 117 118 119. An account of a Tax of Poll-Money in Holland in the year 1622 p. 117. Some illegal Proceedings in Queen Mary's Reign remarked p. 119 120. The Authors opinion that any Roman Catholick Prince that may come to inherit the Crown will use the Politics of Queen Mary as a Sea mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land-mark to go by p. 122. Eight hundred of the empty new built Houses of London have been filled with French Protestants ib. A high character given of Edward the 3 d a sharp Persecutor of the excesses of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and who saved the being of the Kingdoms Trade and Manufacture and patronized Wickliffe and the Authors opinion that any lawful Prince of the Roman Catholick Religion that can come here will uphold the falling Trade of the Kingdom as he did ib. Occasional Remarks on the Numbers of the People in the old Roman Empire p. 124. The vanity of the fear of any ones erecting another Universal Monarchy p. 125. Campanellas Courting Spain and afterwards France with that Monarchy remarked ib. Observations on the fate of the Spanish Armada in 88 and of the Numbers of its Ships and Seamen and likewise of the Numbers of the Ships and Seamen then in Queen Elizabeth's Fleet p. 127. She claimed no Empire of the Ocean either before 88 or afterward ib. The Shipping and Numbers of our Seamen in 12 years after 88 were decayed about a 3 d part p. 128. An account of the French Monarch's Receipts and Expences in the year 1673 ib. The Authors conjecture of the result of the Fermentation about the Regalia in France p. 129. The things predicted in the Apocalyps are with reference to exactness of number and measure p. 130. The Origine of the name Fanatick ib. The Author asserts this as a Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World as well as of a mans own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the Municipal Laws of their Countries ib. The Author gives his Iudgment of the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of Presbytery here being come p. 133. Of the illegality of the Scotch Covenant p. 134. The Assembly of Divines here would have been Arbitrary in Excommunication ib. The first Paragraph of the Covenant introduced Implicit Faith p. 135. The Author of the Book called The true English Interest computes that 300,000 were slain in the late Civil War in England p. 138. Observations on his Majesty's and Royal Brothers Exile into Popish Countries caused by our Presbyterians and even out of Holland into France and out of France into Spain p. 138 139. Presbyterians are obliged of all men to speak softly of the danger of Popery p 139. An account of the present Numbers of the Papists in England and some Historical Glances about the gradual decrease thereof in this Realm in several Conjunctures since the Reformation from p. 139 to p. 154. The late Earl of Clarendon occasionally mentioned with honour p. 147. The Authors judgment that the growth of Popery and of the fears thereof will abate under any Conjuncture of time here that can come from p. 153 to p. 157. In December 1672 the Protestants in Paris mere but as one to 65 p. 157. Observations on the late Conversions in France ib. The Author explains what he means by the expression of Religion-Trade ib. The Author's Assertion that the World can never be quiet and orderly till its State be such that men can neither get nor lose by Religion from p. 158 to 160. Animadversions on a Pamphlet aiming at the overthrow of the Clerical Revenue of England and called The great Question to be considered c. p. 160 161. The Author asserts the present Clerical Revenue of England to be reasonable and necessary and very far from excess in its proportion from p. 161 to p. 167. The Author's reason why he doth usually in this Discourse call Popery an Hypothesis or Supposition and not it or our former Presbytery in gross by the name of Religion from p. 168 to p. 170 and after The Author's Assertion That Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturbed worshipping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the blood of Christ p. 170. The Author distinguisheth Principles of Papists Socinians and Presbyterians into Religionary and Non-religionary and shews to what Principles the name of Religion is absurdly applied from p. 168 to p. 172. The Author observes it in many Papists who have deserted the Church of England that the rational Religion they were first educated in hath had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholly over-power p. 174. An Observation of three of the Nobility that went off from the Church of England to that of Rome but receded not from the Candour of their tempers and that neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and that the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and make great Figures in the State ib. Turen after his being a Papist as kind to his Protestant Friends as
Government admitted only to probation for three years and were no more hindered of the freedom of a Gentlemans Conversation thereby then by the Government of the foremention'd Presbyter Iohn in the East and England was then not only free from the charge of Peter-pence Legatine levys oblations contributions for the Holy Land and both charge and trouble from all the Papal Courts and Masses Anniversaries obits requiems dirges placebos Trentals lamps but from all contumacy fees in spiritual Courts and from those Courts themselves of which yet the yoke is very easie compared with either that of the Papists or Scotch Presbyters and our condition as to ecclesiastical discipline was like that time or conjuncture of liberty that Father Paul in the History of the Councel of Trent refers to speaking of the time when a certain custome prevailed saith il che come e un uso molto proprio diove si governa in liberta quale era all hora quando il mondo era senza Papa That it was a custome very proper where they governed with liberry which was when the world was without a Pope I never heard of any man that was gored with the horn of our Presbyters excommunication nor of any dissenter from them that was tyed up for them out of their horn of plenty of Church power to force a drench of Doctrine down his throat and much less of any dealt with in that way mentioned by Spotswood in his Observation that the Devil would not be feared but for his horn referring to the horning in Scotland that is the seisure of all a mans goods when the horn blew after he was excommunicated by the Presbytery There is no doubt but that some of the Divines of that persuasion were brib'd to it by an expectation of power to oppress when that the great Revenues of the Church were denied them And thus the Pope keeps his Guards in Rome only with the pay of priviledges but instead of their riding the People the Parliament rid them and with that caution as they of old did who rid on Elephants in battel which great animal being observed to be then unruely sometimes and to endanger both the riders and their camp and it being known that their receiving a Conâ—usion in one part about their head would presently dispatch them their riders had alwaies a hammer with them ready for that use on occasion He therefore that saith he loves popery better then the Government of Presbytery as it was de facto setled or rather permitted in England and when they that would have its maypole for them to dance about had it and those that would have none had none saith that he loves a fiery and tormenting furious Church-Government that would make Mount Sion to be still belching out fire like Aetna better then none at all that he loves a Hirricane better then being a while becalm'd that he loves the Church government that was like coloquintida in the pot rather then that of the Presbyter which was here but like Herb Iohn and that he fears a Mastiff who was not only hambled and whose jus divinum was lawd and whose spleen was cut out by the State Chirurgeons more then an incensed hungry Lion of Rome that he likes a Government better that at best is like a Peacock that is all Gaudery and damned Noise and nothing else except pede latro that is all Ceremony and devouring all with ceremony then a Government that with its looks can neither allure nor fright and which we could pinion as we pleased and play with till we could get a better in its Room Whether a Papist was to be loved better then a Puritan was a vex'd question in the time of Queen Elizabeth and 't was resolved then in the affirmative only by the Pensioners of Rome and their dependants The Learned Author of the Book called Certain considerations tending to promote Peace and good will among Protestants doth in p. 13. quote our famous Gataker for relating that Dr. Elmor Lord Bishop of London in Queen Elizabeths time when one in a Sermon at St. Pauls Cross inveighing against Puritans rendred them worse then Papists sharply contradicted that censure saying that the Preacher said not right therein for that the Puritans if they had me among them would only cut my rochet but the Papists would cut my throat and that his Successor Dr. Vaughan Lord Bishop of London when another in the same Pulpit too shew'd the same eagerness in representing the Puritans worse then Papists expressed the same sense with his predecessor concerning it and wished that he had had the Preachers Tongue that day in his Pocket It was it seems then the good fortune of London to be blest with Bishops renown'd for their great zeal for the Protestant Religion and with such a one it is at this time enriched and dignified I will not say Bishop of it only by divine permission but miseratione divinâ the Style I have seen of Bishops in some antient Instruments 't is out of the Divine Compassion that such an eminent Protestant City has such a Prelate Nor do I intend by the just praise paid to this great and good man to lessen the worth of others of the Fathers of our Church of which number I have the honour to be acquainted with others who endeavour the extermination of Popery with as couragious a zeal as can be wisht and no doubt but the text of Scripture in the Title of my Lord Bishop of Lincolns book namely Come out of her my People lest ye be partakers of her Sins and Plagues is by the whole Church of England lookt on as a seasonable alarm and no doubt many of this our Church who have writ with so much various learning and strong Reason against Popery know that if that ever be de facto and by law paramount the Church of England will be ipso facto crusht thereby out of all its visibility The thought of this brings that Scripture to my mind viz. Matthew 21 v. 44. and who soever shall fall on this Stone shall be broken but on whom soever it shall fall it will grind him to powder And if the Church of England by only falling super hanc Petram I mean heretofore by the Empty Project of some for the Uniting Rome to us was broken and disjointed therefore if ever it shall come under the Stone of the Roman Catholick Religion and it be thereby made possible for the Stone to fall on it the Church of Rome will then grind it to powder It s former falling on the Rock could only break it into the pieces of Presbyterian and Independent and other seperate Churches but that Rocks falling on it will not break it into pieces but grind it to powder as was said and perhaps Papists then from this place of Scripture would form as good a title by divine right to crush our Church as they did from the super hanc Petram in the 16 th of
the head-ake the Pen-knife and Books of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a piece of his Shirt much reverenc'd by great belly'd women the coals that roasted St. Laurence two or three heads of St. Ursula Malchus his Ear and the paring of St. Edmund ' s Nails and likewise the trumperies of the Rood of Grace at Boxly in Kent and in Hales in Glocestershire things name◠as trumperies in p. 495 and 496 by Herbert in that History and as adjudged to be such by H. the 8 th And no doubt but the Number of such would be very great who having great Summs of Money given them would be content to offer small ones in Devotion to such Images and many Candidates for preferment among some that now look big for and among Dissenters that look big against the Church of England would produce Certificates of their Constant good affection and Zeal for the Roman Catholic Church and any Legate that came to reconcile us to the Church of Rome would be thought by many to have brought the Holy-Ghost in his Sumpters thô we know what the Inside of Campegius his was made of It is moreover possible that Protestant writers may come not to have that freedom of the Press that Popish now have and all the luxury and wantonness and humor of the Press in sending forth innumerable Pamphlets against Popery in this Conjuncture may perhaps prove but like the jollity of a Carnival to usher in a long melancholly Lent. I will grant that 't is possible the Writ de haeretico Comburendo being now Abolished that destroyed so many Protestants by retail certain bloody men may find some Invention to destroy them by wholesale and to something of that nature Bishop Vshers Prophecy referred of the Raging Persecution of Protestants yet to come and not lasting and when their enemies will ipsam saevitiam fatigare and in the violence of such predicted cruelty not being long lasting that great Prelate erred not from the Nature of things more then he did when he Prophecy'd of an Irish Rebellion Forty years before it hapned for that usually happens once in so many years through the force and numbers of the Irish within that time outgrowing the English and their allowing themselves the repossession of their Estates by that time as a Iubile I will further grant that the discipline of our Church of which I think the Constitution is the best that the world can shew may be Crusht as I said before and our Dissenters then in vain wish that they had the tolerabiles ineptiae as your Lordship knows who imperiously call'd them in the Room of the intollerable abominations of the Mass and 't is possible that divine Iustice and Power may permit the doctrine as well as discipline of our Church to be supprest totally and finally in this Realm and that the prediction of that Great Man of God whô since his death has been as generally styl'd the Iudicious as Lewis the Iust was elsewhere so vogued I mean Mr. Hooker may impress a deep horror and a too late repentance on us who in his 5th Book of Ecclesiastical Polity in the end of the 79th Paragraph p. 432. of the old Edition speaking of the ill affected to our Church saith By these or the like suggestions receiv'd with all Ioy and with all sedulity practiced in Certain parts of the Christian World they have brought to pass that as David doth say of Man so it is in hazard to be verify'd concerning the whole Religion and Service of God the time thereof peradventure may fall out to be Threescore and Ten years or if strength do serve unto Fourscore what follows is likely to be small joy to them whatsoever they shall be that behold it Mr. Hooker did first print his 5th Book in the year 1597. the first four of his Polity being before printed in the year 1594 and so the period of Fourscore Years in his prediction was in the Year 1677. Thô that good man pretended not to be a Prophet yet according to the old saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. he is the best Prophet who can guess well both our Church of England and the Dissenters and Papists too have found that Mr. Hookers prudence had so much divination and his divination so much prudence that the small joy with which they have beheld the external face of Religion here since 1677. hath shew'd us that he guess'd shrewdly I have only affirm'd that humanly speaking and according to the common course of nature Popery cannot be the overgrown National Religion of England but am not ignorant that the sacred Code hath given us instances of Omnipotent power punishing even Heavens peculiar people by the Course of Political and Ecclesiastical Power running out of the common Channel of the Nature of things and particularly by a succession of Ten evil Kings one after another For thô humane Nature is so inconstant and men generally so apt to reel from one extream to another that the World growes as weary of the prevalence of Vice as of Virtue and after a long age of Dissoluteness and Luxury a Contrary humour reigns as long in the World again a humour that then excludes all Voluptuaries from Public Trusts for an Age together and a humour of which I think we now see the Tide Coming in and thus ordinarily scarce any Kingdom hath more than two or three good or bad Princes successively for any considerable space of time Yet after the Ten Tribes had made their defection from the Line of the House of David they were punish't by a Succession of Ten Kings and not one good one in the whole number thô some of them were less ill than others so that no Marvel if the weight of the impiety of so many successive ill Princes sunk them into the power of the Assyrians and to this their doom that passage in the Prophecy of Hosea refers which the vulgus of the Scriblers against Monarchy so Miserably detort and wracke as I may say to their own destruction namely I gave thee a King in mine anger and took him away in my wrath for the Prophet there had not his Eye on Saul or on a particular Person but on the whole succession of Kings after their Rent from Iuda from Ieroboam to the Last under whom the Catastrophe of their Captivity was Such Kings were given them by Heaven as were proper Instruments of Divine wrath and when they were took away from the Stage 't was that other worse might enter and make their Condition more Tragical But secret things belonging to God I pry not into the Book of Fate but Confine my sentiments alone to the Book of Nature In an Excellent Sermon of the Dean of St. Pauls 't is with great Piety and Prudence said We have liv'd in an Age that has beheld strange Revolutions astonishing Iudgments and wonderful Deliverances What all the Fermentations that are still among us may end in God alone knowes I
by some accidents be made to cast Anchor or they may be sunk but they cannot be forced to go back When a man hath long been compell'd to creep with Chains on him through a toilsome dark Labyrinth and having extricated himself out of it and being come to enjoy his liberty in the light of the Sun the persuasion of words cannot make him go back again My Lord I lately mentioned the Motto of the Royal Society of England of which your Lordship is a Member and I look on the very constitution of that Society to be an inexpugnable Bulwark against Popery In which Society many of our choice English Witts have shew'd as much subtilty and curiosity in the Architecture of Real Science and such as tends to the edification of the world as any of our Countrey men heretofore did in those curious but useless Cobwebs of holy Church call'd School Divinity And the constitution of that Society hath not only been useful in encreasing the Trade of Knowledge among its members by a joyned stock but moreover hath tended to the raising in the Kingdom a general inclination to pursue Real science and to contemn all science falsly so call'd and the Raising of this inclination I will call a Spirit that can never be Conjur'd down nor can the knowledge that depends on number weight and local Motion be ever exterminated by Sophisms or Canting or terms of Art Nor will they who have from this Society learned to weigh Ayre give up their Souls to any Religion that is all Ayre without weighing it or notwithstanding any hard name that may come to be in vogue ever forget that bread is bread His Majesty by the founding of this great Conservatory of knowledge presently after his Restoration wherein his great Minister then the Earl of Clarendon was an honourable Member did convey real knowledge and a demonstration of his being an Abhorrer of Arbitrary Power to all that can understand Reason and affect not the ridiculous Treasonableness of Bradshaw's Court to say that they will not hear reason for had he like the Eastern King 's affected Arbitrary Power he would have used their artifice of endeavouring to cast mists before the understanding faculties of his Subjects and to detain them from knowledge by admiration and to deprive them of sight like horses that are still to drudge in the Mill of Government by blind obedience But to shew that he abhorr'd both such obedience and implicit Faith and that he intended to establish his Throne as well in the heads as in the hearts of his Subjects he presently setled this Great Store-house of Knowledge that shew'd it was his desire and ambition by the general Communication of Knowledge in his Dominions to Command Subjects whose heads were with the Rays of Science crown'd within And therefore I think His Majesties Munificence to the Royal Society in giving them Chelsey-Colledge at their first institution was very Consistent with the Primary Intention of the erecting that Colledge which was to be a Magazine for Polemical-Divinity wherewith to attaque the Writers for Popery for the very planting of a general disposition to believe nothing contrary to Reason is the cutting of the graâ—s under Poperies feet and His Majesty providing for the growth of reason did apparently check the growth of Popery as well as of Arbitrary Power without the prop of which Popery can never run up to any height more then the Sun-flower without a supporter and the setling in men an humour of Inquisition into the truth and nature of things is as I partly said before an everlasting barricade against the Popes darling Court of the Inquisition That great and noble notion of the Circulation of the blood took its first rise from the hints of a common persons enquiring what became of all the blood that issâ—â—d out of the heart seeing that the heart beats above Three Thousand times an hour thô but one drop should be pump'd out at every stroke and if any one shall tell me that he believes that Popery with its retinue of implicit faith and ignorance can over-run us I will ask him what will then become of all that knowledge the vital blood of the Soul that hath issued from the heads of inquisitive Protestants and been Circulating in the World for above a Hundred and Fifty years and I doubt not but it will be in mens Souls as long as blood shall have its Circular Course in their bodies and maugre all the Calumnies cast on the Divines of the Church of England for being fautors of Popery I shall expect that our learned Colledge of Physicians will as soon be brought to disbelieve the Circulation of the blood of our Royal Society to take down the Kings Standard that they have set up against implicit faith as our learned Convocation the learnedest that ever England had be brought to believe the principles of Popery I know My Lord ' tâ—s obvious against this my hypothesis of the unpracticableness of Popery being here the state-State-Religion to say that in little more then Twenty years time Four great changes in Religion happen'd in England and that the generality of the people then like dead Fishes went with the stream of the Times but I ask if the generality of the people had been throughly enlighten'd in the rationality of the Protestant Principles Twenty years together would they have return'd to the belief of the Popish Will they now do it after the establishment of a Rational Religion for above a Hundred years together Can Popery now find the way into most Mens brains here presently after the whole Nation almost were Preachers and when all our great and little unruly disagreeing Sects yet agreed in this as a fundamental that the Bishop of Rome is the Antichrist If Printing had been free in Turky for a Hundred years and a libera Philosophia and Theologia had been there in fashion for a Hundred years and every man had been allow'd his Judgment of discretion so long about the sense of the Alchoran or of the holy Scripture and of all Books of Religion could ignorance even there come into play again or if the Turkes had drank Wine for a Hundred years together could any one Conjure the glasses out of their hands by telling them there was a Devil in every grape If that Law in Muscovy that makes it death for any Subject to travel out of that Kingdom without the Emperors Licence lest his Subjects having seen the freedome of other Countreys should never again return to the Arbitrary Power in their own again I say if that Law had been repeal'd for a Hundred years and multitudes of oppress'd mankind had thence found the way to breath in the ayre of Liberty like men could they be persuaded to return to the Yokes of Beasts again When a floating Island has been a Hundred years fixt to the Continent can any teach it to swim again Consulitur de Religione is likely to be the eternal
instance Of their great progress wherein we have an account in Pryn's Compleat History of the Tryal of Arch-bishop Laud where he saith And had they not been interrupted in this good work they would probably in very few years have purchased in most of the great Towns and noted Parishes Impropriate in England in Lay-mens Lands And which had they effected they might have settled such a Bank of Land on the Fond whereof to have brought into their possession the greatest part perhaps of the mony Currant in England and that party without any but Silver weapons have acquired such an arbitrage of the interests of all others in England as to have usurped Harry the Eighth's Motto of Cui adhaereo praeest But though the Livings in these great Corporate Towns are so small and the value they had by oblations be evaporated every where but in the King's Books where it remains still to enhance their payment of first Fruits and Tenths the heterodox Divines there find Harvests of oblations rich enough and so will the Divines of the Church of England if ever a storm of Popish Persecution shall drive them there for shelter to be Pastors of the Monied Men and if the worst comes to the worst they will there find some â—at gathered Churches better then lean Bishopricks as perhaps some heterodox Pastors do now there experiment them and the ambient heat of State-favour that call'd out some of the inward one of Religion being abated they will probably grow more exemplary in austere vertue and thereby attract so much reverence from their flocks as to become Confessors as well as Preachers to them for so the Non-conformist Divines there now in a manner are and as Confession under Popery proved the only Guaranty to the Priests for their being paid their Personal Tithes and as then people at their deaths expiated their omissions in the payment of their Tithes by valuable Legacies thus too will it probably happen to the Ministers of Christ's New Testament and often to be Executors or at least Legatees in Christians Wills the very dust of whose feet is thought beautiful by all Men generally when their return to their own dust is approaching And the persecution design'd them will but reduce their state in the Eye of the World to look and be like that of the Primitive Christians who made the Apostles their Bankers and the depositaries of their wealth and whose Successors likewise in the administration of the Gospel during the following Ages of Persecution had good livelihoods on the Fond of Oblations And as for Tithes we hear nothing of them for many Ages in the Primitive Church In the Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Universae published by Iustellus the most authentick Book in the World next the Bible and which contains the Canons received by the Universal Church till the year 451 there is not one word of Tithes The Clergy were then liberally maintained by the free oblations of the people which were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And there was no such Proverb heard of in the World abroad as laâ—ci semper sunt infensi Clericis till there was another unlucky one Ecclesia peperit divitias c. and till the Goths and Vandals being Proselyted to Christianity exprest the natural zeal of new Converts by vastly endowing the Clergy 〈◊〉 Lands who had as I may say setled Heaven upon them and whoâ—e greâ—â— proportion in the balance of Land necessarily made them aâ—terward one of the Three Estates in the Christian World. And most worthy of Christian Princes care it was to endeavour to secure the profession of Christianity in future times as well as their own by providing that the Clergy should not be of the meanest of the people nor depend on benevolence which in the prosperous condition of Christianity might perhaps grow cold as under Popery the Charity of Oblations had done but for the Aâ—tifices before mentioned of Saints Shrines c. and Reliques and the fear of Purgatory Of the Oblations of the people here in England decreasing toward the Pastors of Independent Churches when Independency became the Darling Religion of the State we had an indication in the late times when some of the most eminent of them obtain'd the possession of great Livings and their Tithes and others of them retreated from their Churches to Headships of Colledges Nor has there been any failure of the return of the old Exuberance of Oblations from such Churches to such Divines who have again returned to them when they were dislodged from those preferments I find not that the Piety of our Ancestors had established any Revenue to the Church from Tithes in England till about the end of the Eighth or middle of the Ninth Century nor was the division of England into Parishes before the time of Honorius Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 636 till which time there could not be Parochial Tithes About that time as 't was said that the measure of donations to the Church was immensitas so was the modus of their Artifices to preserve them sine modo it being incident to humane Nature to be restless in the acquiring of riches for without the perpetual acquiring of more no Man is sure to preserve the Quota of what he hath 'T was thence that Sacriledge of the Monks arose that tore the Bread out of the Mouths of the Parish Priests by the Name of Appropriations which shewed the President to Wolseys alienation of Religious Houses that was the President to Harry the Eighth's And it may well be supposed that the Design of the Monks in robbing the Parochial incumbents by Appropriations was to propagate ignorance among the Laity thereby and to leave the Age as dark as they found it or rather to be able generally to let in or keep out what quantity of light they pleased Yet had those Appropriations been made in an Age of knowledge they would then have met with that Nick-name of Impropriations that was born many years afterward and it would then have appeared improper to all that the Monks should Muzzle the mouth of the Ox that did tread out the Corn and that old natural Zeal for Religion so anciently radicated in English minds that Popes have formerly complained they were addrest to with more questions about Religion from England than from all the World beside would have inclined the respective Parishioners according to their abilities to contribute a liberal maintenance to their Parish Priests and even in St. Paul's words To have plucked out their own Eyes and have given them but that they saw that devotion that brought the fore-mentioned concourse of Spectators and Offerers to the Images and Shrines and to the Altars there made the Vicars at least competently to live by the Altar And if that Classe of heterodox Pastors in Corporations who as to skill in Theology and the Encyclopaedy of Arts and Sciences requisite to Crown a Divine are generally but Images in comparison of the excellent
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
and dangers 'T is true some few others have written something Mr. Baxter and Mr. Pool have laboured worthily Dr. Owen hath said somewhat to Fiat lux and there are some Sermons of the Presbyterians extant Morning Lectures against Popery these are the most and the chief of their performances I ever heard of The Conjuncture of the few and evil days of Popery would occasion another good effect a thing that is always to be wished but considering the general present ferment in Mens minds and pass'd mutual exasperations never else to be hoped for and that is this the common Calamity would cause such an Union between Protestants of several perswasions in Religion as would put a Period to that dreadful state of dissension among them which has so much horrour in it that all those subtle miscreants who have been able to cause it here and make so many of them almost ready with the ferity of the canes sepulchrales to devour one another can never in words express Nor can my imagination paint out to me any thing of the kind like it in the past course of time without my recollecting the description of the fears of the Doctor of the Gentiles given by himself concerning the State of the Church of Corinth to which he applies the words of debates envyings wraths strifes backbitings whisperings swellings tumults and without my considering the fermentation in the City of Ierusalem when near its fatal destruction But there will be a finalis concordia among the now implacable Protestants if ever Popery should set up to be the State-Religion And then any one who will give advice to a Painter to draw The present state of the Protestant Church of England may make a good Copy from the great Original of that Prophesie in Scripture The Wolf and the Lamb shall feed together c. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy Mountain c. And perhaps without going so far for a Mountain that may represent to ones fancy that State of English Protestants he may find one in England to do the work one that several of our Historians speak of telling us that in the Year 1607 When by the Irruption of the Severn Sea the Country in Somerset shire was overflown almost Twenty Miles in length and Four Miles in breadth it was then observ'd that Creatures of contrary natures as Dogs and Hares Foxes and Conies yea Cats and Mice getting up to the tops of some Hills dispensed at that time with their antipathies remaining peaceably together without sign of fear and without any violence used toward one another Nor do Men in great Towns supposed qualified only as the Children of light but as the Children of this World and as wise in their Generations and as projecting their own wealth and the encreasing of their Trade and of the value of their Rents by eminent Oblations provide for such Divines planting there and 't is obvious to every thinking Man that the erecting of Free-Schools and encouraging excellent Divines to live in any particular Town turns sufficiently to Mens account in this World as to the ends aforesaid by attracting inhabitants For it will be natural to Christians there when they do not barely hear of a Christ Transubstantiated into a dull Wafer but see one as I may say Transfigured and shining as the Sun in the Preaching of the Gospel to say Lord it is good for us to be here and for them there to make Tabernacles and provide Oblations not for dead but living Saints and as a living Dog is more valuable then a dead Lyon so I beâ—lieve that in any times of Popery here that can come any one Corporation and a holy learned Divine of the Church of England will get more by one another then all Towns where Shrines and Images of dead Saints shall be set up will mutually gain thereby Then will the Clergy and People being benefactors to each other be naturally ready to pray for each other and the former being believed from their hearts to say O Lord save thy people will find both an Oral and Cordial Response from the latter And bless thy Clergy But while I am thus accompanied by the Guide of Natural reason travelling in the Region of future time the time that only is the object of humane sollicitude and from which anxious minds are too apt to fear that every days birth may be a Monster I have by considering the former Revenue accruing to the Church by Oblations took occasion to Corroborate my great affirmation of it s not being naturally possible for Popery to exterminate the Protestant Religion in England a Religion that Popery can never take by assault or making of its professors Martyrs nor yet by Siege in starving its Pastors 'T is true that such a great impost as Popery may occasion to Protestants by Oblations may in one sense seem to have the nature of a punishment namely because 't will not be a burden to which all Subjects or indeed all Protestants will be equally liable and it will chiefly light on the devouter sort of Protestants And in like manner it may be said that the gain that arose from Oblations in the times of Popery to the Parish Priests of great Towns was in effect an unequal impost on the Popish Laity as being a Tax only on the more Ignorant and Superstitious of them But any one who has in the least considered matters of State cannot but know that any great inequality of Taxes that lights on the Subject as a mischief doth prove to the Prince an inconvenience to whom the Subjects pressure makes him unable to afford that Subsidium he otherwise could and perhaps would cheerfully for the Publick safety Thus may the great supposed charge to be incumbent on the more devout Protestants by Oblations probably tempt them to use all the means the Law will permit to render the Government of a Popish Prince uneasie to him and certainly disable them from paying in that proportion toward the public Levys upon emergent occasions they else might do It may therefore here be affirm'd that the gain of Popes arising from Indulgences which was so vast that Popes would boast That they could never want 〈◊〉 while they could command Pen and Ink and which Klockius in his Book de Contributionibus observes did yield the Pope in Common Years a hundred Tuns of Gold i. e. a Million of pounds Sterling and which being an unequal Tax on Papists and not pressing the debauchees of that Religion but only falling heavy on the more Pious and devout sort made them the less able to supply the holy See with mony on extraordinary occasions or to pay their Taxes due to the Popish Princes they lived under and particularly those due to the Pope as a Temporal Prince has since in a manner dyed a natural death the light of Learning having no sooner come into the World then that poor Hermit Fryer Martin Luther scourged the Popes Buyers and Sellers
