and Modesty there would be no great danger of many Divisions but this is the great Secret of the providence of God that men are still men and both Pastors and People mix their Passions and Interests so with matters of Religion that as there is a great deal of Sin and Vice still in the World so that appears in the Matters of Religion as well as in other things but the ill Consequences of this tho' they are bad enough yet are not equal Effects that ignorant Superstition and Obedient Zeal have produced in the World Witness the Rebellions and Wars for establishing the Worship of Images the Croissades against the Saracens in which many Millions were lost those against Hereticks and Princes deposed by Popes which lasted for some Ages and the Massacre of Paris with the Butcheries of the Duke of Alva in the last Age and that of Ireland in this which are I suppose far greater Mischiefs than any that can be imagined to arise out of a small Diversion of Opinions and the present State of this Church notwithstanding all those unhappy Rents that are in it is a much more desirable thing than the gross Ignorance and blind Superstition that reigns in Italy and Spain at this day IX All these reasonings concerning the Infallibility of the Church signifie nothing unless we can certainly know whither we must go for this Decision for while one Party shews us that it must be in the Pope or is no where and another Party says it cannot be in the Pope because as many Popes have erred so this is a Doctrine that was not known in the Church for a thousand Years and that has been disputed ever since it was first asserted we are in the right to believe both sides first that if it is not in the Pope it is no where and than that certainly it is not in the Pope and it is very Incongruous to say that there is an Infallible Authority in the Church and that yet it is not certain where one must seek for it for the one ought to be as clear as the other and it is also plain that what Primacy soever St. Peter may be supposed to have had the Scripture says not one word of his Successors at Rome so at least this is not so clear as a matter of this Consequence must have been if Christ had intended to have lodged such an Authority in that See X. It is no less Incongruous to say that this Infallibility is in a General Council for it must be somewhere else otherwise it will return only to the Church by some starts and other long intervals and as it was not in the Church for the first Three Hundred and Twenty years so it has not been in the Church these last 120 years It is plain also that there is no Regulation given in the Scriptures concerning this great Assembly who have a right to come and Vote and what forfeits this right and what numbers must concur in a Decision to assure us of the Infallibility of the Judgment It is certain there was never a General Council of all the Pastors of the Church for those of which we have the Acts were only the Council of the Roman Empire but for those Churches that were in the South of Africk or the Eastern parts of Asia beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire as they could not be summoned by the Emperours Authority so it is certain none of them were present unless one or two of Persia at Nice which perhaps was a Corner of Persia belonging to the Empire and unless it can be proved that the Pope has an Absolute Authority to cut off whole Churches from their right of coming to Councils there has been no General Council these last 700 years in the World ever since the Bishops of Rome have Excommunicated all the Greek Churches upon such trifling Reasons that their own Writers are now ashamed of them and I will ask no more of a Man of a Competent Understanding to satisfie him that the Council of Trent was no General Council acting in that Freedom that became Bishops than that he will be at the pains to read Card. Pallavicin's History of that Council XI If it is said that this Infallibility is to be fought for in the Tradition of the Doctrine in all Ages and that every particular Person must examine this here is a Sea before him and instead of examining the small Book of the New Testament he is involved in a study that must cost a Man an Age to go thro' it and many of the Ages thro' which he carries this Enquiry are so dark and have produced so few Writers at least so few are preserved to our days that it is not possible to find out their Belief We find also Traditions have varied so much that it is hard to say that there is much weight to be laid on this way of Conveyance A Tradition concerning Matters of Fact that all People see is less apt to fail than a Tradition of Points of Speculation and yet we see very near the Age of the Apostles contrary Traditions touching the Observation of Easter from which we must conclude that either the Matter of Fact of one side or the other as it was handed down was not true or at least that it was not rightly understood A Tradition concerning the Use of the Sacraments being a visible thing is the more likely to be exact than a Speculation concerning their Nature and yet we find a Tradition of giving Infants the Communion grounded on the indispensible necessity of the Sacrament continued 1000 years in the Church A Tradition on which the Christians founded their Joy and Hope is less like to be changed than a more remote Speculation and yet the first Writers of the Christian Religion had a Tradition handed down to them by those who saw the Apostles of the Reign of Christ for a Thousand Years upon Earth and if those who had Matters at second hand from the Apostles could be thus mistaken it is more reasonable to apprehend greater Errors at such a distance A Tradition concerning the Book of the Scriptures is more like to be exact than the Expositions of some passages in it and yet we find the Church did unanimously believe the Translation of the 70 Interpreters to have been the effect of a miraculous Inspiration till St. Jerome examined this matter better and made a New Translation from the Hebrew Copies But which is more than all the rest it seems plain that the Fathers before the Council of Nice believed the Divinity of the Son of God to be in some sort inferiour to that of the Father and for some Ages after the Council of Nice they believed them indeed both equal but they considered these as two different Beings and only one in Essence as three men have the same Humane Nature in common among them and that as one Candle lights another so the one flowed from another and
C. Subjects all the Priviledges of their other Subjects only they are kept by a Test from having any share in the Government which is truly a Kindness done them considering that ill-natured humour of destroying all those that differ from them which is apt to break out when that Religion is in Power Now the 〈◊〉 of England may justly expect all sort of Protection and Countenance from the Succeâ—â—â—◠〈…〉 it's their Turn to give it they have a legal Right to it and impartial Dissenters 〈…〉 â—â—â—ledge that of late they have deserved it But as 〈…〉 Protestant Dissenters I think no honest Man amongst them will apprehend that their 〈…〉 who keep their Word to their Popish Enemies will break it to Protestant Subject◠〈…〉 from the publick Establishment The next thing I am to make good is That his Highnesses Education must have infused such Principles as side with his Interest There must be a fatal Infection in the English Crown if Matters miscarry in his Highnesses Hands his Veins are full of the best Protestant Blood in the VVorld The Reformation in France grew up under the Conduct and Influence of Coligni Prince William founded the Governmtnt of the United Netherlands on the Basis of Property and Liberty of Conscience his Highness was bred and lives in that State which subsists and flourishes by adhering steadily to the Maxims of its Founder He himself both in his publick and private Concerns as well in the Government of his Family and of such Principalities as belong to him as in that of the Army and in the Dispensing of that great Power which the States have given him has as great regard to Justice Vertue and true Religion as may compleat the Character of a Prince qualified to make those he governs happy It does not indeed appear that their Highnesses have any share of that devouring Zeal which hath so long set the VVorld on Fire and tempted thinking Men to have a Notion of Religion it self like that we have of the ancient Paradice as if it had never been more than an interced Blessing but all who have the Honour to know their Highnesses and their Inclinations in Matters of Religion are fully satisfied they have a truly Christian Zeal and as much as is consistent with Knowledge and Charity As to his Highnesses Circumstances they will be such when his Stars make way for him as may convince our Scepticks that certain persons times and things are prepared for one another I know not why we may not hope that as his Predecessors broke the York of the House of Austria from off the Neck of Europe The Honour of breaking that of the House of Bourbon is reserved for him I am confident the Nation will heartily joyn with him in his just Resentments Resentments which they have with so much Impatience long'd to find and have missâ—d with the greatest Indignation in the Hearts of their Monarchs His Highness has at present a greater Influence on the Councils of the most part of the Princes of Christendom than possibly any King of England ever had And this acquired 〈…〉 weight of his own personal Merit which will no doubt grow up to a glorious Authority when it is cloathed with Sovereign Power May I here mention to lay the Jealousies of the most unreasonable of your Friends that his Highness will have only a borrowed Title which we may suppose will make him more cautious in having Designs at Home and his wanting Children to our great Misfortune will make him less solicitous to have such Designs But after all it must be acknowledged that in Matters of this Nature the Premises may seem very strong and yet the Conclusion not follow Humane Infirmities are great Temptations to Arbitrariness are strong and often both the Spirit and Flesh weak Such fatal Mistakes have been made of late that the Successors themselves may justly pardon Mens jealousies A VVidow that has had a bad Husband will cry on her VVedding-day though she would be married with all her Heart But I am confident you will grant to me that in the Case of the present Successors the Possibilities are as remote and the Jealousies as ill grounded and that there is as much to ballance them as ever there was to be found in the prospect of any Successors to the Crown of England Now may I add To conclude the Reasons that I have given you why we may depend on their Highnesses that I know considerable Men who after great Enquiry and Observation do hope that their Highnesses being every way so well qualified for such an end are predestinated if I may speak so to make us happy in putting an end to our Differences and in fixing the Prerogative and in recovering the Glory of the Nation which is so much sunk and which now when we were big with Expectations we find sacrificed to unhappy partialities in matters of Religion The last thing you desire to know is What Effect this Letter has had But it is not yet old enough for me to judge of that I can better tell you what Effects it ought to have I find the moderate wise Men of all Perswasions are much pleased with it I know Roman Catholiks that wish to God Matters were setled on the Model given in it they see the great Difficulty of getting the Test Repealed And withal they doubt whether it is their Interest that it should be repealed or not They fear needy violent Men might get into Employments who would put his Majesty on doing things that might ruine them and their posterity They are certainly in the right of it It is good to provide for the worst A Revolution will come with a VVitness and its like it may come before the Prince of Wales be of Age to manage an unruly Spirit that I fear will accompany it Humane Nature can hardly digest what it is already necessitated to swallow such provocations even alters mens Judgments I find that Men who otherways hate severity begin to be of Opinion that Queen Elizabeths Lenity to the R. C's proves now Cruelty to the Protestants The whole Body of Protestants in the Nation was lately afraid of a Popish Successor and when they reflected on Queen Maries Reign thought we had already sufficient Experience of the Spirit of that Religion and took Self preservation to be a good Argument for preventing a second Tryal But now a handful of Roman Catholicks perhaps reflecting on Queen Elizabeths Reign are not it seems afraid of Protestant Successors But if some Protestants at that time from an Aversion to the Remedy hop'd that the Disease was not so dangerous as it proves I am confident at present all Protestants are agreed that henceforward the Nation must be saved not by Faith And therefore I would advise the R. C's to consider that Protestants are still Men that late Experiences at home and the Cruelties of Popish Princes abroad has given us a very terrible Idea of their Religion That
persons to sit in Parliament and to exercise Offices in Church and State is only to declare that they do believe there is not any Transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper or in the Elements of Bread and Wine at or after the Consecration by any persons whatsoever and that the Invocation of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint and the Sacrifice of the Mass as they are now used in the Church of Rome are Superstitious and Idolatrous And this Declaration the Non-conformists are of all people the most inclinable and forward to make and therefore very far by vertue of those Statutes from standing incapable of any Trust Office and Employment that other Subjects are admitted unto Nor hath there been a Protestant Dissenter since the first hour that these Laws were enacted that ever scrupled to take the Tests or that was precluded from Office and Employment for refusing them But on the contrary several of the most famous Dissenters such as Sir John Hartop Alderman Love and Mr. Eyles persons who at all times have kept at the greatest distance from Communion with the Church of England by reason of her Forms and 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
