and to the publick safety as the Repealing of the Test Laws would be our Author does hereupon with his wonted Friendship Equity and Candor to those Excellent Princes tells us that he hath not met with so bold a Declaration as this of calling them the Protectors of Gods Church and that the ascribing it to them is a detracting from the Honour of Kings and Monarchs who will not Abdicate from themselves to any other so glorious a Title And in pursuance of his rancour towards their Highnesses he runs out in his way of Wit and Learning into a most silly and impertinent Discourse about the Nature of a Church and accuseth the Prince and Princess as if by having this Character conferred upon them they had a design to usurp from his Majesty of Great Brittain the stile of Defenders of the Faith and to challenge to themselves the being the Protectors of the Church of England Surely this Gentleman does by vertue of his Popish Zeal and Irish Understanding believe that no Titles are due to Princes in reference to the Church of God but what are derived from the Papal Chair Whereas I dare say that Monsieur Fagel in bestowing this Title upon Their Highnesses did not dream of the Roman Pontif but had been taught it by God Almighty whom I take to be the Supream and true Fountain of Honour who is pleased to character such Princes as do cherish and favour his Church by the Name of Nursing Fathers and Nursing Mothers which is the term that the Pensionary useth in reference to their Highnesses And as it is their own merit which according to the Tenor of the Divine Creation hath entitled them to this glorious stile so they are neither to be ridicul'd nor hectored out of that duty of countenancing and supporting the Reformed Religion nor to be deterred by bold and empty words from those compassionate generous and Princely Offices to sincere Orthodox Believers by which they have deserved it And while others glory in the enjoyment of the Titles of most Christian and most Catholick Kings which their Vassalage to the See of Rome their contributing to the Exaltation of the Triple Crown and their being the Popes Executioners in the shedding the Blood of Saints hath procured unto them 't is enough for their Highnesses to be by the Suffrage of all true Protestants and that agreeably to the Doctrine and Authority of the Sacred Scriptures had in esteem and reverenced for Nutritii and Protectors of Gods Church Nor do they appropriate this stile to themselves tho' they account it the brightest among all their Titles but they acknowledge it to belong equally to many others and are afflicted at nothing more than that all Potentates may not justly claim a share in it And as the Pensionary's ascribing it unto their Highnesses was out of no design to usurp upon the King of Englands Title of Defender of the Faith nor to affix any Authority unto them over that Church so it will be no presumption to add that all of the Reformed Religion in that Kingdom how much soever differing in little and circumstantial things among themselves are yet so far sensible of the obligations they are under to Their Highnesses and of the benefits they have all the Assurance to expect from them hereafter that without meaning ill either to the King or to any one else they will unanimously join in stiling them Defenders of the Christian Reformed Faith and Protectors of Gods Church professing the Protestant Religion And they will easily know with whom they are to be angry and against whom to direct their Resentments Mijn Heer Fagel had said that if the Dissenters cannot during his Majesties Reign be eased from the Penal Laws unless the Tests be also abrogated that this will be an unhappiness unto them but for which the Roman Catholicks are only to be blamed who chuse rather to be contented that they and their Posterity should remain still obnoxious to the Penal Laws and exposed to the hatred of the whole Nation than be restrained from a capacity of attempting any thing against the peace and security of the Reformed Religion Our Author whose envy and injustice against Their Highnesses is not yet fully spent doth in his imprudent and indiscreet way obtrude from hence upon the World that the Nonconformists as well as the Roman Catholicks may hereby see where their true Interest stands and that they are extreamly obliged to those in whose Name this advice is given for the Consolation afforded them in the condition under which they are stated by Law Which is as much as if he should harangue the Nonconformists into discontentment against the Prince and Princess by assuring them that they are to hope for no relief against the Penal Laws by any favour of theirs Whereas the Dissenters are not only told that their Highnesses are willing to consent but that they do fully approve that they should have an entire Liberty for the full exercise of their Religion without being obnoxious to receive any prejudice trouble or molestation upon that account So that the heat which our Author would enflame the Dissenters unto against their Highnesses ought to turn and spend it self against the Papists who rather than part with the Tests which the Nonconformists are as much concerned to have maintained as they of the National Communion can be are resolved to keep all the Penal Laws in force and to leave the Dissenters under the dread and apprehension of them But this they may be fully perswaded of that if they can escape the edge of them during this Kings Reign they will be in no danger from them in case the Nation come once to be so happy as to see their Highnesses seated on the Throne For as much as they have not only their word which was hitherto never violated laid to pledge for their relief and ease but in that their Interest as well as their Principles will oblige them to be compassionate and tender to all sorts of Protestants and if they cannot be so Fortunate as to unite them yet to exercise equal kindness and favour towards them Having examined what our Author in his impertinent way venteth in unjust Reflections against their Highnesses and having in some measure chastned him for them tho' not to the Degree he does deserve I come now in the third place to call him to an account for his calumniating the States of these Provinces and for his endeavouring to possess the minds of their Popish Subjects with dissatisfaction and prejudice towards them And if he be the person whom most men take him for tho' he may have herein acted suitably to himself yet he hath behaved disagreeably to his character and unworthy of the Post which his Master hath placed him in Nor need we from henceforth to doubt but that he does all the ill Offices he can between his Majesty of Great Brittain and this Government seeing he hath by slanders destitute of all Foundation