Reign of the Royal Martyr their Numbers decreased faster in many active Conjunctures of time then they encreased in any lazy one The Author of the Regal Apology and supposed to be Doctor Bate the Physitian saith in p. 39. It is well known there are not 24000 Papists Convicted in all England and Wales And if we should suppose the Number of the Papists then not Convicted to be double to that of the Convicted yet would such their number appear considerably dwindled from what it was swoln to in any Conjuncture before in King Iames's Reign And I believe if our Civil Wars had not happen'd one Canon even of the Convacation of 1640 as ill as that Convocation heard among many I mean the third Canon would have effected the extermination of Popery from England in the Reign of the Royal Martyr The Title of the Canon is for Suppressing of the growth of Popery No doubt but a little before that time Popery did again lift up his head as if its Redemption were to draw nigh in Ireland and England and therefore the Convocation then with great conduct and skill did lead up our Ecclesiastical Hierarchy to confront its growth and I do not remember to have found that Phrase of the growth of Popery which has in later days so filled our Mouths used in any Author before the writing of that Canon and do think that all the Committees that have been appointed to prevent the growth of Popery or Books of that Subject have not produced to the World any means or expedient so likely to make Popery have done growing here as is the excellent Scheme for that purpose drawn in that Canon and which when ever it shall be with vigour executed will make our fears grow out of fashion either of the number of the Arguments of the Papists or of the Argument of their Numbers That since that Restoration of our King and Laws and of the discipline of our Church a Conjuncture hap'ned that made the barren Womb of Popery here fruitful of Numbers none will deny who consider how all our great Divines of the Church of England did so lately lift up their voices like a Trumpet against it as I before observed In the account of the Numbers of the perswasions in Religion in the Province of Canterbury that Dr. Glanvile said he had seen and which is contained in a Sheet of Paper among the nine Preliminary Observations the first is That many left the Church upon the late indulgence who before did frequent it I believe by the many there are meant those that veer'd toward Popery and I suppose that few had for several precedent years repaired thither from fear of the Penal Laws We have a Remark given us by that Learned States-man and Noble Confessor of the Church of England the Earl of Clarendon in his judicious Animadversions printed Anno 1673 on Cressy ' s Book against Dr. Stillingfleet That the rude and boisterous behaviour of some of the Roman Catholicks here disturbed the happy Calm they all enjoyed and the vanity and folly of others made that ill use of the Kings bounty and generosity toward them that they endeavoured to make it believ'd that it proceeded not from Charity and Compassion toward their persons but from affection to their Religion and took upon them to reproach the Church of England and all who adhered to it as if they had been in a condition as well as a disposition to oppress it and to affront and discountenance all who would adhere to it and so alienated the affections of those who desired they should not be disquieted and kindled a jealousie in others who had believed that they were willing to attempt it and had more power to compass it then was discerned c. and this mischief the wisest and soberest Catholicks of England have long foreseen would be the effect of that petulant and unruly Spirit that sway'd too much among them and did all they could to restrain it c. And afterward saith As if they could subdue the whole Kingdom and so care not whom they provoke A friend of mine in the Kings Loyal long Parliament wrote to me for News after one of their Sessions that the Speaker of the House of Commons Mr. Seymour opening according to the customary manner in a publick Speech to his Majesty in the House of Lords the nature of the Bills then ready for the Royal Assent spake thus concerning that sharp one that will forever here cut Popery to the quick viz. And for the severity of this Bill to the Papists they may thank their own petulant insolence The word petulant being very significant and importing sawcy malepert impudent reproachful ready to do wrong one would suppose that those two great observing persons would not apply it to any body of men without just occasion It seems the House of Commons at their next Session in an Address to the King October 31. 1673. had this Clause That for another age at the least this Kingdom will be under continual apprehensions of the growth of Popery and the danger of the Protestant Religion and in an Address to his Majesty November the 3 d 1673. Speaking of the Popish Recusants they have these words whose numbers and insolencies are greatly of late encreased c. It was then high time for that Great Minister of the King the Earl of Danby when he saw that of all Dissenters chiefly the Popish ones had sascinated so many with a belief of their Numbers to cause that great enquiry into them to be made and it was his fortune by the very enquiry to strip the Papists of many of their valued number for the very next observation to that I before mentioned is this The sending forth these Enquiries has caused many to frequent the Church Alsted in his Chronology ventures to say p. 112. David ex merâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 numerat populum and the thing perhaps done with an ill intent was punish'd with a Plague from God but the Fact of our Noble and Profound States-man did abate the Plague of the late Conjuncture of pragmatical insolence and too the Plague of the fear of Papists that was then so epidemical among Protestants and did in effect console us as with the words of Elisha viz. Fear not for they that be with us are more then they that be with them and indeed the numbering of people in the Bills of Mortality who dye of the Plague is not more necessary to the State then is the numbring of the Souls infected in any Conjuncture with destructive opinions and the omission thereof in a publick Minister when ever it should be as necessary as at that time it was would appear in him a Lethargy that would be as Penal as a Plague to a Kingdom That useful undertaking of his Lordship as it was worthy of his very great abilities and vigilance for the publick so was it of the great power he had in the Government and
for the establishing to himself a firm Monarchy in the World and therefore ought to be guarded against and punished by the Magistrate not as errors in Religion but as destructive to the Government The Author of Omnia comesta à Belo as great a Calculator as he would go for was yet but a Blunderer in respect of the Author of this discourse in which there is so much smoothness of words and plausibleness of notion that if it were possible he would deceive some of the very Elect and that too of their Established Maintenance But whatever the Sentiments of that Author were I must affirm that as ample as the Revenue of the Church of England shews if compared with that of other Protestant Countries it is yet so far from excess in its proportion as to ward off all inconveniences from the State of mens getting by Religion The over ballance of Land here was so much on the Churches side in the times of Popery that it was then in our Provincial Constitutions sulminated as a Menace to the Layety that in case of some particular Contumacy none of their Children should be admitted into the Clerical Calling for three Generations But how Nugatory would such a threatning now be There are few or none of the inferiour Clergy but might have in inferiour Callings arrived at greater Incomes and with less charge of Education and the most envied of our dignified Clergy might in the other two of the great professions viz. in Law and Physick raised their Estates and Families on better and easier terms then they now can And that the Men of the most eminent natural parts would be losers by Religion I mean by the Clerical Profession but for the encouragement of these Dignities we have an indication from the quality of the Divines in the late times who were generally so unlearned that Learning it self then seemed to have retreated from our Vniversities to the Colledge of Physitians in London Notwithstanding the great Sums of Money by the Usurp'd Powers employ'd in the Augmentations of Livings one may well suppose that all of the 10000 Livings in England except 600 needed for that was the number of the Livings in England as beforesaid averr'd to have afforded a Competent maintenance for a Minister the dearth of Learning and Learned Men still continued insomuch that the teeming press then brought forth few Learned Discourses relating to the faculty of Theology but what was published by Dr. Hammond Dr. Taylor Dr. Sanderson and some other Divines born and bred in the Sunshine of the Church of England And I do believe that in Holland the Livelihoods for their Parochial Divines are better then those that our Livings at a Medium yield especially considering that the Dutch Ministers Widdows have 40 l. a year paid them during their Viduity but for want of such encouragement as our Dignities afford for the Educating their Natives in Learning they are constrained as Mr. Philip Nye observes in his Book called Beams of former light p. 152. To send to Forraign Parts to men to be their Professors in their Academies And I account that nothing less then the hopes of being Dignitaries could in the flourishing condition of the Church of England make so many of our Learned Divines take up with the poor generality of our Livings which are such that the Answer to the Abstract published by Authority in the Year 1588 mentions in p. 27 That surely if a Survey were taken of all Parish Churches and Parochial Chappels in England I dare affirm that it would fall out that there be double or treble as many more Livings allotted for Ministers under the true value of 30 l. a year ultra omnia onera reprisas as are above that Rate And that our Divines in the late Times look'd on such a yearly Sum as an uncomfortable pittance for a Minister we have an instance in the Story told in a History of the late Times in Print where a Patron desiring one to recommend to him a godly man for a Living of 50 l. a year he then had void was answered That a godly man could not be had to accept of a Living of so small a value It is moreover a lamentable thing to consider what an Excisum hath been put on the value even of our poor Livings by the Simoniacal Practices of Lay-Patrons and in their hands the greatest part of the Impropriations hath been computed to be Sir Benjamin Rudyard a Famous Parliament-man of the last Age in a Speech of his in behalf of the Clergy spoke in Parliament and Printed at Oxford Anno 1628 speaks there of the Scandalous Livings we have of 5 l. and 5 Mark a year and Cites Bishop Iewel for complaining in a Sermon before Queen Elizabeth That the Simony of our Lay-Patrons was general throughout England and that a Gentleman cannot keep his House unless he have a Parsonage or two in farm for his Provision And how generally a Simoniacal disposition hath continued to infect our Gentry appears by the vile Bonds that have been so much by Lay-Patrons imposed on the Ministers they presented viz. to resign their Livings again to them at pleasure and it is for the lasting Glory of the Lord Chancellor that he hath in Court declared that he will on occasion Null all Bonds of that sort and no doubt but the accidental encrease of the poverty of the Gentry which hath tempted them to sell the same Land twice and to sell the same Living once will tend to the encrease of Simony Moreover when it shall be considered that the Case of a Minister is such that tho Lay-men are secured by the Great Charter from being punished for Contempt of the King's Commands otherwise then with the saving of their Contenement and Free-hold yet that he holding Virtute Officii is lyable by the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws even for those things that in the Layety are no offences to be deprived of the Free-hold that the Law supposed him as Parson or Vicar to possess and that he by the Artifice of the said Bonds hath had the benefit of his Free-hold in effect during the Patrons leâ—eplacitum and further that every New Political Conjuncture threatens him with New Subscriptions from the Magistrate and New Nic-names from the Mobile and that on any change of Religion he is sure to be put in the forlorn hope and that he tho continually thinking of Divinity which is his profession hath not yet that freedom to speak all his Sentiments of the controverted part of it which a Lay-man enjoys and that he is still exposed by constant thinking to prey on the Membranes of his own Brain to find Notions for sensless people methinks after he has all his life before been constrain'd to take these bitter Pills as they are in themselves none should repine at their being gilded for him in his declining age and if among Ten thousand of these twenty six shall in their old Age have the Revenue of Bishops
and five hundred of Prebends after so many shall have drawn Blanks in the Lottery of Preferment those few that shall draw those Prizes need not be envyed for what they have acquired by the Theological Profession It was both with Justice and Prudence by our Laws caution'd that so great a part of the Clerical Maintenance should arise from Tithes for by that means our Clergy are engaged to make the interest of their Country and its improvement their own and had they not had so much of their maintenance sounded on Tithes but on Money out of the Exchequer as they had before this time lost excessively by Religion so Religion would have lost their Calling for that the price of Silver falling by the plenty of it and the plenty or encrease of our people making all the Products of our Country dearer it hath been advantageous to our Clergy to receive their Tithes in kind as it hath been to Colleges to receive a Quota of their Rent in Corn. But that still the maintenance of the inferior Clergy was too mean will appear even by the late Enemies of our Hierarchy being Judges for Mr. Nye in that Book of his called Beams of former Light having spoke of the Ministers Calling being once a gainful one saith p. 123. It is vtterly otherwise now not but that there is a very liberal Maintenance appertaining to Ministers and greater by the bounty of the Honourable Parliament then the Preaching Ministry have formerly enjoyed The gradual encrease of our People and Trade hath proportionably encreased the Clerical Revenue which on the beginning of the Reformation was presently sunk so that Latimer in his Sermon before Edward the 6 th said We of the Clergy have had too much but that is taken away and now we have too little and what Iewel in his Sermon notified to Queen Elizabeth of that kind I have mention'd and so languid was the State of the maintenance of the Inferior Clergy in her time that She by one of her Printed Ecclesiastical Injunctions Anno 1599. did under great Penalties forbid all Priests and Deacons to Marry any Woman without the Advice and Allowance first had by the Bishop of the Diocess and two Iustices of Peace which I suppose was caution'd by the Queen that the many Ministers who had not competent Livings to maintain themselves might not marrying Wives without Dowries by new Births encrease the number of Paupers in Parishes It is observable that in the late times the Iesuites did publish many Pamphlets in Print against Tithes and did animate the people to make Tumultuary Addresses to the Usurpers to abolish that maintenance of the Ministers wherein as their Politicks were so unjust to our Monarch that had they succeeded they would have barricaded the way for his return in the minds of too many of the People for fear that the payment of Tithes should return too so likewise were they so ridiculous by cutting off all hopes of the return of Popery here in any Conjuncture of time that less then an Army of Bellarmines would never have perswaded the common People to hear with patience any talk of Holy Church's re-establishment here Tho as I have shewn that Tithes by reason of the equality in the Imposition of them and the diuturnity of time that hath habituated People to the payment thereof are a gentle part of the Yoke of our Ecclesiastical Government yet if the payment of them or any other Tax whether of Excise Customs or Chimny-money were for many years discontinued there would be no probability of bringing either the old Stagers or new Comers in the World to consent or hearken to their being re-established The Critical Observers of the Iewish State after Ten Tribes had made a Schism from the other two judge that there were two Conjunctures of time wherein their piecing together was fesable and that the great true Cause in Nature that hindred the Re-union of the Tribes was the aversion in the Ten Tribes to make three chargeable Journeys yearly to Ierusalem and to pay a double Tenth yearly out of their Estates besides Offrings and other Casualties to the Priests and Levites from which trouble and charge they had been relaxed by Ieroboam and by his Model of Idolatry and therefore the People having most inclination to that Religion that was cheapest and knowing that if they return'd to their old Religion they must likewise return to their old Payments to the Priests and Levites did venture to adhere to the cheaper Golden Calf and had the Iesuites here effected from the Usurpt Powers the Abolition of the Clergies Tithes which would have made the Return of the Church of England so difficult I may well argue that it would have made the Return of the Papal Religion and its chargeable Idolatry impossible whose Yoke of Payments neither we nor our Forefathers were able to fear But when senseless â—anaticks came with those Petitions against Tithes the more sagacious of the Usurpers knew that the hand of Joab was in them and they knew that hardly any Observation was more trite then that Popery gained ground chiefly in the poorer parts of the Kingdom where the despicable maintenance made the Ministry so too and where too the Pope would no more hunt for Converts then among the poor Norwegians but that it was of use to him to have the number of his Subjects increas'd in any poor places in a rich Kingdom where he tho a spiritual King might yet call his Subjects to Fight Sir Benjamin Rudyard takes notice of Popery's being an intruder among the poor Benefices of the North in the Speech before Cited and there saith p. 1. That to plant good Ministers in good Livings is the strongest and surest means to establish true Religion and will prevail more against Papistry then the making of new Laws and executing the old and there p. 3. relates what King Iames had done for the supporting of the Protestant Religion in Scotland where saith he within the space of one year he caused to be Planted Churches throughout that Kingdom the High-Lands and the Borders worth 30 l. a year a piece with a House and some glebe-Land belonging to them which 30 l. a year considering the cheapness of that Country is worth double as much as any where within an 100 Miles of London And p. 7. he mentions some Passages of Bishop Iewels Sermon before Queen Elizabeth where the Bishop having in general reflected on those that then caused the diminution of the maintenance of Ministers he further saith howsoever they seem to rejoyce at the prosperity of Sion and to seek the safety and preservation of the Lords Anointed yet needs must it be that by these means Forraign Power of which this Realm by the mercy of God is happily delivered shall again be brought in upon us Such things shall be done to us as we before suffer'd in the times of Popery c. 'T was there before mention'd how that Man of God with
a flame of Zeal reflected in these words on the Queen her self Our posterities shall rue that ever such Fathers went before them and Chronicles shall report this Contempt of learning among the Plagues and Murrains and other Punishments of God they shall leave it written in what time and under whose reign this was done If the good Bishop had considered the vastness of Queen Elizabeth's Expences before mention'd in desending the Protestant Cause contra gentes he would have given her day to have built and endowed some Churches and to those expences before mention'd it comes into my memory here to add what I then forgot which is related in the Travels of Mr. Fines Moryson who was Secretary then to the Chief Governor of Ireland in her Reign viz. That she expended in 4 years time on that Kingdom a Million and one Hundred Ninety Eight Thousand Pound Sterling which Sum so laid out then on Ireland will seem the more considerable when by a late Report of the Counsel of Trade in that Kingdom drawn by Sir W. P. The currant Cash of that Kingdom is made to be but Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pound Sterling But this by the way and to resume my discourse of our Clergies neither getting nor losing by Religion I shall say that as the acceptable free restoration of the Church as well as the Crown to its Lands shewed that there was no fear of its injuring the Ballance of the Kingdom or hurting Religion by its weight so hath the following acquiescence of all dis-interested men in the same evinced that weight to be no gravamen In a Pamphlet called a Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country Printed in the Year 1675 generally supposed to be writ by the Earl of Shaftsbury and which asserts the Justice of the Declaration of Indulgence the Author in p. 5. speaking of the Church of England becoming the head of the Protestants at home and abroad saith For that place is due to the Church of England being in favour and of nearest approach to the most powerful Prince of that Religion and so always had it in their hands to be the Intercessors and Procurers of the greatest good and protection that Party throughout all Christendom can receive And thus the Archbishop of Canterbury might become not only alterius orbis but alterius Religionis Papa and all this Addition of Honour and Power attain'd without the least loss or diminution of the Church it not being intended that one Dignity or Preferment should be given to any but those that were strictly conformable The natural inclination in all ingenious Men not to cast an evil Eye on the Church Revenue appears in Mr. Marvel 's Second Part of the Rehersal transpos'd p. 146. where he saith I am so far from thinking enviously of the Revenue of the Church of England c. That I think in my Conscience it is all but too little and wish with all my heart that there could be some way found out to augment it And our ingenious and great Lord Chancellor Bacon in his certain Considerations touching the pacification of the Church of England hath with great equity decreed our Parliaments to be in some sort indebted to the Church Moreover that Gentlemanly way of writing used by our great Divines in a late Conjuncture against Popery and so suitable to the refinement of Wit and Reason in the Age and wherein without the Pedantry of unnecessary Words or Quotations or raising a dust out of the Learned Rubbish of the Schoolmen they generally with a manly Style and clear reason and skill at that weapon got the Sword out of their Enemies hand by the Argumentum ad hominem and shewed us that Popery and Implicit Faith were not Calculated for the Meridian of this Age hath I think made all ingenious Men Conformists in this opinion that if their Genius had been cramp'd with the res angust a domi their thoughts had not in their Books appeared so great and therefore I hope that all the well writ works of their hands and seasonable discourses against Popery at that time when it was ready to curse us and to rise up against our Religion will make all thinking Protestants to say Amen to that Prayer of Moses Bless O Lord Levi 's substance accept the work of his hands smite through the Loyns of them that hate him that they rise not again It will I doubt not appear to rational and thinking men that our little interloping Churches or Congregations that set up with their precarious Power and small stock of Learning or Revenue will no more be able to break the great Compacted Body of the Papal Church that hath the Monopoly of the Religion-Trade in so many parts of the World then a few interloping Merchant-men to break the Opulent Dutch East-India Company who have engross'd so much of the Spices of the World that sometimes they cause several Ships loadings of them to be at once consumed as knowing what quantity and no more will be useful to the World. And somewhat like that thing too the Polity of the Anglican Church in Harry the 8 th's time perform'd while it drove a Religion-Trade with Rome and yet consumed a great quantity of its superfluous Merchandize and the same thing hath been done by our National Church as to remaining parts of the Romish Superstition in succeeding times and indeed Superstition which is a kind of Nimiety of Religion is so incident to Humane Nature and is so destructive to the Polity of Churches and the substantial Commerce of Nations that it is worthy the Power and Care of Nations to consume it And considering that the Church of Rome hath still valued it self for being terribilis sicut castrorum acies ordinata it is a vain thing to contend with such a Regular Church Militant without our having of general Officers and as exact a Conduct or to think to have such Officers without Honourable Maintenance from the Publick For none doth go a Warfare at any time at his own charge When I think how in the Primitive times while a Cloud of Persecution was always over the head of the Christians that yet they strain'd themselves so much in Contributions for the Pastorage of their Souls that all the Pastors then were so far from losing by Religion that some were tempted to that Office for filthy Lucre as we may see out of Peter Ep. 1. Ch 5. Vers. 2. tho yet too so little comparatively was to be gain'd by all thereby that others probably undertook that Office by constraint as the same place intimates and that therein the Apostolick Prudence was conspicuous in ordering it upon the whole matter that the generality of Pastors then should not get or lose by Religion I may reasonably conclude that we who live in the flourishing and prosperous State of Christianity ought to provide that the meanest Pastor of Souls in England may live competently and decently by that
an erroneous Proposition which he doth not know to be so and believes him he doth not sin but is bound to err because he is bound to believe him meretur volendo credere errorem And he who believes he shall merit by going out of his way I am sure deserves that I should not much trouble my self to go out of mine to put him in the right But this is not the temper of this Worthy Gentleman whom I have reason to esteem a lover of truth quatenus truth and for its own sake and one who doth not account falshood charming or rebelling against the Light meritorious and indeed I have observ'd it in some others as well as him that after they have deserted the Church of England their inquisitiveness in Religion has not been at its Journeys end but has still continued in its way and that so far that Holy Church and they have oft been apt secretly to be weary of one another The Rational Religion they were first educated in has had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholy overpower I have known three Earls one whereof was of the Kingdom of Ireland and the other two of England and all of them were men of great Wit and Parts and such who being brought up in the Religion of the Church of England went off from it to the Church of Rome but receded not from the candour of their tempers nor from the Society of their old Friends nor from the frank readiness to discourse with them about the controverted Points of both Churches and neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and do make considerable figures in the State. One of those three Earls is yet living and in him lives the great example of an English Nobleman adorning Nobility by his intellectual and Moral Endowments and by a Majesty mixt with incomparable sweetness in his familiar Converse and by a consummate Loyalty to his Prince that Envy it self never spotted and by such an exact Observation of his Faith given to any of Mankind that he would no more violate it with an Heretick then with a Patriarch or Apostle and by having been never suspected from using any Iesuite-Confessors to learn how to evade from solid Honour by subtle distinctions or once to allow the least Chicanery in God's Great Court of Conscience And if we cast our thoughts on France we shall there find that the great and the brave Turen after he had so unfortunately thrown himself at the Popes Feet had there his Arms as ready to embrace his Protestant Friends as ever I have heard of two Crown'd Heads of the Church of Rome who were very unkind to their Protestant Subjects after stipulations to the contrary the one was Ferdinand of Bohemia who when Cardinal Cleselius Bishop of Vienna told him that if he made War on the Bohemians the destruction of that flourishing Kingdom would certainly follow answered We would rather have the Kingdom destroyed then damned the other was Queen Mary of England who as the Acts and Monuments tells us being intent on the Restoring the Abby-Lands and discoursing with Four of her Privy-Counsellors about the same said perhaps you may object to me again that the State of my Kingdom the Dignity thereof and my Crown Imperial cannot be honourably maintain'd without the Possessions aforesaid yet notwithstanding I set more by the Salvation of my Soul then by Ten Kingdoms and the Reign of each of these was besmear'd with Blood but had they been born and bred Lambs I believe that no Transmutation of the Blood of Tygres into them would have made them such The Famous Iulian of whom 't was said Nunc Apostolicus Nunc Vilis Apostata factus had learned too much Christianity when he was a Reader to be a raging Blood-sucker and if when Emperor he had had e're a Name-sake that collected the Madrigals or Hymns against him he would perhaps have done him no harm The low birth and the Poverty and Mercenary disposition of Iudas tempted him to betray his Master with a kiss but he was so far wrought on by the good Company he had kept that he afterwards kill'd none else but himself and they are such perverted Protestants generally that are of the same rate with Iudas for Birth and Poverty and paultry Avarice that I should desire to stand out of the way from and to avoid the Vermine of such Renegadoes and they are only such Popish Princes as Ferdinand and Mary that in their Education were never imbued with better Principles then the bloody ones of Popery that I should fear as Monsters and account any Kingdom but a Den if I lived therein with them and when ever I happen to dispute about that Notion in vogue that Vertue it self in a Popish Successor will be a Nusance and make him a bloody Bigot I answer with a distinction and grant it is likely to be so in one who passed from the Breast in Infancy to suck in Sanguinary Principles but where in any Successor the Tenets of Popery when he is on the Borders of old Age are Successors to Principles of a Noble and Rational Religion that he has grown up into youth and manhood with I shall account my fears very wild and irrational if my hopes do not grow up with them as to my promising my self that he will at least answer Bocalines Character of the best Reformer of the World namely one that leaves it as he finds it and do suppose the practicableness of what is Savage in Nature being reclaim'd in one Animal toward another it was educated with will be allowed from the frequent and trivial spectacle of the Lion and the Lamb that were bred up together and who without the help of Miracle and Prophecy were taught by Nature to lye down together and shall account the same persons injurious to the World who fishing in troubled waters of the State say the worse the better and of such a Prince educated in Protestancy and then perhaps turning Papist the better the worse and especially when the Laws have espous'd us to his Line for better for worse Our acute and profound Mr. Chillingworth in Mature years went over to the Church of Rome and in his course there made a short turn and the Natale solum of the Church of England charm'd him soon back again and he by the culture of his reason made the Soil a hundred fold amends for his temporary deserting it But Princes and Potentates are under higher temptations then his low Station placed him in not to be seen to retreat especially after their having once done it before and may suppose that other Princes will look on them as more slippery and unsafe to be dealt with if the same Principles once congeal'd or hardened in them and afterward dissolv'd should be congeal'd again just as the Earth is more slippery and unsafe