and of which you have seen so fresh an instance that we need not put you in mind of it You know how many of your Fellow-Officers have been used for their standing firm to the Protestant Religion and to the Laws of England and you cannot flatter your selves so far as to expect to be better used if those who have broke their word so often should by your means be brought out of those Straits to which they are reduced at present We hope likewise that you will not suffer your selves to be abused by a false Notion of Honour but that you will in the first place consider what you owe to Almighty God and your Religion to your Country to your Selves and to your Posterity which you as Men of Honour ought to prefer to all private Considerations and Engagements whatsoever We do therefore expect that you will consider the Honour that is now set before you of being the Instruments of serving your Country and securing your Religion and We will ever remember the Service you shall do Us upon this Occasion and will promise unto you that We shall place such particular Marks of our Favour on every one of you as your Behaviour at this time shall deserve of Us and the Nation in which we will make a great Distinction of those that shall come seasonably to join their Arms with ours and you shall find us to be Your Well-wishing and Assured Friend W. H. P. O. Prince George 's Letter to the King SIR WITH a Heart full of Grief am I forced to Write what Prudence will not permit me to say to your Face And may I e'er find Credit with your Majesty and protection from Heaven as what I now do is free from Passion Vanity or Design with which Actions of this Nature are too often accompanied I am not ignorant of the frequent Mischiefs wrought in the World by factious pretences of Religion but were not Religion the most justifiable Cause it would not be made the most specious pretence And your Majesty has always shewn too uninterested a Sense of Religion to doubt the just Effects of it in one whose Practices have I hope never given the World cause to censure his real conviction of it or his backwardness to perform what his Honour and Conscience prompt him to How then can I longer disguise my just Concern for that Religion in which I have been so happily Educated which my Judgment throughly convinces me to be best and for the Support of which I am so highly interested in my Native Country And is not England now by the most endearing Tie become so Whilst the restless Spirits of the Enemies of the REFORMED RELIGION back'd by the cruel Zeal and prevailing Power of France justly alarm and unite all the Protestant Princes of Christendom and engage them in so vast an Expence for the support of it can I act so degenerous and mean a part as to deny my Concurrence to such worthy Endeavours for disabusing of your Majesty by the Reinforcement of those Laws and Establishment of that Government on which alone depends the well-being of your Majesty and of the PROTESTANT RELIGION in Europe This Sir is that irresistible and only Cause that cou'd come in Competition with my Duty and Obligations to your Majesty and be able to tear me from You whilst the same Affectionate Desire of serving You continues in me Could I secure your Person by the Hazard of my Life I should think it could not be better Employed And wou'd to God these Your distracted Kingdoms might yet receive that satisfactory Compliance from your Majesty in all their justifiable pretensions as might upon the only sure Foundation that of the Love and Interest of your Subjects establish your Government and as strongly Unite the Hearts of all your Subjects to You as is that of SIR Your Majesty's most Humble and most Obedient Son and Servant The Lord Churchill 's Letter to the King SIR SInce Men are seldom suspected of Sincerity when they act contrary to their Interests and though my dutiful Behaviour to your Majesty in the worst of Times for which I acknowledge my poor Services much over paid may not be sufficient to incline You to a charitable Interpretation of my Actions yet I hope the great Advantage I enjoy under Your Majesty which I can never expect in any other change of Government may reasonably convince Your Majesty and the World that I am acted by a higher Principle when I offer that violence to my inclination and interest as to desert Your Majesty at a time when your Affairs seem to challenge the strictest Obedience from all your Subjects much more from one who lies under the greatest personal Obligations imaginable to Your Majesty This Sir could proceed from nothing but the inviolable Dictates of my CONSCIENCE and a necessary concern for my RELIGION which no good man can oppose and with which I am instructed nothing ought to come in Competition Heaven knows with what partiality my dutiful Opinion of Your Majesty hath hitherto represented those unhappy Designs which inconsiderate and self-interested men have framed against Your Majesty's true Interest and the Protestant Religion But as I can no longer joyn with such to give a pretence by Conquest to bring them to effect so will I always with the hazard of my Life and Fortune so much your Majesty's due endeavour to preserve Your Royal Person and Lawful Rights with all the tender Concern and dutiful Respect that becomes SIR Your Majesty's most Dutiful and most Obliged Subject and Servant The Princess Ann of Denmark 's Letter to the Queen Madam I Beg your pardon if I am so deeply affected with the surprising News of the Princes being gon as not to be able to see You but to leave this Paper to Express my humble Duty to the King and your Self and to let You know that I am 〈◊〉 to absent my self to avoid the King's Displeasure which I am not able to bear â—ur ther against the Prince or my Self And I shall stay at so great a distance as not to return before I hear the happy News of a Reconcilement And as I am confident the Prince did not leave the King with any other design than to use all possible means for His Preservation so I hope You will do me the Justice to believe that I am uncapable of following Him for any other End Never was any one in such an unhappy Condition so divided between Duty and Affection to a Father and a Husband and therefore I know not what to do but to follow one to preserve the other I see the general falling off of the Nobility and Gentry who avow to have no other end than to prevail with the King to secure their Religion which they saw so much in danger by the Violent Counsels of the Priests who to promote their own Religion did not care to what dangers they exposed the King I am fully perswaded that the Prince of
for it being terrified by the greatness of the danger would have compounded so far as to have taken away the Penal Laws against Papists and so have set them upon a Level with other English Subjects provided the Test might have been continued and the Government secured from falling into the hands of that Faction all such offers were despised and rejected with scorn Nor would any thing content the Bigotry and Arbitrary humour of those who were then in the Saddle less than the total enslaving of the Nation and the Re-establishment of that Idolatrous Religion from which our Ancestors had freed themselves with so much Bravery and Generosity in the beginning of the last Century In this deplorable Condition His then Highness the Prince of Orange found these Kingdoms when he came to relieve us from the greatest Oppressions He heard the Voice of the People that earnestly invited him over to their Rescue and taking it as undoubtedly it was for the Voice of God complied and God hath made us All happy with the desired success Had the late King James stuck firmly to the Interests of his People He would thereby have easily secured his own and if they could have found He had had what he assured both Houses of Parliament King's Speech to both Houses of Parliament May 30. 1685. in a Speech he made to them A true English heart as Jealous of the Honour of the Nation as they themselves could be he might have carried by God's Blessing and their Assistance as he then said the Reputation of it yet higher in the World than ever it had been in the time of any of his Ancestors He wanted not some about him at the first especially that would gladly have given him faithful Counsel Those that were able to advise him well and were real Friends to Him as they were true to their Religion and to the Interest of their Countrey and A Wise Man says my incomparable Author Memoirs of Philip de Comines lib. 3. c. 5. p. 159. in a Prince's Retinue is a great Treasure and Security to his Master if one has the Liberty to speak truth and the other the Discretion to believe him But unhappy Prince He was resolvedly bent by the force of his own Superstition the Power and Influence of the Priests and Jesuits that continually attended on him and the Directions from France upon the total Destruction of our Reformed Religion that Pestilent Northern Heresy our Liberties and our Properties and was upon the point of effecting that Tremendous Design but God in his Wise Providence with Infinite Mercy and Compassion to this almost Ruined Land and People saw it meet to give check to that Imperial Carreer with a hitherto shalt thou come and no further HE REMOVETH KINGS AND SETTETH UP KINGS In this Volume you have a full Account of our late happy Revolution with almost all the steps and measures that were taken in it and a justification of our present Settlement 'T was God's doing and it ought ever to be marvellous in our eyes We have now a King and Queen professing the same Faith with our selves who as He came over to preserve our Dearest Interests the Protestant Religion and to restore to Vs our invaded Laws and Liberties found the Nation generally disposed to receive him as the Mighty Deliverer under God of this Church and State The hand of Heaven conducted him with safety up to London and all the Kingdom called him Blessed and in a sence of Joy and Gratitude to Him and His Royal Consort The whole Body of the Nation by their Representatives in Parliament have recognized and acknowledged Their present Majesties to be their Lawful and Rightful Sovereign Liege Lord and Lady And how could we do less than own them for our King and Queen who by such an amazing turn have redeemed from Slavery both our Souls and Bodies if we pretend to any value for our Holy Religion or any English Love of Liberty We have a King of an Extraordinary Personal Valour and Conduct that hath very often already ventured his Life and still resolves to despise all difficulties and hazards himself that His People may reap the fruit of them in their own Peace and Prosperity and that the Protestant Religion may be established to us and our Children to future Generations The Queen is as Supream in Her Vertue as in Her Dignity and hath shewed a most Eminent Resolution as well as a most Prudent Care in all the Administrations of the Government when the Absence of the King hath obliged Her to take the Exercise of the Regal Power upon Her So that the Nation may now hope to enjoy a lasting Felicity from the Royal Protection of both Their Majesties whose constant endeavours we are assured from themselves will be imployed to procure and support the Interest and Honour of it and the Benefit Safety and Ease of their People they throughly understanding the Truth of Mons Gourville's Observation who had been long enough here in England Memoirs of what past in Christendom from the War begun 1672. to the Peace concluded 1679. p. 33 34. to know the Humour of our Court and People and Parliaments to conclude Qu'un Roy d'Angleterre qui veut estre l'homme de son peuple est le plus Grand Roy du monde mais s'il veut estre quelque chose d'avantage par Dieu il n'est plus rien i. e. That a King of England who will be the MAN of his People is the greatest King in World but if he will be something more he is nothing at all I may venture therefore to Prophesy that this King and Queen will take the same care to continue as they have already done to make themselves the DARLING of their People and no Good English Man can wish for more but that this King and Queen may long Reign and that the Tripple Alliance of their Sacred Majesties their Parliaments and their People may never be dissolved Little needs be said concerning the usefulness of such Collections as these THAT formerly published having received sufficient Approbation from Persons of Learning and Knowledg The benefit of them is the same with what redounds from a true History not of Battels and Sieges Births Marriages and Deaths of Princes which are temporary and momentary things but of the Legal Government of a Nation struggling with Arbitrary Power and Illegal Proceedings so far forth as it was invaded within the time mentioned in the Title A CATALOGUE OF THE TRACTS Contained in This Second Volume 1. THE Earl of Clarendon's Speech about disbanding the Army September 13. 1660. Fol. 1 2. The State of England both at home and abroad in order to the Designs of France considered 6 3. Of the Fundamental Laws or Politick Constitution of this Kingdom 22 4. London's Flames revived Or an Account of several Informations exhibited to a Committee appointed by Parliament Sept. 25. 1666. to inquire into the burning of London