become void of all sense and understanding if they suffer themselves to be either wheedled or frighted into an opinion of their being subject to receive any dammage by the Tests it being so expresly contrary both to the Terms of those Laws and to their own experience Nor can they be so far abandoned of God nor prove so treacherous to the Nation Posterity and the whole Protestant Interest thro' Europe as to cooperate to the Repeal of them by destroying that great Fence about the Reformed Religion in England and to put the Papists into capacity both of subverting it there and every where else And setting aside a few mercenary fellows among them there is no ground to fear after we have had so many proofs of their zeal for the Protestant Religion and English Liberties in the worst of times and under the greatest Temptations that they should at this season when all others behave themselves with so much Integrity and Courage be accessory to so villanous a thing The ill success which the Court hath met with in the several Towns and City's since the late Regulation of the Corporations sufficiently shews that the Dissenters who were put into Magistracy in hopes by them to have compassed the packing of a Parliament are no less careful of preserving the Test Laws than they of the Church of England Communion were who were displaced to make way for them And to discover the grossness of the abuse which our Author without regard to Truth or Ingenuity endeavours to put upon them as if they were judged by their Highnesses to be incapable of Trusts and Employments or any ways concluded to stand under those restraints by the Test which the Roman Catholicks do there is not one word in Mijn Heer Fagel's Letter whereby they are said to be subject unto them or by which there is any ground administred of fancying they are put into the same rank with the Papists and whereby to fear that they may hereafter come to be treated accordingly But in stead of this they are expresly told that Their Highnesses do both allow and desire the abrogation of all the Penal Laws against Dissenters and the having them freed from the severity of them and that they do not only consent but heartily approve of their having an entire liberty granted them for the full exercise of their Religion without any trouble or hindrance or being left exposed to the least molestation or inconvenience upon that account And to testifie how far the Nonconformists are from being in the least menaced by those Laws it is again Declared that the only reason why their Highnesses refuse to consent to the having them repealed is because that they have no other tendency save to Secure the Reformed Religion from the Designs of the Papists by containing provisions in the vertue of which those only may be kept out of Office who can not testifie that they are of the Reformed and not of the Roman Catholick Religion Which as it is the highest evidence imaginable of their own stedfastness and integrity in the Reformed Religion and of the compassion and love which they equally bear to all who profess it and how careful they will at all times be to have it maintained and supported so it is the putting such a merit upon all Protestants that it should engage their prayers for their happy extation to the Throne and make them ambitious as well as willing and ready to hazard their lives and Fortunes for the securing the Succession unto them if any should be so wicked as to go about to preclude them But I must pay a further attendance upon our Author and accompany him to the fifth particular which I promised to consider namely that according to his own foolish and incoherent way of writing while he pretends to commend and justify the proceeding of His Majesty of Great Brittain he publisheth the villany of the Papal Church and proclaims the dishonour and injustice of diverse Eminent Monarchs and Princes of the Romish Communion His Panegyricks upon the King of England are so many just Satyr's upon the Church of Rome the Monarch of France and the Duke of Savoy c. For if it be becoming a Christian to be of a contrary judgment to those who are for persecuting such as differ from the publick and established Religion and if it be a sentiment worthy of a Royal mind that none ought to be oppressed for their Consciences in Divine Matters what characters of irreligion ignominy wickedness are due unto them who judge it to be meritorious to destroy sincere Christians for no other pretended Crime save that they cannot believe as the Pope and the Church of Rome do Surely our Author must either be extreamly ignorant of the Doctrine of his own Church and of the bloody and barbarous practices pursuant thereunto both at this day and for many ages past or else he must be the most unsincere miscreant that ever writ or at best be guilty of the inconsistency and folly as to continue in the Communion of a Church whose Articles of Faith he condemns as Antichristian and whose practices according to the Terms made necessary for Salvation he abhorreth both as unworthy of Royal Minds and contrary to Christian Piety But tho nothing can render a false man honest or a foolish Man wise yet seeing something may be done towards the curing a person's ignorance if he be teachable or at least to shew his obstinacy and that the fault is in his will not in his Understanding if he will not learn and be convinced I shall therefore both acquaint him a little with the Doctrine of that Church and briefly put him in remembrance how these of the Romish Fellowship have therefore persecuted Christians and still continue so to do only for differing from the publick and established Religion As to the first it is sufficiently known that according to the judgment of the Church of Rome we are Hereticks and that Heresie being Crimen laesae Majestatis Divinae we are therefore the worst of Traitors and liable to the Penalties of the greatest High Treason And thereupon we are not only declared to be infamous and sentenced to be deprived of all Honor and Dignity and to be incapable of all Offices and have our Estates confiscated and seised but we are condemned to be burnt and if that cannot conveniently be effected it is both made lawful and meritorious to extirpate us by War or Massacre as shall be best and most safe for the Church of Rome In order whereunto not only all Laws made for our Security are declared to be null and that no promises made unto us ought to be kept but all Princes that neglect to destroy and extirpate us are proclaimed to be deposed And sutable hereunto has their carriage been for many ages to such as differ from them in Articles of Faith and will not joyn in their Superstitions and Idolatries In proof whereof I neither need