here and of their strenuous endeavours to free the Kingdom from it had nothing in their Famous 19 Propositions to bar the right of any Heir to the Crown for the being a Papist The exact Collections afford many instances of their declaring That they would provide for the greatness of his Majesty and his Royal Posterity in future times and in which there was no Proviso respecting any Religionary Tenets they should profess It appears in Mr. Pryns memorable Speech in that House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the Kings answers to the Propositions of both Houses whether they were satisfactory or not in the Isle of Wight Treaty that that Parliament that was concern'd for the saving of their own Credit as well as the Souls of the People to make that Treaty to end with the extermination of Popery from England did not in the application of the most proper means for that purpose judge the debarring any Popish Prince here from his Inheritance of the Crown any proper or necessary one For in p. 58. of that Speech ' t is said As to any danger to our Church from Religion there is as good Security and Provision granted us by the King as we did or could desire even in our own terms First He hath fully consented to pass an Act for the more effectual disabling of Iesuites Papists and Popish Recusants from disturbing the State and deluding the Laws and for the prescribing of a new Oath for the more speedy discovery and Conviction of Recusants Secondly To an Act of Parliament for the Education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion Thirdly To an Act for the due Levying the Penalties against Recusants and disposing of them as both Houses shall appoint Fourthly To an Act whereby the practices of the Papists against the State may be prevented the Laws against them duely executed and a stricter Course taken to prevent the saying or hearing of Mass in the Court or any other part of the Kingdom whereby it is made Treason for any Priests to say Mass in the Court or Queens own Chappel Fifthly To an Act for abolishing all Innovations Popish Superstitions Ceremonies Altars Rayles Crucifixes Images Pictures Copes Crosses Surplices Vestments bowings at the name of Jesus or toward the Altar c. By all which Acts added to our former Laws against Recusants I dare affirm we have far better Provision and Security against Papists Iesuites Popish Recusants c for our Churches and Religions Safety and States too then any Protestant Church State and Kingdom whatsoever so as we need not fear any future danger from Papists or Popery if we be careful to see those Concessions duely put in Execution when turned into Acts and our former Laws And afterward in that Speech p. 110. he shews how dear the Kings consenting to pass five such Acts cost him for saith he The Iesuites understanding that the King beyond and contrary to their expectation hath granted all or most of our propositions in the Isle of Wight and fully condescended to five new Bills for the Extirpation of Mass Popery and Popish Innovations â—ut of his Dominions and putting all Laws in Execution against them and for a speedier Discovery and Conviction of them then formerly c are so inraged with the King and so inexorably incensed against him as I am credibly informed that now they are mad against him and thirst for nothing but his Blood. Mr. Pryn had mentioned in that Speech before that some Jesuites and Jesuited Agitators had engaged the Army to dissolve that Treaty with the King and 't is no wonder if that prying Order who knew the Kings Aversion to Popery as well as the most stupid of his Enemies did when they saw him consenting to pass five such Bills was the more brisk in executing its Designs against him and that as Mr. Pryn saith in his perfect Narrative a Priest present at the Kings death flourished his Sword with an exclamation That now the greatest Enemy we had in the World was gone But this by the way I had not mentioned how dear the consenting to those Bills that would have been so fatal to Popery and have prevented the Phrase of its growth from being used at this time of day but that some persons not vers'd in the passages of those evil days seem to think that there was nothing of Religion to support that Kings Title to Martyrdom but what concern'd his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue In the very solemn League and Covenant its takers declared they had before their Eyes the honour and happiness of the Kings Majesty and his Posterity And I have seen a printed paper of the Presbyterian Divines of one of the Associations in the late times wherein they do expresly affirm and argue it that any of the Royal Posterity here ought not to be debarr'd from their Hereditary Right to the Crown by being either Papists or Idolaters If we look so far back as the great Conjuncture in the beginning of King Iames ' s Reign namely in the year 1605. we shall find that there was then a Paper before mentioned published in Print called a Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by the Nonconforming Ministers which were suspended or deprived that year and that the first Paragraph or Tenet in that Protestation is this We hold and maintain the same Authority and Supremacy in all Causes and over all Persons Civil and Ecclesiastical granted by Statute to Queen Elizabeth and expressed and declared in the Book of Advertisements and Injunctions and in Master Bilson against the Iesuites to be due in full and ample manner without any limitation or qualification to the King and his Heirs and Successors for ever c. And the 4 th Paragraph in that Protestation part whereof I have before recited is viz. We hold that though the Kings of this Realm were no Members of the Church but very Infidels yea and Persecutors of the Truth that yet those Churches that shall be gathered together within these Dominions ought to acknowledge and yield the same Supremacy to them And that the same is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it And in the 18 th Paragraph they say That if the King subjecting himself to Spiritual Guides and Governors shall afterward refuse to be governed and guided by them according to the Word of God and living in notorious sin without repentance shall willfully contemn and despise all their Holy and Religious Censures that then these Governors are to refuse to Administer the Holy Things of God to him and to leave him to himself ond to the secret Iudgment of God and wholy to resign and give over that spiritual Charge and Tuition over him which by calling from God and the King they did undertake And more then this they may not do And after all this we
verò muneribus honorat amplissimis augustissimis in toto regno alibi tum bello tum pace c. Quartò consilium suum è puris putis haereticis stabilit c. So that after he had with St. Peter denied his Lord the followers of St. Peter's pretended Successor call'd him in effect a Galilean and said that the Speech of his Actions bewrayed him and after his absolution he continued in effect what the Pope styled him in his Bull of Excommunication filius â—rae and after as a Prodigal having fed among heretical Swine he returned to his Romish Ghostly Fathers house and had cryed peccavi and abjured and his Father had compassion on him he experimented the contrary to for this my Son was dead and is alive again and himself was the fatted Calf that was slain and so much wantonness was shewed by the contrivers of his dire fate that Gassendus in his life of Peiresk Book 2 d shews how in the beginning of the Year 1610. An Almanack or yearly Prognostication was brought out of Spain in which the Accidents of Harry the 4ths death were foretold and that it was sent to his Majesty to read who slighted it as Gassandus did likewise all judicial Astrology but yet supposed that the figure-flinger might possibly be acquainted with the Plot against that Kings Life and saith sure I am it could not be perfectly conceal'd either in Spain or Italy for even the Kings Ambassadors and particularly the most excellent Johannes Bochartus Lord of Champigny then Agent at Venice had already preadvertised his Majesty thereof and it was sufficiently proved that all the Sea-faring Men of Marseilles who for two Months before came from Spain brought word that there was a report spread abroad in Spain that the King of France was already or should be killed by a Sword or Knife Poor Harry the 4 th He who while a Protestant had Dominion over his own Stars and his Enemies Stars too for they were his Enemies who made him first be call'd Great and their designing to ruine him by embroiling France in Civil Wars tended to the advancement of his Interest and his Glory and the Artifices by which they thought to have chased him out of Guyen brought him into the heart of France and their former by unjustifiable practices urging the King his Predecessor to have prosecuted him with more violence then he had done were the causes of his being reconciled to that King and who then in the most dark and stormy night of his Affairs never wanted that Illumination from above which was like a Star to him and not only a sign of fairer weather but a mark of direction in the foul and which would have furnished his Portraiture in Story with another guess Star than that usually engraved on Coesars Image and which by its blazing seven days ore the Games consercrated to Coesar by Augustus did make him inter Divos and did awe the World as being thought his Soul which vouchsafed from Heaven to visit it with its lustre this Harry the 4 th was at last grown the ludibrium of Star-gazers And if any one shall say that Franciscus de Verona Constantinus the Author of the Apology for Chastel was not a Voucher good enough for the spreading the Belief of the Doctrine that Heretical Princes by their absolution from the Pope are not restored to their Regal Rights let him consult the Great Thuanus and he will find that in his Book 135 and on the Year 1605 where he gives an account of the Gun-powder Treason here he saith that the Conspirators therein Ante omnia conscientiam instruunt eâque instructâ ad facinus audendum obfirmant animum sic autem à Theologis suis disserebatur That Hereticks are yearly excommunicated by the Pope in the bulla coenae and are ipso facto fallen into the punishment of the Law and that thence it followeth that Christian Kings if they fall into Heresy may be deposed and their Subjects released immediately from their Princes Dominion nec jus illud recuperare posse etiamsi ecclesiae reconcilentur Ecclesiam communem omnium parentem cum nemini ad eam redeunti claudere gremium cum dicitur adhibitâ distinctione interpretandum esse modo non it ad damnum periculum ecclesiae Nam id verum esse quoad animam non quoad Regnum Nec solum ad Principes hac labe infectos paenam extendi sed etiam ad eorum filios qui à Regni successione ob vitium paternum pelluntur haeresim quippe lepram morbum haereditarium esse atque ut disertius res exprimatur Regnum amittere qui Romanam Religionem deserit diris illum devoveri nec unquam ipsum aut illius posteros in Regnum restitui quoad animam à solo Pontifice posse absolvi His se rationibus cum satis tutos intus existimarent munimenta externa conjurationi quaerere coeperunt c. ita ad facinus non solum licitum laudabile verum etiam meritorium à Theologis suis auctorati accesserunt They thought it seems that by the Authority of the Doctrines of those Divines they might blow up the King and three Estates with Gun-powder very fairly It is a thing that cannot have escaped your Lordships curious Observation that both the Nonconformists and Papists were sturdy Petitioners to King Iames in the beginning of his Reign that he would be a Fautor to them and their Hypotheses In April in the Year 1603 a Petition was presented to him call'd the humble Petition of the Ministers of the Church of England desiring reformation of certain Ceremonies and Abuses of the Church and there they particularly desire that Ministers may not be urged to subscribe but according to the Law to the Articles of Religion and the Kings Supremacy only and that none migat be excommunicated without the consent of his Pastor and therein they complain of Ministers being suspended silenced disgraced imprisoned for Mens traditions This Petition was commonly called the Millenary Petition the Petitioners averring themselves to be more then a thousand and an animadverting Answer was made to the same by the Vice-Chancellor and Doctors and Proctors and Heads of Houses in the Vniversity of Oxford and printed in the Year 1604. Methinks a Humble Petition with a thousand hands is a kind of Contradictio in adjecto But the Vniversity in their Animadversions on the Petition do observe that the two contrary Factions of Papists and Puritans did shew themselves by their Petitions discontented with the present State and Ecclesiastical Government They mention particulars as parallels wherein their Petitions agreed and resemble them to Samsons Foxes c. I had occasion before to mention to your Lordship the Supplication of the Papists to King James that was Contemporary with that of the Puritans and printed too in the same year and tho I remember not any of our Historians to have given the World an account of that memorable
busie Anti-Papists then others have been immediately admitted to the good Graces of the People and cried up by them as Patriots and Hero's and by their afterward espousing the true Interest of the Kingdom as to the point of Popery all their former spurious Actions have been not only pardoned but almost according to the Canon Law legitimated and as the Popes in any Croysad for the Exterminium of Hereticks were wont to give plenary Indulgences for all Sins past and to come for many years so have the People heaped such Indulgences on such Persons that in any Conjuncture shewed their zeal in the extermination of Popery And though to an ordinary view these mens Title to their Fame may appear by some of their former Actings much incumbered yet who ever pryes into it is as much generaly hated as are those Projectors who rake for their Bread among the weak Titles of other Mens Estates and cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when they have found out a flaw there 'T is observable that S. Iames C. 2. in his Assertion of Justification by works gives two Instances of Persons so justified and that one is of Abraham and the other of Rahab the Harlot in v. 25. likewise also was not Rahab the Harlot justified by workt when she had received the Messengers and had sent them another way and yet too that senâ—â—â— the Spies another way as the Fact is Historically mentioned in Ioshua the 2 d would to some Scruplers seem unjustifiable Thus do the People in their way justifie all that they believe are assistful to them in the attaquing of the Romish Babylon and look on them as their Saviours and as captious as they are against others yet think of nothing but saving them and all that they have as was in the case of Rahab Nor is it to be wonder'd at that Men who have so much to account for to the Public should be thus discharged by the populace tho many of them are Gallios in Religion and were no more concern'd for the Eclipse of Protestancy or the light of the Gospel in the year 1678. or 1680. then they were for the four Eclipses of the Luminaries viz. two of the Sun and two of the Moon that will be in the year 1701. and particularly of that of the Sun which will be in Ianuary then and not seen by us but only by our Antipodes but there is that adherent to Popery that if it could rivet it self into our Law here it would make the light of the Sun not worth the looking on namely the Confiscation of the Goods and Estates of those that Holy Church calls Heretics and the throwing them into such forlorn Prisons where they could see neither Sun or Moon and therefore as the Devils those Seducers in Chains are hated by Men because they know those Fiends would destroy their lifes if they could for the same reason all that lye open to the Name of Heretics will be animated with a brisk hatred against Popery and magnify those as their tutelar Angels that shall pretend to defend them from it tho such did before conspire against them But therefore because a Zeal against Popery is a remedy so cheap and so easie to be had and yet so infallible a one against the Peoples being discontented with Men who did before so much by their Principles poison the Realm 't is the common interest of us all both Protestants and Papists out of love to our Country to wish that no Men may be tempted so fatally to injure it hereafter by being beforehand sure of purchasing both Pardon and Adoration from the People on such easie terms The strong currents of Inclination I find in my self and observe in others not only to Pardon but to extol and magnifie nay to bless all Men that help their Country as it is contesting with Popery or Presbytery or either of those or any Religion-trade and to say to them as the Expression is in the Psalms We bless you in the name of the Lord will I hope be accompany'd with such an Extirpation of it as will not leave any Fibre behind it in our English World. As it need not be told to our Divines of the Church of England that they are under no obligation to strain any point of Courtesie whereby to render the Papists generally not worse than Puritans and that their Character hath been by the Papists all along render'd more vile than that of the Puritans and that Doleman in his Book of the Succession weighing the Parties in England and having first spoke of the Protestants of the Church of England afterward p. 242. saith That the Puritan party is more generally favour'd throughout the whole Realm with all those which are not of the Roman Religion then is the Protestant upon a certain general persuasion that the profession of the Puritan Party is the more perfect especially in great Towns where Preachers have made more impression in the Artificers and Burgesses than in the Common People And among the Protestants themselves all those that are less interested in Ecclesiastical Livings or other Preferments depending on the State are more affected commonly to the Puritans c. And p. 244. The Puritan Party at home in England is thought to be most vigorous of any other that is to say most ardent quick bold resolute and to have a great part of the best Captains and Soldiers on their side which is a point of no small moment and that Weston Lib. 3. de Trip. Hom. Offic. Cap. 16. p. 226. in a very janty manner crying up the Puritans beyond the Prrotestants of the Church of England saith Protestantibus inâ—â— Sacrâ praestabiliores puritanos Qui enim estis Protestantes hominum judicamini ignavissimi omnium religionis etiam fuco destituti impiissimi aeruscatores parati jurare in cujusvis verba modò inde emolumentum rebus vestris accrescat and in p. 227. Puritani sane multò solidius ac syncerius sua dogmata profitentur So neither need it be told the Papists that the Divines of the Church of England did never prefer the Tenets of Popery or Professors thereof to those of Puritanism or Presbytery as such and that they never complain'd of the Protection the Dutch and French Churches have long here enjoy'd with Liberty to worship God according to their peculiar Rites and Church Discipline and that upon the late great migration of many French Protestants from their own Country hither under great Circumstances of want our Divines and particularly those in and near London shew'd all the efforts of their Art of Persuasion from their Pulpits to move their Hearers to liberal Contributions to them that they could have possibly done in the case of their own Countrimen or Kindred and that one of those Divines in one of the greatest Cures there being for his Learning and Life and Endowments proper to his Function a great Ornament to the Gospel when he with great Eloquence so pathetically bespoke
the least if the Oath were to be interpreted otherwise than in the Imposers sense and under this Conclusion it may be properly added that where that sense is sufficiently manifest in the words it is exactly to be stood to as Sanderson hath well shewed in his second Lecture of the aforesaid Subject and where having shewed how we must take heed that we impose not on the Oath we have taken or any part thereof other sense than that which any other Pious and Prudent Man and who being unconcerned in the Business is of a freer Iudgment may easily gather out of the Words themselves he saith That we become without question guilty of the heinous Crime of Perjury if that milder interpretation which encouraged us unto the Oath chance to deceive us And in his 6th Lecture § 7. he saith As it is one kind of Perjury to strain the words during the Act of Swearing unto another Sense than that wherein they are understood by the Auditors so it is another kind of Perjury having sworn honestly not to proceed sincerely but to decline and elude the strength of the Oath tho the words be preserved with some new forged inventions variously turning and dressing the words to cloak the guilt of their Consciencâ—s as Tacitus saith of some and he concludes that Section by saying That where the words of an Oath are so clear in themselves that among honest men there can be no quâ—stion of their meaning the Party swearing is obliged in that sense which they apparently afford and may not either in swearing or when he hath sworn stretch those words upon the last of his Interest by any studied interpretations There appeared nothing more detestable to the Eye of the old Civil Law then fraud and trick and particularly the destroying the true Sense and meaning of a Law by a cavilling fraudulent interpretation that retains the words but confounds the ends for which the Law was made and accordingly 't is said in the Digests In fraudem legis facit qui salvis verbis legis sententiam ejus circumvenit But this in the Case of an Oath was more abominated and accordingly Cicero tells us that Fraus adstringit non dissolvit perjurium And if the Civil Law was afterward so provident for the honour of Humane Nature as to determine in the Case of an unask'd free gift that Cum in arbitrio cujuscunque sit hoc facere quod instituit oportet eum vel minime ad hoc prosilire vel cum venire ad hoc properaverit non quibusdam excogitatis artibus suum propositum defraudare tantamque indevotionem quibusdam quasi legitimis velamentis prolegere any one may judge how much it abhorred any thing of fraud in the evading of the payment of a due subjection to Sovereign Power acknowledged by what the thinking Heathens term'd Sacramentum as if the most eminent or only thing emphatically Sacred and religiously to be observed I should not since the Extermination of the Iesuites Doctrine of Equivocating have thought it worth while so much to dilate on this plain Conclusion before the publishing a Pamphlet in our Metropolis in the Year 1680 called An Account of the New Sheriffs holding their Office made publick upon reason of CONSCIENCE respecting themselves and others in regard to the Act for Corporations and in which ACT tho the Lawgivers meaning of the Oath thereby imposed is most apparently manifest out of the Words yet the Author of that Casuistical Pamphlet makes it lawful to take the Oath and subscribe the Declaration and not in the literal strict Construction but in an imaginary sense topp'd upon the Lawgivers and that nothing but a vitiated fancy or injudicious mind could imagine I was sorry to hear that that Pamphlet was writ by a Non-Conformist Divine and that in a Conjuncture when the Magistrates of that City were so hot against the name of Popery any men should be so zealous for the Thing called Iesuitism and that any men by attempting to rivet Equivocation into their Model of Protestancy should at once endeavour to rob us of the Energy of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and of the Test it self and to make the sacredness of all Oaths whatsoever to evaporate Let any sober Person of the Dissenters Party but seriously read that Pamphlet so scandalous to Protestancy and it cannot but give him the Alarm of coming out from among them for that he must do that would come out even from the Iesuitick Equivocation If there were not a Church of England Protestancy in that Loyal City I may without unjust reflection say it that Magistrates who were Accessory to the erecting that Paper-Monument to Equivocation and to the trying to help it to a jus Divinum and to be a part of pure Religion and undefiled could bring little honour to our Metropolis by calling it a PROTESTANT CITY on its Monument of Stone As we find in the Book of Iudges that all that saw that inhumane Butchering and Quartering out into pieces of the Levites Wife by her own Husband cried out and said There was no such thing done or seen since the time that the Children of Israel came up out of the Land of Egypt until that day I believe it may be affirmed that never in any PROTESTANT City in the World since the time that it was free'd from the Egyptian Servitude of the Papal Impositions was any such barbarous butchering of the Obligation of an Oath by Equivocation in a printed Case sent about the Kingdom by the pretended Espousers of Protestancy ever done or seen And according to the saying that Nisi serpens serpentem comederit non fit draco it may be said that the most superlative and dreadful outraging of Oaths cannot be compassed but by the Consciences of pretended Protestants digesting the old Equivocation of the Iesuites When I consider this therefore that the false Protestant Discusser of that CASE of CONSCIENCE of the SHERIFFS doth determine that by taking up Arms against the King mentioned in the Oath is to be meant against HIS RIGHTFUL GOVERNMENT and that the Oath must be taken in the SENSE or MEANING of the Major part of both Houses that passed it and then makes their meaning so opposite to their words and do recollect what is so clearly laid down in my Lord Chancellor Hatton's Treatise concerning Statutes and the Expositions of Acts of Parliament viz. That the Assembly of Parliament being ended functi sunt officii and that as to all of the lower House who are by Election their Authority is returned to the Electors so clearly that if they were altogether assembled again for interpretation by a voluntary Meeting eorum non esset interpretari and that then the interpretation of the Statutes falls into the hands of the Sages of the Law and when I consider that great Caution of Sanderson in his said Book that where we depart from the words of an Oath to the intent it must be well proved that
to belong to the Pope's Authority and their own School Doctors are at irreconcileable odds and jarrs about them He had then his Eye on the Lateran Council as appears by the other words there in the Margent viz. Touching the PRETENDED Council of LATERAN See Plat. in vitâ Innocen 3. and by which Council the King knew that all except two or three of those Conclusions were concluded and defined If therefore many of the poor petty School-Doctors were so searless of the Papal Thunder as in Cases when they were perhaps unconcerned to impeach the Papal Usurpation there was no cause of apprehension in that our wise Monarch that any of his High-born Heirs and Successors would ever favour the Usurpations of that Authority When Queen Elizabeth was so firmly satisfied concerning the Loyalty of the Roman Catholick Lords Temporal and of their great Quota in the balance of the Kingdom securing their abhorrence of all Papal Usurpations as not to impose the Oath of Supremacy on them tho yet She took care to have it imposed on the Popish Bishops can we imagine that the great Interest of an Heir of the Crown in the Hereditary Monarchy did not give a Plerophoâ—y of satisfaction to that Great Monarch that such an Heir would never permit any Usurpation to prejudice his Crown Imperial Moreover if in the Case of the device of an Inheritance by Will on the Condition of the Legatees not holding this or that Philosophical or Religionary Tenet the absurdity of such Condition would not frustrate the device but would be taken as Pro non adjectâ and that thus in that known Case in the Digest viz. Of an Heir made on an absurd Condition namely On Condition he should throw the Testators ashes into the Sea the Heir was rather to be commended than any way questioned who forbore to do so how can we think in the Inheritance of the Crown which is from God and by inherent Birth-right any such supposed absurd Condition of a Prince's not believing this or that Speculative Religionary Tenet and for his professing of which he hath a dear bought Liberty by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the New Testament of Iesus Christ should be intended to operate to his prejudice But that I may in a word perimere litem about that Kings never intending the least prejudice to the Succession by any of his Successors being Roman Catholicks I shall observe that that Kâ—ng who was so great and skillful an Agonist for the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England did yet in the Articles of the proposed Match with Spain and afterwards with that of France agree that the Children of such Marriage should no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience or Religion and that their Title to the Crown should not be prejudiced in Case it should please God they should prove Roman Catholicks and that the Laws against Catholicks should not in the least touch them And that the sense of the Government then was likewise to that effect avowedly declared is manifest from the Passages of those times and the needless quarrel therefore that our late Excluders would have exposed us to with France was a thing worthy their considering But enough of this Conclusion if not too much for where the Tide of the Words of any Oath runs strong and clear we need not to regard the Wind of any Law-givers intention however yet I have made it appear for the redundant satisfaction of the scrupulous that while they have embarqued their Consciences in thâ—se Oaths they have had such Wind and Tide both together on their side and that therefore any Storms which the Takers of these Oaths relating to the Lineal Succession of the Crown may have raised either in their Consciences or the State must be supposed to be very unnatural Having thus in the foregoing Conclusions asserted and proved the Obligation relating to the Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I shall briefly answer such objections thereunto or rather Scruples for they deserve not the name of Objections as some noisy Nominal Protestants have troubled themselves and others with and so end this Casuistical Discussion The first Objection or Scruple then I shall take notice of that some have raised against the Obligation of these Oaths as above asserted is that they were made in relation to Papists only and were enjoyned to be taken for the discovery of those that were suspected to be so As to which it will be sufficient to say that it is most plain that all Persons who have taken these or any other lawful Oaths are bound by Deeds to fullfil what they have sworn in Words and it is an absurd thing to doubt whether the Law intended that those Persons should observe the Oaths whom it hath enjoyned to take them And to this purpose we are well taught by Bishop Sanderson in his 6th Lecture of Oaths That tho Papal Vsurpation was the cause of the Oath of Supremacy the arrogating to himself the exercise of Supreme Iurisdiction in spiritualibus throughout this Kingdom yet the Oath is Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude the reà son is that the intention of a Law is general to provide against all Future inconveniences of the like kind or nature c. I refer the Reader to him there at large By the Measures of that Bishop as to the Oath of Supremacy we likewise may direct our selves in the Oath of Allegiance being Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude tho that Oath was made by occasion of the Gun-powder Treason And as to the intent of the Oath of Supremacy King Iames tells us in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 108. That it was to prop up the Power of Christian Kings as Custodes utrâ—usque tabâ—ae by commanding Obedience to be given to the word of God and by reforming Religion according to his prescribed Will by assisting the spiritual Power with the Temporal Sword c. by procuring due Obedience to the Church by judging and cutting off all frivolous Questions and Schisms as Constantine did and finally by making Decorum to be observed in every thing and Estaâ—lishing Orders to be observed in all indifferent things c. whereby his Majesty doth clearly denote the intention of that Oath to have been to extend against any Non-Conformists continuing their Schism in the Church And as to the Oath of Allegiance being intended against Protestants as well as Papists making a Faction in the State the Book called God and the King compiled and printed by King Iames's Authority sufficiently shews throughout by the Notification of the particular Moral Offices required by the Oath of Allegiance and likewise by his Subjects natural Allegiance and which Moral Offices are there strengthened with passages out of the Scriptures and Fathers and the Doctrine of absolute Loyalty is there well Established and likewise the Doctrine of Resistance
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will
use not unfit otherwise this Form thereof allowable And let a man demand of one of them when he prayeth what Warrant he hath to use that Form that he then useth he can answer no otherwise So for a Book the means of help are not determined and this one among others this therefore not unwarrantable And if one of them should be asked how he proves it warrantable to use a printed Book to read on at Church he shall not be able to make other answer than as before and further hereupon the resolving of another Question viz. Whether one man eminent for Piety and Learning or perhaps eminent for neither is able without premeditation to make as fit a Prayer for the People to say Amen to as a hundred Persons eminent for both are able to frame with lâ—ng study I say to make an Elias and much more the holy Iesus to come down from Heaven to solve such doubts as these is an extravagance Parallel with the Error of those old Poets who would on all occasions introduce Gods to end doubts that were never fit to be begun by men and wherein there was not dignus vindice nodus and against which the judicious Poet gave the known Caution of Nec Deus interfit c. The holy Iesus by his Tacit Rejection of Questions as impertiment that the World thought of more moment than some such as are above named when he forbore to give his thoughts of Pythagoras his pre-existence of Souls upon the Question put to him viz. Who did sin this Man or his Parents that he was born blind shewed he thought it not for his honour to have it supposed that it was part of his Errand from Heaven to set the World rightin Speculations of Philosophy and so he threw that famous Notion off as a Titivilitium Chemnitius in his Harmony taking notice of our Saviour's reprehending in the Pharisees their use of Oaths and thereby invocating God as a Witness in the Occurrences of their common talk and Conversation saith In re levi ne magnum quidem virum in testem vocare auderemus as I find him cited by Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots and wherein he doth so learnedly confute the superstitious conceit in some of the unlawfulness of the use of Cards and Dice in recreation as likewise the other of mens being obliged to count every thing unlawful that they have not a Scriptural Warrant for Yet since his writing of those Books of Lots thousands of such our superstitious Protestants have not â—crupled to throw the Dye of War and to appeal to the Lord of Hosts by the Decision of Battel to signalize the truth in some of those nugatory and others of those plain points before-mentioned and our Land groans under the guilt of the Blood of hundreds of thousands of Subjects as well as of the Royal Blood by Questions on which an ingenious man would scarce think a drop of Ink necessary to be spent But I have in this Discourse express'd my belief That the fierceness of our Dissenters humour of quarrelling about such little Ceremonial matters will be naturally reclaimed by the influence of the Civility appearing in the many French Protestants here into a Complaisance with our King's and Church's enjoyned Ceremonies that all the learned Books of our Divines have not been able to work in them the Civility of the French humour making it natural to those Protestants as I â—ave remarked not only to comply with Princes but even their Fellow Subjects in the use of all Ceremonies they expect and as I have in many places of this Discourse and particularly in p. 239 expressed my thoughts that the sicarious Principles of the Iesuites will naturally evaporate by fear and shame so I have in the following Page that all Rebellious Principles of any Nominal Protestants will by fear and shame in our populous English World be abandoned and do think That to the shame of quarrelling about little matters the shame of doing it before Strangers being super-added will prevent our future disquiet thereby Let them ask those Protestants who are fled hither from Persecution the Circumstances of which are with great Judgment stated by Dr. Hicks in his Excellent printed Sermon on that Subject if in case their great Monarch had excused them from Conformity to the Gallican Church in the points of Praying in an unknown Tongue and the Worshipping the Host and the Forbidding the Cup to the Layety and the other momentous Religionary points controverted between Papists and Protestants and had enjoyned them only such things as our Religion by Law Established doth whether they would have with the hazard of their lives made a migration hither from the best Country in the World their Native Soil or have made their Monarch and his Ministers at home uneasie by Complaints of Persecution and by raising of any dust about unnecessary Questions as aforesaid Leo After tells us that the Inhabitants of the Mountain Magnan on the Frontiers of Fez have not thought fit to be at the Charge of any settled Judicature or Parade of the Law to support their Polity but to the end their Controversies emerging may be decided and that impartially they stop some Travellers passing that way to give Judgment in the same and that himself in his passage there was detained many days to perform the Office of a Judge and that his performance of the same was rewarded by the Inhabitants defraying the Charges of his Stay and some of those People were ashamed perhaps to trouble him a Stranger with vilitigation or querelles d' alleman And thus perhaps may those Protestant Strangers that Providence hath sent hither prove to our Religionary branglers useful itinerant Judges and their patience in their Judicature will in my opinion deserve to be well rewarded and for the greatness of its burden from the minuteness of its Controverted Causes and whereby Strangers are imposed on by as needless trouble as Travellers would be if in the several Territories they passed through the Inhabitants should desire them to weigh their Air. But I hope the Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church will find those to ours ashamed to entertain them here with the Crambe of old Controversies of Ceremonies and things Indifferent and that those Strangers will not find themselves invited hither by Nature as to a Theatre where they shall only see our digladiations with Air or beating of the Air as the Scripture Expression is and much less where they shall see any Dissenters implicitly swallowing the Doctrine of Resistance and weighing nothing but Air. It was I think a little before the Migration of so many French Protestants here that some of the Faex of our Dissenters were so shameful as to Nick-name our Clergy But I do account that the inquisitive and Philosophical Temper of the Age shining with so much lustre in our English Clergy and which temper is as naturally accompanied with the gentle warmth of Charity for the Persons of different