are forced none will abide you And said further That there was a Man beyond sea had prophesied That in sixty six if the King did not settle the Romish Religion in England he would be banished out of the Kingdom and all his Posterity And Collins further said That he being lately turned a Roman Catholick he would not be a Protestant for all the World He wished Graunger again in the hearing of his Wife which he affirmed to the Committee to turn his Religion for all the said Prophesie would come to pass in Sixty six Robert Holloway of Darking aforesaid informed That one Stephen Griffin a Papist said to him That all the bloud that had been shed in the late civil War was nothing to that which would be shed this year in England Holloway demanded a reason for these words in regard the Kingdom was in peace and no likelihood of trouble and said Do you Papists intend to rise and cut our throats when we are asleep Griffin answered That 's no matter if you live you shall see it Ferdinand de Massido a Portuguese and some Years since a Romish Priest but turning Protestant Informed That one Father Taff a Jesuite did the last year tell him at Paris That if all England did not return to the Church of Rome they should all be destroyed the next Year Mr. Samuel Cottman of the Middle-Temple Barister Informed That about two Years since one Mr. Jeviston a Popish Priest and called by the Name of Father Garret did perswade him to turn Papist and he should want neither Profit nor Preferment Mr. Cottman objected that he intended to practise the Law which he could not do if he turned Papist because he must take the Oath of Supremacy at his being called to the Bar and if he were a Papist he must not take it Mr. Jeviston replied Why not take the Oath It is an unlawful Oath and void ipso facto And after some pause said further First take the Oath and then I will convert you He said further The King will not own ' himself to be Head of the Church And said further You in England that set up the Dutch to destroy our Religion shall find that they shall be the Men to PULL DOWN YOURS Mr. Stanley an Officer to the Duke of Ormond in Ireland Informed That coming out of Ireland with one Oriel who owned himself of the Order of the Jesuites and commissioned from the Pope to be Lord Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Armah and falling into some Discourse with him he told him That there had been a Difference between him and some other of the Jesuites in Ireland and that part of the Occasion was that one Father Walsh and some other of the Jesuites there did dispense with the Papists in Ireland to take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy by virtue of a standing Commission from the Pope which he had to do it during this King's Life and Oriel thought they ought not to do it by virtue of the standing Commission but should take a new Commission from the Pope every Year to do it And likewise That he brought eight Boys out of Ireland whom he intended to carry to Flanders to breed up in some of the Colledges there And at his taking Shipping to go for Flanders he shaked his Foot towards England terming it Egypt and said He would not return into England till he came with 50 thousand Men at his heels A French Merchant being a Papist living in St. Michael's Lane London writes in a Letter to his Friend That a great number of Men and Arms were ready here if those he wrote to were ready there He being upon the Intercepting of this Letter searched forty Fire-locks were found in his House ready loaden which were carried to Fishmongers-Hall a Month or more before the Fire and he committed to Prison but since released A Poor Woman retaining to one Belson's House a Papist about Darking in Surrey was follicited that she and her husband would turn Roman Catholicks which if they did voluntarily Now they would be accepted of but if they staid a little longer they would be forced whether they would or no and then they would not be esteemed This was deposed before Sir Adam Brown a Member of Parliament A Complaint being made against a Sugar-Baker at Fox-hall his House was searched by Lieutenant Collonel Luntly who found there several Guns with such Locks as no English-man who was at the taking of them could discharge together with Brass Blunderbusses and Fire-works of a furious and burning nature Trial being made of a small part of them the Materials were discerned to be Sulphur Aquavitae and Gun-powder whatever else In a Letter to Sir John Frederick and Mr. Nathanail Heron from Horsham in Sussex the 8th of September 1666. Subscibed Henry Chowne Wherein is mentioned that the said Henry Chowne had thoughts to come to London that week but that they were in Distraction there concerning the Papists fearing they would shew themselves all that day And that he had been to search a Papist's House within six miles of that place He with another Justice of Peace met the Gentleman's Brother who is a Priest going to London whom they searched and found a Letter about him which he had received that Morning from his Sister twenty miles off from him wherein is expressed That a great Business is in hand not to be committed to Paper as the times be Your Committee have thought fit to give no Opinion upon these Informations but leave the matter of Fact to your Judgments I am commanded to tell you That your Committee have several other things of this nature under their Inquiry AS a further Instance of the audacious and insolent Behaviour of these Popish Recusants take the following Copy of Verses made and then scattered abroad by some of their Party in Westminster-Hall and several other places about the City and elsewhere in the Kingdom COvre la feu ye Hugonots That have so branded us with Plots And henceforth no more Bonfires make Till ye arrive the Stygian Lakeâ— For down ye must ye Hereticks For all your hopes in sixty six The hand against you is so steady Your Babylon is faln already And if you will avoid that hap Return into your Mothers lap The Devil a Mercy is for those That Holy Mother-Church oppose Let not your Clergy you betray Great Eyes are ope and see the way Return in time if you will save Your Souls your Lives or ought you have And if you live till sixty seven Confess you had fair Warning given Then see in time or ay be blind Short time will shew you what 's behind Dated the 5th Day of November in the Year 1666. and the First Year of the Restoration of the Church of Rome in England NOt long after the Burning of London Mr. Brook Bridges a young gentleman of the Temple as he was going to attend Divine Service in the Temple-Church in a Pew there
the eighteen Months Assessment granted by a late Act of Parliamert Intituled An Act for raising the Sum of Twelve hundred thirty eight thousand and seven hundred and fifty Pounds for the Supply of his Majesties present Occasions be expended Except it shall appear that the Obstinacy of the Dutch shall render it necessary Nor before this Kingdom be effectually Secured from Popery and Popish Counsels and the other present Grievances be 〈◊〉 And An Address ordered to be presented to His Majesty for a Fast to be observed throughout the Nation and a Committee appointed for that purpose A further Address to be presented to his Majesty concerning the Marriage of the Duke of York with the Dutchess of Modena And the Privy Counsellors of this House to attend His Majesty to know His Pleasure when he will be attended therewith And they Adjourned till to Morrow in the Afternoon November 3. 1673. A Report from the Committee appointed for that purpose was made for an Address to be presented to His Majesty to appoint a General Fast to be observed throughout the Nation and the Concurrence of the Lords to be desired thereto The standing-Army voted a Grievance A Committee appointed to prepare an Address to be presented to his Majesty to shew how this Standing-Army is a Grievance and then adjourned till Three of the Clock in the Afternoon Mr. Speaker and the House went to attend His Majesty at Whitehall with the Address who returning Mr. Speaker reports That it was a Matter he would take into his present Consideration and would return speedily an Answer And then the House Adjourned till to Morrow Morning eight of the Clock November 4. 1673. The House of Commons having Ordered an Address to be made to his Majesty shewing that the Standing-Army was a Grievance and a Burden to the Nation and did intend that Day to wait on his Majesty to present it But his Majesty was in his Robes in the House of Peers and the Lords hastning to him the Black-Rod being sent to the Commons-House to Command the Speaker and the Commons to come to his Majesty to the House of Peers but it so happened that the Speaker and the Black-Rod met both at the Commons-House door the Speaker being within the House the Door was commanded to be shut and they cried to the Chair others said the Black-Rod was at the Door to command them to wait on the King to the House of Peers but the Speaker was hurried to the Chair Then was moved 1. That our Alliance with France was a Grievance 2. That the evil Counsel about the King was a Grievance to this Nation 3. That the Lord Lauderdale was a Person that was a Grievance to this Nation and not fit to be intrusted or imployed in any Office or Place of Trust but to be removed Whereupon they cried To the Question But the Black-Rod knocking very earnestly at the Door the Speaker rose out of the Chair and went away in a Confusion A LETTER FROM A PARLIAMENT-MAN to his FRIEND Concerning the Proceedings of the House of Commons This last Session begun the 13 of October 1675. SIR I See you are greatly Scandalized at our slow and confused Proceedings I confess you have cause enough but were you but within these Walls for one half Day and saw the strange Make and Complexion that this House is of you would wonder as much that ever you wondred at it For we are such a pied Parliament that none can say of what Colour we are for we consist of old Cavaliers old Round-heads Indigent Courtiers and true Country Gentlemen the two latter are most numerous and would in probability bring things to some Issue were they not clogged with the humorous uncertainties of the former For the old Cavalier grown Aged and almost past his Vice is damnable Godly and makes his doating Piety more a Plague to the World then his youthful Debauchery was For he is so much a Byggot to the Bishops that he forces his Loyalty to strike Sail to his Religion and could be content to pare the Nails a little of the Civil Government so you would but let him sharpen the Ecclesiastical Tallons which behaviour of his so exasperates the Round-head that he on the other hand cares not what Increases the Interest of the Crown receives so he can but diminish that of the Miter so that the Round-head had rather enslave the Man than the Conscience The Cavalier rather the Conscience than the Man there being a sufficient stock of Animosity as proper matter to work upon Upon these therefore the Courtier mutually plays For if any Anticourt motion be made he gains the Rounhead either to oppose or absent by telling them If they will joyn him now he will joyn with them for Liberty of Conscience And when any Affair is started on the behalf of the Country he assures the Cavaliers If they will then stand by him he will then joyn with them in promoting a Bill against the Fanaticks Thus play they on both hands that no Motion of a publick nature is made but they win upon the one or other of them and by this Art gain a Majority against the Country Gentlemen which otherwise they would never have Wherefore it were happy that we had neither Roundhead nor Cavalier in the House for they are each of them so Prejudicate one against the other that their sitting here signifies nothing but their Fostering their old Venome and lying at Catch to snap every Advantage to bear down each other though it be in the Destruction of their Country For if the Round-heads bring in a good Bill the old Cavalier opposes it for no other reason but because they brought it So that as the poor English Silk-weavers are feign to hire a French-man to sell their Ribbons So are the Round-heads a Cavalier to move for those Bills they desire should pass which so sowers the Round-head that he revenges that Carriage upon any Bill the Cavalier offers and the Rage and the Passion of the one and other are so powerful that it blinds them both that neither perceives the Advantage they give the Courtier to abuse both them and their Country too so that if either of them do any Good it is only out of pure Envy against the other Thus you see how we are yoked and seeing this you may cease your Admiration that we offer at all and do just nothing Nor is this Division alone of the House all we have to lament for Death that common Cure does now every Day lessen this evil but that which is more our Misery is that those Gentlemen who are truly for the Good of their Country will not be perswaded to stand upon the sure Basis of Rational Principles like Workmen too presumptive of their Judgments that will not build by Rule but rather affect the most loose Standing on the Sandy Foundation of Heat and Humour By reason of which they often do as much Harm as Good and yet