Ceremonies are known to have chearfully made the Declaration contained in the Test Laws and thereupon to have sit as Members in divers Parliaments And as a further demonstration of the impudence and dishonesty of our Author in this particular it is not unworthy of remark that tho' the King hath taken upon him to dispense with the Tests and to prohibit the requiring them yet the Dissenters who have since that time been preferred to publick Trusts continue still to take them and go to the respective Courts where by Law the Declaration is enjoined to be exacted and there demand the being admitted to make it Tho' in the mean season they cannot be unsensible that it is the thing in the World whereby they most highly offend his Majesty it being both a proclaiming the Illegality of that Authority which he challengeth of dispensing with Laws and a defeating so far as lieth in them his great design as well as artifice for the introducing of Popery which his Soul is so much in travel with And were not this Author both a person of a most depraved Conscience and destitute of all common sense he would never have slandered Monsieur Fagel and so egregiously perverted his plain meaning as to tell us that tho' he be a Hollander and a Non-conformist yet he thanks God for the Test Laws by which his Non-conforming Brethren in England of what degree and quality soever they be stand excluded from Publick Employments For every one that will be so kind to himself and so just to the Pensionary as to read his Letter will immediately discern that there is not one word in it upon which to superstruct this calumny and accusation seeing he therein affirms in repeated and emphatical Terms that all contained in and designed by the Test Laws is the securing the Reformed Religion thro' the having provided that none be allowed to sit in Parliament nor admitted to Publick Offices except they declare that they are of the Reformed and not of the Roman Catholick Religion So that how Monsieur Fagel's Non-conformity Brethren in England should come to be affected by these Laws so as to receive any prejudice by them is that which none but a person of our Author's wit integrity and candor could have had the faculty either to conceive or alledge But that we may come to the second particular there is the less reason to wonder at this Gentleman's calumniating Mijn Heer Fagel and affixing dull tho' malicious Forgeries of his own unto him if we do but consider with what petulancy and injustice he treats Their Serene Highnesses and at the gate of their own Court assumeth the confidence to misrepresent lessen and asperse them The nearness which those Princes stand in to the ascending the English Throne and the joyful prospect which all Protestants have of it exciteth a discontent and rage in our Author which he knows not how either to suppress or govern For not to mention what we learn of the kindness of Roman Catholicks to an Heir professing the Reformed Religion from the proceedings of Sixtus Quintus and the Papists in France towards Henry 4. we are sufficiently instructed what good will they bear to a Protestant Successor by the Bull which Clement 8. published about the End of Queen Elizabeth's Reign For the Supream and Infallible Head does therein ordain That when it should happen to that miserable Woman to die they should admit none to the Crown quantumque propinquitate sanguinis niterentur nisi ejusmodi essent qui fidem Catholicam non modo tolerarent sed omni ope ac studio promoverent more majorum jurejurando se id praestituros susciperent whatsoever Right and Title they should have thereunto by vertue of their next affinity in blood unless they should first swear not only to tolerate but to advance and establish the Romish Religion Nor can I avoid being filled with fear and reverence to the safety of some certain persons when I remember how Cardinal Baronius commends Irene for murdering the Emperor her Son because he was against the Worship of Images and not only calls it Justitiae zelum a righteous zeal but adds Christum docuisse summum pietatis genus esse in hoc adversus filium esse fidelem That Christ hath taught the perfiction of Religion in such a case to consist in fidelity to the Church tho' by destroying one that was both her Son and her Soveraign 'T is a high piece of injustice in our Author towards Their Highnesses and calculated for no other end but to alienate his Majesties affections from them when he tells us that the thing aimed at in the writing of the Pensionary's Letter as well as that pursued in the manner of publishing it was to obstruct the King's righteous pious designs and to render them unpracticable For the Letter being written in obedience to the Command of Their Highnesses to declare their Opinion in reference to the several matters about which it treateth it plainly follows that tho' Mijn Heer Fagel be accountable for the manner of cloathing and delivering their thoughts and for the Order and Method in which things are digested and possibly for the ratiocinations by which they are supported and enforced yet that the Prince and Princess are the persons who are alone responsible for the End unto which it was intended And it appears to have been so far from their intentions thereby to obstruct and defeat any pious and just designs of his Majesty that nothing can be more visible than that as it is admirably adapted to the giving ease and security to all his Protestant Subjects so it offereth means for relieving the Papists from the severe Laws to which they are liable and for the granting them a Warranty in a legal way for the exercise of their Religion Nor doth it discourage any kind of favour towards them save that which the concession whereof would not only be inconsistent with the peace and safety of those of the Reformed Religion in England but which might enflame the Nation to such Resentments as would in all likelihood both endanger his Majesties Person and Crown and come at last to issue in the reducement of the Roman Catholicks to worse circumstances than they have hitherto been acquainted with But to proceed with our Author to whom it is so natural to act foolishly and with sauciness and injustice that neither the Character he is said to bear nor the Quality of the Persons of whom he speaks can either restrain his intemperance or correct his rudeness and indiscretion For Monsieur Fagel having said that he believes there are many Roman Catholicks who under the present state of Affairs will not be very desirous to be in Publick Offices and Employments nor use any attempts against those of the Reformed Religion and that not only because they know it to be contrary to Law but lest it should at some other time prove prejudicial to their Persons and States Our Author is