part of its Patrimony Queen Elizabeth alienated to secure the Protestant Religion ib. The fears of Popery further Censured p. 198. Ridly and Latimer Prophesied at the Stake that Protestancy would never be extinguished in England p. 198. Roger Holland prophesied at the Stake at Smithfield that he should be the last that should there suffer Martyrdom ib. Observations on the Natural Prophesying of dying men and its effects p. 199. The Vanity of Mens troubling the World by Suppositions ib. and p. 200. 'T is a degree of madness to trouble it by putting wanton impossible cases p. 200. The Author without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only by the light of reason presageth that the excessive fear of Popery as weâ—l as its danger will here be exterminated ib. The justice of the Claim of King Charles the first to the Title of Martyr asserted p. 201 202 203. The Author judgeth that some vile Nominal Protestants by the publication of many Seditious Pamphlets have given the Government a just Alarm of their designs against it p. 203. Of Papists and Protestants being Antagonists in Shamms p. 204. Mr. Nye cited for representing the Dissenters acted by the Jesuites in thinking it unlawful to hear the Sermons of the Divines of the Church of England p. 204. False Witnesses among the Jews allowed against false Prophets p. 205. The Earl of Anglesy's Courage and Iustice asserted in the professing in the House of Lords his disbelief of such an Irish Plot as was sworn by the Witnesses tho the belief of the reallity of such a Plot had obtained the Vote of every one else in both Houses ib. Above 2000 Irish Papists in the Barony of Enishoan demean'd themselves civilly to the English during the whole Course of the Rebellion ib. Several eminent ingenious Papists in England and Foreign parts celebrated for their avowed Candour to Protestants p. 206 207 208 c. D' Ossat's acquainting the Pope That if his Holyness were King of France he would show the same kindness to the Huguenots that Harry the 4th did p. 208. Cromwel being necessitated to keep the Interest of the Kingdom divided was likewise necessitated to keep up all Religions according to the Politicks of Julian p. 211. Of the Papists calling King James Julian ib. The Author inveigheth against the Calumny of any Protestants who call any one Apostate for the alteration of his Iudgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants ib. The Author's Reason why 't is foolish to fear that any Rightful Prince of the Roman Catholick perswasion that can come here will follow the Politicks of Julian ib. 'T is shewn that any Protestant Vsurper here must act à la Julian ib. The Vsurper Cromwel shewn to be a Fautor of Priests and Jesuites by the Attestations of Mr. Prynn and the Lord Hollis p. 212 213. The danger of Popery that would have ensued Lambert's Vsurpation p. 213 214. How true soever any Vsurpers Religion is he must be false to the Interest of the Kingdom p. 214. Observed that the Kings long Parliament by the Act for the Test did enjoyn the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to be taken ib. Those Oaths lay on the Takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors ib. Mr. Prynn's Book called Concordia discors printed Anno 1659 to prove the Obligation by those Oâ—hs to the King's Heirs and Successors commended ib. The Author mentions the Reasons that induced him to write Casuistically concerning such Obligation and promiseth to send that his Writing to his Lordship ib. The Author judgeth that he ought not to be severe to any Papist before he hath a Moral certainty of such Papists having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Pâ—pery that is unmoral or inhumane ib. The Author observes that few or no Writers of the Church of Rome have lately thought fit by their Pens to assert the Inheritable Right of Princes without respect to any Religionary Tenets they may hold p. 215. The Author thinks that for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Roman Catholick Prince of his Property and Right of Succession when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope employ their Pens for the preservation of such his property and right without respect to to any Religionary Tenets he may hold is like drawing against a naked man ib. D' Ossat affirms That the Pope and the whole Court of Rome hold it lawful to deprive a Prince of any Country to preserve it from Heresie ib. An Animadversion on a late Pamphlet concerning the Succession ib. Reflections on the House of Commons Proceedings in the Exclusion Bill ib. and p. 216. The Author gives an explanatory account of the tempus acceptabile he in p. 25 mentions p. 216. His Majesty's constant contending for the Protestant Faith celebrated and likewise his Iustice in preserving the property of the Succession in the Legal Course by all his Messages to the Parliament p. 217. The unhappy State of that Prince who shall for fear of the Populace do any Act of the Iustice whereof he doubts and much more of the injustice whereof he is fully convinced p. 217. at large The Caution to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia applied to such a Prince viz. Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take away thy Crown ib. at large 'T is not only Popery but Atheism in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion p. 218. King James disavowed the Act of his Son-in Laws accepting the Title of King of Bohemia ib. An Observation that in the Common-Prayer in King Charles the 1 sts time relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runneth for Frederick Prince Palatâ—ine Elector of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife ib. The Author observes that in the Assembly's Directory the Lady Elizabeth is styled Queen of Bohemia p. 219. An Account of the Governments avowed sence in King James's time that any of the Princes of England ought not by becoming Roman Catholick to be prejudiced in their Right of Succession to the Crown ib. The same sense of the Government in the time of King Charles the 1 st ib. The Parliament during the Civil War projected not any prejudice to the right of Succession on the account of any Religionary Tenets p. 220. Mention of somewhat more to confirm the claim of King Charles the 1 st to the Title of Martyr beside his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue ib. An account of the Protestation of the Nonconforming Ministers in the year 1605 relating to the King's Supremacy wherein they assert the Royal Authority inseparably fixt to the true Line whatever Religion any Prince thereof may profess p. 221. The Author peâ—stringeth the Protestant would be 's and new Statists of the Age that would for Religionary Tenets barr any of the
Religion of the Church of England hath naturally pierced through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy ib. The numbers of the Non Conformists are daily decaying ib. There were in the Year 1593 judged to be in England 20000 Brownists ib. The Gross of the Numbers of Non-Conformists always consisting chiefly of Artisans and Retail-Traders in Corporations p. 281. They were very numerous there before the King's Restoration ib. A new way by which their Numbers and Potency may easily there be diminished ib. The Author judgeth the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants to be necessary p. 282. The Lord Keeper Puckerings Speech of the ill behaviour of the Puritans in 88 referred to ib. The prudence and justice of the King's Measures asserted as to the not repealing the Statutes against Protestant Recusants ib. The Peace of Munster observed to have removed the popular fears abroad in Case of the Successions of lawful Princes differing in Iudgment from the Religion Established p. 283. The Author of the Catholick Apology with a Reply cited for there not being one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England in the year after the Declaration of Indulgence then in any year of trouble p. 284. The Author mentioneth the soft and gentle disposition of Bellarmine p. 284. The Authors reflecting on the Principles of the Iesuites with sharpness as the Pope and his Court of Inquisition have done ib. The Author disowneth all acerbity and rancour relating to the usage of any Papists ib. He observes that the putting Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion ib. The Author observes that an English Priest of the Church of Rome hath done him the honour to adopt as his own many passages of the Authors long since printed that were disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion p. 284. Observed that if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private judgment in matters of Religion 't is hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Church of Rome of the guilt of Schism ib. The Author not inclined to be severe to any Papist for being in any Tenets that may properly be called Religion guided by his private judgment to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome ib. The Custom of Authors of large Discourses publishing together with them a REVIEW ib. He promiseth to the Earl of Anglesy a REVIEW of this Discoursâ— p. 285. The Author will in a short REVIEW explain some passages on occasion and add others ib. If he doubts of any thing or shall alter his opinion of any thing therein he will in the REVIEW acquaint his Lordship why he doth so ib. The Author thinks that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunâ—es are positive ib. C2 R DIEV·ET·MON·DROIT HONI·SOIT·QVI·MAL·Y·PENSE Devon Jan. 27. 1680. My Lord AS to the Candour of the English Nation that was formerly so very extraordinary and the whiteness and sweetness of the temper of the People of England that did adde to the representing it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and to the making it like the Galaxy to have one brightness from thousands of fixt Stars placed so high by Nature that they could not suffer the least Eclipse by the shaddow of the whole Earth we may well since the Publishing of the horrid Affidavit of the Infamous Person and so many valuing themselves as the best of Men upon their believing what was sworn by the worst lament the temporary decay of so great a part of the Glory of the English good Nature And they who knew your Lordship and consequently knew you to be a steadfast approver of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England have reason more particularly to be sensible of what concern'd you in that calumnious Affidavit because the wretch presumed therein to fasten on your Lordship the Sanbenito of a Court of Rome Papist and to represent you as a favourer of Popery or the Papal Usurpations that were in Harry the 8th's time hence exterminated and as an endeavorer to stifle the Evidence about the Plot notify'd by the Government for the recalling that kind of Popery Altho I know no Christian more tenderly inclined then your Lordship to shew all Christian Indulgence to the Persons of Popish and Protestant Recusants and have sometimes observed your Lordship while you were wishing that none of the New Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Creed were by any believed yet out of tenderness to the Persons of Devout and Loyal Papists with great reason to wish likewise that no Odium might come to such from the Name of POPERY for their Profession of such Tenets as are held by the Greek and other Churches who yearly Curse the Pope and are so Curs'd by him yet none need doubt but that your Lordship will as much as any man account it the opus diei by all due means to oppose all plotted Designs whatsoever to retrive the Papal Power of Usurping over the Crown or Conscience My Lord there are some among us who would usurp on and appropriate to themselves the Name and Thing of Protestancy and would be thought the only true Protestants and would be Monopolists of all the heat and light against Popery But as I shall make bold to come in for my share with them so I shall yet acquaint your Lordship that if I may in any part of this Letter to you seem with any excess of Passion to reflect on Popery I shall before I take leave of you afford you such a Patriotly and Gentlemanly reason of my warmth against it as I think hath not by others been given nor particularly by some Pedantick Anti-Papists who render their Conversation nauseous by their eternal talking of nothing but Popery and while they are neglectful of all the due means to prevent its growth These things being therefore premised I shall in despite of the Affidavit say that I will be the last man in England who shall believe that my Lord Privy Seal can be such a Court of Rome-Papist I think it was St. Augustine who meaning well in a pang of Zeal cry'd out on one occasion Credo quia impossibile est But I shall both as to the truth of any deposing or imposing Doctrine and of your Lordships believing it ground my disbelief on the impossibility of either When I hear men say they look upon it as an exerting of a miraculous Power Divine that the Globe of the Earth hangs in the Air without falling I interrupt not their thoughts of devotion but know that the Earth which is ballanced by its own weight cannot fall but it must fall into Heaven Coelum undique sursum And should any one tell me of your Lordships falling into any gross erroneous doctrinal opinions I who have long observed the constant tendency of your understanding toward the Center of truth cannot apprehend any danger of your falling from it So likewise when I hear men impute it
the Irish as well as of the English and a common Father to them all it may be worthy of His Royal goodness and a God-like thing in him to distribute to them all the Kindness that would not undo themselves and others as the Divine bounty dispenseth itself to the Sinful yet with respect to the Government of the World. And as the love of an Indulgent Father may be measured more by the kindness he would shew an obstinate son were he qualified to receive it then by what he doth who tryes all methods to reclaim him by his Will Disinherits him and goes down to the shades below without revoking such a Will and yet in his life-time with the tenderest bowels and softest language he was constantly bemoaning that Sons being not a Subject fit or capable to participate in the Estate equally with his Brethren Thus too may the love of the Pater Patriae and of the Country it self be demonstrated to these our obstinate Brethren more by the Favour we do not afford them then by what we do having often seen the truth of what Solomon saith that the prosperity of fools destroys them But as I said before I would be glad that the Papists themselves would try to find out what way of security the Wisdom of His Majesty and His great Councel may acquiesce in so that any bitter way may not be prescribed to them by public Authority as perhaps this of Transplantation or some other may seem and that persons of innocent Tempers and Principles may not be carryed off with those of noxious ones as all strong purging Phisic disposesseth the body of some good Humours as well as bad and I therefore wish that they may rather satisfie His Majesty that they have transplanted into their minds some such Principles as are to be found not only in Protestant but Heathen Authors to incline men to be Gods and not Devils to one another and those Principles growing in the Soil of Nature when transplanted into the mind of a Christian are much more generous and improved like the Vines on the Rhine transplanted into the Fortunate Islands and whereby a Protestant King may Sit securely in His Throne and His Protestant Subjects sleep securely in their houses and walk securely in the Streets without fear of the fate of Sir Edmond Godfrey and Mr. Arnold pursuing them upon a declaratory sentence that they are Hereticks by a shabby Consult of a few ignorant Priests in a blind Cabaret without citing them to shew cause why they should not be knock't on the head by Villains who account themselves the Popes Sheriffs and at the worst that happens to them his Martyrs a fate of Proteâ—â—ants worse then they suffered in the Dog-days of Queen Maryes Reign that Canicula Persecutionis as Tertullian's phrase is for then they were not murder'd but after a Tryal for their Lives and Liberty granted to recant at stake Methinks when they consider the Popes Decree made at Rome the second of March 1679. condemning some Opinions of the Iesuits and other Casuists the which in Latin and English was printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1679. and see thereby that the Augean Stable of the Casuists being so full of Filth that it could hold no more the Pope to avoid the scandal of the World and danger to those Souls who by the practice of those Opinions were not at that time sent to the place from whence there is no Redemption though yet as the excellent Author of the Preface to that decree here printed judiciously observes That the Pope treats those Opinions very gently and mercifully and indeed doth not declare them ill in themselves or such a Nusance to souls that he could not dispence with and when they likewise consider that most of those Opinions if not all were Rules allow'd by Iesuits or other Casuists for Confessors and Penitents to go by in the securing of the great concern of Eternity till that time and that Guymenius with the approbation and permission of his Superiors in the year 1665. favours most if not all of those Opinions with a colourable gloss out of Councels Fathers School-men and Divines and endeavours to throw off the Odium from the Iesuits for them upon the whole Roman Church they should now be so awaken'd as throughly to examine both those and other points in that Religion supposing that some future Pope may declare the Souls left in the lurch that hold some other Opinions recommended to them by their Spiritual guides without their having obtained a papal dispensation to hold them My Lord though I believe your Lordship to have ever had as keen an Antipathy against Caballing with any Papists as good old Iacob shewed he had against that with Simeon and Levy of which he said O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their assembly mine honour be not thou united yet their necessary applications to your Lordship in your administration of the Privy Seal and their voluntary recourse to the hospitality of your noble and constant Table where any one in the habit of a Gentleman is allowed to be your Guest giving you opportunities of discoursing sometimes with Papists I suppose your advice to them to consult with one another in peace how to satisfie His Majesty that all bloody Consults being by them abandon'd he himself may enjoy the Kings peace and we his Subjects enjoy that Peace of the King which his very Wild Beasts in the Forrest enjoy as I said before and where any of the Inhabitants if they have lights in their Windows that may affright the Kings Deer are lyable to punishment by the Forrest law and that we being delivered from the hands of our Enemies may serve God without fear in holiness and righteousness all the dayes of our Lives and not be in danger of being in the Kings High-way knock't on the head like Weasels or Polecats by base Ruffians not worthy to feed the Dogs of our Flocks I say I suppose your Lordships advice backt with those reasons against Popery that you alwayes carry ready told may especially at this time when the ecce duo gladii or two Votes of the House of Commons in the last two Parliaments cannot be forgot by any of them occasion their offering that to the consideration of His Majesty and his great Councel that may render the Kingdom safe from any hostility of their Principles or Practises Your Lordship hath one advantage in giving advice beyond most men I know and perhaps no man is Master of that advantage more then your Lordship and that is your advice to any of Mankind is the advice of a friend for both by your natural temper and a habit that can plead the prescription of sixty years for its continuance in your Soul and a sharpe edge of Wit and Reason to justifie your claim to it so it is that you are in a constant readiness to shew your self a friend
of lust try to puzzle the Cause of Religion and by distinctions to make Golden Bridges for Men to retreat from Morality And this Course the Iesuits have took By their Casuistical distinctions they have broke both the Tables of the Moral Law into innumerable pieces they have broke not only the least but greatest of the Commandments and have taught men so to do and how to do it with a Salvo to them and how Salvo metu fide peccare and by being Casuistical Splitters of Sin have been as troublesome to the World as Splitters of Causes are to a Country The Christian Religion that great Tye intended by Heaven to be like a substantial and great Cable as I may say to supply the great Anchor of our hope they have made it their great business to untwist by their nice distinctions and to make it so fine that it will not hold and by encouraging Lies and Calumnies for the honour of Holy Church they have help'd the Politic-Atheists-would be to a new occasion of trying to insinuate that old impotent-Slander that Religion it self is a Cheat and moreover since it is on all hands Confessedly true that Religion is necessary for the Government of the World and that every Ligament of Humane Society without Religion is but like a rope of Sand 't is probable that the Iesuits Morality being destructive of Religion that the Nations of the World will look on it and their Society as an Association against Humane Society and that one Nation after another will declare themselves Abhorrers of it And it must by necessity of Nature appear that they cannot be Confessors of truth nor Martyrs for any but the Devil that make lying venial nor can their fate who pretend to be Witnesses in the Cause of Religion be any other than is that of some according to the Law and Practice of Nations who are Witnesses in any Cause to have their whole Deposition rejected upon the Discovery of one falsity therein And since 't is confessed to be the Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and particularly of the Trent-Council that the intention of the Priest is necessary to the validity of a Sacrament who can promise to himself safe anchoring in the Depths of a Jesuits intentions to make the Sacrament while he makes Cheating lawful If any one shall say that so vile a thing is not to be supposed in a Priest as upon any occasion not to intend the making of the Sacrament let him consult the Additionals to the Mystery of Iesuitism and there he shall see p. 95. Proposition 23. no meaner a Iesuit than the Great Casuist Escobar cited for this Assertion That it is lawful upon Occasion of some great fear to make use of Dissimulation in the Administration of the Sacraments as for a man to make as if he Consecrated by pronouncing the words without attention Escobar Theol. Moral Tom. 1. l. 6. Sect. 2. C. 7. Prob. 26. p. 27. And in this point the Pope's said Decree is infallible namely to shew the fact of this Doctrine of Devils having been own'd by Jesuits and Casuists as appears by the Proposition 29th in the Decree viz. Vrgens metus gravis est Causa justa Sacramentorum administrationem simulandi O Blessed Jesus can any Jesuit think it is lawful for him so far to fear those that can kill the Body as by his Dissembling his making of thy Body to destroy anothers Soul by Idolatry 'T is among both Papists and Protestants confessedly true that if the Host I worship should not be the Body of Christ I were a great Idolater and therefore if a Priest by that incident Passion of fear may lawfully forbear to intend to make the Body of Christ I may well have such a constant fear as do's cadere in Constantem virum of the danger of my worshipping only a Wafer and consequently of my being an Idolater and since a Miracle is Heaven's Broad Seal to the truth of any Doctrine and since Transubstantiation is the greatest Miracle that can be thought of I may well conclude that God will not commit the Power of making Millions of Miracles every day to men that make Cheating lawful more than a Prince will commit the Custody of his Broad Seal to a professed Impostor And therefore I shall 〈◊〉 the way affirm that the Protestant Religion not making the intention of the Prâ—est essential to the Sacrament of the Eucharist is more strongly assertive of the Real presence there then is the very Popish Hypothesis The truth is 't is a very inglorious and a very imprudent thing to use fraud even in the Conduct of Political Government My Lord Herbert in his Life of Harry the Eighth speaking of a foreign Monarch saith with great Judgment but while he escaped not the Opinion and the Name of false which yet his Country Writers pallâ—aâ—e no otherwise than with calling it Saberraynar he neither comply'd 〈◊〉 his Dignity nor indeed the Rules of Wisdom true reason of State consisting of such solid Maxims that it hath as little need of Deceit as a sure Game at Chess of a false Draught there is no use of it therefore among the wiser sort it being only a supply of Ignorance among the Ruder and worse kind of Statesmen Beside it appears so much worse in Public Affairs as it is never almost hid or unrevenged Reputation again is still lost thereby which yet how much it concerns Princes none can better tell than such as Imagine them without it But to use Fraud in or for that great concern of Mankind call'd Religion is more absur'd and 't is the vilest Nonsence imaginable for Men to talk deceitfully for God and that style of a foreign Monarch of Dissembling his Indignation need not be used by him who made the World with a fiat and can unmake it with a thought and whatever Religion in the World is true I am sure that is and must be false that attempts to support it self by falshood or fraud and by the Violation of Faith given For I am sure that to stand to Promises to abhor Deceit is a thing in its own nature simply good and that it is impossible that God should lye and if it be simply good in God it is necessarily so in Man whom he hath made after his own Image the Image being to answer the Archetype and that Religion therefore that doth approve of falsarii and which cannot have the true God for its Founder and in which every honest man may justly say to the Deity of its worshippers Stand by thy self come not near me for I am holier then thou as the Scripture expression is must expect to be exterminated out of the Knowing World. Such worshippers can be no more judged parts of the Ecclesia Catholica than Pick-pockets in Churches are of the Coetus fidelium there and as when these petty Larceners are there discovered they are glad silently thence to steal themselves away such perhaps will the
great vehâ—menâ—â— and Master-like in the Councel about two hours proving that the Power of Iurisdiction was given wholly to the Pope and that none in the Church besides â—ath any spark of it but from him and that while Christ liv'd in the flesh he govern'd the World with an absolute Monarchical Government and being to depart out of the World he left the same form appointing his Vicar St. Peter and his Successors to administer it as he had done giving him full and total Power and Iurisdiction and subjecting the Church to him as before to himself That in Councels be they never so frequent if the Pope be present he only doth decree neither doth the Councel any thing but approve and therefore it has been always said Sacro approbante Concilio yea even in Resolutions of the greatest weight as was the Deposition of the Emperor Frederic the Second in the General Councel of Lions Innocent the Fourth a most wise Pope refus'd the approbation of that Synod thaâ— none might think it to be necessary and thought it sufficient to say prâ—sente Concilio How comes the Case now alter'd when we behold the Iesuites now crucifying the Decree of their King the Pope after all their former Hâ—â—anna's to him while he was mounted on the World as his Ass and after all their deaâ—â—ing of the World with Blessing him in nomine Domini and see them now putting but a reed of Infallibility in his hand and see his Scepter in theirs and see their fourth Vow to the Pope annull'd and what performance then can Hereticks expect from any Promises they make to them and might not the Iesuits wiâ—â— the salvo of a Protestation against the Inquisition or with a thousand Expedients if they had pleas'd allow'd Receipts from the Inquisition to rid the World of a Pestilence as frankly as Protestants use the Jesuits Powder against Agues and without intending more Honour to that Court than the Sacred Writ did to the Devil in recording for our instruction several things by him spoken And have not we a candid account of this Arcaâ—um in a very Ingenious Discourse lately Translated into English and call'd The Policy of the Clergy of France to destroy the Protestants of that Kingdom and writ in the way of a Dialogue between a Parisian and Provincial where p. 67 and 68. Le Cheise and the Iesuits Party are said to have effected the suppression of the said Decree in France upon pretence that it issued from the Tribunal of the Inquisition and that in the Draught of an Order of a Parliament in France for the suppressing the Publication of this Decree these words were put viz. Tho that these Propositions are justly Condemned and that Father Le Cheise caus'd these words to be raâ—ed out and has put in their stead That even the good things which come to us from the Tribunal of the Inquisition ought not to be receiv'd But if upon occasion of what was discours'd by that Author it be further said that the setting up of those unmoral Casuistical Tenets in France was the erecting a Pillar of ignominy against God I will ask if one who is revera an incompetent Iudge shall go to demolish any such Pillar set up against my Father and I have already own'd that that Iudge doth infallibly know the bounds of his Iurisdiction and have obliged my self to him by the foremention'd fourth Vow that what thing soever he shall Command that belongs to the profit of Souls and the Propagation of the Faith I will without any tergiversation or excuse execute as far as I am able for this is the Jesuits fourth Vow to the Pope shall I then be active in the hindring a Decree of this Nature given by this Judge from being executed at the same time I Protest against it shall I make no Protestation for the honour of my Father And do you think in this Inquisitive Age the Cheat of an Inquisition will elsewhere pass long since that Court that is used by ordinary Inquisitors for the torturing the Bodies of Christians and mutilation of the Image of God cannot be allow'd to shew severity to the body of Sin to the Image of the Devil in depraved Minds and that while your unerring Iudge of Law and Fact is in Person there praesiding Are not you that surpreâ—â— the Dictates of your own Vniversal Pastor such unreasonable Men as we may well pray to be delivered from All our Jesuited Papists must still expect Expostulations of this Nature Their Head was before at Rome and their Brains too but if they now make a Schism from the Pope himself they will come under the Denomination of Acephali the Name of some ancient Heretics that is the People without a Head unless they will own the Hydra of the Jesuits for their Head which it seems the Hercules of Rome could not subdue I believe many of them will consider what sure footing they have where they are while they see their Moses flying from his own Staff when made a Serpent I mean his Order of Jesuits and see the Collusive or Sham-Serpents of the Jesuits devour those of their Moses and Juglers by Deceptio Visus and lying to impose on the eyes of the World against the sence and reason of Mankind and even of the Pope himself and 't will be very ridiculous for them who have been cheated out of their own Religion to think that some who are the Jesuits Bubbles can cheat us of ours and that while they are grown Seekers they should make us loose our Church and that when the Spiritual Monarchy of the Pope is in a manner Run Down by the Republic or Society of the Iesuits they should think to cheat us of our King and Church and that our Religion can be run down by such Spiritual Outlaws and Rebels against the Pope himself and such as perhaps the Pope may in time be induced to oblige the World by suppressing after their Injuring all Morallity and the most vital parts of Christian Religion and the great avow'd use of his Power in the whole Christian Common-wealth by their Suppression of his said Decree I hope while the Fan is in his hand he will throughly purge his floor and esteem the Disposals of rich Benefices in France to be poor Regalia sancti Petri for him to vindicate in Comparison of the lives of the Souls of his Flock that he and all ingenuous Knowing Mankind Know must be destroy'd by such Casuistical Principles and without his doing which he cannot in the least deserve the Title of his Holiness For the determining the truth about such Principles he need not say as one of his Predecessors did about the Iansenian Speculations that he had no skill in Divinity A very little skill in Natural Divinity and such as may be had by the Reading a few Lines in Tully's Offices would accomplish any one with what would demonstrate the things allowed by the Casuists to be unworthy both of the Divine and