committed and also their Issues being any way assenting or privy to the same and all their Aiders Comforters and Abettors in that behalf And to the end that the intention of this Law may be effectually Executed if Her Majesties Life shall be taken away by any violent or unnatural means which God defend Be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid That the Lords and others which shall be of Her Majesties Privy Council at the time of such Her Decease or the more part of the same Council joyning unto them for their better Assistance five other Earls and seven other Lords of Parliament at the least foreseeing that none of the said Earls Lords or Council be known to be persons that may make any Title to the Crown those persons which were Chief Justices of either Bench Master of the Rolls and Chief Baron of the Exchequer at the time of Her Majesties Death or in Default of the said Justices Master of the Rolls and Chief Baron some other of those which were Justices of some of the Courts of Records at Westminster at the time of Her Highness Decease to supply their Places or any Four and twenty or more of them whereof Eight to be Lords of the Parliament not being of the Privy Council shall to the uttermost of their Power and Skill examine the cause and manner of such Her Majesties Death and what persons shall be any way Guilty thereof and all Circumstances concerning the same according to the true meaning of this Act and thereupon shall by open Proclamation publish the same and without any delay by all forcible and possible means prosecute to Death all their Aiders and Abettors And for the doing thertof and for the withstanding and suppressing of all such Power and Force as shall any way be levied or stirred in Disturbance of the due Execution of this Law shall by virtue of this Act have Power and Authority not only to raise and use such Forces as shall in that behalf be needful and convenient but also to use all other means and things possible and necessary for the maintenance of the same Forces and prosecution of the said Offenders And if any such Power and Force shall be levied or stirred in Disturbance of the due Execution of this Law by any person that shall or may pretend any Title to the Crown of this Realm whereby this Law may not in all things be fully Executed according to the effect and true meaning of the same That then every such person shall by virtue of this Act be therefore excluded and disabled for ever to have or claim or to pretend to have or claim the Crown of this Realm or of any other Her Highness Dominions any former Law or Statute whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding And be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid and all and every the Subjects of all Her Majesties Realms and Dominions shall to the uttermost of their Power aid and assist the said Councel and all other the Lords and other Persons to be adjoyned to them for Assistance as is aforesaid in all things to be done and executed according to the effect and intention of this Law And that no Subject of this Realm shall in any wise be impeached in Body Lands or Goods at any time hereafter for any thing to be done or executed according to the Tenour of the Law any Law or Statute heretofore made to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding And whereas of late many of Her Majesties good and faithful Subjects have in the Name of God and with the Testimonies of good Consciences by one Uniform manner of Writing under their Hands land Seals and by their several Oaths voluntarily taken joyned themselves together in one Bond and Association to withstand and revenge to the uttermost all such malicious Actions and Attempts against Her Majesties most Royal Person Now for the full Explaining of all such Ambiguities and Questions as otherwise might happen to grow by reason of any sinister or wrong Construction or Interpretation to be made or inferred of or upon the words or meaning thereof Be it Declared and Enacted by the Authority of this present Parliament That the same Association and every Article and Sentence therein contained as well concerning the Disallowing Excluding or Disabling any Person that may or shall pretend any Title to come to the Crown of this Realm as also for the pursuing and taking Revenge of any person for any such wicked Act or Attempt as is mentioned in the same Association shall and ought to be in all things expounded and adjudged according to the true intent and meaning of this Act and not otherwise nor against any other person or persons A Word without Doors concerning the BILL for SUCCESSION SIR I AM very sensible of the great Honour you were pleas'd to do me in your last which I received immediately after our late unhappy Dissolution but could have wished you would have laid your Commands on some more able Person to have given you Satisfaction in the matter you there propose relating to the Duke who you seem to insinuate was like if the Parliament had continued to have received hard measure I must ingeniously confess to you I was not long since perfectly of your Opinion and thought it the highest Injustice imaginable for any Prince to be debar'd of his Native Right of Succession upon any pretence whatsoever But upon a more mature Deliberation and Enquiry I found my Error proceeded principally from the falso Notions I had took up of Government it self and from my Ignorance of the Practiâ—â—â— of all Communities of Men in all Ages whenever Self-preservation and Necessity of their Affairs obliged them to declare their Opinion in Cases of the like Nature To the knowledge of all which the following Accident I shall relate to you did very much contribute My Occasions obliging me one day to attend the coming of a Friend in a Coffee-house near Charing-Cross there happened to sit at the same Table with me Two Ingenious Gentlemen who according to the Frankness of Conversation now used in the Town began a Discourse on the same Subject you desire to be more particularly informed in and having Extolled the late House of Commons as the best number of Men that had ever sate within those Walls and that no House had ever more vigorously maintained and asserted English Liberty and Protestant Religion than they had done as far as the nature of the things that came before them and the Circumstances of time would admit to all which I very readily and heartily assented they then added That the great Wisdom and Zeal of that House had appeared in nothing more than in Ordering a Bill to be brought in for debarring the Duke of Y. from inheriting the Crown A Law they affirmed to be the most just and reasonable in the World and the only proper Remedy to establish this Nation on a true and solid Interest both Relation to the present
Heart without either Passion or Prejudice and should be as willing as any Person to agree with what that Gentleman hath proposed if any such Reason can be brought to enforce it For my part I think it absolutely impossible that this Kingdom can be safe or the Protestant Religion succeed under a Popish Successor for do but Review the Ancient and Modern Histories and you shall find how Protestants have lived under a Popish King have they not been Massacred Butchered and Enslaved in Germany France and in our own Countries notwithstanding all the Laws Vows and Promises to the contrary Are not the Tenets of the Papists destructive to the Protestant Religion which is Heresie and that Faith is not to be kept with such See the barbarous Usage of the Protestants in Piedmont and in Queen Maries Time How then can we expect any better success for by how much a Popish Prince seems to be Religious by so much ought he to be looked upon desperately dangerous for since the Papists make such Plotting and Designing to subvert our Religion under a Protestant Prince how much more will they act against us under a Popish Successor For to think to Restrain a Prince under the Power of a penal Law thereby to secure Religion is no more than to tye Sampson with Cords for will not the Courteors be flattered by their Prince to imitate the same Religion with him and then will not we Protestants be discountenanced and none but Priests and Jesuites have Dominion over us For my part if you pass not this Bill we shall all agree to have our Throats cut and I have no patience at all for that you see how the Duke of York being a Papist they have all the dependency on him and hope to perfect their Villanies Therefore take away this General and this Army may be secured and then being united at home we need not fear what all the Papists in the World can do unto us when we fight for the maintenance of our Laws and Religion by Exclusion of a Popish Prince and rather withstand any Violence that shall be brought against us than be in Danger every day to have our Throats cut by those that are amongst us One Gentleman was pleased to say that it was a Papist Jesuits Bill and that which they brand the Papists withall viz Deposing of Princes I do say as to that That we do not Depose James D. of Y. but as being a Papist considering the sad Consequence that will ensue for should we admit a Papist we should give away the Crown for he would only have the Title the Pope would be our Sovereign And we ought to prevent any such Usurpers who no doubt would make havock of our Estates if he spares us our Lives To tell us that Exclusion will cause a Civil War I am of the contrary Opinion for it will be more conducing to the Preservation of the Kings Person and Government our Laws Lives and Religion to be Unanimous Whereas Oppression Fire and Faggot might cause People to Rebel and be Mutunous when the other would be a means to unite us As I will give you a reason why we cannot restrain him otherwise or use moderation towards him for suppose I were riding a full speed on the Road on a secure Horse a Gentleman passing by desired me to be moderate for that I would kill my Horse when at the same time he knows that if I slacken my pace I shall have my throat cut by thieves that are swiftly pursuing me therefore I cannot be moderate in this case unless I will fling away my Life And I will lay down another Similitude that is if I were Sayling to the East-Indies and passing the Equinoctial Line most of the Sea-men were distempered through Heat and on their sick Beds but it being told them that the Ship is in danger of sinking for there springs a Leak upon which they all arise and instantly fall to Pump but the Chyrurgeon acquaints them that if they do not work more moderately they will get the Calenture and so destroy themselves but they give him only the Hearing knowing that if they cease never so little they are all drowned in the Deep therefore in this case there can be no Moderation And to give an Instance in Holy Writ Moses was a meek and mild Man and a moderate Man but seeing an Egyptian and an Israelite fighting he immediately slew the Egyptian for he knew it was to no purpose to be moderate with him and afterwards seeing two Israelites fighting endeavoured to part them telling them they were Brethren and ought to be moderate so we must place it upon the right Object and not suffer our selves and Posterity to be irrecoverably undone Another Speech by a Worthy Gentleman Mr. Speaker NO Man hath a greater Veneration for the Royal Family than my self to which I am obliged both in gratitude and Duty I am bold to say that I have a great esteem and honour for the D. of Y. Yet I must before the passing of this Bill to dissent from that worthy Gentleman that thinked it a Bill of Rigour for it is as I conceive a Bill of Grace and Mercy Vote for it as a Favour for the D. I am sure it is so to the Royal Family they cannot be safe till the Bill be passed in tenderness to one Branch we must endanger the whole That worthy Gentleman that moved last seems to intimate that the passing this Bill is against our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I admire his Mistake and it is the first time I ever heard the Protestant Oaths cited to justifie a Popish Successor it is urged we are sworn to the King his Heirs and lawful Successors it is true we are so but not obliged to any in the Kings life time but himself for that were Treason He has no Heirs or Successors by Law during his own Life Non est Heres viventis We are likewise told we are designing a Bill to UNITE the Protestant Interest but will divide it because many true Protestants are for the true Heir and for the D. of Y. if he be so which may occasion the Effusion of much Blood amongst us Mr. Speaker UNITY is desired by all yet let us be glad to divide from such Men for when this Bill is passed their false Loyalty will be a Crime and we know not what Character to give it and what Punishment to assign them LOYALTY is a Correspondency and Submission to the Law it is that surrounds the King and makes his Person Sacred It is hinted that we must Impeach the Duke I should be for that if he did not withdraw I will not say fly from Justice if we Impeach him being absent we can only Attaint him and should he survive the King and be then Lawful Heir the Descent of the Crown takes off all Attainders and such Proceedings were only an Illusion and would indeed involve us in Blood Let us disable
not unknown to your Majesty how restless the Endeavours and how bold the Attempts of the Popish Party for many years last past have been not only within this but other your Majesties Kingdoms to introduce the Romish and utterly to extirpate the true Protestant Religion The several Approaches they have made towards the compassing this their Design assisted by the Treachery of perfidious Protestants have been so strangely successful that 't is matter of Admiration to Us and which we can only ascribe to an Over-ruling Providence that your Majesties Reign is still continued over Us and that We are yet assembled to consult the means of our preservation This bloody and restless Party not content with the great Liberty they had a long time enjoyed to excercise their own Religion privately amongst themselves to pertake of an equal Freedom of their persons and Estates with your Majesties Protestant Subjects and of an Advantage above them in being excused from chargeable Offices and Employments hath so far prevailed as to find countenance for an open and avowed practice of their Superstition and Idolatry without controul in several parts of this Kingdom Great swarms of Priests and Jesuits have resorted hither and have here exercised their Jurisdiction and been daily tampering to pervert the Consciences of your Majesties Subjects Their Opposers they have found means to disgrace and if they were Judges Justices of the Peace or other Magistrates to have them turned out of Commission and in contempt of the known Laws of the Land they have practised upon people of all Ranks and qualities and gained over divers to their Religion some openly to profess it others secretly to espouse it as most conduced to the service thereof After some time they became able to influence matters of State and Government and thereby to destroy those they cannot corrupt The continuance or Prorogation of Parliaments has been accommodated to serve the purposes of that Party Money raised upon the People to supply your Majesties extraordinary Occasions was by the prevalence of Popish Councils imployed to make War upon a Protestant State and to advance and augment the dreadful Power of the French King though to the apparent hazard of this and all other Protestant Countries Great numbers of your Majesties Subjects were sent into and continued in the service of that King notwithstanding the apparent Interest of your Majesties Kingdoms the Addresses of the Parliament and your Majesties gracious