most maliciously studied to raise differences betwixt them and their own Subjects And if the Intelligence which he transmits to Whitehall be as equally distant from truth and sincerity as the Memoirs are which he hath here published we may easily conjecture what little credit ought to be given unto it tho' at the same time we cannot but discern the end that it must be shapen and designed unto Nor was there the least occasion administred by mijn Heer Fagel in his Letter by which our Author could be provoked to attack these States with so much rudeness injustice and falshood as he hath done in his Answer For all that the Pensionary had said and which it seems threw our Author into a raging fit was only that their Highnesses could consent that the Papists in England Scotland and Ireland should be suffered to exercise their Religion with as much freedom as is allowed them in these Provinces in which they enjoy a full liberty of Conscience And as the time hath been and may hereafter come wherein the English Roman Catholicks would have thought and may again account such a Liberty for a happiness so I do not understand if the condition of the Roman Catholicks in these Countreys be as our Author describes it with what consistency either to Reason or with themselves the Papists in England should have so often heretofore in their Pleas for a Toleration have made the Liberty vouchsafed their Brethren in these Provinces not only a motive for their own being capable of Indulgence but to have represented it as the largest measure of the freedom they desired and which they would have been thankful for Seeing this Gentleman according to his accustomed manner of truth and ingenuity takes upon him to assure us That as there can be no greater persecution than what the Papists undergo in the exercise of their Religion in Guelderland Freesland Zeland and the Province of Groningue so that the Liberty which they even enjoy in Holland is so mean and inconsiderable that it doth not deliver them from being subject to daily fines and molestations Surely this man is either very unacquainted with what is done upon the account of Religion in other parts of the World or else he must needs think that the most brutal severities to some are Acts of Merit while gentle restrictions upon others are mortal Crimes otherwise he could never write at this ignorant and extravagant rate wherein all persons must discern his folly as well as insincerity and neglect of truth For we have too many deplorable evidences daily before our Eyes besides those which arrive with us by reports of unquestionable credit of a stranger kind of Persecution exercised towards those of the Reformed Religion in France and Piedmont than any which the Roman Catholicks in these Provinces can be alledged to be under except it be by one of our Author's veracity and discretion Neither needs there any other Refutation of the calumny with which he asperseth the Supream and Subordinate Magistrates of this Country in reference to the treating their Popish Subjects with horrid Severities nor a clearer proof that those of the Romish Communion do esteem themselves to be in a condition of peace freedom and ease under this Government than that of their behaviour during the late War carried on by the French King against these States which he gave out both at Rome and at several other Courts in Europe to have been undertaken in favour and for the restoring of the Roman Catholick Religion For had they lain under that grievous persecution and those tragical hardships in the practice of it which our Author would impose the belief of upon the World they would not have failed to welcome that Monarch as their happy Deliverer and would have united in a general Insurrection against the States for their having been Tyrannous over them But instead of that most of them acquitted themselves with the same Zeal for the support of this Government and in defence of their Country that other Subjects did Which demonstrates beyond all controul that they do not judge themselves to be in so wretched and miserable circumstances as this bold and calumnious Person represents them to be And whereas Monsieur Fagel in justification of the necessity of preverving the Test Laws by which the Papists are precluded from Employments and Places of Trust and to rectifie a mistake in Mr. Stewart about his conceiving the Roman Catholicks to continue capable of bearing publick Offices in this Commonwealth had said that by the Laws of this Republick they are expresly shut out from all the Employments both of Policy and Justice Our Author does hereupon with the highest Injustice and with all the acrimony he can accuse the States not only of departing from the express Terms of the Pacification of Gant but of violating the Articles of the Vnion at Utrecht which was the Foundation upon which this Government was both originally erected and doth still subsist And with his wonted degree of knowledge and prudence he further adds That the Provinces and most of the Cities would not have entred into the foresaid Vnion but upon condition that they of the Roman Catholick Religion should at all times possess the Government And particularly that Amsterdam had it stipulated unto them under the Guaranty of the Prince of Orange that none of the Reformed Religion should be allowed a Place to assemble in either within the Walls or without so far as the Jurisdiction of the City did extend One would have little expected that a person living in the Communion of the Romish Church as our Author professeth himself to do should upbraid these States with the violation of Articles relating unto a Grant made unto any for their Security in the free Exercise of their Religion at a season when Popish Soveraigns not only account it their glory to break all Laws Oaths and Edicts by which Protestants had their Religion together with many other Rights and Priviledges established and confirmed unto them but who with a salvageness and barbarity which scarce any Age can parallel seek to extirpate their Religion and destroy them And all this attempted and pursued against them not only without their being guilty of any crime by which they might have deserved to lose the favour of their Princes and to forfeit protection in the free exercise of their Religion and their safety as to their Persons and Estates which had been sworn unto them and secured by Authentick Laws But when one of the chiefest motives unto it was their Loyalty and the Merit that they had laid upon their respective Soveraigns which by a new way of gratitude was thought fit to be thus recompensed and rewarded And if we be not as I have formerly said strangely deceived in the Person and Character of our Author this charge upon the States of these Provinces is the effect of a most prodigious folly as well as of inveterate malice in that his Master