giving decent burial to any of their undecent Plotts and for the exasperating any Protestants by despising them and endeavouring to impose on their Understandings as some did on a raw young Country Gentleman whom one day treating at a Puppet-shew they persuaded that the Puppets were living Creatures and after he had found out his gross ridiculous misconceit therein they on the following day attending him to the Theatre engaged him to believe that the Actors were Puppets I mean their endeavoring to make us believe that Sham-Plots were real ones and that a real one was Shamme I shall never wonder at the encrease of the passion of anger incident to humane Nature even in great and generous Souls on the occasion of gross Calumnies invented against them about a matter of weight when I consider the Example of the Great Royal Prophet a Person of a great Understanding and of so great Courage that he was not afraid of Ten thousands of men who set themselves against him round about and tho an Host should encamp ogainst him his heart would not fear and a Man that had in his Nature and temper the Gentleness of a Lamb mixt with the stoutness of a Lyon and one to whom the Divine Promise had ensured a Kingdom and yet was he by the Sycophancies and little Shammes rais'd against him by Saul's great Courtiers wrought to so high a pitch of anger that he did with exquisite forms of imprecation and such as perhaps are not to be found in any other Story frequently devote those Calumniators to the most dire Miseries his fancy could lead him to express But the Cause of his being so highly provoked by those that would turn his glory into shame and did seek after leasing and whose deceitful tongues used all-devouring words as he saith to Doeg the Edomite in one of his Psalms and whose tongue he there sayes did devise mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully may be ascribed to the Shammes of his Enemies wounding him in the most sensible Part namely the Reputation of his Loyalty to his Prince whose Life he spared when 't was in his power to destroy him and who was so far from the use of Shammes against him that he doom'd the Amalekite to dy that shamm'd himself the author of Saul's death And therefore No marvel if the Calumnies of Jesuited Papists attaquing Protestants in that Case too of their Fidelity to their King render the passion of anger in them against those Shams so intense and vehement And tho the English Courage or a very little Philosophy would help them to bestow only a generous neglect on other Calumnies they can never forget those that strike at the heart of their allegiance and consequently of their Religion that so strictly enjoyns it Nor if according to the Example of that great man after Gods heart who said Away from me all ye that work vanity and who would have No lyer tarry in his sight is it to be admired if every true English Protestant shall say too odi Ecclesiam malignantium and shall feclude all dictators of Calumny from his company and banish them home to their own And tho the abuse of Excommunication by the Papal Church and Presbyterian hath been so horrid that the primitive use of it is in a manner lost and grown obsolete yet will that which includes somewhat of the Nature of it be still kept alive in the World by private persons who practice the Christian Religion they profess and to whom tho the Precepts of the New Testament have not given that hateful thing to humane Nature in charge namely to be Informers or Promoters or judicial accusers of any of Mankind accordingly as under the Mosaic oeconomy 't was said Tu non eris criminator yet have they obliged them to withdraw themselves from men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth and not to eat with any one who is call'd a Brother and is a railer and to turn away from men that are truce-breakers and to mark those who cause divisions and to avoid them and to reject a Heretic who is subverted and self-condemned and by men of Cultivated educations and tempers who value themselves on the Company they keep and on it are valued by the World and will therefore abandon or excommunicate from their Conversation such Monsters of men who have renounced the obligations of humane society and who are guilty of Notorious Contumacy in matters that concern the very Salvation of Souls and the Safety of Kingdoms The being staked down therefore to a Narrower Tedder in Conversation or being Civilly Excommunicated from Protestants Company must by necessity of Nature in my opinion be the fate of our Jesuited make-bates and criminators of Protestants that have been so unweary'd in raising Jealousies between the King and his People and between Protestant and Protestant and all such that go to part whom God and Nature and Interest have joyn'd will probably come at last to be the derelicts of humane Society when they shall Come to be understood and especially when there shall be that good understanding between Protestants here of several persuasions that may be expected to arise from their having found out the authors of their divisions and seen how ridiculous Protestants have been in the view of the World while they have appear'd like the Cat to draw one another through the Pool and the Jesuits and their Pensioners stood behind undiscern'd and pull'd the Rope My Lord I know we may justly fear that Popery may during some turbid intervals gain ground in England and as the Renowned Historian of our Reformation hath in a public Sermon Judiciously observed that Sure none believed themselves when they say we are not in danger of Popery and none can think it but they who desire it But without presuming to make my self one of Heavens Privy Councellors and without pretending to a spirit of Prophecy I shall on the basis of the Course of Nature ground this affirmation That whatever alterations Time can Cause yet while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Forraign Conquest the Protestant Religion Can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom nor the public profession of it suffer any long interruption therein I will grant it possible that hereafter under a Prince of the Popish Religion Popery may like the vibration of a pendulum among Certain persons have the greater extent in the return of it as Becket's Image was by Gardiner set up in London 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much pomp in Queen Mary's time after its being pull'd down in Harry the Eighth's and himself unsainted and some people may undertake devout Pilgrimages hereafter to some such Images and Reliques as my Lord Herbert saith were in Harry the Eighth's time exploded and we may again hear of our Lady's Girdle shewn in eleven several places and her Milk in eight the Bell of St. Guthlac and the Felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster both Remedies for
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
of Enemies a name that the Impotent passion of Subjects makes them so familiarly vex one another with and thereby shews them not such fit depositaries of Heavens Artillary as Soveraigns are so is it extremely unbecoming the Glorious height to which the Doctrine of the Cross hath exalted humane Nature for men as I may say to deâ—cend from Heaven to Earth for Dirt and to Hell for Fire-brands to throw at one another and petulantly to call those that were sometime Aliens and Enemies in their mind c. always such after the Divine reconciliation or even to manage the most lawful and just War Sine quadam bene volentiâ as St. Austines words are or to think that they can justly assume the great Name first used at Antioch and yet retain a Constant and Stated enmity against any Person whatsoever For according to the Excellent saying of Tertullian Christianus nullius est hostis But the Bosome of that wise Princess was no resting place for Anger and all the Popes Thunder could not discompose her and as in all Games they who in their play retain a Constant Equabillity of mind are generally most Successful so was she in the great Political Game she play'd by being Semper eadem and the Papal Excommunications seem'd to her as despicable as the Curses of loosing Gamesters and I doubt not but by her Prudent and just Administration of the Government of Church and State she hath laid the Foundation of the English Nations being Semper eadem in the Royal Line and of the Protestant Religions being so too and that no delendam fore can Issue out against either humanly Speaking and that any Popish Successor that can come here will find it his interest to use the Politicks of Queen Mary as a Sea Mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land Mark to go by and it being clear accordingly as Sir W. P. in his Manuscript discourse called Verbum Sapienti demonstrates it Cap. 2. of the Value of the People that each Head of Man-kind is as certainly valuable as Land that the many Strangers who have Transplanted themselves hither need never fear that they will be so undervalued as in the Marian days The Families of French Protestants that have lately come here have filled 800. of the Empty New Built Houses of London and have given us too an occasion of entertaining Angels in those untenanted Houses whose Ruinous appearance before made them seem to the vulgar such as they call haunted but from which no Prince can ever think of exorcising the inhabitants without Conjuring away his own Revenue of which about one moity depends on that City and where the Rents tho fallen as I say would yet have been much lower but for the Tenancy of these Forreigners and the expectation of others There is a very great President in our English Story and that is of a Prince of the Popish perswasion and yet one who was a sharp persecuter of the Extravagances of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and one who by the Introducing of Forreignors here to Manufacture our Wooll saved the Life or Being of the Nations Trade which his Predecessors had left in a Gasping Condition and one who by his Patronizing of Wiclif sufficiently shew'd that if those Forreigners had been Wiclifists he would yet have been a Fautor of those Hereticks and one who more disoblig'd the Pope by seizing on the Lands of the Alien Oâ—thodox Clerical Idlers then he could have done by the entertainment of many Heterodox lay Alien Manufacturers 'T is needless to say that I here mean our great Edward the third of whom and of Queen Elizabeth the prudence was as memorable as of any Princes that ever Sate on the English Throne And I will never despaire of any Heroick Prince here of the Roman Catholick perswasion with his Scepter upholding the trade of the Kingdom as those two great Names did and that too by the same methods if ever he shall come to find it in the tottering Conditon that they did and it may be well supposed that the experience the Kingdom hath since gained under King Iames and the Royal Martyr and His Present Majesty of the publick benefit that hath arisen from the reception of Forraign Artists who have been Heterodox in some ritual points about our Religion will make their expulsion seem a Solecisme And every Sagacious Person will I believe accord with me that the Spider hath done much more good to humane kind by furnishing it with the Invention of Weaving then harm by any thing of Poyson I shall be glad to know from your Lordship whether on your search among the Records of State either in the Exchequer or Paper-Office you can find Foot-steps of any thing like those returns of the Numbers of the People in London mentioned out of Howel and Cotton I am sure that the knowledge of the Numbers of our People ought by Statesmen to be accounted their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in this conjuncture as the opus diei and to pass no longer for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that those of them who take their measures either of the publick Strength or Revenue without respect to this are but State-Eâ—thusiasts and such who in their reckonings do according to our Common Phrase reckon without their Host and do not govern their Politicks by the Arithmetick the Scripture suggests in the question of What King goeth to make War against another King sitteth not down first and Consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand Bodin in his de Republicâ speaking of the Numbering of the People saith That the benefit that redounds to the Publick thereby is infinite and that thereby Princes and States know what Souldiers they may have and what Numbers they may send abroad to Collonys I have been informed by a Person belonging to the Custom-house that near 10000. Persons have had their Names entred as gone out of the Ports of London and Bristol for our Plantations in a years time And no doubt but the Number was great that then went away thither from other Ports and likewise of such that went from London and the out-Ports whose Names were not entred But I was not a little surprised of late when I read it in a Book newly Printed called The Negros and Indians Advocate and Dedicated to the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury where the Author pag. 171. Speaking of the Kidnappirs trade or mistery saith A Trade that t is thought Carrys off and Consumes not so little as 10000. out of this Kingdome yearly which might have been a Defence to their Mother Country c. 'T is certainly a sign that we are very rich in the number of our People when we can endure such a quantity of them to be yearly stolen without the pursuit of a Hue and Cry. Yet in this point Scotland is reported to be somewhat more unhappy then England for those who
the being of a Deity saith Nec sanè multum interest uâ—rum id neget an Deos omni procuratione atque actione privet mihi enim qui nihil agit esse omnino non videtur He there moreover acquaints us with the origine of the word Superstition saying that Non enim Philosophi verùm etiam Majores nostri superstitionem à Religione separaverunt nam qui totos Dies precabantur immolabant ut sui liberi sibi superstites essent superstitiosi sunt appellati quod nomen patuit posleà latiùs qui autem omnia quae ad Deorum Cultum pertinerent diligenter pertractarent tanquam relegerent sunt dicti Religiosi ex religendo c. But those things that those antient Heathens carefully discriminated many Modern Christians as carefully Confound namely Superstition and Religion and by the innate pride of Humane Nature leading men to worship the Gods that they make rather then the God that made them and which enslaved the ancient Jews almost with a Continuando to the Adoration of stocks and stones and to the neglect of the worshiping the God that delivered them from the House of Bondage degenerate Christians adore the Births of Religion in their own fancies and having there Model'd a Deity do Act over the old Superstition with Anxious wishes and Formal Prayers that those their monstrous Births may out-live them and do outgo all examples of the heathen World in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immolating Nations by War to those Children of their imagination and thus Popish Superstition within our Memory turn'd Ireland into one Akeldama and Enthusiastick Superstition converted England into another and as Lipsius tells us that the gladiatory Combats did in some one Month cost Europe 30000 mens lifes to divert the old Romans so fanatical have some that call themselves Protestants been as to afford sport and diversion to the new Romanists and even the very Iesuits by Superstition having made so many of us Gladiators against one another and as if we were Brute Animals we give them the recreation of seeing us like Cocks attacking each other with the keenest anger when they please and give the Arbitrary Power to the Iesuits to make our Land their Cock-Pit But the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of the superstition of Popery here being come and the worst thing in Popery being its Fanaticism and Holy Church being the great Asylum of that as our Learned Dr. Stilling fleet hath taught the World in his Book of the Fanaticism of the Church of Rome 't is in vain for Popery or Jesutisme to save-themselves from the blow of Fate by standing behind Presbytery The Conclusum est contra Manichaeos before mention'd that is now the Vox populi doth with its full cry pursue Presbytery as well as Popery for the making duo summa Principia in States and Kingdoms and claiming an Ecclesiastick Power immediately derived from Christ and not dependant on the Civil and 't is in vain for any Principle that an awaken'd World pursues as a Cheat to try to save it self by changing its name There is no observation more common then that Popery and Presbytery that seem as distant as the two Poles yet move on the same Axle-tree of a Church Supremacy immediately derived from Christ and Mr. Hobbs his Leviathan might have passed through the World with a general Applause if no Notion had been worse in it then in Chap. 44. The making his Kingdom of darkness to consist of Popery and Presbytery The measures that the Genius of our Nation inclines it to take of things from experiment will Naturally Perpetuate its aversion from Presbytery as well as Popery For tho the Divines of the Protestant Churches abroad that are fautors of the Presbyterian Form of Church Government own not the doctrine of Rebelling for Religion and tho thus on the occasion of a Iesuite's formerly Printing somewhat in defence of his Order and alledging that several Protestant Writers had allow'd the Rebelling of Subjects against their Princes and instanceth in Buchanan and Knox yet Rivet the Professor of Divinity at Leiden in his Answer to that Jesuite saith that all other Protestant Writers Condemn that doctrine and he ascribes the Rashness of Buchanan and Knox praefervido Scotorum ingenio ad audendum prompto and tho the persons who in Holland and France live under that Form of Church Government have pretended to no authority from Christ to resist Soveraign Powers and that the Loyalty of the French Protestants hath been so signal under all their Pressures that D'Ossat in his Letter to Villeroy from Rome Ianuary the 25 th 1595 having discoursed of the horrid attempt against the Life of Harry the 4 th acknowledgeth Concerning the Hugonots il's n'ont rien attenté de tel ny contre lui ny contre aucun de cinq Roys ses predecesseurs quelque boucherie que leurs Majestez ayent faite des dits Huguenots i. e. They have attempted nothing of this Kind either against him or against any of the five Kings his Predecessors notwithstanding the butchery or slaughter that their Majesties made of those Huguenots yet is it too notorious to be denyed that that sort of Church-Government having in Scotland in the time of our former Princes been accustomed continually to hold their Noses to Grind-stones which was a preparatory way to have brought their Heads to Blocks and that Nation invading us with a Covenant the very entring into which and the imposing it without leave from the King so to do and much more against his Command was a thing that perhaps to the Associators themselves seemed illegal and contrary to the Petition of Right which provides against the administring of any Oath not warrantable by the Laws and Statutes of this Realm there was by that means a Coalition between the Presbyterian Divines of our Nation and theirs in principles of Enthusiasme and Rebellion Principles that our Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time here abhorr'd for in the Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by those Ministers and Published Anno 1605 the conclusion of their 4th Tenet is That the Supremacy of Kings is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it and their 9th Tenet is We hold that though the King should command any thing contrary to the Word unto the Churches that yet they ought not to resist him therein but only peaceably to forbear Obedience and sue to him for Grace and Mercy and where that cannot be had meekly to submit themselves to the Punishment and their last Tenet is We hold it utterly unlawful for any Christian Churches whatsoever by any Armed Force or Power against the will of the Civil Magistrate and State under which they live to erect and set up in publick the true worship of God or to beat down or suppress any Superstition and Idolatry that shall be
you are bold to brag that at this present there are within the Realm more Catholicks and Catholick Priests then there were forty years since Math. Kellison in his Survey in the Epist. dedic almost at the latter end They afterward in their Supplication use the word Catholickly affected to make it comprehensive of both parts of Parsons his distinction of Papists more open and close and therein have the honour of the Invention of the Phrase of Popishly affected that hath so much gall'd them since and at this day continues to do and I shall accord with them that the Number of Papists or of Popishly affected was apparently grown great in the juncture of time after King Iames came here to the Crown but 't is not deniable that after the Epoche of the Gun-powder-Treason it did more sensibly decrease for they cannot say that by the intended blow from the Gun powder they designed to make him Catholick in order to make him continue a King. The Dean of Bangor in his excellent Sermon in Print and Preached at St. Martins on the 5 th of November 1678. Speaking p. 29 of the Conspirators in the Gun-powder-Treason saith judiciously For the Number I believe the design it self was known to few but that there was a design was known to many more King James himself tells us so in his works p. 291. A great number of my Popish Subjects of all Ranks and Sorts both Men and Women as well within as without the Country had a confused Notion and obscure knowledge that some great thing was to be done in that Parliament for the Weal of the Church tho for Secresies sake they were not to be acquainted with the particulars And no doubt but that great Number took occasion to slip their Necks out of the Collar of Misprision of Religion as well as of Treason thereupon and a vast encrease of the Numbers of the Protestants was thereby occasioned But there afterward appeared another Conjuncture of time in which the Catholickly affected did in his Reign multiply in the which however implicit faith could never come so much in fashion but that as Gondomar observed in the Kings Chappel when ever the Preacher quoted Texts of Scripture the Auditors would immediately turn to their Bibles to find them Mr. Pryn saith in his Introduction to the Archbishop of Canterbury ' s Tryal p. 13. That the number of Priests and Popish Recusants enlarged out of Duress by King James if we may believe Gondomars Letter from hence to the King of Spain or the Letter of Serica that Kings Secretary Dated from Madrid July 7 th 1622 to Mr. Cottington was no less then 4000. He had before in p. 10. and 12. set down the Petition and Remonstrance intended to be sent to King James by the House of Commons in December 1621 where among other things 't is said That the Popish Recusants were then dangerously encreas'd in their Numbers and complaint is made of the swarm of Priests and Iesuites dispersed in all parts of the Kingdom 'T is probable that not many Papists except Priests were then imprison'd and it may be conceived that the Number of Priests who escaped the Net of Imprisonment was more then double to that which was took therein and that the Number of Lay-Papists was very growing in that Conjuncture Mr. Iohn Gee's Book of the Foot out of the Snare of 4th Edition Printed in London 1624. mentions the Names of many Romish Priests and Jesuites resident about London in that year and begins with the Bishop of Chalcedon and shortly after him mentions Collington the Titular Arch-Deacon of London and Wright Treasurer for the Iesuites and Smith Vicar-General for the South parts of England and Broughton Vicar-General for the North parts of England and Bennet Vicar-General for the West parts of England and the whole Number of them there named together with the places of their Lodging is two hundred sixty one and the number of the Iesuites out of that Total is 72. Moreover out of that Total he mentions only 3 as having been formerly in Prison in England and but one who was at that time in Prison At the end of the Catalogue of the Priests there he saith These be all the Birds of this feather which have come to my Eye or Knowledge by Name c. yet above four times so many there are that overspread our Thickets through England as appears by the empty Nests beyond Sea from whence they have flown by Shoals of late I mean the Seminary Colledges which have deeply disgorged by several Missions of them as also is gathered by particular Computation of their divided Troâ—ps when as in one Shire where I have abode sometime they are reputed to nestle almost three hundred of this Brood In the following Pages he there Prints a Catalogue of Popish Physitians in and about the City of London and makes the Number of them 27 and no doubt but that in that Conjuncture of time the number of Papists encreasing there were enow Patients of that persuasion to afford Livelyhoods to so many Physitians In that Book immediately after p. 116. he Prints a Catalogue of such English Books that he knew of to have been Printed reprinted or dispers'd by the Priests and their Agents in England within two years last past or thereabout viz. 156. So fortunate was that Conjuncture to the Papists then that the odious Name of Puritan was bestowed on any of the Magistrates that went to put any Laws in execution against Popery as we find it from Sir R. Cotton in his serious Considerations for repressing of the encrease of Iesuites Priests and Papists without shedding of blood p. 33. his words there are There is no small Number that stand doubtful whether it be a gratful work to cross Popery or that it may be done safely without a foul aspersion of Puritanisme or a shrew'd turn for their labour at some times or other c. In the Petition and Remonstrance of the House of Commons in December 1621 before mentioned among the Causes of the growing mischiefs here the fifth Paragraph assignes one what would make Popery very prolific with Proselytes here viz. The strange Confederacy of the Princes of the Popish Religion aiming maiâ—ly at the advancement of theirs and subverting ours c. and another is assigned in the 6 th Paragraph viz. The great and many Armies raised and maintained at the Charge of the King of Spain the chief of that League and another in § 8th The interposing of Forraign Princes and their Agents in the behalf of Popish Recusants for Connivance and Favours to them But in fine in King Iames his Reign the gross of the Number of the Protestants was generally reckoned to be ten times greater then the Papists the which is hinted in the Posthuma of Cotton who then said To what purpose shews it to muster the Names of the Protestants and to vaunt them to be ten for one of the Roman Faction In the
the Invention of the double bottom'd Vessel and a rude Description of it being sent me for News into the Country I easily guessed that such a Ship bearing much more Sail then other Ships must needs go a great deal faster before the Wind but I was not inform'd of the Provision that the excellent Artist had made against the danger of Divulsion it being obvious that in some Tempests 't is as much as one entire body can do to preserve it self against the â—ury of the Sea. This hath been the condition of Popery with its double bottom of Principles namely to bear a great wide spreading Sail and it has heretofore in a quiet World sail'd apace before the Wind and in fair weather but the Tempestuous Debates its Principles have raised here and abroad in the Sea of the People have made this old double bottom'd Ship of St. Peter in such danger of Divulsion that especially with such Pauls Marriners as it employs it can hardly escape I doubt not but the Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturb'd worshiping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the Blood of Christ for Religion being Mens Priviledge as well as Duty just as the Romans did account that they endowed any place with a Priviledge when they gave them their Laws they may thank their great Redeemer for being restored to it By the vertue of his Blood the Papists stand seiz'd of a good and indefeisable estate of Christian Liberty and they are bought with a Price and are therefore not to be the Servants of Men and one is their Master even Christ who is the Lord that bought them and they are therefore to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free Socinus saith he went on his Knees to God to find out the meaning of the 58th V. of the 8 th of St. Iohn And should I chance to over hear any one Member of Mankind at his Private Devotions and importuning Heaven to illuminate his mind with the knowledge of some point in Religion that he conceived necessary to his Salvation and acknowledging it to the praise of the Divine Goodness that excited him to the use of all means whereby to discover it that he had so far through the Efficacy of assisting Grace practised the Truths his understanding was possest with as to satisfie his mind that he was a serious Supplicant for its being the depositary of more I should be so far from wishing this man delivered over to Satan from differing for me in any controverted Point of Religion that I should think that if the truth he was in quest of imported his Salvation God would send an Angel to explain it to him But as to one part of the double bottom of Popery tho we should grant it laden with fundamental truths yet 't is notorious that the other is overladen with Fundamental Errors and such as are apt to undermine the Foundations of States and Kingdoms and there is no need of an extraordinary Messenger from Heaven to tell one embarked therein that the Pope is not to absolve Subjects from the obedience of their Princes nor to cause an eternal fermentation and inquiâ—tude in the World through his Kingdom that should not be of it at all yet being unbutted and unbounded by him in all the parts of it I will likewise tell any Soeinian that his great Master Socinus made such a double bottom of his Systeme of Notions that it hath forfeited its right to the Name of Religion by one Tenet complicated therewith and that he ought to throw that off and simplificare se ipsum Let any one if he pleaseth call the Socinians denying of the Trinity in Unity and Original Sin and the Baptism of Infants or the Divine Prescience and many other of their Notions by the Name of Religion but there is own of their Tenets that their Master needed no long wrestling with Heaven as a Supplicant to find out the truth of and which Notion when really believed is as pernicious to Crown'd Heads and their Subjects as the lawfulness of any ones sometime killing the next man he meets and that is that my Prince and I may not defend our lives against the next Invader who comes to take them away for as to that great Question An bellum offensivum vel defensivum fit licitum the Socinians answer is negatur which any one may see who pleaseth to consult the Themata F. Socini de officio Christi p. 7. Inter breves tractatus F. Socini and likewise his Epistle to Christopher Morstias p. 498. among his Epistles And thus let the well-willers to Presbytery call that erroneous opinion of their Church Government being founded on that Divine Right and the immediate Command of Christ and his Apostles a Tenet of Religion but to confront the Laws of Kingdoms in the settling it and to eradicate any part of those and especially to root the inheritable Monarchs Power in popular Election or Approbation and to make him but the Peoples Attorny and his Authority as revocable by them as a Letter of Attorney is abusively call'd Religion and is only properly to be term'd Sedition or Rebellion I have been so copious in insisting on the necessary separation of all Tenets that are denominable as Religious from those that are really Irreligious and Seditious under the gross name of the Religion in any Party as a thing perfectly just in it self and necessary for the quiet of the World and do hope that the Age that is so much addicted here to the improvement and polishing of our Language will incline it to do it self that right as not to give false Names to Things and Names of a contrary signification We know that the Standard of England in the Mint refers both to weight and fineness and tho a piece of Money may have the Royal Stamp on it engraven with all possible curiosity yet if it be not standard 't is so far from being allow'd the Name of any Species of the Kings Coyn that 't is instantly to be broken in pieces and as this is but just so is it but necessary for the quiet of the People who else detecting it would suspect the whole credit of the Mint as well as of that Species of Money and would either not take it or else with a Clamour raise the price of their Commodities for it And thus it is too a thing unreasonable and troublesome to the World for Men to Coyn false words or false denominations for any Tenet in Religion intrinsecally defective what curious stamp of the artifice of any Party soever it may bear its reprobate Silver is not to be call'd Religion and it makes Religion it self lyable to suspicion among the inquisitive it will trouble every hand it passeth to and from and in giving a value to it the People will raise the price of their tolerating it and
the World will never be quiet till its allay from the true Silver be separated by melting it down and it takes the name of Religion only when it deserves it What is more ordinary then for Clamour to raise this question Will you punish any man for his Religion and will you have any man lose by his Religion and I see no end in the disputes of the question but by this Answer and by this it must find a Period viz. I punish no man for his Religion for that Tenet that I quarrel with him about is not and indeed cannot be Religion It is pure and rank Sedition and Rebellion and if any Papist or Presbyterian shall write or speak to make the Kings Power a bubble blown up by the breath of the People and so dissolvable I shall esteem him fit to be proceeded against by the new Statute of the 13 th of this Kings Reign against Sedition and as a Subverter of the Fundamental Laws and do suppose 't will be ridiculous for any one to plead his Religion in bar of that Indictment and he doth moreover deserve to be punish'd as a Cheater for abusing the World and himself and Religion too by calling such a particular Tenet Religion or a Complication of many Tenets by that Name where the vertue of them all is not strong enough to correct the Poyson of one The Scripture doth punish those with a denunciation of a Wo who call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness and in this particular Point of the calling any of the Idolatries or Impostures of the Heathens or others by the name of Religion I remember not any instance in holy Writ tho yet in other Cases 't is not infrequent for the inspired Pen man to speak cum vulgo I observe that in the New Testament the name of Religion is several times applyed to the Iewish after the World was freed from the Obligation of it but one of the holy Pen-men speaking in one Chapter of false Apostles useth the Style of hating the Deeds of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrine of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrines of Balam And another of the Amanuenses of the Holy-Ghost speaks of Doctrines of Devils If any man shall offer to my consideration a Scheme of Doctrines that relate to Theology and I find it is too subtle for my understanding to penetrate I shall yet be so evil as to allow the Propounder to call it a Religion and thus if Papists or Protestants would agree to call Dr. Gibbon's Scheme a Religion or demonstration of it I would not oppose theit calling it any such thing and the rather since it enjoyns not to me any thing that would break my own or the Worlds quiet but when Popery doth enjoyn so many Tenets to be believed that are incredible to a rational Man and some things that are clearly impossible to a Moral Man I will call Popery in the gross any thing rather then Religion just as Tully saith of those Law-givers who did perniciosa injusta a populis praescribere that they did quidvis potius ferre quam leges I find not that since the year 1605. Popery hath so discriminated it self by any alteration for the beter as to overthrow the weight of King Iames's saying then to both his Houses of Parliament viz. That as it is not impossible but many honest men seduced with some Eâ—rors in Popery may yet remain good and faithful Subjects so on the other hand none that know and believe the grounds and School conclusions of their Doctrine can ever prove good Christians or faithful Subjects There is one Tenet in the Doctrine of Popery that your Lordship shewed me once discust in Print by a Canonist and by whom I was directed to trace it both to the Gloss and Text in the Canon Law that I having discours'd of to a Pious and Learned Neighbour of mine who is a Roman Catholick he obliged me to write to your Lordship that you would please to let any of your Amanuenses transcribe and to send hither to me the Resolution of that Lawyer and determination of the Pope in his Law about it and hath declared to me that he will joyn issue with me in the Plea about Religion in that being a Tenet or Principle approved by the Church of Rome and your habitual inclination to afford any one tho a stranger to you lumen de lumine will I doubt not make it easie to you to gratifie my request in his behalf He grants to me that if that Tenet can be shewn to be one approved by the Church of Rome that he believes there will be no occasion for disputants any more to attaque the Roman Catholick Religion and that as an Independant Author in the late times writing a Pamphlet against Presbytery had this Title for it An end of one Controversy it might be supposed that a Sheet of Paper that without strain'd Inferences could fasten that Tenet on the Doctrine of Popery would with better success make an end of that Controversy My Lord this Point discussed in Print that I refer to is as I find it in the Notesâ— I took thereof in your Lordships Study in Gundissalvus his Tractatus de Haereticis Question 24. before which the Summarium is thus 1. Civitas in quâ aliqui insunt haeretici an tota possit igne exuri aut alias destrui 2. Civitas quando dicatur haeresim committere ut universa destrui possit 3. Vniversitate punitâ de haeresi an singuli quâ—que puniti videantur ita ut amplius puniri non possint The Gentleman being of a nice tenderness of Conscience and having a quick sense of any thing that looks like gross impiety was at the very nameing of the first and second Question surprized with a kind of trembling and was somewhat more discomposed when I told him that upon consideration of the whole matter it appear'd even from the most moderate of the Canonists that a whole City might lawfully be destroyed with Fire if the Majority of it were Hereticks and that there were the Judgment of the Church in the Case and like a Man of a large and candid Soul he said that he was sorry that Humane Nature could in any men so far degenerate as to deliberate about such their destroying a whole City by Fire but would reserve his judgment on the Point till he saw it before him in the Quotations out of the Canon-Law as well as Canonists What the Event of his Judgment will be I know not and I confess I have been very sparing of my time in discoursing with Roman Catholicks about any Point of the Doctrine of their Church since I read it in Cardinal Tolets Inst. sacerdotum lib. 4. cap. 3. and 7. p. 612. and in our Countryman Holcot a Famous Schoolman in lib. 1. Sententiarum Quest. 1. ad sextum principale in replica That if he hears his Prelate Preaching