Proclamations to the contrary Nor can We forbear to mention how that at the beginning of the same War even the Ministers of England were made Instruments to press upon that State the acceptance of one demand among others from the French King for procuring their peace with him that they should admit the publick exercise of the Roman Catholick Religion in the United Provinces the Churches there to be divided and the Romish Priests maintained out of the publick Revenue At home if Your Majesty did at any time by the Advice of Your Privy-Council or of Your two Houses of Parliament Command the Laws to be put in Execution against Papists even from thence they gained advantage to their Party while the edge of those Laws was turned against Protestant Dissenters and the Papists escaped in a manner untoucht The Act of Parliament enjoining a Test to be taken by all Persons admitted into any Publick Office and intended for a security against Papists coming into Employment had so little effect that either by Dispensations obtained from Rome they submitted to those Tests and held their Offices themselves or those put in their places were so favourable to the same Interests that Popery it self has rather gained than lost ground since that Act. But that their business in hand might yet more speedily and strongly proceed at length a Popish Secretary since Executed for his Treasons takes upon him to set afoot and maintain correspondencies at Rome particularly with a Native Subject of Your Majesties promoted to be a Cardinal and in the Courts of other Forreign Princes to use their own form of Speech for the subduing that Pestilent Heresie which has so long domineered over this Northern World that is to root the Protestant religion out of England and thereby to make way the more easily to do the same in other Protestant Countries Towards the doing this great Work as Mr. Coleman was pleased to call it Jesuits the most dangerous of all Popish Orders to the Lives and Estates of Princes were distributed to their several Precincts within this Kingdom and held joint Councils with those of the same Order in all Neighbour Popish Countries Out of these Councils and Correspondencies was hatcht that damnable and hellish Plot by the good Providence of Almighty God brought to light above two Years since but still threatning us wherein the Traitors impatient of longer delay reckoning the prolonging of Your Sacred Majesties Life which God long Preserve as the Great Obstacle in the way to the Consummation of their hopes and having in their prospect a Proselyted Prince immediately to succeed in the Throne of these Kingdoms resolved to begin their Work with the Assassination of Your Majesty to carry it on with Armed Force to destroy Your Protestant Subjects in England to Execute a second Massacre in Ireland and so with ease to arrive at the suppression of our Religion and the subversion of the Government When this Accursed Conspiracy began to be discovered they began the smothering it with the Barbarous Murther of a Justice of the Peace within one of Your Majesties own Palaces who had taken some Examinations concerning it Amidst these distractions and fears Popish Officers for the Command of Forces were allowed upon the Musters by special Orders surreptitionsly obtained from Your Majesty but Counter-Signed by a Secretary of State without ever passing under the Tests prescribed by the aforementioned Act of Parliament In like manner above fifty new Commissions were granted about the same time to known Papists besides a great number of desperate Popish Officers though out of Command yet entertain'd at half pay When in the next Parliament the House of Commons were prepared to bring to a legal Tryal the principal Conspirators in this Plot that Parliament was first Prorogued and then Dissolved The Interval between the Calling and Sitting of this Parliament was so long that now they conceive Hopes of covering all their past Crimes and gaining a seasonable time and advantages of practising them more effectually Witnesses are attempted to be corrupted and not only promises of Reward but of the Favour of your Majesty's Brother made the Motives to their Compliance Divers of the most considerable of your Majesty's Protestant Subjects have Crimes of the highest nature forged against them the Charge to be supported by Subornation and Perjury that they may be destroyed by Forms of Law and Justice A Presentment being prepared for a Grand Jury of Middlesex against your Majesty's said Brother the Duke of York under whose Countenance all the
Alliances can be made for the advantage of the Protestant Religion and Interest which shall give confidence to your Majesty's Allies to joyn so vigorously with your Majesty as the State of that Interest in the World now requires while they see this Protestant Kingdom in so much danger of a Popish Successor by whom at the present all their Councils and Actions may be eluded as hitherto they have been and by whom if he should succeed they are sure to be destroyed We have thus humbly laid before your Majesty some of those great Dangers and Mischiefs which evidently accompany the expectation of a Popish Successor The certain and unspeakable Evils which will come upon your Majesty's Protestant Subjects and their posterity if such a Prince should inherit are more also than we can well enumerate Our Religion which is now so dangerously shaken will then be totally overthrown Nothing will be left or can be found to protect or defend it The execution of old Laws must cease and it will be vain to expect new ones The most sacred Obligations of Contracts and Promises if any should be given that shall be judged to be against the interest of the Romish Religion will be violated as is undeniable not only from Argument and Experience elsewhere but from the sad experience this Nation once had on the like occasion In the Reign of such a Prince the Pope will be acknowledged Supream though the Subjects of this Kingdom have sworn the contrary and all Causes either as Spiritual or in order to Spiritual Things will be brought under his Jurisdiction The Lives Liberties and Estates of all such Protestants as value their Souls and their Religion more than their secular Concernments will be adjudged forfeited To all this we might add That it appears in the discovery of the Plot that Forreign Princes were invited to assist in securing the Crown to the Duke of York with Arguments from his great Zeal to establish Popery and to extirpate Protestants whom they call Hereticks out of his Dominions and such will expect performance accordingly We further humbly beseech Your Majesty in Your great Wisdom to consider Whether in case the Imperial Crown of this Protestant Kingdom should descend to the Duke of York the opposition which may possibly be made to his possessing it may not only endanger the farther descent in the Royal Line but even Monarchy it self For these Reasons we are most humble Petitioners to your most Sacred Majesty That in tender commiseration of your poor Protestant people Your Majesty will be gratiously pleased to depart from the Reservation in Your said Speech and when a Bill shall be tendred to your Majesty in a Parliamentary way to disable the Duke of York from inheriting the Crown Your Majesty will give your Royal Assent thereto and as necessary to fortify and defend the same that your Majesty will likewise be gratiously pleased to Assent to an Act whereby your Majesty's Protestant Subjects may be enabled to Associate themselves for the defence of your Majesty's Person the Protestant Religion and the Security of your Kingdoms These Requests we are constrained Humbly to make to your Majesty as of absolute Necessity for the safe and peaceable Enjoyment of our Religion Without these things the Alliances of England will not be valuable nor the People encouraged to contribute to your Majesties Service As some farther means for the Preservation both of our Religion and Propriety We are Humble Suiters to your Majesty that from henceforth such Persons onely may be Judges within the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales as are Men of Ability Integrity and known Affection to the Protestant Religion And that they may hold both their Offices and Sallaries Quam diu se bene gesserint That several Deputy-Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace fitly qualified for those Imployments having been of late displaced and others put in their room who are Men of Arbitrary Principles and Countenancers of Papists and Popery such only may bear the Office of a Lord-Lieutenant as are Persons of integrity and known Affection to the Protestant Religion That Deputy-Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace may be also so qualified and may be moreover Men of Ability of Estates and interest in their Countrey That none may be Imployed as Military Officers or Officers in your Majesties Fleet but Men of known Experience Courage and Affection to the Protestant Religion These our Humble Requests being obtained we shall on our part be ready to Assist your Majesty for the Preservation of Tangier and for putting your Majesties Fleet into such a Condition as it may preserve your Majesties Soveraignty of the Seas and be for the Defence of the Nation If your Majesty hath or shall make any necessary Allyances for defence of the Protestant Religion and Interest and Security of this Kingdom this House will be ready to Assist and stand by your Majesty in the support of the same After this our humble Answer to your Majesties Gracious Speech we Hope no evil Instruments whatsoever shall be able to lessen your Majesties Esteem of that Fidelity and Affection we bear to your Majesties Service but that your Majesty will always retain in your Royal Breast that Favourable Opinion of us your Loyal Commons that those other Good Bills which we have now under Consideration Conducing to the Great Ends we have before mentioned as also all Laws for the Benefit and Comfort of your People which shall from time to time be tendred for your Majesties Royal Assent shall find acceptance with your Majesty The Report of the Committee of the Commons appointed to Examine the Proceedings of the Judges c. THis Committee being Inform'd that in Trinity-Term last the Court of Kings-Bench discharg'd the Grand Jury that serv'd for the Hundred of Ossulston in the County of Middlesex in a very unusual manner proceeded to enquire into the same and found by the Information of Charles Umfrevil Esq Foreman of the said Jury Edward Proby Henry Gerard and John Smith Centlemen also of the said Jury That on the 21st of June last the Constables attending the said Jury were found Defective in not presenting the Papists as they ought and thereupon were ordered by the said Jury to make further Presentments of them on the 26. following on which Day the Jury met for that purpose when several Peers of this Realm and other Persons of Honour and Quality brought them a Bill against James Duke of York for not coming to Church But some exceptions being taken to that Bill in that it did not set forth the said Duke to be a Papist some of the Jury Attended the said persons of Quality to receive satisfaction therein In the mean time and about an Hour after they had received the said Bill some of the Jury attended the Court of Kings-Bench with a Petition which they desired the Court to present in their Name unto His Majesty for the Sitting of this Parliament Upon which the Lord
is I shall only say As my Life hath most of it been spent in serving and suffering for his Majesty so whatever be the event of this Process I resolve while I breath to be loyal and faithful to His Majesty And whether I live publickly or in obscurity my head my heart nor my hand shall never be wanting where I can be useful to His Majesties Service And while I live and when I die I shall pray That God Almighty would bless His Majesty with a long happy and prosperous Reign and that the lineal legal successours of the Crown may continue Monarchs of all His Majesties Dominions and be Defenders of the True Primitive Christian Apostolick Catholick Protestant Religion while Sun and Moon endure God save the King The Kings own Letter to this Nobleman when he was Lord Lorn Collogne December 20. 1654. My Lord Lorn I Am very glad to hear from Middleton what affection and zeal you shew to my Service how constantly you adhere to him in all his distresses and what good Service you have performed upon the Rebels I assure you you shall find me very just and kind to you in rewarding what you have done and suffered for me and I hope you will have more Credit and Power with those of your Kindred and Dependants upon your Family to engage them with you for me than any body else can have to seduce them against me and I shall look upon all those who shall refuse to follow you as unworthy of any protection hereafter from me which you will let them know This honest Bearer M will inform you of my Condition and Purposes to whom you will give Credit and he will tell you That I am very much Your very affectionate Friend C. R. General Middleton's Order to the Earl of Argyle who was then Lord Lorn for capitulating with the English wherein he largely expresseth his Worth and Loyalty John Middleton Lieutenant General next and immediate under His Majesty and Commander in chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised within the Kingdom of Scotland SEeing the Lord Lorn hath given so singular proofs of clear and perfect Loyalty to the Kings Majesty and of pure and constant affection to the good of His Majesties Affairs is never hitherto to have any ways complyed with the Enemy and to have been principally instrumental in the enlivening of this late War and one of the chief and first movers in it and hath readily chearfully and gallantly engaged and resolutely and constantly continued active in it notwithstanding the many powerful disswasions discouragements and oppositions he hath met withal from divers hands and hath in the carrying on of the Service shewn such signal Fidelity Integrity Generosity Prudence Courage and Condect and such high Vertue Industry and Ability as are suitable to the Dignity of his Koble Family and the Trust His Majesty reposed in him and hath not only stood out against all temptations and enticements but hath most nobly crossed and repressed designs and attempts of deserting the Service and persisted loyally and firmly in it to the very last through excessive toil and many great difficulties misregarding all personal inconveniencies and chusing the loss of Friends Fortune and all private Concernments and to endure the utmost extremities rather than to swerve in the least from his Duty or taint his Reputation with the meanest shadow of disloyalty and dishonour I do therefore hereby testifie and declare That I am perfectly satisfied with his whole Deportments in relation to the Enemy and this late War and do highly approve them as being not only above all I can express of their worth but almost beyond all parallel And I do withal hereby both allow and most earnestly desire and wish him to lose no time in taking such course for his safety and preservation by Treaty and Agreement or Capitulation as he shall judg most fit and expedient for the good of his Person Family and Estate since inevitable and invincible necessity hath forced us to lay aside this War And I can now no other way express my respects to him nor contribute my endeavour to do him Honour and Service Intestimony whereof I have signed and sealed these Presents at Dunveagave the last day of March 1655. JOHN MIDDLETON Another Letter from the Earl of Middleton to the same purpose Paris April 17. 