so unjust as well as imprudent as to call this a menacing not only of all the Non-conformists and Roman Catholicks in England but a threatning of his Majesty and an insulting over him And from thence he takes occasion to add that he hopes God will inable his Majesty to repress and prevent the effects of these menaces and furnish him with means of mortifying those who do thus threaten and insult over him It certainly argues a strange weakness and distemper of mind to call so modest and soft an expression both a menacing of the King and of all his Catholick Subjects when I dare say it proclaimeth the sense of all among the Papists who are endowed with any measure of Wisdom and is nothing else save a Declaration of the measure by which they do at this day regulate and conduct themselves But the injustice of our Author towards Their Highnesses in his Reflections upon the forementioned expression of the Pensionary's is his intending them by the persons that do threaten his Majesty and insult over him For did he take Mijn Heer Fagel for the only guilty person in reference to this Phrase which he miscalls a Menace it would be a strange detracting in him from the Power and Glory of his Majesty of Great Brittain to wish him sufficient means whereby to shun the effects of a Gentleman 's threatning whose highest Figure in the World is meerly to be a Minister in a Republick Nor would he bring down his Master to so low a level as to make it the highest Object of his Hopes concerning so great a Monarch that he shall be able to mortifie a person who whatsoever his Merit be yet his Fortune is to fill no sublimer a Post So that it can be no other save the Prince and Princess whom our Author in his usual way of injustice petulancy and indiscretion does here character represent and intend And what he thereupon means by the Kings having power in his hands and by his hoping that God would furnish him with means by which he may mortifie them is not a matter of difficult penetration even by persons of the most ordinary capacities For the several methods that have been projected and are still carrying on for the debarring them from the Succession to the Imperial Crowns of England Scotland and Ireland to which they have so Just and Hereditary a Right are sufficient to detect unto us what our Author intends and serve as a Key whereby to open the scope and meaning of his Expressions But whatsoever the Papal and Jesuitick Endeavours may be for the obstructing and preventing their Ascending the Thrones of Great Brittain I dare say that all the effects they will have will be only the discovering the folly and malice of those that attempt it and that they can never be able to compass and accomplish it For as their Highnesses have both that interest in the Love and Veneration of all Protestants and so indisputable a Title that it is impossible they should be precluded either by Force or in a way to which their Enemies may affix the Name of Legal so there is no great cause to apprehend or fear their being supplanted by the King 's having Male Issue of a vigour to live considering both his Majesties condition and the Queens which is such that they can never communicate bona stamina vitae And for the Papists being able to Banter a suppositious Brat upon the Nation tho' there are many among them villanous enough to attempt it we have not only the watchfulness of Divine Providence to rely upon for preventing it but there are many faithful and waking Eyes that will be ready and industrious to discover the Cheat. And if the People once perceive that there hath been a contrivance carried on for putting so base an affront upon a noble and generous Kingdom and of committing so horrid a wrong against such Vertuous and Excellent Princes I donot know but that their Resentment of it may rise so high as that all who are discovered to have been accessory unto it may undergo the like fate that they of old did who were found to have been conscious and contributory unto the thrusting the Eunuch Smerdis into the Persian Throne Nor do I in the least doubt but that the same Righteous Wise and Merciful God who prevented the like villany when designed in the time of Queen Mary and which was advanced so far that some Priests had the wickedness and impudence both to give thanks in the publick Churches for her Majesties safe delivery of a Prince and also to describe the Beauty and Features of the Babe tho' all she had gone with amounted only to a Tympany of Wind and Water I say that I do not question but that the same God will out of his Immense Grace and Sapience find ways and methods of which there are many within the compass of his Infinite Understanding by which so hellish a piece of villany if there be any such projected and promoting may be brought into light and disappointed And truly when I consider the Christian and Royal Vertues wherewith their Highnesses are imbued and how they are furnished with all the Moral Intellectual and Religious accomplishments that are requisite for adapting them to weild Scepters and which render them not only so agreeable to the necessities and desires of all good people but so admirably qualified to answer both the present posture of Affairs in Europe and the Exigencies of those that are oppressed and afflicted I grow into a confidence that as the Church of God both in Brittain and elsewhere and the circumstances in which so many Countreys are involved do bespeak and crave their Exaltation to the Thrones of the Brittish Dominions so that they are both destined of God unto them and will in due time be safely conducted thither Nor can I avoid pleasing my self with those joyful and hopeful thoughts when I reflect upon the various steps of Divine Providence by which they are brought into that nearness of legally inheriting these Crowns Certainly there is a voice that speaketh loud to this purpose not only in Gods denying a Legitimate Issue to the Late King and in his taking away from time to time all the Lawful Male Off-spring of his present Majesty but in the uniting their Highnesses in Marriage even to the crossing a certain Persons Inclinations whom I forbear to Name as well as to the disgusting of a Neighbouring Monarch and to the defeating the busie endeavours of the Popish Party But I must return to our Author whose Injustice to their Highnesses and his malice against their Honour Interest and Reputation knows neither end nor bounds For upon Monsieur Fagel's having ask'd Who would go about to advise him or any man else to endeavour to perswade their Highnesses whom God has so far honoured as to make them Defenders of his Church to approve and promote things so dangerous and hurtful both to the Reformed Religion