to be walked on in a Frost after a Thaw We are told by the Conformist in the Friendly Debate in p. 112. That he has heard some of the Nonconformist Divines acknowledge that they did not scruple what the Conformists do but thought it unhandsome for them to do it c. And the meaning was in plain English that they were ashamed to confess their error But if some of those Divines whose low Education conducted them perhaps from being Servitors in the University to domineer in their Cures and who through the Track of their Lives might be traced by the slime of their Pedantry and whose Trade was or should have been the Study of Divinity the Precepts of which and their fragments collected out of Augustinus and Aquinas as well as the example of the former obliged them to retract those Errors publickly that they had so utter'd I say that if they were yet so Picquez d' Honneur that they would not let their fallibility appear in Villages and even the falsity of those Principles of theirs by which as many Hundreds of Thousands here were slain as were bare hundreds murder'd in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary they have true Cause to think it dishonourable for them to restrain their Compassion from any high born Prince the brightness of whose great Martial Atchievements has dazel'd the Universe and will continue to do it when he is in the shades below and one who may say as the Pope did to the Iansenists that he had never studyed Divinity and they are very unfit to Cashiere him from the Church Militant if he doth not in the view of Mankind appear to make a Retreat at the Call of their Trumpet which has been known to give so uncertain a sound and such may be ashamed to dispair of his finding out any false Notions he may have received in Religion and to conclude that he hath not privately discovered them because he doth not openly recant them and to expect that after perhaps he hath erred in the Tenet of Confession he should yet presently make the World his Confessor about it and grant him nothing of the Guard of Honour in the Case but Monopolize the temptations from honour to their sinful obscure selves But as no man can take the measures of anothers Sins without taking those of his temptations so none but a Prince can know the temptations of a Prince Dic mihi si fueris tu Leo c. The like Pedantry therefore in the great St. Ierom was inexcusable as to that sharp saying of his Miror si aliquis Rex salvabitur and that Satyrical fancy of his hath since met with its Match by some that have sent St. Ierom to the Devil as fantastically for so I find it said in Dr. Donnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After so many Ages of a Devout and Religious Celebrating the Memory of St. Jerom Causaeus hath spoken so dangerously that Ratio 5. Campian says he pronounceth him to be as deep in Hell as the Devil Moreover I think it great injustice to any Prince who has changed his Religion of Protestancy for Popery that Protestants should at the same time be jealous of his retaining no tincture of his former Principles that the Bigotted and Jesuited Papists are jealous of his scarce retaining a tincture of his new ones and by jealousie too as cruel as the Grave as appeared by the fate of Harry the 4 th who because he did not and indeed could not devest himself of that humanity toward his Protestant Subjects that was riveted in his nature after he was absolv'd by the Chair of Infalibility and reconciled to the very Scorners Chair of the Iesuites yer merely because he had not a window to his breast through which every capricious Priest might look in at and might thereby put in what Principles he pleased they were resolved to cut one there and after Iohn Chastel had begun to practice his incision an execrable Apology for it was Published in which Apology Printed in Latin at Lyons Anno 1611. the Assertion or Head of Chapter 3d Part 2d is Chastel had no purpose to kill a King and of Chapter 4th there Henry of Burbon cannot be called a King by reason of his pretended Conversion and of Chapter 8th there Neither can he be King tho absolved by the Pope and of Chapter 9th Neither can he be called a King by the Right of Succession and of Chapter 11th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones are Juâ—e Divino Humano to be put to death and of Chapter 12th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones may be killed by private Persons if it cannot be done otherwise The Assassination of Harry the 3 d of France bears with it a Memento mori to any Roman Catholick Prince who will not be thorow paâ—ed in obeying the Precepts of Bigotted Priests against Hereticks and to this effect runs the Clamour of the Actions of such Bigots either you must go our pace to Heaven and Travel by our Mapp see with our Eyes and let us ride you when we will and make you ride over your Heretical Subjects or we will precipitate you to the Devil I mention'd it before out of D' Ossat that it was known at Rome that Queen Anne the Wife to King Iames had some inclination to the Roman Catholick Religion and no doubt but she was perverted to it in some measure by some of the Romish Priests who were then as since insolently over officious to tempt Princes to change their Faith and tho none of our Histories mentions any thing of her being a Papist or inclining to be so yet D' Ossat as I said relates how Villeroy supposed her to have turn'd Papist but our Historians unanimously mention one thing that she was designed as well as the King and Prince and others to be blown up by the Gun-Powder-Treason a thing that may give one who turns Son of the Church of Rome cause to say Mallem esse Herodis porcum quam filium No doubt but the mind of any Popish Prince coming out of the cool and sweet Air of a benign and rational Religion to that of such a torrid Zone and Shambles of mans flesh as the Doctrine of Popery presents will be oftener in his thoughts travelling back to that Religion then the prying World can know But the Gentleman my friend is not any way tempted in point of honour to delay his Return to the Church of England and he lately mentioning to me his wishes of the speedy Arrival of your Lordships Papers told me that possibly he and I should be both gainers thereby and that I should gain the Victory and he the Truth and that he would never account those Priests of Rome to be the Missionaries of Christ who if their Doctrine be refused shall instead of shaking off the dust of their feet in any house reduce it to Ashes and further affirmed that it were less absurd and extravagant to wish there were no Religion
at all in the World whether reveal'd or natural then that any such Hypothesis or Doctrine that Authorised a Practice of that nature should be universally receiv'd in it as its Religion For tho natural Religion acquaints me with the Divine Power and gives me hopes of my Creators not rendring me miserable by that Power and the rather when I have seen that many of the Contemners of Heavens Thunder lived prosperously on Earth yet if a Model of Religion pretended to be the only reveal'd one shall controuling all the Dictates of natural Religion enjoyn the firing of whole Cities and mankinds confused outraging one another I must abandon my further hopes of Bliss from such a Being as was it self miserable for so that would be whose nature was still in a fermentation of Anger and Passion and rear'd up Men as the Workmanship of its hands only to dash those curious but brittle Vessels against one another and that even for such a Being 't were more eligible to be then to be always so miserable as well as 't would prove so for my self too then to be always in Torment by Anger But we know that as God is the God of Order and not of Confusion so he is likewise an overflowing Fountain of Goodness and so infinitely benign that if his Nature were rightly represented to an ingenious Atheist if he did not at last believe he would ardently wish there were a God and I think if there be any number of that degenerate sort of Mankind called Atheists as was said that such degeneracy must needs be chiefly caused by the mis-representations of the Divine Being I have before mentioned how Tully in his de Natura Deorum shews great Wit in his Anger against the Epicureans for their representing the Deity as unconcern'd for Mankind and against the rendring God careless of the welfare of his Creature man he there exclaims Deinde si maxime talis est Deus ut nullâ gratiâ nullâ hominum charitate teneatur valeat How passionately then would he have upbraided any Mushroom Sect of Philosophers if such had sprung up in the World as in his time and before there never did that had represented the Nature of the Deity as solicitous and careful only of procuring the misery of Mankind and disorder of the World and enjoyning men to spit fire at one another exposing them to the sury of Wild Beasts if they lived in Desarts and of wilder Creatures that is themselves if they lived in Cities There was an Ingenious and Learned and Pious Divine I mean Cressy who in our days forsook the Communion of the Church of England and turned Roman Catholick and went beyond Sea and returned to England in the Conjuncture of the petulant Insolence and was so far infected therewith and likewise with the Chagrin incident to sickness that he writ very peevishly against our Church and one of our great Church Men and his Writings were justly censured by the Earl of Clarendon but according to my former Observation so much of the Character of the rationality of the Protestant Religion that he was long bred up in remain'd in him indelibile that I believe had he been made an Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity he would neither have took away a drop of Blood from any Protestant nor a hair from his head and in his Reply to that Noble Lord he is so candid as speaking of the Position charged on Roman Catholicks that no Salvation is to be had out of that Church to affirm that all Catholicks grant that this is not necessarily to be understood of an actual external Communion and that many Christians of vertuous devout lifes and having had a constant preparation of mind to prefer truth whensoever effectually discovered to them before all temporal advantages they dying in this disposition tho not externally joyned to the Church will be esteem'd by our merciful Lord as true Members of his Mystical Body the Church No Papist but one bred a Protestant could have had thoughts so large concerning the extent of the invisible Church or fancy that what is before mentioned is granted by all Catholicks and should I hear any Priest in a Fryars Cowle grant what is abovesaid I should fancy that he remain'd an invisible Protestant and that he continued so exuberantly good in his natural disposition as not to be able to frame an Idea in his mind of the damning of Mens Souls and making Coals of their Bodies and Bonefires of their Cities for mistaken Sentiments in Religion and had Mr. Cressy lived till this time 't is possible your Lordship by your Notification of that fiery Tenet of the Papal Church aforesaid might have been an instrument of his visible Return to our Church for his labour'd heating himself with Passion upon the mention of the Practice of that thing in his Church History shews sufficiently how he would have abhorr'd any Church that abhorr'd not that Tenet The Place I refer to in his Church History is in the 14th Book 4th Chapter where he doth strenuously endeavour to prove that Monk Austin was unjustly Accused of having killed 1200 Brittish Monks and having said there § 9th yet of late this poysonous humour of Calumniating God's Saints is become the Principal Character of the New Reformed Gospel he goes on thus I will add one example more of a Calumniator to wit Mr. William Prynn a late stigmatised Presbyterian c. But alas what repentance can be expected in such a person speaking of Prynn who is inveteratus malorum dierum when we see in his decrepit Age his rancorous Tongue against innocent Catholicks yet more violently set on Fire of Hell so far as to sollicit a general Messacre of them by publishing himself and tempting others to damn their Souls also by publishing through the whole Kingdom that in the last Fatal Calamity by Fire happening to London they were the only Incendiaries This he did tho himself at the same time confessed that not the least proof could be produced against them but said he it concerns us that this Report should be believed Complaints of this most execrable Attentat were made and several Oaths to Confirm this were offer'd but in vain But however surely there is a Reward for the innocent oppress'd and whatsoever Mr. Prynn may think doubtless there is a God that judgeth the World. Let him therefore remember what the Spirit of God saith quid detur tibi aut quid apponatur tibi ad linguam dolosam sagittae potentis acutae cum carbonibus desolatoriis is what must be given to thee and what must be assign'd to thee for thy Portion O deceitful Tongue sharp Darts cast by an Almighty Arm with devouring Coals of â—uniper And it follows § 10. With as good reason therefore St. Austin may be Accused of the slaughter of those Brittish Monks as St. Columban a holy Irish Monk c. might be charged with the most horrible death of Queen Brunecheld c. This good
Moravia and all the heritable Lands of the House of Austria Franconia Bavaria and the upper Palatinate no Protestants are permitted to have the publick Exercise of their Religion and the Effects of the Emperor's Persecuting the Protestants of Hungary the World knows and feels and have with horror gazed on the Protestants of Transylvania putting themselves under the Protection of the Turk that they might enjoy their Profession of Christianity And how the Bohemians were treated by a Jesuited Emperor twenty years after 1579 I have spoken when I gave an account of the Jesuites Emblem painted on the Arms of Austria viz. I have practiced That the Duke of Savoy practiced nothing of Cruelty to his Heretical Subjects in the Valleys about the time 1597 those poor Protestants may under God thank their old friend Harry the 4th who in the year 1600 took almost his whole Country after his having been before in a Contest with him by way of demand for the Marquisat of Salusses and his having applied to the Pope to interpose therein the Emperor having likewise demanded that Marquisat in Right of the Empire and while that Duke was in fear of being fleeced by the Pope and Emperor and Harry the 4th 't is no wonder if he suffered his Heretical Subjects to graze or sleep in whole Skins in the Neighbouring Valleys of Piemont but in the year 1655 there ran in those Valleys such a torrent of Protestant blood as did bear away all the dire Examples of Cruelty before it that History could shew as appears out of Sir Samuel Morelands History of the Churches in those Valleys and Book 4th and Chap. 4. where in his Audience Speech as Envoy to the Duke of Savoy in the behalf of the Protestants in those Valleys on that sad occasion he saith Si reviviscant omnes omnium temporum aetatum Nerones quod sine ullâ celsitudinis vestrae offensione dictum velim quemadmodum nullà ejus culpâ quicquam factum esse crediâ—us puderet prefecto eos ut qui nihil non mite ac humanum ad haec facinâ—ra si spectas excogitasse se reperirent interim exhorrescunt Angeli Mortales obstupescunt Ipsum coelum morientium clamoribus attonitum esse videtur ipsaque terra diffuso tot hominum innocuorum cruore erubescere And as for the Kingdom of Poland the fear of the Turkish Power then gave the Prince there no leisure to attend squabbles about Heresy and Heretics and as for the interest he had in Sweden which too in the year 1599 had a Popish King as Sandys saith in his Europae Speculum that year writ yet were the Papists there then as he saith few and consequently the Heretics too many to be persecuted The very Interim spoke of by D' Ossat or Formula inter-Religionis as 't was called was a double bottom of Popery and Protestancy and nothing was expected to be its Fate but Divulsion Alsted in his Chronology mentions its Date with the words of Infaelix partus and the Protestants in Constance rather than they would embark in that double bottom threw themselves overboard into the Sea of the Power of Ferdinand King of the Romans and Brother of Charles who soon used them not as their Protector but their Conqueror and 't is notorious that the Interim was professedly designed to continue only till the Council of Trents determinations were ended and 't is likewise as notorious that that Council was called designedly and reverâ for the exterminium of Heretics and its being called ad restituendos collapsos eclesiae mores was but umbrage and shamme And what Quarter Heretics were to expect from the Tridentine Spirit Father Paul hath told us in his History p. 693 and that as to the year 1563. Advice came to Rome that the King of France had made a Peace with the Hugonots the particular Conditions being not known of yet And the Pope thinking it proceeded from some Prelates who tho they did not openly declare themselves to be Protestants yet did follow that Party he resolved to discover them and was wont to say he was wronged more by the Masqued Heretics then by the bare-faced Whereupon the last of March he gave order that the Cardinals who governed the Inquisition should proceed against them The Cardinal of Pisa answering that there was need of proper and special Authority the Pope ordain'd that a new Bull should be made which was dated the 7th of April and contained in Substance that the Pope being Vicar of Christ to whom he hath recommended the feeding of his Sheep and to reduce those that wander and to bridle with temporal Penalties those who cannot be gain'd by Admonitions he hath not since the beginning of his Assumption omitted to execute this Charge notwithstanding some Bishops are not only fallen into Heretical Errors but do also favour other Heretics opposing the faith For Provision wherein he commands the general Inquisitors of Rome to whom he hath formerly commended this business to proceed against such tho Bishops and Cardinals inhabiting in places where the Lutheran Sect is Potent with Power to cite them to Rome by Edict or to the Confines of the Church to appear personally or if they will not appear to proceed to Sentence which he will pronounce in private Consistory The Cardinals in Conformity to the Popes Commands cited by Edict to appear personally at Rome to purge themselves from imputation of Heresie and of being favourers of Heretics the Cardinal of Chastillon the Arch-Bishop of Aix the Bishop of Chartres and other Bishops in France His Holyness it seems thought that Cardinal and the Arch-Bishop and the Bishops to be Protestants in Masquerade and has given an example to some Furiosi among Protestants thus to miscal some of the better sort of them In fine that which I aim at by referring to these Historical Passages is this to shew that some of the very Grandees of the Church of Rome hold Principles in Religion that allow indulgence to the persons of Heretics I have instanced how D' Ossat in the Popes presence was a Confessor for moderation in this kind and spake like a skillful Divine when he said That Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn and Theophylact on that place tells us that by Tares are meant Heretics Nor can it be unknown to men of great thought among the Papists that the sanguinary usage of Heretics hath much encreased their number not perhaps will it be denyed by the Critical Judges of things in the Papal World what was by one of our beaus esprits and great States-men I mean the Lord Viscount Falkland observed in Print That the Massacre in France made more Protestants in one night than all Calvins Works have done since their first publication According to that Observation That nothing surfeits soner than man's flesh 't is but natural to suppose that the
swarming of the Iesuites then in England and transforming themselves into several shapes among the divided Sects here and saith What liberty the Priests and Iesuites take how far they prevail on the People what Countenance they receive from this Government is apparent enough by not proceeding against them in Iustice as if no Laws were in force for their punishment Your private Negotiations with the Pope and your promises that as soon as you can â—stablish your own greatness you will protect the Catholics and the insinuations that you will countenance them much further are sufficiently known and understood and of their dependance upon and devotion to you there needs no Evidence beyond the Book lately written by Mr. White a Romish Priest and dedicated to your Favourite Sir Kenelm Digby Entitled the Grounds of Obedience and Government in which he justifies all the Grounds and Maximes in your Declaration and determines positively that you ought to be so far from performing any promise or observing any Oath that you have taken if you know that it is for the good of the People that you break it albeit they foreseeing all that you now see did therefore bind you by Oath not to do it and that you offend both against your Oath and Fidelity to the People if you maintain those limitations you 〈◊〉 sworn to and sure what you do must be supported by such Casuists And afterwards speaks how Cromwel in distrust of the whole English Nation was Treating to bring over a Body of Swiss to serve him as the Ianisaries do the Turk The Declaration here referred to was Cromwels Declaration of October 31 Anno 1655 and which was supposed to have been worded by his Lord Keeper Fiennes wherein all the measures of Justice toward the Cavaliers and particularly the Public Faith of the Parliament for the punctual and exact performance of Articles with them after the vast gain that had accrued to the Parliament by their Compositions and an Act of Grace and Oblivion afterward granted to the Royal Party are avowedly broken and in p. 36. of that Declaration 't is said If the Supreme Magistrate were tyed up to the ordinary Rules and had not liberty to proceed upon the illustrations of reason against those who are continually suspected there would be wanting in such a State the means of Common Safety c. and before in p. 12 and 13. the Iesuites are out-done as to the keeping of no faith with Heretics by the asserting in effect in general that nulla fides est servanda and the humour of Pope Paul the 4th is Repeated who as the Author of the History of the Council of Trent tells us declared it in the Consistory That 't was Heresie to say the Pope can bind himself And we are assured out of Mr. Peter Walsh his History and Vindication of the Irish Remonstrance that Edmund Reilly the titular Popish Primate of Ireland who at a public Dinner boasted that he never had been friend or well wisher to the King and his two Brothers and the Duke of Ormond did yet write Precepts under his Seal to all the Province of Armagh to pray for the Health Establishment and Prosperity of Cromwell Protector and his Government More need not be said of the danger of Popery and Arbitrary Power to the Nation if God and man had not hindered Lamberts Usurpation over it I have mention'd how some of the Plot-Winesses have deposed somewhat thereof and some of his Countrymen have in discourse affirm'd his having been there a Fautor of Papists and my self observing it to a worthy Gentleman of Yorkshire that one of the Popish Lords in the Tower did in February 1662 pass a Grant from the Crown of several Mannors in Yorkshire forfeited by the Attainder of Iohn Lambert he averr'd to me that Lamberts Son enjoys that Estate at this day It had been just for the Almighty to have punished the extravagance of the Fears and Jealousies that Reigned in the time of the Royal Martyr about his not being a Protestant a Character of Religion he had constantly own'd in the view of the World both by his publick Devotions and Alliances and particularly that with Holland which chiefly his Zeal for that Religion made him to ensure by the Marriage of his Daughter with the Prince of Orange in the time that the War between the Crown of Spain and the States was depending by permitting a private Gentleman whose name perhaps had not come to public knowledg but for the figure he made in illegal Arms so far to march with his Religion undiscern'd through the Quarters of all the gathered Churches and the Classical ones too that he deceived in that point so many that called themselves the very Elect and who were as well vers'd in the business of all Religions as Iews are in Coines and in the way of adulterating them and who after that Religion had always been the Staple Commodity of England as much as Wooll did almost nothing else but Weave and Dye and Tenter the same with all subtilty of Art possible to them and as the Israelites marched out of Egypt without the farewel of a Dogs barking at them we were then near the point of being driven back to Egypt to Civil and Spiritual Slavery without the least â—arm given us by any of our best and deep mouth'd Dogs against Popery But the extreme danger to Protestancy from that intended Usurpation hath been long since over nor do I expect that any fatality of that kind can ever happen to it from any Prince of the Right Line how much a Papist soever he may be that is to say from one who was swathed with the Laws in his Cradle and will be Circumscribed with them in his Crown According to that great severe truth I observed before of the fate of the ten Tribes after they had made a defection from the Line of David that they were punished with a Succession of 10 Kings and not one ' good one in the whole Pack and their falling at last as a Prey to Forraigners it was the Lot of England justly to suffer what has been here described from various Governments and Governors for its defection from the Royal Line and the experience of our disastrous past Calamities must needs convince all men of serious thought and sense that we can have no Usurper how true a Religion soever he may own but will be false to the Interest of the Nation and that particularly by diving it and thereby as much depretiating it in the view of all Christendom as a great Diamond would be if cut in two for tho Diamonds or Pearles be equal and like in their Figures Waters Colours and Evenness yet if they differ in their Weights and Magnitudes those are the Roots of their Prices and a Diamond of Decuple weight is of Centuple value I therefore think the Kings Loyal long Parliament did consult the public Security when in the great Act of the Test they enjoyn'd
Person as of very great Abilities so of a great and frank inclination to employ them even to the over-obliging a Country and which though naturally attended with envy from some must too be with acknowledgements from others of that Dignity and Authority that his mind is possessed of and such as Valerius Maximus speaking of as innate in Famous Men who have no extrinsic Authority saith of it Quam rectè quis dixerit longum beatum honorem esse sine honore And he who in the course of his History and his other Works hath appear'd so Impartial and Accurate in his Observations of Men and things may very well be supposed not to have been partial in his comparison of Papists and Dissenters nor do I think he receded from his usual close judging of things when in one of his Books he said that it is not to be denied that it were better there were no Revealed Religion in the World then that Mankind should by its influences be so vitiâ—ted as to become more barbarous and cruel then it would be if Acted by no higher Principles than those are with which Nature inspires Men. I will not with our Learned and Reverend Iudge undertake to compute how many times Popery is worse then the Religion of the Romans but this I will say that had I been in the Roman Senate and had there heard any one propound to them a removal of their minds out of that Coast of Religion which by the light of Nature lay open before them into the Region of the Iesuites Morals I would have said My Masters let us keep where we are and should have expected that the Reasons I would have urged for their so doing would have had the effect of the good Omen that happen'd in that remarkable Crisis when the Roman Senators were debating whether they should quâ—t Rome or remove to Veij and when a Souldier then coming on the Guard and his Captain being heard to cry out to him Signiser signum statue hic optimè manebimus occasioned their adhering to Rome I think that no Protestant who compares the Tenets of the Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time with the Tenets of Popery will prefer the latter before the former But it is not deniable that before King Iames's time and then and since many Puritans and Nonconformists have made great Schisms in the Church and disturbances in the State and that especially in some particular Conjunctures The great Epoche of 41 in England and likewise in Ireland will in our Histories preserve the Memory of the outragious Principles of many Presbyterian Divines in the one Kingdom and of Popish ones in the other but if any shall be so partial to the Papists as either to justify their Commotion in Ireland or to deny all part of the influence that Commotion had on ours here he will find himself a vain imposer on the World. A great inspector into our modern English Affairs I mean the late Earl of Clarendon hath in his Animadversions on Cressys 's Book against Dr. Stilling fleet said That nothing can be stranger then that Mr. Cressy should so magnify the general obedience of all Roman Catholicks that none of them was ever in Rebelâ—ion against the King or his Father when he knows very well and hath some marks of it that the whole Irish Nation very few Persons of Honour excepted joyn'd in Rebellion against the King but for that Rebellion neither Presbyterian Independant or Anabaptists had been able to have done any harm in England For the Scots Rebellion was totally suppressed and their Army disbanded before the Irish Rebellion begun It was that which produced all the mischief that succeeded in England and gave those Sects in Religion opportunity to bring in their Confusion to the destruction of Church and State c. But as to the Papists coming in for their share in the guilt of our Commoâ—ion here we have the incontestable Authority of the Royal Martyr who in one of his printed Declarations saith And we are confident that a greater number of that Religion meaning the Popish is in the Army of the Rebels then in our own and 't was there before said All men know the great number of Papists which serve in their Army Commanders and others The Author of the Regal Apology printed in the Year 48 in p. 36 answereth that part of the Declaration of the House of Commons that so unworthily râ—flects on his Majesty as to offering a toleration to the Papists in Ireland tontrary to his former resolutions which saith the Author was on great and pressing necessity which hath no Law and to that degree of necessity as the two Houses had driven him so the Consequences were to be set on their Score not his own yet even then in his Letters about that Affairs published by themselves he doth insist on it that the Bargain may be made as good as can be for him But I have seen other Letters from one of his Secretaries to the Irish which I am assured were true wherein where these expressions after expostulation of their delays in his Assistance He is inform'd that taking advantage of his low Condition you insist on something in Religion more then formerly you were contented with He hath therefore commanded me to let you know that were his Condition much lower you shall never force him to any further Concessions to the prejudice of his Conscience and of the true Protestant Religion in which he is resolved to live and for which he is ready to die and that he will joyn with any Protestant Prince nay with these Rebels themselves how odious soever meaning his two Houses rather then yield the least to you in this particular I should with extreme reluctance touch the Sores of these Sects who yet have both at several times given such deadly wounds to the peace of the Kingdom but that they are Nusances to the publick quiet in raking up the odious Comparisons of one anothers practices and that the Papists on the occasion of any of the worse sort of Protestants or Nonconformists being Convicted of Sedition or Treason a thing that may be expected from the degeneracy of Humane Nature to happen oftener from some of a Religion of so great Numbers then from a perswasion that has Comparatively but a handful of men for its Disciples just as accordingly perhaps where one Papist is hanged for Clipping or Coyning twenty Protestants are so â— are so apt to expect that the World should acquit the present Principles and former practises of that Sect from Disloyalty on their Out-cry that they are no Puritans or Presbyterians and as ridiculously as if a false Coyner Arraigned for the Fact should trouble the Court with a Plea and Noise that he was no House-breaker and but that on the detection of a Plot of Papists several persons that have in their publick Capacities done many Acts of Hostility to the Interest of the Kingdom yet entirely by being more