1655. My Noble Lord I Am hopeful that the Bearer of this Letter will be found one who has been a most faithful Servant to your Lordship and my kind Friend and a sharer in my Troubles Indeed I have been strengthned by him to support and overcome many difficulties He will acquaint you with what hath past which truly was strange to both of us but your own Re-encounters will lessen them My Lord I shall be faithful in giving you that Character which your Worth and Merit may justly challenge I profess it is next to the ruine of the Service one of my chiefest Regrets that I could not possibly wait upon you before my going from Scotland that I might have settled a way of Correspondence with you and that your Lordship might have understood me better than yet you do I should have been plain in every thing and indeed have made your Lordship my Confessor and I am hopeful the Bearer will say somewhat for me and I doubt not but your Lordship will trust him If it shall please God to bring me safe from beyond Sea your Lordship shall hear from me by a sure hand Sir Ro. M. will tell you a way of corresponding So that I shall say no more at present but that I am without possibility of change My Noble Lord Your Lordships most Faithful and most Humble Servant JO. MIDDLETON A Letter from the Earl of Glencairn testifying his esteem for this Noble Person and the sense he had of his loyalty to the King when few had the Courage to own him My Lord LEst it may be my misfortune in all these great Revolutions to be misrepresented to your Lordship as a person unworthy of your favourable Opinion an Artifice very frequent in these times I did take occasion to call for a Friend and Servant of yours the Laird of Spanie on whose discretion I did adventure to lay forth my hearts desire to obviate in the bud any of these misunderstandings Your Lordships true worth and zeal to your Countries happiness being so well known to me and confirmed by our late suffering acquaintance And now finding how much it may conduce to these great ends we all with that a perfect Unity may be amongst all good and honest-hearted Scotchmen tho there be few more insignificant than my self yet my zeal for those ends obliges me to say that if your Lordships health and affairs could have permitted you to have been at Edenburgh in these late times you would have seen a great inclination and desire amongst all here of a perfect Unity and of a mutual respect to your Person as of chief
than the fore-mentioned of Religion Law and Reason which the Earl did of himself profer As for what His Majesty's Advocate adds That under such professions and reserves the late Rebellions and disorders have all been câ—rried on and fomented It is but a meer vapour for no Rebellion ever was or can be without a breach of one or other of the Earl's qualifications which doth sufficiently vindicate that part of the Earl's Explanation The Advocate insists much that Any is equivalent to All and that All comprehends Every particular under it which he would have to be the deadly Poyson in the Earl's words And yet the Earl may defy him and all his detracters to find out a Case of the least undutifulness much less of Rebellion that a Man can be guilty of while he keeps within the excellent Rules and Limitations wherewith his words are cautioned I could tell you further that so imaginary or rather extravagant and ridiculous is this pretended Treason that there is not a person in Scotland either of those who have refused or who by the Act are not called to take the Test that may not upon the same ground and words be impeach't viz. That they are not bound and so without doubt both may and do say it by the Test in their station c. to wish and endeavour any alteration c. Nay I desire the Advocate to produce the Man among those that have taken the Test that will affirm that by taking it he hath bound up himself never to wish or endeavour any alteration c. according to the Earl's qualifications and I shall name Hundreds to whom his Highness as you have heard may be added that will say they are not bound up So that by this conclusion if it were yielded all Scotland are equally guilty of Treason the Advocate himself to say nothing of His Royal Highness not excepted Or if he still think he is I wish he would testify under his hand to the World that by his Oath he is bound up never to wish nor endeavour any alteration he thinks to the advantage of Church or State in a lawful way nor in his station though neither repugnant to the Protestant Religion nor his Loyalty And if this he do he does as a Man if not of Sense at least of Honour but if not I leave a blank for his Epithets But that you may see that this whole affair is a deep Mystery pray notice what is objected against the last part of the Explanation This I understand as a part of my Oath Which says the Advocate is a Treasonable invasion upon the Royal Legislative power as if the Earl could make to himself an Act of Parliament since he who can make any part of an Act may make the whole And then say I farewell all Takers of the Test with an Explanation whether the Orthodox Clergy or Earl Queensberry tho himself Justice General who were allowed by the Council so to do seeing that whether they hold their Explanation for a part of their Oath or not yet others may and in effect all men of sense do understand it so And thus in the Advocate 's Opinion they have Treasonably invaded the Legislative Power and made an Act of Parliament to themselves Neither in that Case can the Councils allowance excuse them seeing not only the Earl had it as well as they but even the Council it self cannot make an Act of Parliament either for themselves or others But Sir I protest I am both ashamed and wearied of this trifling and therefore to shut up this Head I shall only give a few remarks First you may see by the Acts of Parliament upon which the Advocate founds his Indictment That as to Leasing-making and depraving Laws all of them run in these plain and sensible terms The inventing of Narrations the making and telling of Lies the â—ttering of wicked and untrue Calumnies to the slander of King and Government the depraving of his Laws and misconstruing his Proceedings to the engendering of discord moving and raising of batred and dislike betwixt the King and his People And as to Treason in these yet more positive terms That none impugn the dignity and authority of the Three Estates or seek or procure the innovation or diminution thereof Which are things so palpable and easily discerned and withal so infinitely remote both from the Earl's words and intentions or any tollerable construction can be put on either that I confess I never read this Indictment but I was made to wonder that its forger and maker was not in looking on it deterred by the just apprehensions he might have not only to be sometime accused as a manifest depraver of all Law but to be for ever accounted a gross and most disingenuous perverter of common sense The Earl's words are sober respectful and dutifully spoken for the exoneration of his own Conscience without the least insinuation of either reflection or slander much less the impugning of the Authority of Parliament as the Earl may appeal not only to His Majesty's true and Royal sense but to the most scrupulous and nice affecters of the exactest discerning besides that they were first formally tendered in Council for their approbation and by them directly allowed How then can any Man think that they could be charged with the greatest and vilest of crimes Leasing-making Depraving Perjury and Treason But the Advocate tells us That there are some things which the Law commonly forbids in general and that some inferences are as natural and strong and reproach as soon or sooner than the plainest defamations But what of all this Must therefore such generals be left to the phantastick application of every wild imagination to the confounding of the use of Speech and subverting of humane Society and not rather be still submitted to the judgment of common sense for their true and right understanding and the deducing thence these strong and natural inferences talk'd of Of which good sense if the Advocate do but allow a grain weight it is evident that the inferences he here Libels against the Earl must infallibly be cast and by all rational unbiassed men be found strange unnatural and monstrous For Sir Secondly pray observe these rational and sound Maxims he founds his Inferences on and they are manifestly these First That he who says he will only obey as far as be can invents a new way whereby no man is at all bound to obey 2dly That he who in the midst of Hundreds of exceptions and contradictions objected against an Oath injoyned by Act of Parliament and still unanswered says That he is confident the Parliament never intended to impose contradictory Oaths reproaches the Parliament 3dly That he that says he must explain an ambiguous Oath for himself before he take it renders all Laws and Oaths useless and makes himself the Legislator 4thly That he that says that he takes this Oath as far as it is consistent with it self and the Protestant
another making a Speech that no Man understood a third all the time of the reading repeating Lord have mercy upon me miserable sinner Nay even an Advocate after being debarred a few days because albeit no Clerk yet he would not take it without the benefit of his Clergy viz. the Councils Explanation was yet thereafter admitted without the Warrant of the Councils Act but all this in the Case of so many other was right and good Further the Council expresly declare the Earl to be Guilty before he had ever said one word in his own defence Thereafter some of them become his Assizers and others of them witness against him and after all they do of new concern themselves by a Second Letter to His Majesty wherein they assert That after full debate and clear probation he was found guilty of Treason c. to have a sentence past against him and that of so high a nature and so dreadful a consequence as suffers no person to be unconcerned far less their Lordships his Judges who upon grounds equally just and which is more already predetermined by themselves may soon meet with the same measure not only as Concealers of Treason but upon the least pretended disobedience or non-compliance with any Act of Parliament and after all must infallably render an account to God Almighty He bids them therefore lay their hands to their bearts and whatever they shall judge he is assured that God knows and he hopes all unblassed men in the World will or may know he is neither guilty of Treason nor any of the Crimes libelled He says he is glad how many out-do him in asserting the true Protestant Religion and their Loyalty to His Majesty only he hadds If he could justify himself to God as he can to His Majesty he is sure he might account himself the happiest man alive But yet seeing he hath a better hope in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ he thereupon rests whether he finds Justice here on Earth or not He says he will add nothing to move them either to tenderness or pity he knows that not to be the place and pretends to neither from them He pleads his Innocence and craves Justice leaving it to their Lordships to consider not so much his particular Case as what a Preparative it may be made and what may be its Consequences And if all he hath said do neither convince nor persuade them to alter their judgment yet he desires them to consider whether the Case do not at least deserve to be more fully represented and left to His Majecty's wisdom and justice seeing that if once the matter pass upon record for Treason it is undoubted that hundreds of the best and who think themselves most innocent may by the same methods fall under the like Condemnation whenever the King's Advocate shall be thereto prompted And thus you have a part of what the Earl intended to have said before pronouncing Sentence if he had not made his Escape before the day Yet some things I perceive by his Notes are still in his own breast as only proper to be said to His Majesty I find several Quotations out of the Advocate 's printed Books that it seems he was to make some use of but seeing it would have been too great an interruption to have applied them to the places designed I have subjoined them together leaving them to the Advocate 's own and all mens consideration It was by some remarked That when the Lords of Justitiary after the ending of the first days debate resolved that same night to give judgment upon it they sent for the Lord Nairn one of their number an old and infirm man who being also a Lord of the Session is so decayed through age that he hath not for a considerable time been allowed to take his turn in the Outer-house as they call it where they judge lesser Causes alone But notwithstanding both his age and infirmity and that he was gone to bed he was raised and brought to the Court to consider a Debate a great deal whereof he had not heard in full Court and withal as is informed while the Clerk was reading some of it fell of new asleep It was also remarked that the Lords of Justitiary being in all five viz. the Lord Nairn above-mentioned with the Lords Collintoun Newtoun Hirkhouse and Forret the Libel was found relevant only by the odds of three to two viz. the Lord Nairn aforesaid the Lord Newtoun since made President of the Session and the Lord Forret both well enough known against the Lord Collintoun a very ingenious Gentleman and a true old Cavalier and the Lord Hirkhouse a learned and upright Judge As for the Lord Justice General who was also present and presided his vote according to the constitution of the Court was not asked But to return to my Narrative the Earl as I have already told you did not think fit for reasons that you shall hear to stay till His Majesty's return came to the Council's last Letter but taking his opportunity made his escape out of the Castle of Edinburgh upon Tuesday the Twentieth of December about eight at night and in a day or two after came His Majesty's Answer here subjoined The King's Answer to the Council's Letter December 18. 