the publick establishment within their own Jurisdictions yet it was then and there ordained that the Protestant Religion alone should be publickly professed and have the protection of the Laws in the Provinces of Holland and Zealand And as the other Provinces were left to do as they should judge best for the peace and safety of their respective Territories and the support and defence of the Union so it is a thing wherein all that have written with any integrity do agree that the alterations which were afterwards made in these Provinces or in reference unto them concerning Religion were either resolved and decreed in the Provincial Assemblies of the States of those several Provinces or else in the meetings of the States-General where not only the Deputies of those several Provinces were present and consenting but behoved to have the approbation of their Principals in order to the rendring those Alterations legal and binding Nor is it unworthy to be observed that the chief occasion for shutting the Roman Catholicks out of the Government and for depressing the Romish Religion from being Dominant arose from the Papists themselves in that not only contrary to their stipulations and promises they were found in the vertue of a malice imbib'd from their Religion to be upon all occasions committing violences and outrages against the Reformed but in that the Roman Catholick Magistrates and many others of that Communion were discovered to retain too great an inclination to Spain and to be ready to abandon and betray the Freedom and Civil Rights of their Countrey instead of continuing stedfast and faithful in the defence of them as they had covenanted and sworn In a word as neither the Articles of the Union at Vtrecht nor any other Terms agreed upon before the Abdication of the King of Spain which was not until Anno 1581. can be called the Fundamental Laws of the Government of this Republick tho' they may be stiled conditions upon which such and such Provinces Associated for mutual defence against the Spanish Power and Tyranny so it is undeniable that by reason of the many dangers they found themselves exposed unto and the hazards they had run of being betrayed again into the hands of the Spaniard through their having suffered the Magistracy to remain any wherein Papists and thro' their having allowed the Roman Catholick Religion to be publickly preached and exercised they thereupon re-assumed and gave a new frame unto their Union in the Year 1583. in which it was agreed and enacted by all the Provinces that from that time forward the Reformed Religion should alone be openly professed and preached and that none but Protestants should from that time be admitted to any Office of Policy and Justice in the Government And as this is the true Fundamental Law upon which this State hath since so happily subsisted and flourished so there can be nothing objected against the Justice of it but what will lye against all States of the World who have always changed and moulded their Laws as they have been necessitated in order to self-preservation And so remote from all truth is our Author 's affirming the Roman Catholicks to have been upon these Alterations brought under Persecution that Sir William Temple whom the World will much sooner believe than this Gentleman tho' possibly he may bear the same character which that worthy person once did does assure us in his excellent Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands That no Papist can here complain of being pressed in his Conscience of being restrained from his own manner of Worship in his House or obliged to any other abroad and that all such who ask no more than to serve God and save their own Souls have as much Freedom Ease and Security as they can desire Yea it is demonstrable that the Roman Catholicks enjoy advantages under this Government which they have not in Popish States In that being suffered to exercise their Religion so far as is necessary to attain all the ends of it if it be capable of affording them any whereon they can hereafter find themselves happy they are delivered from the Tyranny of Priests over their Persons and Estates and hindred from being in a condition to do that ill to others which the Doctrines of their Church would both tempt them unto and justifie them in And as to that which our Author says of the injustice done to the City of Amsterdam and of the violating the Conditions towards the Roman Catholicks there upon which under the guaranty of the Prince of Orange they came into the Vnion he is mistaken in that whole matter and betrays only his ignorance infidelity or both For the Conditions which he mentioneth were the result of an Agreement made Anno 1578. when upon the Nassovian Army's coming before their City to attack them they abandoned the Party and Interest of the King of Spain whom they had till that time adhered unto and came into an Alliance with the rest of the Towns of the Province to oppose him in defence of the Priviledges of these Countreys And as this was a year before the Vnion concluded at Vtrecht into which Amsterdam entred at the same time that Gelderland Zutphen Holland Zealand and Utrecht did so they joined in the Vnion upon the same Terms that the other Towns of their own Province had agreed unto Nor could the Prince of Orange be Guaranty in reference to the conditions specified in the Vnion forasmuch as tho the Act of Vnion was signed Jan. 23. 1579. yet the Prince did not sign it till the May following And that the Roman Catholick Magistrates came to be divested of the Government contrary to the Articles made with them when they forsook the party of the King of Spain they have none to blame for it but themselves nor was there that injustice in it which our Author does imagine For not being satisfied to remain disobedient and refractory to an Edict and Decree of the Arch-Duke Matthias and the Council of State who Anno 1578. had appointed that wheresoever there were a hundred Families of those professing the Reformed Religion that they should there be allowed a Church or Chappel for the exercise of their Worship they not only broke all their capitulations made with the Protestants thro oppressing them in various severe unjust method's and in denying them a decent and convenient place in which they might bury their dead but they were found to be still inclining to the Spanish Interest and ready to espouse it upon the first convenient opportunity And therefore the Protestants who were by much the majority partly to relieve themselves from the sufferings which were daily inflicted upon them contrary to stipulations and Articles and partly to prevent the mischiefs which would have ensued to the whole Country should that City have been betrayed again into the power and hands of the Spaniards assumed the Government to themselves and eased the other party of the Trust which they