mind was there in the Divines that governed our Church in the times of the late Vsurpation when those Triers of Ministers would allow none to have a Living or Cure of Souls that asserted the Tenets of Arminius in Religion which yet carry a face of so much probability to be maintained that a man who having used his utmost care in the investigation of truth therein asserts them may claim it as his due by the purchase of Christs Blood that when he is required to deliver his opinion about the same his asserting it that way should not expose him to punishment And there is no Controverted Religionary Speculative Point of that Nature wherein there is among Learned Men probabilis causa litigandi and in some Cases too where it may touch too close upon our Articles and Homilies in which liberty of differing in Judgment is here either prejudicial to their Interest or common Esteem Thus tho all the Reformed Churches make the Pope to be Antichrist and particularly our Church of England in its Homilies hath done so our Famous Dr. Hammond adventured as he thought himself obliged in Conscience to publish it that Simon Magus was the man. The most judicious Comparers of times are sensible that there is now a more valuable libera theologia in England then was during the Usurpation How glad would many of the Independent and Presbyterian Divines then have been of the liberty to have taught their Flocks the Notions they then thought of importance as to the Divine Decrees tho they had been allowed to have so done only in Surplices or in Vests of Indian feathers or any habits imaginable The old way of arguing about speculative points in Religion with passion and loudness and being tedious therein is grown out of use and a Gentlemanly Candour in discourse of the same with that moderate temper that men use in debating natural Experiments has succeeded in its room and 't is accounted Pedantry for any one in good Company to pass for a Victor in Notions by having the last word and seeming a Baffler in dispute And the truth is our Divines and the Lay Literati having since the King's Restoration been more addicted to the Study of real Learning then formerly which requires quiet of thought in its pursuit hath brought noise out of Request I need not again mention the Obligation our Land hath received from the Royal Society in making so great a Plantation of real knowledge in it 'T was high time at last when the Kingdom was settled on its proper Basis to improve it with such strong and nervous knowledge that would be like the strong man keeping Possession in mens understandings during which either Poperies or Presbyteries Kingdom of Darkness cannot overthrow our Quiet There were in the Year 1599. reckoned in Christendom 2,25044 Monasteries and from whence all the great Revenue there bestowed on men to think sent not perhaps one Notion of real Learning into the World. But their professed business was to extinguish the light of Knowledge and not to increase it and that which they made their real Study was to find out Artifices to make Mankind fit still and quiet in the dark and to invent torments and punishments for those that would not do so and to ridicule those who pryed into nature and but looked toward Arithmetick and Geometry by the Name of Students of the black Art and Conjurers a humour that was not quite exterminated hence from the time of Fryer Bacon to my Lord Bacon for our pious Martyrologer mentioning occasionaly Dr. d ee the Mathematician called him Dr. Dee the Conjurer Thus Almighty God tho the first thing he made for the World in general was external light yet one of the last things he hath made or so much blessed the World with is real Learnings intellectual Light and even that whereby we so knowingly converse with his works of Nature and so careless was Mankind in considering the frame of their own bodies that Dr. Henshaw a late Ornament of the Royal Society hath truely observed it in his Book of Fermentation That within the Compass of this last Century the knowledge of Anatomy hath been enriched by a full third part at least Mankind was so busie in murthering one anothers bodies of old under the Notion of Christians and afterward as Hereticks that it had no leisure to dissect them and was wholly taken up by studying experiments of Cruelty equal to the making of live Anatomies of each other And tho the Holy Iesus came into the World not to destroy mens lives but to save them and for that purpose tho the Divine Philanthropy chose that time for his coming into the World when the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was arrived at a greater heighth then ever before yet by the depraved nature of man perverting and corrupting the use of Religion the fantastick vile sacrificing of men hath since encreased In the Infanticidium of Herod's that was presently after the Birth of the Holy Child Iesus Samuel Siderocrates saith that there were slain of Infants of 2 years old and under that Age 444000 and Paulus Volzius makes them to be a Million and 44 Thousand And afterward among the Heathens he was accounted the Magnus Apollo not who could find ways of saving but destroying Christian men No fewer than seven Books were writ by Vlpian to shew the several punishments that ought to be inflicted on Christians And tho Livy saith of the Romans in hoc gloriari licet nulli gentium mitiores placuisse paenas yet Tacitus tells us of the Christians in the 15th Book of his Annals Primo correpti qui fatebantur deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt Ea pereuntibus addita ludibria aut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent aut crucibus affixi aut flammandi aut ubi defecisset dies in usum nocturni luminis urerentur Several Authors relate it as a Decree of Nero ' s Quisquis Christianum se esse confitetur is tanquam generis humani convictus hostis sine ulteriori sui defensione capite plectitor Enough hath been already said to parallel the Cruelty of new Rome with that of old toward the Heterodox and how ingenious the Virtuosi of the Inquisition have been in finding out such torments for Heretics as can multiply one death into a thousand I with horrour think of How profound a submission and deference to the unaccountable Will of Heaven doth this Consideration require namely that Christs little Flock even in the Ark of his Church is not only endangered by a deluge from without but by one within and that of its own blood and that the Sheep of Christ appear to a common eye to be as it were made on purpose to feed the grievous Wolves that are entred in among them and as it may be supposed that thousands of harmless Sheep were in the Ark of Noah
the Curious abroad shall send to their knowing Correspondents here for a Political Map or Scheme of our Affairs and ask what is become of the fantastick Vtopias Oceanas and new Atlantis'es that our late Visionaries and idle Santerers to a pretended new Ierusalem â—roubled England with and shall further send hither to their friends that old Question Quid rerum nunc geritur in Anglia The Return they will receive from England will be to the following effect viz. That People in that Noble and very Populous Country do there mind things that the Trade of words is spoiled that the business of sowing Tares is over and that he will be the inimicus homo to himself who doth it that the sowing the Wind of Errors in the Church and the reaping the Whirl-wind of Confusion in the State is grown hateful that they have done weaving of jus Divinum and dying of Religion with false Colours and preparing Nets and Snares of death for one another and that the most ungovernable Animals troubling others with Projects of Government of the Church is out of fashion that they have done there with Science falsly so called and quae non habet amicum nisi ignorantem and with Trade falsly so called the false Religion-one that hath no friend but the knave that their eyes are there opened and they see that res accendunt lumina rebus and their hands are at work in Trade and Lucre without turpitude that they can no more be brought like St. Francis his Novice to set Plants with the head downward nor at the instigation of factious Heads of Religionary Parties to do with their Notions as Fryar Iohn at his Abbots Command did with a dry withered stick which he planted and twice a day for a whole year fetched water two Miles off to water it and omitting it no Festival day that they speak more of Christ and talk less of Anti-Christ and do promote Christianity by solid Industry and Charity and the living there are Aparrel'd with their own Linen as the Dead are with their own Wooll and are grown so dexterous in the Linen Trade that it may be said of them what Klockius doth of the Dutch 't is to be doubted plusne in lanificio an vero in linificio illi praestent and thus by means of a true and undefiled and laborious Religion there Antichristus lino periit as I may say with Allusion to a forementioned Phrophecy The Genius and Interest that England hath in several Conjunctures been intent on devouring the Religion-Trade and which still hath slip'd from its seisure hath now at last effectually swallowed it up and just as a Cormorant swallowing an Eel and the Eel slipping out through its Body is soon by that potent Creature again swallowed and again slipping through its Body is at last certainly macerated and dissolv'd in its Stomach and still the Cormorant hath weakened the Eel in its passage through it thus hath it in England fared with the Religion-Trade that as Luther said of one great point in Religion it was doctrina stantis cadentis Ecclesiae the Notion of the not getting or losing by Religion there is accounted the Doctrina stantis cadentis Reipublicae That time hath laid so close and long a Siege to the Popish and Presbyterian Religion-Trade that as it was in the Siege of Ostend there is no more Earth left it to defend That as Physicians observe of superfetation in Women if it be made with considerable intermission the latter most commonly proves Abortive for that the first being confirmed engrosseth the Aliment from the other it hath happened so in England to the superfetation of Reformation That the Trade of Reformation unduely prosecuted by Art hath been diverted by the Reformation of Trade resulting from Nature and the over spreading the Land with such a great and useful Linen-Trade and Materials for the same as hath in a manner exterminated Poverty from the same And while now Nature seems to Court our Expectation with the probability of this new Scheme of Trade and Manufacture and which perhaps will stay with us till the Scheme or fashion of this World shall finally pass away I shall take occasion to discharge my self of a promise I long ago made to your Lordship when you were Treasurer of the Navy which was to send you an account of the rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-Cloth and of all the other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax imported into England yearly and now that it may appear what quantities of Hemp and Flax and the Manufactures thereof have been here imported and from what Countries and that thereby we may usefully take our measures about the proportion to which this new Trade and improvement of our Land should at least be advanced and because likewise the former measures of computing what Sail-Cloth and fine Linen have been here imported were taken generally from blundering Estimates and random Calculations and that we may see it possible tho France hath got the start of us in the Linen Manufacture that we may yet overtake it in the Race for that 't is apparent tho much Sail-Cloth yet little or no fine Linen hath thence come to us I shall here entertain your Lordship with an Account of the Linen-Cloth Canvas Linen Yarn Hemp Flax and Cordage imported into the Port of London from Michaelmas 1668. to Michaelmas 1669. which was drawn up for me by the favour of one of the late Farmers of the Customs I happened to make choice of that year for the quantity of those importations as being a year of Peace but was since told by the Merchants that that year being the second after the Fire of London there was then imported into London about a 3 d part less of those Commodities than was in common years the which happened because the year before being the next after the Fire an extraordinary glut of those Goods was then brought in Your Lordship thereby seeing what then came into the Port of London will in effect see what came into the whole Kingdom the Out-Ports bearing a proportion of a 3 d to that of London and by finding that we have so much Hemp from the East Countries now we are put to it to go to Market there with ready Money instead of our woollen Manufactures as formerly as we likewise do for our Pitch and Tar and Masts find that we are more closely concerned in point of interest to have our Hemp provided at home And it will appear high time for us to begin somewhat like a Linen Manufacture when a running view of this Account presents us with so great a quantity of old Sheets imported from Holland and France tho perhaps designed by us for our Plantations and of Linen Yarn and some Linen from Scotland and since in that year by an Abstract of the exportations of Ireland I have seen that Country so long unsettled had yet so much Linnen Yarn and Linen Cloth for its own use that 522
told me he knew well enough that the Canon Law did not as such bind all Papists in foro conscientiae but he would stay in no Church that he should find to be built in any Akeldama or Field of Blood that is a Church that approved of Tenets destructive of Civil Societies or condemned not Tenets that where any other Religion than the Popes was would Condemn men like Nebuchadnezor to grasing and to solitude or if they would live in Towns or Cities make them live there in Houses under Ground as Dr. Browne in his Travels saith He saw some Towns in the Turkish Dominions where Christians so lived like the Troglodytes and subterraneous Nations about Egypt and which might be occasioned by many Armies marching that way and burning of Towns en passant and that till the Pope disclaimed this power and damned such Tenet in his Canon Law that hung up there a Light conspicuous to the World for the lawful kindling of the Torches that should set fire to Heretical Cities such Cities as he called Heretical would be in fear of their being incendio delendae and that in the mean time the Iesuites who assert the plenitude of his power would implicitly obey his Commands and their Emissaries execute theirs without considering whether Gratian as a Fool or a Knave misapplied Cyprian and he granted that if as an Universal Censor morum the Pope did Command the Iesuites or others to inflict spiritual Censures in Cases of Sin or Non-belief of any Religionary Notion and those Censures were not to operate beyond the Soul that Civil Societies might yet be maintained but to give the Pope power to issue out Orders to burn the Cities and Towns where the Roman Catholick Religion is not professed is said he to give him Arbitrary Power over a great part of the World and to leave it to his Arbitrage whether there shall be any Political Government and Commerce in the States and Kingdoms of Hereticks and the World might suffer Confusion by the Papacy's having this power de facto as much as if it had it de jure and that several places have been burned as Heretical and when certainly they had a right not to be so served and particularly the Heretical Villages at the Massacre of Merindol of which Dr. Heylin in his Geoghraphy in Folio makes mention saying that in the Year 1560. there were above 1250 Churches of the Hugonots in France which cannot in such a long time but be wonderfully augmented tho scarce any of them have scaped some Massacre or other Of these Massacres two are most memorable viz. that of Merindol and Chabiers as being the first and that of Paris as being the greatest That of Merindol happened in the Year 1545. the instrument of it being Minier the President of the Council of Aix for having Condemned those poor people of Heresy he mustered a small Army and set fire on the Villages He directed me further for the proof of that Fact to Maimbourg's History of Calvinism Book 2d where he mentions the Decree of the Parliament of Aix to which Heylin refers and saith Maimbourg of it Par le quel il Condamn ' par Contumace dix neuf de Ces Heretiques à estre brasléz c. ordonne que toutes les Maisons de Merindol qui sont toutes remplies de Ces Heretiques soient entierement démolies renverses de fond en comble c. He further said that there was another guess Fire projected by the Jesuites as was before mentioned out of Thuanus and which was abetted by the Pope which shewed there was another Pope beside Eugenius that thought the burning of Heretical Cities lawful and meritorious and he referred it to the Consideration of the Criticks in Gun-powder how far so great a quantity of it lodged in a strait Vault might have tended to the demolishing of the Heretical Cities of Westminster and even of London if the experiment of the Gun-powder Treason had took effect for said he the utmost power of Gun-powder was never yet tryed He told me that Osborn in his King Iames having spoke of the Gun-powder Treason saith I never met two of the like conceit concerning any effect or extent this Powder might have reached had it not failed of success some men confining it to the Circle it lay in and no farther whereas the judgment of others no less experienced delivered at least the whole Isle to the fury of it and then he quotes it as the more probable Conjecture then that it could not but work dire effects on the City it self He further discoursed that in this Case of securing Protestant Cities from Fire at the Popes pleasure Pere Veron's artifice in making the Church of Rome chargeable with nothing to be believed but what is proposed by the Catholick Church in her general Councils or by her Vniversal Practice to be believed as an Article or Doctrine of Catholick Faith or any Papists in this Case joyning with Protestants to decry the Canon Law is but trifling away time as to any giving light to our understandings or keeping Fire from our Cities for if each Pope believes he hath this power and the Jesuites too believe it the Notion of a things not being de fide will not be sufficient to save our Cities when the Incendiaries even by the Doctrine of probability may save their Souls and when they shall have such Doctors as the Pope and Gratian and as they may think Cyprian for the opinion of burning the Nests of Heretical Hornets He moreover mentioned how Bellarmine as to the Tenet of all Christian Monarchies owing subjection to the Pope said the contrary to it is Heretical tho he well knew that no definition of the Church ever made it Heresy and might as well have called the denial of this Incendiary Power of the Pope against Heretical Cities to be Heresy Moreover he told me he had read Bellarmine cited in that Book of Donne p. 277. for writing against a Doctor who had defended the Venetian Cause against the Popes Censures and reprimanding that Doctor in these words viz. It is a grievous rashness not to be left unpunished that he should say the Canons as being but Humane Laws cannot have equal Authority with divine for this is a Contempt of the Canons as tho they were not made by the direction of the Holy Ghost and yet saith Donne citing that Doctor that impugned the Canons those Canons that he referred to were but two and cited but by Gratian. And that Donne further in that Page observed that when Parsons is to make his advantage of any Sentence in Gratian he uses to dignify it thus that it is translated by the Popes into the Corps of the Canon Law and so not only allowed and admitted and approved but commended and commanded canonized and determined for Canonical Law and authorized and set forth for Sacred and Authentical by all Popes whatsoever Treat of Mitag ca. 7. ◠42. That moreover tho we
Crescent there should so powerfully dâ—ive away the Cross. And thus too when Italy was over-run with the barbarous Nations partly of the Pagan and parâ—ly of the Arrian Belief Pagâ—nism and Arrianism being then Dotard Trees in the World the Seed of the Christian Doctrine falling on them from the Pious and Learned hands of Gregory the Great did easily work through them and for the Conversion of them and likewise of our English Nation about the Year 600 from Heathenish Idolatry the greatest Celebrations are due to him and no wonder if the Papacy then yielding so good Fruit did then cast so venerable a shade in the World. But that Tree afterward being observed to degenerate and decay within Six Years as the general Observation of our Apocalyptick Men is Valeat quantum valere possit and who thus tells us of the aetates Antichristi viz. Nascentis in Bonifacio circa Ann. 606 Iuveniliter exultantis in 2. Consilio Nicaeno Anno. 787. Regnantis in Hildebrando successoribus post An. 1075. Triumphantis in Leone Decimo Ann. 1517. Vltima senescentis est and say that shortly after it began to be consumptive and the decays of it being obvious to the view of the gazing World and the Branches of the Lutheran and Calvinistick Tenets appearing through its sides the quiet and gentle Order of Capuchins was invented for the praying for its growth and flourishing in the Year 1530. and ten years afterward the Active Fiery Order of the Iesuites was invented to extirpate the Men that wished ill to its growth and after that the Fathers of the Oratory were set up to extoll and preach up the Tree but Nature would not be extirpated the Potent Seminal Virtue of the Rational Religion dropt on the Tree of the other hath passed its roots through and through and as I may say transubstantiated it self through them and rooted it self deep both into the intellectual World and into States and Kingdoms and their Laws and will in time probably leave not one Fibre or Capillamentum of the Roots of the Irreligionary part of the Tenets of Popery remaining in Nature and shew the World that the Schisma Anglicanum that Sanders and other Papists cry out of as so unnatural was a mere natural Scissure or Rupture of the parts of the decaying Tree of the Church of Rome that came to pass from the Seed of the Protestant Religion being cast thereon And such a Natural Scissure hath the Religion of the Church of England made through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy and the Seeds that by the hands of Non-conformists probably guided by Iesuites have been laid on the Royal-Oak of the Church of England which they vainly thought decay'd were in effect thrown away and as the old Prophetic Fiction represents it that every great Tree included a certain Tutelar Genius and still living with it it may be said that Nature it self is the Tutelar Genius of that Plant of Renown that according to the Scripture expression we may call the Church of England and will ever live with it The Numbers of our Non-conformists are daily decaying and the names of their Tenets will probably be in a short time forgotten We are told in Townsend's Collections that Sir Walter Raleigh mention'd it in one of the Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth viz. in Anno 1593. That there were then near 20000 Brownists in England a number somewhat near as great as that of the Papists to be estimated from the Bishops Survey The name of those Schismaticks is evaporated and their Tenets are not more known or enquired into by the Populace then are the Heresies of the Bardesanistae the Aquei the Abelonitae the Messaliani and some others As was remarked concerning the late Non-Conforming Divines not having bred up their Sons to Non-Conformity the same thing is much observable among the Lay-Dissenters and that their Children do not generally imbibe their Parents principle of Dissentership but rather the contrary The Gross of their Numbers always consisting chiefly of Artisaâ—s and Retail-Traders in Corporations where before the King's Restoration they were numerous and naturally hating Popery and its Parade of Ceremonies cannot but be sensible of the sharp hatred against the same in the Professors of the Religion of the Church of England as by Law Established and how vastly such Professors do every where over-shoot the Dissenters in numbers and how the Seed of the Church of England hath as naturally and with as much ease pierced through the Body of theirs and dissolved its Roots as doth the Seed of an Oak often growing in the Body of a decayed Willow The times were known in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth King Iames and King Charles the first and likewise since till within these late years that some States-men when their Court-Interest was decaying and in danger of Extirpation could by wheadling Dissenters into a belief that they would plant their perswasion in the Church plant themselves the better in the State but humanly speaking such Conjunctures of time will come here no more and the seeming Eradication of such a Religion-Trade in Church and State is a strong Indication That our Heavenly Father or as I may say the God of Nature never planted it But if there were no Laws in being to extirpate any Dissenters Schism or separation from our Church or to Mulct or Excommunicate the obstinate Separaters or if any of those Laws were never Executed as through the vigilance of our Magistrates they have been yet is there one apparent way whereby the Conformists to the Church of England could now as easily lessen their numbers and consequently extirpate their Potency every where as they can frame a thought or resolution to do it and by no other Engine than that with which our Universities of Oxford and Cambridge batter the Contumacy of particular Towns-men namely not by Excommunicating but by discommuning them that is to say by forbidding the Scholars to Trade with them Their own forbearance of buying from Conformists the Wares that those of their own Sect do sell may reasonably invite such a reâ—aliation While heretofore they were so numerous in England their Congregated Churches helped many of the mean Artists and poor Traders thereof with the pretence of Liberty of Conscience to force a Trade by Combination among themselves and their doing it then turn'd to some account but would now be altogether insignificant in this wane of their Numbers And thus without sweat or blood or one Information brought on Penal Statutes or the least occasion or colour for their Out-cry of Persecution may the many Millions of Conformists here humble the Comparative handful of Popish and Protestant Recusants both in Corporations and out of them too when they please and in effect reduce them to the Condition the many Empericks in our Land would be in if they only sold Physick to one another I affect not to be a Propounder of any new Law or of the execution of any old that
may have who shall believe it nor of the Doctrine of Consubstantiation under any Prince of the Lutheran perswasion nor of Calvin's horrendum decretum relating to reprobation as 't is call'd under any Prince that may believe the Doctrine of Calvin tho yet till the Peace of Munster the timid People of the Lutheran and Calvinian Religions hating one another more than they did Papists abroad in the World were so much imposed on by fears and jealousies in Case a Lutheran or Calvinian Prince should by the right of Lineal Descent come to rule them But the Munster Peace has taught them better things and should I ever hear that any Roman Catholick Prince here did according to the power by Law reposed in him relax some of the Penalties of the Law in Case of Recusancy that as things now are Recusancy would not be thereby rendered considerably prolific with Converts Tho I have given my opinion as beforementioned concerning the Fact of the encrease of the number of the Papists in the Conjuncture of the Declaration of Indulgence and do not think fit to alter it yet I can tell your Lordship that a Person of great Sagacity who I believe considered the State of their Numbers here then very carefully and entirely believe what he published thereof in Print I mean the Author of the Catholick Apology with a reply c. there saith that during the Year 1672. and which he calls a year of Peace there was not one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England than in the Year 1663 1666. or any other time of trouble I have in this Discourse spoke of such a perfect hatred against Popery as may always consist with a perfect love to Papists and cinge not a hair of their heads more than a Lambent fire I have acknowledged the great mortifications austerities and zealous devotions not only among many of the Religious Orders of the Church of Rome but of the common People and have allowed a sober Party to the Iesuites themselves and have reason to believe that Bellarmine himself that hammer of Heretical Princes as his Works shew him was yet of so soft and gentle a disposition as would not permit him to hurt a Fly or tread on a Worm and I have reflected on no other Principles of the Iesuites with any sharpness than what the present Pope hath done and which the Court of Inquisition at Rome or elsewhere would have allowed me to do and I have been as I still am so free from any thing of rancour or acerbity in my Principles relating to the usage of the Papists that an English Priest of the Church of Rome the Author of the remarkable Book beforementioned called the Advocate of Conscience Liberty or an Apology for toleration rightly stated published in the Year 1673. and the most considerable Book that had for several years been writ in favour of the Roman Catholicks and a Book our Learned Dr. Stilling fleet refers to in a very excellent printed Sermon of his p. 43. and called The Reformation justified and Preached before the Lord Mayor of London doth me the honour there to adopt as his own several Sayings of mine he found in a printed Discourse of mine that was disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion and gave me occasion when I read some passages in his 14th 25th 26th 34th 43d 54th 55th 62d 94th Pages there to call to mind that I had read them elsewhere and much good might any thing in my Writings do that Author and he was as welcome to them as if they had been his own and I am sorry that his not citing an Author where he should have done it was accompanied with another misfortune of citing one where he should not I mean his in p. 225. citing of D' Ossat He might have cited another passage of mine against Hereticide as being impolitic if he had pleased to have took notice of it among its fellows and where I observed that the putting of the Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion and that that Faith was given to the Assertors of Popish Opinions because they were dying which they could not have drawn from me but by raising the dead I still own what in p. 93. he partly cites of mine as said by another Author That if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private Iudgment in things of Religion 't will be hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Romish Church from the guilt of Schism c. and if any Papist shall as to any Tenet that can properly come within the denomination of Religion tell me that his private Judgment guides him to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome and that therefore I a Protestant ought not to be inclined to bear hard upon him on the account of such adhesion to his private Judgment I shall own the Argumentum ad hominem so far as to tell him that I am not inclined eo nomine to he severe to him And now my Lord because it hath been so â—ustâ—mary in the Authors of large Discourses to bestow on them a short REVIEW that it would appear sullenâ—ess in me not to follow them and because it would be an irreverence to your great Judgment in me to present any thing for you to view once that I had not resolv'd to view twice I intend to improve some Intervals of leisure hereafter in reviewing of this Discourse and shall explain some passages therein on occasion and add others and if I doubt of any thing particularly in the various matters of Calculation herein contained and of many of which few or none perhaps have written or shall alter my opinion therein or in any thing else I shall acquaint your Lordship why I do so and do as much value my self on my natural temper of acknowledging a quick and ready assent to any proposition of Reason that convinceth my understanding how contradictory soever the same may be to any former Notion of mine as any man can value himself on his thinking he never erred or on his Abilities either by Eloquence or Sophisms to make others think so and to make them erre with him and do still account this to be one of the best properties in the best Ship namely the soonest to feel its Rudder and do think that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunces are positive My Lord after the Efflux of the various Intervals in which this Discourse was written it having happened that the Papists are to the general satisfaction of impartial Judges of Men and Things become as found a part of this Nation as they were and are of the Dutch States and as throughout this Discourse I always supposed them capable of being and that the Body of them is as Loyal as can be wished and likely forever so to continue and that none but the Factious would have them now to groan under the Penal Laws
it saith Concessimus Deo hac praesenti charta confirmavimus pro nobis HAEREDIBVS nostris in perpetuum quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit habeat omnia jura sua integra libertates suas illaesas and whereby the British Churches are secured under a Prince of any Religion from Foreign Arbitrary impositions But indeed the Style current in Magna Charta is that our Kings for themselves and their Heirs forever did grant the Customs and Liberties contained in that Charter to our Ancestors and their Heirs for ever Our Ancestors had no occasion to spend time in seeking Knots in a Bull-rush or hidden Sense in the words HEIRS and the King's HEIRS when so anciently as by the Oath of Fealty which every Person above fourteen years old and every Tythingman was obliged to take publickly at the Court-Leet within which he lived they were sworn to the King and his HEIRS and that Oath was taken a fresh every year by all the Subjects under Edward the Confessor and William the first and is thus set down by Pryn in his Concordia Discors viz. I A. B. do swear that FROM THIS DAY FORWARDS I will be Faithful and Loyal to our Lord the King AND HIS HEIRS c. The instances are innumerable of Allegiance anciently Sworn to our Kings and their Heirs and this one for example occureth to me as Sworn in the time of Edward the 4th viz. Sovereign Lord I Henry Percy become your Subject and Leige-man and promit to God and you that hereafter I Faith and Troth shall bear to you as to my Sovereign Leige-Lord and to your Heirs Kings of England of Life and Limb and of Earthly Worship to Live and Die against all Earthly People and to you and to your Commandments I shall be Obeysant as God me help and his Holy Evangâ—lists 27. Oct. 9. Ed. 4. Claus. 9. Ed. 4. m. 13. in dorso Mr. Pryn likewise in that Book of his beforemention'd saith that there was an ancient Oath of Fealty and Allegiance both by the Subjects of England and Kings Bishops Nobles and Subjects of Scotland made to the Kings of England and Their Heirs as Supreme Lords of Scotland in these words viz. Ero fidelis legalis fidemque legalitatem servabo Henrico Regi Angliae haeredibus suis de vitâ membris terreno honore contra omnes qui possunt vivere mori nunquam pro aliquo portabo arma nec ero in consilio vel auxilio contra eum vel Haeredes suos c. which Oath he saith William King of Scots and all his Nobles Swore to King Henry the second haeredibus suis sicut ligio Domino suo and John Balliol John Comyn with all the Nobles of Scotland to King Edward the first and his Heirs He there likewise gives an account how the Nobles of England Swore Fealty to Richard King of England and to his Heirs against all men and how the Citizens of London Swore the like Oath and That if King Richard should die without Issue they would receive Earl John his Brother for their King and Lord juraverunt ei fidelitatem Contra omnes homines salva fidelitate Richardi Regis fratris sui as Hoveden relates And he moreover cites the Record of the Writ issued to all the Sheriffs of England soon after the Birth of Edward the 1 st Son and Heir to King Henry the 3 d. To Summon all Persons above 12 years old to Swear Fealty to him as Heir to the King and to submit themselves faithfully to him as their Liege Lord after his Death This form of the Oath in the Writ is there mention'd to that effect viz. Quod ipsi salvo homagio fidelitate nostrâ quâ nobis tenentur cui in vitâ nostrâ nullo modo renunciare volumus fideles eritis Edwardo filio nostro primogenito ita quod si de nobis humanitus Contigerit eidem tanquam Haeredi nostro domino suo ligio erunt fideliter intendentes eum pro domino suo ligio habentes And he there shews how they were Summon'd and Sworn accordingly and further how in the Parliament of H. 4. The Lords Spiritual and Tempâ—ral and Commons were Sworn to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King to the Prince and his Issue and to every one of his Sons severally succeeding to the Crown of England And he there mentions more Oaths taken to our Kings and their Heirs of the like Nature The Consideration hereof would make any one wonder at the Confidence of a late Learned Lawyer and positive pretender to Omniscience in our English Antiquities and Records who in his Detestable Book called The Rights of the Kingdom and which contains a farrago of Impious Anti-monarchical Principles and Printed in London 1649. and there to the Scandal of the English and Protestant Name lately Re-printed by some Factious Anti-Papists hath averred That our Allegiance was of old tyed to the Kings Person not unto his Heirs and for the Kings Heirs saith he there I find them not in our Allegiance And he mentions the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance as enjoyn'd in Queen Elizabeth's and King Iames's time respectively to be the first that were made to the Kings Person and his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS But to return to the Cause in hand 'T is sufficient for the Obligation I press that HEIRS and SUCCESORS are so clearly expressed in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy And tho the Statute of 1 â— Elizabethae in the Clause of the Annexing Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction to the Crown useth the style of Your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm shall have full Power c. as the Statue of the Supremacy 26o. Henry 8th runs in the Style of our Sovereign Lord his Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realms shall be taken accepted and reputed the only Supreme Head and tho the Oath in the 35 th H. the 8 th Cap. 1. that relates to the bearing Faith Truth and true Allegiance to the Kings Majesty and to his Heirs and Successors c. be further thus expressed viz. And that I shall accept repute and take the Kings Majesty his Heirs and Successors when they or any of them shall enjoy his place to be the only Supreme Head c. and tho' the old Oath of the Mayor of London and other Cities and Towns throughout England and of Bayliffs or other chief Officers where there are no Mayors runs in the style of Swearing That they shall well and Loyally Serve the King in the Office of Mayor in the City of L. and the same City shall keep surely and safely to the use of our Lord the King of England and of his Heirs Kings of England might give occasion for that great empty and big-sounding Sophism of Sir W. I. in his famous Speech wherein he said That we are Sworn to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors but not Obliged to any during