1681. C. R. MOST dearly c. having this day received your Letter of the 14th instant giving an account that our Advocate having been ordered by you to insist in that Process raised at our instance against the Earl of Argyle he was after full debate and clear probation found guilty of Treason and Leasing-making betwixt us our Parliament and our People and the reproaching our Laws and Acts of Parliament We have now thought fit notwithstanding of what was ordered by us in our Letter to you of the 15th of November last hereby to authorize you to grant a Warrand to our Justice General and the remanent Judges of our Justice Court for proceeding to pronounce a Sentence upon the Verdict of the Jury against the said Earl nevertheless it is our express pleasure and we do hereby require you to take care that all execution of the Sentence be stopped until we shall think fit to declare our further pleasure in this Affair For doing whereof c. Which Answer being read in Council on the Thursday and the Court of Justiciary according to its last Adjournment as shall be told you being to meet upon the Friday after a little hesitation in Council whether the Court of Justiciary could proceed to the Sentence of Forfaulture against the Earl he being absent it was resolved in the affirmative And what were the grounds urged either of hesitation or resolution I cannot precisely say there being nothing on record that I can learn But that you may have a full and satisfying account I shall briefly tell you what was ordinarily discoursed a part whereof I also find in a Petition given in by the Countess of Argyle to the Lords
dangerous a Vertue to be commended If then for these and a thousand other Reasons there is cause to suspect sure your new Friends are not to dictate to you or advise you for instance the Addresses that fly abroad every Week and Murther us with another to the same the first Draughts are made by those who are not very proper to be Secretaries to the Protestant Religion and it is your Part only to write them out fairer again Strange that you who have been formerly so much against Set Forms should now be content the Priests should Indite for you The Nature of Thanks is an unavoidable Consequence of being Pleased or Obliged they grow in the Heart and from thence shew themselves either in Looks Speeches Writing or Action No Man was ever Thankful because he was bid to be so but because he had or thought he had some Reason for it If then there is cause in this Case to pay such extravagant Acknowledgments they will flow naturally without taking such pains to procure them and it is unkindly done to tire all the Post-Horses with Carrying Circular Letters to sollicit that which would be done without any Trouble or Constraint If it is really in it self such a Favour what needeth so much pressing Men to be Thankful and with such eager Circumstances that where Perswasions cannot delude Threatnings are employed to fright them into a Compliance Thanks must be voluntary not only unconstrained but unsolicited else they are either Trifles or Snares they either signifie nothing or a great deal more than is intended by those that give them If an inference should be made that whosoever thanketh the King for his Declaration is by that engaged to justifie it in point of Law it is a greater stride than I presume all those care to make who are perswaded to Address If it shall be supposod that all the Thankers will be Repealers of the TEST when ever a Parliament shall Meet Such an Expectation is better prevented before than disappointed afterwards and the surest way to avoid the lying under such a scandal is not to do any thing that may give a colour to the Mistake These Bespoken Thanks are little less improper than Love Letters that were solicited by the Lady to whom they are to be Directed So that besides the little ground there is to give them the manner of getting them doth extreamly lessen their Value It might be wished that you would have suppressed your impatience and have been content for the sake of Religion to enjoy it within your selves without the Liberty of a publick Exercise till a Parliament had allowed it but since that could not be and that the Artificers of some amongst you have made use of the Well-meant Zeal of the Generality to draw them into this Mistake I am so far from blaming you with that sharpness which perhaps the Matter in strictness would bear that I am ready to err on the side of the more gentle construction There is a great difference between enjoying quietly the advantages of an Act irregularly done by others and the going about to support it against the Laws in being The Law is so Sacred that no Trespass against it is to be Defended yet Frailties may in some measure be Excused when they cannot be justified The desire of enjoying a Liberty from which men have been so long restrained may be a Temptation that their Reason is not at all times able to resist If in such a case some Objections are leapt over indifferent men will be more inclined to lament the Occasion than to fall too hard upon the Fault whilst it is covered with the Apology of a good intention but where to rescue your selves from the severity of one Law you give a blow to all the Laws by which your Religion and Liberty are to be protected and instead of silently receiving the benefit of this Indulgence you set up for Advocates to support it you become voluntary Aggressors and look like Counsel retained by the Prerogative against your old Friend Magna Charta who hath done nothing to deserve her falling thus under your Displeasure If the case then should be that the Price expected from you for this Liberty is giving up your Right in the Laws sure you will think twice before you go any further in such a losing Bargain After giving Thanks for the breach of one Law you lose the Right of Complaining of the breach of all the rest you will not very well know how to defend your selves when you are pressed and having given up the Question when it was for your advantage you cannot recall it when it shall be to your Prejudice If you will set up at one time a Power to help you which at another time by Parity of Reason shall be made use of to destroy you you will neither be pitied nor relieved against a Mischief you draw upon your selves by being so unreasonably thankful It is like calling in Auxiliaries to help who are strong enough to subdue you In such a case your Complaints will come too late to be heard and your sufferings will raise Mirth instead of Compassion If you think for your excuse to expound your thanks so as to restrain them to this particular case others for their ends will extend them further and in these differing Interpretations that which is back'd by Authority will be the most likely to prevail especially when by the advantage you have given them they have in truth the better of the Argument and that the Inferences from your own Concessions are very strong and express against you This is so far from being a groundless Supposition that there was a late instance of it the last Session of Parliament in the House of Lords where the first Thanks though things of course were laterpreted to be the Approbation of the King 's whole Speech and a Restraint from the further Examination of any part of it though never so much disliked and it was with difficulty obtained not to be excluded from the Liberty of objecting to this mighty Prerogative of Dispensing meerly by this innocent and usual piece of good Manners by which no such thing could possibly be intended This sheweth that some bounds are to be put to your good Breeding and that the Constitution of England is too valuable a thing to be ventured upon a Complement Now that you have for some time enjoyed the benefit of the End it is time for you to look into the Danger of the Means The same Reason that made you desirous to get Liberty must make you solicite us to preserve it so that the next thought will naturally be not to engage your self beyond Retreat and to agree so far with the Principles of all Religions as not to rely upon a Death bed Repentance There are certain Periods of time which being once past make all cautions ineffectual and all Remedies desperate Our Understandings are apt to be hurried on by the first heats
has been formerly thought the whole Constitution of this Church and Kingdom which we dare not do till we have the Authority of Parliament for it It is to recommend to our People the Choice of such Persons to sit in Parliament as shall take away the Test and Penal Laws which most of the Nobility and Gentry of the Nation have declared their Judgment against It is to condemn all those great and worthy Patriots of their Country who forfeited the dearest thing in the World to them next a good Conscience viz. The Favour of their Prince and a great many honorable and profitable Employments with it rather than consent to that Proposal of taking away the Test and Penal Paws which they apprehend destructive to the Church of England and the Protestant Religion and he who can in Conscience do all this I think need scruple nothing For let us consider further what the Effects and Consequences of our Reading the Declaration are likely to be and I think they are Matter of Conscience too when they are evident and apparent This will certainly render our Persons and Ministry infinitely contemptible which is against that Apostolical Canon Let no Man despise thee Titus 2.15 That is so to behave himself in his Ministereal Office as not to fall under Contempt and therefore this obliges the Conscience not to make our selves ridiculous nor to render our Ministry our Counsels Exhortations Preaching Writing of no Effect which is a thousand times worse than being silenced Our Sufferings will preach more effectually to the People when we cannot speak to them but he who for Fear or Cowardise or the Love of this World betrays his Church and Religion by undue Compliances and will certainly be thought to do so may continue to Preach but to no purpose and when we have rendred our selves ridiculous and contemptible we shall then quickly fall and fall unpitied There is nothing will so effectually tend to the final Ruine of the Church of England because our Reading the Declaration will discourage or provoke or misguide all the Friends the Church of England has can we blame any Man for not preserving the Laws and the Religion of our Church and Nation when we our selves will venture nothing for it Can we blame any Man for consenting to Repeal the Test and Penal Laws when we recommend it to them by Reading the Declaration Have we not reason to expect that the Nobility and Gentry who have already suffered in this Cause when they hear themselves condemned for it in all the Churches of England will think it time to mend such a Fault and reconcile themselves to their Prince and if our Church fall this way is there any reason to expect that it should ever rise again These Consequences are almost as evident as Demonstrations and let it be what it will in it self which I foresee will destroy the Church of England and the Protestant Religion and Interest I think I ought to make as much Conscience of doing it as of doing the most immortal Action in Nature To say that these mischievous Consequences are not absolutely necessary and therefore do not affect the Conscience because we are not certain they will follow is a very mean Objection Moral Actions indeed have not such necessary Consequences as natural Causes have necessary Effects because no moral Causes act necessarily Reading the Declaration will not as necessarily destroy the Church of England as Fire burns Wood but if the Consequence be plain and evident the most likely thing that can happen if it be unreasonable to expect any other if it be what is plainly intended and designed either I must never have any regard to Moral Consequences of my Actions or if ever they are to be considered they are in this case Why are the Nobility and Gentry so extreamly averse to the Repeal of the Test and Penal Laws Why do they forfeit the King's Favour and their Honourable Stations rather than comply with it If you say that this tends to destroy the Church of England and the Protestant Religion I ask whether this be the necessary consequence of it whether the King cannot keep his promise to the Church of England if the Test and Penal Laws be Repealed We cannot say but this may be And yet the Nation does not think fit to try it and we commend those great men who deny it and if the same questions were put to us we think we ought in Conscience to deny them our selves And are there not as high probabilities that