had so unwisely and unrighteously managed Nor can our Author deny but that since they took on them the Ruling Authority they have exercised it with all the moderation that can be expressed And have been so far from returning to the Roman Catholicks the like measures which themselves had met with that they have in no one thing given them cause to complain unless they should quarrel that they are kept out of capacity of doing the mischief their priests would otherway's be ready to excite them unto and which their Religion would countenance them in But it is now time that I should proceed to the fourth thing for which I promised to call our Anonymous Answerer to an account And were he not of a singular Forehead and of a peculiar complexion from all others he could not have had the impudence to endeavour to deceive the world into a belief that the Protestant Dissenters in England stand listed by their Highnesses into the same rank with the Papists and that they are hereafter to expect to be shut up into the same state and condition Certainly he must either have an Antipathy woven into his nature against all truth and sincerity or else thro having long accustomed himself to the misreporting of persons and to the giving false representations of things he must at last have acquired an incurable Habit otherwise it were impossible to prevaricate to that degree from truth in every thing he medleth with and which he undertaketh to say For Mijn Heer Fagel having declared that the reason why their Highnesses can not agree to the Repeal of the Test Laws is because they are of no other tendency than to secure the Reformed Religion from the designs of the Roman Catholicks and that they contain only conditions and provisions whereby men may be qualified to be Members of Parliament and to bear publick Offices Our Author hereupon tells us That the Nonconformists as well as the Roman Catholicks do apprehend that they receive a great deal of damage by those Laws and do account them extremely prejudicial to their Persons and Families And whereas Monsieur Fagel had said that he would be glad to hear one good Reason whereby a Protestant fearing God and concerned for his Religion could be prevailed upon to consent to the Repealing of these Laws which have been enacted by the Authority of King and Parliament and that have no other tendency save the providing for the safety of the Reformed Religion and the hindreing Roman Catholicks from being in a capacity to subvert it Our Author in way of reflection upon this tells us that it is not only a Childish demand but that it is to be hop'd that the pensionary will from hence be brought to acknowledg how trifling and weak all those Reasons are by which he would preclude the Nonconformists as well as the Roman Catholicks from publick Employments So that by these and many other passages equally false and disingenuous in our Author 's pretended Answer which for brevity's sake I forbear to mention it is apparent that he endeavours to perswade the world into a belief that the Dissenters are stated by their Highnesses in the same rank and condition with the Papists and are to expect to be treated in the same manner in case it please the Almighty God to bring Their Highnesses to the Throne One would wonder at this sudden and strange change in the opinion and conduct of the Papists towards the Nonconformists that they who were represented by them a while ago ' as unfit to live in His Majesties Dominions should now come to be accounted the Kings best and most Faithful Subjects and worthy to be advanced to the chief Trusts and Employ's 'T is but a few years since that all the Laws enacted against them were judged to be too few and gentle and therefore they had Laws executed upon them to which the Legislators had never made them obnoxious but now the Roman Catholicks are become so tender of their ease and safety that out of pure kindness unto them if any will be so foolish as to believe it they must have Laws abrogated which in the worst times and during the most illegal and barbarous procedures against them they were never affected with nor suffered the least prejudice by And whereas it was the only way for persons heretofore to make their Court at St. James's by declaiming against the Dissenters as Rebels and Traitors and by putting them into a salvage Dress to be run upon as beasts of prey it is now grown the only method of becoming gracious at Whitehall to proclaim their Loyalty and to cry them up for the only people in whom his Majesty with safety to his Person and Crown can repose a confidence But under all the Shapes which the Papists do assume they may be easily discovered to retain the same malice to the Reformed Religion and only to act those various and opposite parts in order the better to subvert it And the Dissenters being harassed and oppressed before and indulged and caressed now was upon the same motive of hatred unto it and in subserviency to its extirpation The method's are altered but the design is one and tho they have changed their Tools yet they remain constant in the pursuance of the same End While they of the Church of England were found compliant with the ways which the Factors for Rome thought serviceable thereunto they were not only the Favourites of the Court and of the whole Popish party but were gratified at least as was pretended with a rigorous execution of the Penal Laws upon Dissenters But there remaining several steps to be taken for the introduction of Popery and the extirpation of the Reformed Religion which they of the National Communion would not go along with them in they are forced to shift Instruments and to betake themselves to the Nonconformists whose assistance the better to engage they have not only suspended all the Penal Laws to which the Dissenters were liable but have endeavoured to fill them with jealousy and apprehension of danger from the Test Acts tho at the same time they know that Nonconformists never either did or could receive prejudice by them Only they are sensible that if they could work up that easie people into such a belief they should thereby not only obtain their concurrence and abettment for the rescinding of those Laws that are at present the only great remaining Fence about our Religion and upon the abrogation whereof nothing could hinder the Papists from getting into a condition to extirpate it but make them a formed and united Body with themselves against the Prince and Princess of Orange who have with so much Wisdom Courage and Integrity declared that they are against the having them repealed And as the Dissenters cannot have so far renounced all regard both to honesty and to a good name as to be fond of being herded with the Papists or thank our Author for it so they must be