quemjure naturali dominiove rerum aut provinciarum And as I have already referred to the Instance of Abraham in obliging himself at once to Abimelech and his Son and his Sons Son I shall here cast my Eye on Abimelech as an Idolater and take notice that the aforesaâ—â— Father of the Faithful and by whose Bosom Heaven is represented and who had the honour done him by Holy Writ to be called the friend of God and by the Chronological Writers of Memorable Things to be called Inventor foederum and most worthy of him as being the friend of God it was to be the Inventor of Alliances and federal friendship with men did make that first Alliance with an idolatrous Prince and with his whole Race of Idolaters in Prospect If then it is an allowed judged point by the consent of Parties That Religion is out of the Case when one Prince doth freely protect another and his Subjects of different Religions it may be thence very well inferr'd That it is most reasonable and just and ought not to any to seem strange that Subjects who owe a natural Allegiance to their Princes are indispensably bound to pay the same to them and to defend all their Regal Rights without any regard to the Religion their Princes may profess and on the other hand that Princes may oft protect their Subjects who differ in Religion from them in the enjoyment of their Rights I grant that some Popish Princes abroad having rivetted the Inquisition into their Politicks and being perhaps of harsh or bigotted dispositions have out of a regret against Hereticks expelled Infidels from their Territories and by which expulsion such Princes have been sufficient losers in this World and a Case of which nature is particularly referred to by the Bishop of Rhodes in his History of Harry the 4th of France who accounting the Moors in Spain to be about a Million mentions the hard usage they there found and that before they were thence expulsed they applied to Harry the 4th for Protection once when but King of Navarre and afterward when King of France and a Roman Catholick and who then did no more doubt of the lawfulness of protecting them than while he was a Protestant however he forbore on Political grounds only to protect and defend them Nor when he forsook the Communion of the Protestant Church were any of his Heretical Subjects used by him with any hardship on the account of the hard word of Heresy and I believe his Notion of the practicableness of an orderly Political Government without reference to Religionary differences was the same with his great Minister Villeroy's I have mentioned how Cardinal D' Ossat told the Pope that if his Holyness were King of France at that time that Harry the 4th was he would shew the Huguenots the same favour that Harry the 4th did and shall observe it that in the famous printed Oration of Cardinal Perron made to the 3d Estate or Commonalty of France tho he speaks of the LATERAN Council and owns and asserts it to be a general one as strenuously as the Learned Bishop of Lincoln hath since done and faith When that Council intended to provide for the extirpation and rooting out of the Reliques of the Albigenses it ordained that the Princes who should become Contemners of the Council that Condemned the Albigenses should be deprived of the Obligation of their Subjects fidelity to them yet he then adds And this I remember not for an Example to disturb or trouble the publick Peace or Tranquillity seeing the Hereticks are here in so great a number as that they make a notable part of the Body of the Estate c. Here then I have named two Cardinals of as great real Eminence as any the Church of Rome could ever shew who held it lawful for a Catholick Prince to protect his Protestant Subjects notwithstanding the Lateran Council But what Tacitus speaks of the Duty of common Men namely that they should not penetrate Abditos Principis sensus nay be particularly applied to their Religion And the Apostles Caution of Who art thou that judgest another mans servant may here be improved by saying Who art thou that judgest thy Natural Liege Lord and particularly as to matters of Religion wherein the most Antimonarchical Writers will allow them accountable only to God. And to any Protestant who having followed his judgment of Discretion hath separated from the Communion of another Church and yet shall Censure his Prince for so doing those other words of the Apostle are justly applicable Therefore thou art inexcusable O man whosoever thou art that judgest for wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy self for thou that judgest doest the same things The Christian Religion that hath enjoyned us not only to defraud and injure and offend none and to love our Neighbour as our self and extended that Neighbourhood to all Humane kind hath likewise commanded us to HONOVR all men and especially to render honour to whom honour is particularly due and not rashly to judge another and if men would imprint on their minds a serious Sense of the Moral Offices to which they are obliged by Virtue of those Expressions they would soon be better guided in the Measures of their Obligations relating to the King and his Heirs and Successors without being tempted as formerly to exclude any of them from their Civil Rights on the account of Religion Ames in his Cases of Conscience doth well descant on those Moral Offices and in his Chapter of Charity to our Neighbour he assigns some particular Cases in which as to the actual exercise and effect of Charity one is to love his Neighbour more than himself and instanceth in our being in Temporal Matters obliged to prefer publick Persons to our selves and saith That all are to be reckoned among publick Persons concerning whom it is manifest that they are useful to the Realm and in the Case of whom he determines it That on their occasionally being in danger of their lives we are to venture ours Are we not then when we may without the peril of our lives defend the Civil Rights of an Heir of the Crown who by the venturing his life hath supported the honour of the Realm obliged to forbear excluding him from the benefit of his Birth-right The Privilege of his owning the belief of Religionary Propositions tho differing from any other mens was purchased for him by the Blood of Christ and in using it he doth but use his own Right and consequently injures no man and if we slight the offering his own blood to us shall we too vilify or as I may say endeavour to nullify in his Case the effect of the Blood of his Saviour Ames in his Chapter De honore proximi tells us That Honour according to the common Notion of it doth denote the Testification of the excellence and worth of any one and that such Testification thereof cannot appear before men but by Words and Actions and
Happiness he tho differing from me in speculative points yet hath by his Practical Devotion proportioned his means to that end better than I have done Moreover because it is a dishonourable thing for any man to receive a Religion in gross and servilely to own all the Religionary Sentiments that the Major part of any Church seem to do I will not so much as in my secret thoughts charge such a Person with owning all the Religionary Tenets of the Church of Rome and much less with owning any one of the Tenets that is Irreligionary how justly soever chargeable either on the Papacy or any of its Adherents I who am a Son of the Church of England have considered how its Constitution hath been prop'd up in various ways and on different Hypotheses by several of the Fathers and great Writers in that Church before Arch-Bishop Laud's time and since and how some of them in some points receded from its Articles and that many of them did in several Doctrines of importance variously interpret its Articles My Conversation with several Divines of that Church who are equally Learned and Pious hath let me see that in many Theological speculative points they differ much from one another and yet retain perfect Charity for one another and their Notions as to which points they have in prudence not troubled the Populace with And yet even in our very Protestant Populace in this Conjuncture of Zeal against Popery I have observed so much Candour expressed to Protestant Writers who have asserted some speculative points that seemed to agree with the Doctrines of the Church ofâ— Rome that no one man hath either called them Papists or Protestants in Masquerade for so doing I have not heard of any who hath censured Mr. Baxter as a Papist or Popishly affected since Dr. Tully in his printed Letter to him p. 21. desiring him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see the very small odds between His Iustification and the Council of Trents addeth for to me neither of them turns the Scale upon the other There was likewise after the beginning of the Popular Out-cryes of the Danger of Popery a Learned Metrophysical Book of Dr. Glisson who was Professor of Physick in Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society Printed and Dedicated to the EARL of SHAFTSBVRY and in the 28th Chapter there viz. De substantiarum penetrabilitate mutatâ quantitate the Dr. saith That 't is better to admit Penetration than a Vacuum however we have been taught from our Child-hood to believe that there is no penetration of Bodies and Dimensions and doth Combat those old Notions of Philosophy with which Transubstantiation was opposed formerly and yet was never censured so much as Popishly affected for so writing nor have I observed any one to blame him for it or to have animadverted on his Book I have likewise observed that several Protestant Divines have not been in the least reproached or censured as maintainers of Purgatory when they have professed their Beliefs that the Souls of good Men after Death go to a good Hades and of bad Men to a bad one and are to stay in those common receptacles till the day of Judgment It is hence obvious that there are ingenious Protestants who do not take up their Religion in gross and that the fear of Popery or hatred of it is not generally so much founded on the Speculative Religionary Propositions maintained by Papists as partly on the Arbitrary Power claimed by the Pope to impose Creeds on men and by which Power he may if he pleaseth command them to believe that there are no Antipodes and excommunicate any who believe there are as one Pope long since did and partly on his claiming a Power to disturb the measures of their Loyalty to their Princes In such a Conjuncture therefore as this when 't is so much out of fashion to think any one the less a Christian or the less a Protestant for differing from others of the Church of England in such point as aforesaid it would be an aggravation of the immorality of our not acknowledging the honour due to any Person of the Roman-Catholick Communion because supposed to own Speculative Religionary Tenets of this Nature and which too have no influence no Mens Conversation with each other or on their Actions as they are Members of any Civil Society and as one saith would be still the same with all the Consequences of them tho there were no other Person besides one's self in the World. And therefore as I will rashly charge no Protestant with the servile resignation of his reason to any true Church nor look on him as one who doth More balantium antecedentem Ducem sequi so I will not without just ground and certain proof charge any Papist with the taking up his Religion in gross from the Papal Chair nor with the owning all the Religionary Tenets that many Romanists do and much less with any one of the Irreligionary Tenets imputable to any Order of the Church of Rome or to the Papacy To think any Papist the less a Christian for owning such Tenets which being held by some Protestants we think them not the less Christians for doth most notoriously come under the Sin of Acceptio personarum and is contrary to that Precept of St. Iames viz. My Brethren have not the faith of our Lord Iesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of Persons and by which accepting of some mens Persons the duty of honouring all men and valuing their real worth is manifestly outraged I will by no means therefore rashly charge any particular Papist with owning the Tenet that he is implicitly to obey the Commands of the Pope without weighing the Justice of them for I find the contrary Tenet own'd in print by the seven Divines of Venice as Ames mentions it in the Preface to his Puritanismus Anglicanus where he saith In Tractatu illo Iudiciosissimo à septem Theologis meaning those of Venice de interdicto Papae conscripto verbatim ponitur nervosè firmatur haec propositio viz. Christianus praecepto sibi facto etiam à Pontifice summo obedientiam praestare non debet nisi prius praeceptum examinaverit quantam materia subjecta requirit an sit conveniens legitimum obligatorium is qui siâ—e illo examine praecepti sibi injuncti caeco quodam impetu obedit peccat And do not many of the Church of Rome by their being picque'z d' honneur upon the being called Papists give some indication thereby of their being not obliged to pay an absolute blind Obedience to the Pope And tho Bellarmine and several of the Popes Parasites have called those Hereticks that believe not the Iure-Divinity of the Popes Monarchy over the World yet all the Gibelline Papists of old made it HERESY to say that the Emperor was not by Divine Right Lord of the World. Moreover tho some Papists have writ opprobriously of the Scripture and called
that I affirm therein we have obliged our selves to by our Oaths is so incomparably asserted in a long Speech of that Great Man of the Church of Rome Reginaldus Belnensis Arch-Bishop of Bourges in France I shall refer any one to it as printed in â—huanus The Speech was spoke in a Famous Assembly and on a great occasion for to make way for the quiet Reception of Harry the 4th of France while a Protestant into the Throne and it was framed with such profound thoughts of Loyalty and with such extraordinary Learning referring both to the old and new Testament and to Fathers and Church History and Civil and Canon Law and with such close and nervous argumentation to evince the Divine Right of Allegiance due to Princes and particularly without any respect had to their Religion that it may pass for one of the best Bullwarks of absolute Loyalty I know of next to the 13th of the Romans and other things contained in Holy Writ And because I think no serious Christian who reads â—t will ever find in his heart afterward to ridicule passive oâ—edience or make ridiculous Platforms of Conditional Loyalty I do intend to Translate and Publish it Moreover because there is in that Speech one Noble peculiar Character of the Moral Offices of Loyalty wherein it is pity that the proverbial English good nature should in any men come short of that of the French Civility and any Protestants Loyalty of a Roman-Catholicks I mean that Arch-Bishops honouring the Mind and Soul of his Prince who was not of the Communion of his Church and even then vindicating him from Heresy and saying That he ought not to be thought a Heretick and propping up his honourable thoughts of his Prince with a Quotation out of St. Austin viz. That he was not to be reckon'd among Hereticks who without pertinacy defended his opinion tho erroneous c I think the hanging up so great a Picture in publick view wherein that Man of God did with such exquisite draught design and colour thus paint his Princes Character and that of his own Loyalty to Eternity may be variously useful and the very sight of the great Colours in which cannot methinks but raise the little ones of Blushes in any Nominal Protestants who do with such foul and hard hands handle the Religionary Concernments of Kings who are Nominal Gods and make no difference between the danger of Heterodoxy in Subjects and in Princes I have mentioned it that there is less danger of any Princes believing or practising what may favour the Papal Usurpation than of such Belief or Practice in a Subject and it were an easie matter to instance in many erroneous Religionary Tenets which as held by Parties among Subjects may cause general apprehensions of danger but from which as held by a Prince it would be ridiculous to fear any ill or to imagine that the Prince can imbibe the dregs of those Tenets as they discriminate discontented Parties as for example how can any one fear that a Prince by believing that Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years would hurt his own Government or that a Prince by â—eing a Socinian â—ould hold the Tenet of the unlawfulness of Defensiâ—e War or that a Prince who favoured the Order of the Iesuites would approve of their Teâ—ets of Calumny and Equivocation c. and several of their vile Casuistical Tenets or that any Magistracy would permit some of their Apologies and particularly that of Guymenius to be so much as published in the Laâ—guage of the Country But the truth is we are Morally bound to make a great difference in our Demeanor toward our Princes when supposed to erre in opinions about Religion from the Measures we are allowed to take in relation to our â—ellow Subjects so erring Error is a part of Humane frailty and Subjects are Morally bound to conceal the frailties of their Kings and not to censure or publish them to their dishonour and are to be more ready to Apolâ—gize for their Princes on all occasions than for their Parents Sâ— Peter in that Verse where the Duty of honouring all Men and loving the Brotherhood is mentioned subjoyns a particular Precept of honouring the King. We are never to think of the hearts of Kings but as being in the hâ—nds of God nor of any Mists of Errors that may be in their heads without thinking of the Rays of the Divine Power that like a Glory surrounds theirs and which in the usual Concourse of Providence do dissipate all danger from any Errors within them Tho in mens beliefs who are Subjects Religionary Errors are often complicated with Irreligionary ones yet we are to think of the Oyl of the Lords Annointed as uppermost and appearing above such latter Errors and suppressing the Fumes of them in the minds of Princes and are to fear no more harm from the Persons of our Princes than from our Guardian Angels differing from us in many great Religionary Speculations and are to think with honour of our King as an Angel of God to discern between good and bad Religion and Irreligion and it is an absurd thing for any not to imitate the Popish Arch-Bishop aforesaid in clearing his Prince tho of another Communion from Pertinacy since such a Moral defect is a humour of positiveness that of all men Kings are most naturally free from and whose becoming dissidence of their own understandings how great soever is Conspicuous by the wearing away so much of their lives in hearing the advise of their Council And when ever Passive Obedience is called for by Princes and must be readily payed as a due Debt we are even then to strain our most improved thoughts to find an honourable Interpretation of our Princes Actions in like manner as some of the Loyal Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church have done as appears by a Great Observation in their Book called the Policy of the Clergy of France a Book that Maimbourg in print hath acknowledged to be the best lately published by their Party viz. That their Princes never made any great Assault on the Papal Power but what cost their Protestant Subjects dear This This is Loyalty worthy the name of Christian and after all if yet any men will make wanton Suppositions of the beliefs or practices of Sovereigns being never so contrary to Religion let those know that an absolute and irrespective Loyalty is that which by these Oaths they have obliged themselves to and that therefore it is an absurd thing to attempt to exclude any Heir of the Crown from his Birth-right on any pretence of his Religion or other pretence whatsoever since we must pay an absolute Obedience and Allegiance to him immediately on the Descent of the Crown to him and accordingly as by these Oaths we have obliged our selves to do Having thus in these Conclusions asserted the Obligation relating to our Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the plain and genuine Sense of the
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
he pleased And there in Book 7th 't is said That the Pope on further application from the Ambassadors of Princes that that Clause might be damned as contrary to the liberty of Ambassadors and Bishops in propounding what they thought profitable those for their States and these for their Churches the Pope gave them good words about it but did nothing and Book 10th The Spanish Ambassador desiring the Retractation of that Clause and that otherwise the Council could not be called free and that its freedom was to be dated only from the time of such Retractation and that the Emperor insisted on its abrogation and that by reason of that Clause no German had yet come to that Council yet nothing was effected for its revoking and still the Proponentibus legatis stood as a Rock and all their Addresses dash'd themselves in pieces producing nothing but the froath of excusatory words from the Pope about it and in fine all that could be gained was in the end of the Council after that Clause had had its full effect and done all its Execution against the freedom of the Council and particularly of the Ambassadors and Bishops there and was like a Post-horse ridd to his Stage and had brought all the Cloak-bags with the Holy Ghost from Rome to turn it to grass with a Formal Declaration or Protestation contrary to Fact that the meaning of the Synod was not by that Clause to change in any part the usual manner of handling matters in general Councils c. A crying Con licensa to the Bishops and Ambassadors after the cutting of the Throats of their Liberties And now can any Opiniatre yet further think that a Representative of English Commoners will ever think those Republican Projectors of liberty who do bare faced cut them off from the freedom of their share in Enacting any thing but what another House shall propound and that nothing shall have the Sanction of Law but what enters the Stage with a proponentibus Patriciis or by the Proposition of any other House the Style of one of Cromwels two Houses and who do set up for Inventors in Politics by reviving the exploded Constitution of the Athenians among whom Anacharsis observed Wise men did consult and Fools determine But the days are pass'd and gone that gave People of subtle and uneasie Brains the leisure of digging in Politics further than the Center which whoever doth digs not downward but upwards and that Center I account the ancient lex terrae to be and he who hath got beyond that doth digging upwards destroy the real Foundations of Churches and States while he is laying imaginary ones But since according to the saying in hieme nil movendum men of Sense who love to be tampering with Physick in other seasons will in that be averse from stirring the humours and trying Conclusions on themselves and in the churlish State of the World abroad that is in prospect all State Empirics that would any where advise a change of Fundamental Governments will find an unruly Patient of the World and all our sober Political Virtuosi will be necessarily inclined to study how to maintain and support our old Government instead of projecting any new one And in order to the support of our old one I dare say that there will be no more suspension of Royal Aids on the account of the Arminian Controversie or the freedom of our Wills while we are busied in preparing to defend the freedom of our Estates and Bodies from Forraigners and securing both Prince and Peoples not being predestinated to ruine by them The Extinguishing the maintenance of the Clergy will not pass for a new Evangelical Light but the exactest provision for the Enabling Crown'd Heads to support their Civil Government and their Clergy and with the observance of equality and proportion in the same respecting the State of their Kingdoms will be worthy the thoughts of the most illuminated Doctors for as among the Divines it is on all hands agreed that from the 40th Chap. of the Prophecy of Ezekiel to the end of that Book the thing chiefly designed in the Portraiture of the great Vision of the Prophet is to represent the figure of Church and State under the Gospel so there is great proportion kept in the same and not only the curious colouring but the exactness of draught and design required in a great Historical Painting and no wonder if the same appeared so express'd on the Table of the Prophets imagination when God himself was pleas'd there to paint it partly after the exactness and proportion of the Iewish Oeconomy and with many Additions of Curiosity and to which tho a litteral interpretation is not applicable and on which tho no expectance of the Erection of another material Temple at Ierusalem or in Iudea is to be founded or of 12000 Reeds of Land for the Temple and Priests yet may it thence be naturally inferred that the preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and Priest and with respect to number Weight and Measure in the Future times of the Gospel was then the care and design of Providence The 45th Chapter that doth so nicely assign the Portion for the Prince and Priest ordains or rather predicts a Royal Patrimony for the Prince in the way of a ballance of Land as 't is said in the 8th Verse In the Land shall be his Possession in Israel and my Princes shall no more oppress my People and the rest of the Land shall they give to the House of Israel according to their Tribes The consideration of this may probably reforme the men of curious imagination who are still making the Metal of Government more fine than the Standard and thinking to leave out there the necessary Mixture of the baser allay that the frail State of humanity requires to make it currant and without which it would be too brittle for use and projecting how to make the Government of Church and State with ease to live upon nothing or on Taxes in a confused and blundering manner laid when the thought of an inspired Prophet in this Vision relating to the time of the Gospel the which is called by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews the time of Reformation applied all the exactness of Mathematics to the supporting both the Crown and use of the Keys by an ample and certain Revenue And as the great Tax of Augustus on the Roman World or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of Capitation or Pole near the time of our Saviors Birth served to confirm the Christian Religion in the accomplishment of the Prediction of Christs being born in Bethlem and to cause Ioseph and Mary's going thither a resembling effect in the Confirmation of the most rational kind of the Christian Religion I mean the Protestant do I expect from our Future Legal and Equal Taxes and as I mentioned my Lord Bacon's saying of the Parliaments being yet in debt to the Church since
Harry the 8ths time so it may perhaps as justly be said that they are in debt to the Crown for the safety of the Protestant Religion since Queen Elizabeth's who as I have been informed from some well Vers'd in our Exchequer Records alienated more of the Patrimony of the Crown then any English Prince ever did and that in order to her raising those great Sums before mentioned which were necessary for the securing the Protestant Religion and rivetting it in fast to our Laws and Government and I am the more apt to credit such my Information because I see not by what other way she could raise those vast Sums but by such alienation of the Crown Lands her ordinary expences probably coming near such her receits which one may partly guess by what Sir Robert Cotton in his abstract of the Records of the Tower touching the Kings Revenue affirms Ex Computo Dom. Burleigh The saurar that Anno 12 her Revenue besides the Wards and Dutchy of Lancaster was 188197 l. 4 s. and the Payments and Assignmets were 110612 l. 13 s. of which the Houshold was 30000 l. Privy Purse 2000 l. Admiralty 30000 l. and Sir Robert Cotton in that Book mentions that she did pawn her Iewels in the Tower and often morgage her Land which no doubt she was constrained to do for the great end aforesaid her ordinary Revenue and extraordinary Supplies of Subsidies not being adequate to the great Sums that her Measures of State and Religion caus'd her to expend And to how low an Ebb the Crown Lands were fall'n in the late Kings time from what they were in the 12th year of her Reign and when they were perhaps about 200,000 l. per Annum appears in a Book of Mr. Christopher Verion an Exchequer man dedicated to Sir Iohn Culpeper under Treasurer of his Majesties Exchequer where 't is said that the Revenues of the Kings Lands now in charge before his Majesties Auditors amounted in the whole to 100,000l per Annum and consisted then for the most part of Fee-Farms and certain Rents I have before mentioned that she laid the Foundation of the Protestant Religion being here semper eadem as in the Metropolis of Holland the Foundation of a House ordinarily costs as much as the superstructure thus expenceful to the Crown did the Foundation of Protestancy by her prove and she needed not the Precaution in these words of St. Luke For which of you intending to build a Tower sits not down first and counts the cost whether he hath sufficient to finish it lest happily after he hath laid the Foundation and is not able to finish it all that behold it begin to mock him saying This man began to build and was not able to finish She laid the Foundation of our English Gospel so deep in the Law of the Land that God be thanked the Romanists have not been able to mock it further then by calling it a Parliament-Religion and by my consent let them that way still mock on and I shall mock at them who think that any Religion but protestancy here will ever have a Parliamentary Sanction and if Popery had not been a Parliamentary Religion here in the Marian dayes her Reign had not as I may say been infamous by the occasion of any Noble Army of Martyrs nor the Eclipse of Justice and Mercy and the English good nature in her vile Quinquennium been made an Epoche of Horror in the English Story as great Eclipses of old in Chronology like notches in the Line of Time for Mens Memories to fasten on served as dates of Epoches to measure it by and setting aside some just ground of fear of Poperies being here permitted by Heaven to be an Epidemical opinion of Religion as a just Punishment of such defection from Morality I think the fear of the Kingdoms being Shipwrack't on it and sustaining thereby such persecution as was in Bohemia would be as much to be mocked as Shakespears Shipwrack in Bohemia and the fear of the Writ De haretico comburendo grillading any more Christians be as ridiculous as Lithgows mentioning in his Travels that in a hot Country he saw Geese roasted in and by the Sun. But My Lord raillery apart the Protestant Religion that before Queen Elizabeth's Reign was only like a Picture hanging on the Wall and easie to be removed without Fatal Prejudice to the Kingdom hath since been so incorporated into our Laws and the heart of our Politicks that like the old Fresco Painting appearing on Walls and there wrought deeply in it cannot be removed but with the Wall it self and whatever Popish Bishops or Iudges any Prince of that persuasion may possibly hereafter appoint they must till some of our Acts of Parliament can be Repeal'd which declare Popery to be against God's Law give Judgment that it is so accordingly as 't is rationally resolved in Vaughan's Reports in the Case of Thomas Hill vers Thomas Good where 't is occasionally said That if a Marriage be declared by Act of Parliament to be against God's Law we must admit it to be so for by a Law that is by an Act of Parliament it is so declared There is nothing I am more ashamed of in many Protestants who pass for first-rate ones and carry not only swoln Sails of Profession of it but Flaggs as Demagogues then to see them as I said value themselves on their excessive Fears of Papists and Popery I would wish that such intimidated Protestants if really they suffer that Passion and are afraid of the Fire of those Faggots that they are more distant in nature from then from the heat of Mount Aetna and talk after the Rate of the Martyr in his Letter to Cranmer that they must prepare to hold out to the Fire Inclusive would not by their pittiful ill boding fears stain the Noble Prophecies of some English Martyrs when the Fire was kindled about them at the Stake The Acts and Monuments will tell them how at the Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer That when a Faggot was kindled with fire and laid down at Ridleys Feet Latimer spake to him in these words Be of good comfort Mr. Ridley and play the man We shall this day light such a Candle in England as I trust shall never be put out But what is somewhat more extraordinary and which I remember not to have heard any one observe out of the Acts and Monuments is in the Relation of the Tryal of Roger Holland a Merchant-Taylor of London how Bishop Bonner heard him say after the Sentence of Condemnation was read God hath heard the Prayer of his Servants which hath been powred forth with Tears for his afflicted Saints whom you daily persecute But this I dare be bold in God to speak which by his Spirit I am moved to say that God will shorten your hand of Cruelty c. For after this day in this place shall there not be any by you put to the Tryal of Fire and Faggot