to insist upon the infinite Murders committed by the Inquisition the most Devilish Engine of Cruelty that ever the World was acquainted with nor to reflect so far backward as the Parisian and Irish Massacres or the infinite Slaughters perpetrated heretofore in France Germany and the Low Countreys c. seeing we have such fresh and doleful evidences of the mercy and gentleness of the Papal Church in the ungrateful inhumane perjurious and salvage persecutions executed so lately in France and Piedmont If it be the effect of Royal and Paternal affection in the King of England to his Subjects that all he endeavoureth is to treat them as becomes a common Father without making any distinction between one and another as our Author is pleased to call it in his Testimony concerning him what cruel Parents must many Princes of the Roman Communion be who act with that difference towards their people that while they cherish and embrace some they tear out the Bowels and suck the blood of others And if no Society destitute of such tender and Christian affections can merit the name of a Church we hence learn where to fasten the character of being the Mother of Harlots In that we not only know whose Doctrine it is that whom She cannot convert She ought to destroy but that we have observed her to have been in all Ages drunk with the Blood of Saints All the commendations our Author bestows upon the King of England are not only either so many accusations of His Majesties insincerity in the Papal Faith or infallible indications that both the King pardon the expression and his Minister are Hypocritical Dissemblers but they are stabbing and twinging Satyr's against Mother Church and the Holy Father and against his Brittanick Majesties dear Brother and Ally the French King Nor can we be guilty either of Crime or Indecency in the worst we can say of the Church of Rome and the Most Christian King seeing we have in equivalent Terms a President for it both from so good a Catholick and so wise a Minister of a great Monarch as our honourable Author is And tho I begin to grow weary of conversing with so impertinent a man yet I am bound to wait upon him a little longer and while the Reader can reap no advantage by any thing he says to see whether it be not possible to lay hold of an occasion from his Ignorance and Folly to communicate things that may be more solid and instructive The sixth thing therefore whereof I accused him and for which I promised to call him to an account is his egregious ignorance in relation to Government Laws Customs and matters of Fact Mijn Heer Fagel tells us that the Test Laws being enacted by King and Parliament for the Security of the Reformed Religion and the Roman Catholicks receiving no prejudice by them but being meerly restrained from getting into a condition to subvert it therefore Their Highnesses could not consent to their Repeal And he further adds that there is no Kingdom Common-wealth or any constituted Body and Society in which there are not Laws made for the safety thereof which not only provide against all attempts that may disturb their peace but which prescribe such conditions as they judge necessary for the discerning who are qualified to bear Employments To which he again subjoins that there is a great difference between the conduct of these of the Reformed Religion towards Roman Catholicks which is moderate and only to prevent their getting into a capacity to do hurt and that of those of the Roman Catholick Religion towards the Reformed who not being satisfied to exclude them from places of Trust do both suppress the whole Exercise of their Religion and severely persecute all that profess it And he finally adds that both Reason and the Experience of the present as well as past Ages do shew that it is impossible for Roman Catholicks and those of the Reformed Religion when joyned together in places of Trust and publick Employment to maintain a good Correspondence live in mutual peace and to discharge their Offices quietly and to the publick Good Now from these several passages which carry their own evidence along with them our Author takes occasion both to vent his foolish and ridiculous Politicks and to proclaim his ignorance in History and of the most obvious matters of Fact However we shall have the patience to hearken to what he hath been pleased to say and shall examine it piece by piece as we go along And the first thing he does is to acquaint us with a mighty Mystery of State and which none but so great a Minister could have been able to have revealed namely that tho the King and Parliament upon the first Revolution with respect to Religion and the introducing and setting up the Reformed Religion thought fit to make those Laws which they judged necessary for its preservation yet that it does not follow that his present Majesty and a Parliament would be of the same mind but that they might enact Laws of a differing Nature from the former and re-establish Religion into the same State in which it was before the Reformed Doctrine and Worship was set up We are much obliged to our Author for this discovery though I must add that this it is to trust a Fool with secrets for he will be sure to be blabbing For tho he subjoin that he will not say that matters would be pushed so far yet he hath already told us enough to make us understand both what his own hopes are and what is designed by the Papal party if they could compass a Parliament of a Complexion and Temper to their mind But there are two fatal things which lye in their way One is that neither progressing nor closeting bribing nor threatning can prove effectual to give them the slenderest ground of confidence of their obtaining a Parliament of that mould and constitution And the second is that all the Members must take the Tests before they can be a Legal Parliament and then there is little probability that they who can make the Declaration required in these Laws will be inclinable to Repeal them especially at a season when their own safety as well as that of the Protestant Religion renders it so necessary to have them maintained Whatsoever any Body of men by what name soever they be called or within what walls soever they assemble shall attempt to do without first having taken the Tests is ipso facto null and void in Law and will serve to no Legal purpose but to make themselves obnoxious to the severest punishments which the Justice of a provoked and betrayed Nation can be able to inflict upon them So that we do not doubt what the King would do for the re-establishing Popery and banishing the Protestant Religion could he get a Parliament to his mind but our hope is that he will not and the better to prevent it we will endeavour to keep our Test