our Reading the Declaration will promote the Repeal of the Test and Penal Laws as that such a Repeal will ruine our Constitution and bring in Popery upon us Is it not as probable that such a complyance in us will disoblige all the Nobility and Gentry who have hitherto been firm to us as that when the power of the Nation is put into Popish Hands by the Repeal of such Tests and Laws the Priests and Jesuirs may find some salvo for the King's Conscience and perswade him to forget his Promise to the Church of England and if the probable ill consequences of Repealing the Test and Penal Laws be a good reason not to comply with it I cannot see but that the as probable ill consequences of Reading the Declaration is as good a reason not to read it The most material Objection is that the Dissenters whom we ought not to provoke will expound our not Reading it to be the effect of a persecuting Spirit Now I wonder Men should lay any weight on this who will not allow the most probable consequences of our Actions to have any influence upon Conscience For if we must compare consequences to disoblige all the Nobility and Gentry by reading it is likely to be much more fatal than to anger the Diffenters and it is more likely and there is much more reason for it that one should be offended than the other For the Dissenters who are wise and considering are sensible of the snare themselves and though they desire Ease and Liberty they are not willing to have it with such apparent hazard of Church and State I am sure that tho' we were never so desirous that they might have their Liberty and when there is opportunity of shewing our inclinations without danger they may find that we are nations without danger they may find that we are not such Persecutors as we are represented yet we cannot consent that they should have it this way which they will find the dearest Liberty that ever was granted This Sir is our Case in short the Difficulties are great on both sides and therefore now if ever we ought to besiege Heaven with our Prayers for Wisdom and Counsel and Courage that God would protect his Church and Reformed Christianity against all the devices of their Enemies Which is the daily and hearty Prayer of SIR Your Friend and Brother May 22. 1â—88 POSTSCRIPT I Have just now seen H. Care 's Paper
And assure your selves they are very desirous to extend this Violence beyond the bounds of France They would fain see England also in the same Condition the Bishop of Valence and Die hath told as much in the Speech which he made to the French King in the Name of the Clergy of France to congratulate his glorious Atchievements in rooting out the Heresie of Calvin In which he hath a most memorable Passage for which we are beholden to him because it informs us that they are not satisfied with what their King hath done there but would have him think there is a further Glory reserved for him of lending his Help to make us such good Catholicks as he hath made in France This is the blessed Work they would be at and if any among us be still so blind as not to see it we must look upon it as the just Judgment of God upon them for some other Sins which they have committed They are delivered up to a reprobate Mind which cannot discern the most evident things They declare to all the World that they have been above fifty Years crying out against they know not what For they know not what Popery is of which they have seemed to be horribly afraid if they believe that they of that Religion either can or will give any Liberty when they have Power to establish their Tyranny It is no better St. John himself hath described that Church under the Name of Babylon that cruel City and of a BEAST which like a Bear tramples all under its Feet and of another Beast which causes as many as will not worship the Image of the Beast to be killed and that no man may buy or sell save such as have had his Mark i.e. are of hsi Religion Rev. 13.1 15 16. This Character they will make good to the very end of their Reign as they have fâ—â—â—thed it from the beginning They cannot alter their Nature no more than the Ethiopian change his Skin or the Leopard his Spots It ever was since the rising of the Beast and it ever will be till its Fall a bloody Church which can bear no Contradiction to her Doctrine and Orders but will endeavour to root out all those that oppose her from the Face of the Earth Witness the Barbarous Crusado's against the poor Albigenses in France in one of which alone Bellarmine himself saith and not without Triumph there were killed no less than an hundred thousand Witness the horrible Butcheries committed in France in England and in the Low Countries in the Age before us and in Poland the Vallies of Pâ—edmont and in Ireland in this Age upon those who had no other Fault but this that the made the Holy Scriptures and the Roman Church the Rule of their Faith IX But if you be ignorant of what hath been done and doing abroad yet I hope you observe what they do here at home What do you think of the Declaration which was very lately imposed to be read in all our Churches Which when several Bishops and their Clergy most humbly represented they could not in Conscience publish to the People in time of Divine Service this would not excuse them their Petition was received with Indignation and looked upon as a Libel the Bishops were prosecuted for it and Inquiry is now ordered to be made after those who did not read it as well as those that did that the may be punished by the High Commissioners Call you this Liberty of Conscience Or do you imagine you shall never have any thing imposed upon you to be read in your Congregations which you câ—nnot comply withal Consider I beseech you what will become of you when that time shall come What 's the meaning of this that ever they are look'd upon as Offenders for following their Conscience whose Services have been acknowledged to be so great that they should never be forgotten It ought to teach Dissenters what they are to expect hereafter when they have served them so far by taking off the Tests and Penal Laws as to enable them with safety to remember all their former pretended Transgressions Let them assure themselves the Services of the Church of England are not now more certainly forgotten than the Sins of Dissenters will hereafter when they have got Power to punish them be most certainly remembred Be not drawn in then by deccitful Words to help forward your own Destruction If you will not be assistant to it they cannot do it alone and it will be very strange if you be perswaded to lend them your Help when the Deceit is so apparent For what are all the present Pleas for Liberty but so many infamous Libels upon the Roman Church which denies all Men this Liberty While they declaim so loudly against Persecution they most notoriously reproach Popery which subsists by nothing but Deceit and Cruelty And who can think that they would suffer their Church to be so exposed and reviled as it is by such Discourses but with a Design to cheat heedless People into its Obedience For this end they can hear it proved nay prove it themselves to be an Antichristian Church when they prove it is against Christianity nay against the Law of Nature and Common Reason to trouble any Body for his Opinion in Religion X. Once more then I beseech you be not deceived by good Words if you love your Liberty and your Life Call to mind how our poor Brethren in France were lately deluded by the repeated Protestations which their King made he would observe the Edict of Nantes which was the Foundation of their Liberty even then when he was about to overthrow it and by many Assurances which were given them by those who came to torment them that the King intended to eform the Church of France as soon as he had united his Subjects What he had done already against the Court of Rome told them they was an Instance of it and they should shortly see other Matters Such ensnaring Words they heard there daily from the Mouths of their armed Prosecutors who were ready to fall upon them or had begun to oppress them And therefore they would be arrant Fools here if they did not give good words when they have no Power to hurt us But we shall be far greater Fools if we believe they will keep their Word when they have got that Power the greatest of all Fools if we give them that Power They have no other way but this to wheedle us out of our Laws and Liberties Do but surrender the one I mean our Laws and they will soon take away the other our beloved Liberties Be not tempted to make such a dangerous Experiment but let the Laws stand as they are because they are against them as appears by their earnest Endeavours to repeal them and be not used as Tools to take them away because they have been grievous to you They never can be so again For can they who now Court you have
earnest to have those Laws maintained in their full and due vigour and think that the chief Security of the established Religion consists in the preserving of them Sacred and unshaken It is certain that there is no Kingdom Common-Wealth or any constituted Body or Assembly whatsoever in which there are not Laws made for the Safety thereof and that provide against all Attempts whatsoever that disturb their peace and that prescribe the Conditions and Qualities that they judge necessary for all that shall bear Employments in that Kingdom State or Corporation And no man can pretend that there is any Injury done him that he is not admitted to Imployments when he doth not satisfie the Conditions and Qualities required Nor can it be denied that there is a great difference to be observed in the conduct of those of the Reformed Religion and of the Roman Catholicks towards one another The Roman Catholicks not being satisfied to exclude the Reformed from all places of Profit or of Trust they do absolutely suppress the whole Exercise of that Religion and persecute all that profess it and this they do in all those places where it is safe and without danger to carry on that rigour And I am sorry that we have at this present so many deplorable Instances of this severity before our Eyes that is at the same time put in practice in so many different places I would therefore gladly see one single good reason to move a Protestant that fears God and that is concerned for his Religion to consent to the Repealing of those Laws that have been enacted by the Authority of King and Parliament which have no other tendency but to the security of the Reformed Religion and to the restraining of the Roman Catholicks from a capacity of overturning it these Laws inflict neither Fines nor Punishments and do only exclude the Roman Catholicks from a share in the Government who by being in Employments must needs study to encrease their party and to gain to it more Credit and Power which by what we see every day we must conclude will be extreamly dangerous to the Reformed Religion and must turn to its great prejudice Since in all places those that are in publick Employments do naturally Favour that Religion of which they are either more or less And who would go about to perswade me or any man else to endeavour to move Their Highnesses whom God hath honoured so far as to make them the Protectors of his Church to approve of or to consent to things so hurtful both to the Reformed Religion and to the publick Safety Nor can I Sir with your good leave in any way grant what you apprehend That no prejudice will thereby redound to the Reformed Religion I know it is commonly said that the number of the Roman Catholicks in England and Scotland is very inconsiderable and that they are possessed only of a very small number of the places of Trust Tho even as to this the case is quite different in Ireland Yet this you must of necessity grant me that if their numbers are small then it is not reasonable that the publick Peace should be disturbed on the account of so few persons especially when so great a favour may be offered to them such as the free Exercise of their Religion would be And if their numbers are greater then there is so much the more reason to be afraid of them I do indeed believe that Roman Catholicks as things at present stand will not be very desirous to be in publick Offices and Imployments nor that they will make any attempts upon the Reformed Religion both because this is contrary to Law and because of the great inconveniencies that this may bring at some other time both on their Persons and their Estates yet if the Restraints of the Law were once taken off you would see them brought into the Government and the chief Offices and Places of Trust would be put in their hands nor will it be easie to his Majesty to resist them in this how stedfast soever he may be for they will certainly press his hard in it and they will represent this to the King as a matter in which his Conscience will be concerned and when they are possessed of the publick Offices what will be left for the Protestants to do who will find no more the support of the Law and can expect little Encouragement from such Magistrates And on the other hand the advantages that the Roman Catholicks would find in being thus set loose from all restraints are so plain that it were a loss of time to go about the proving it I neither can nor will doubt of the sincerity of his Majesties intentions and that he has no other design before him in this matter but that all his Subjects may enjoy in all things the same Rights and Freedom But plain Reason as well as the Experience of all Ages the present as well as the past shews that it will be impossible for Roman Catholicks and Protestants when they are mixed together in places of Trust and publick Employments to live together peaceably or to maintain a good Correspondence together They will be certainly always jealous of one another For the Principles and the Maxims of both Religions are so opposite to one another that in my opinion I do not see how it will be in the power of any Prince or King whatsoever to keep down those Suspitions and Animosities which will be apt to arise upon all occasions As for that which you apprehend that the Dissenters shall not be delivered from the Penal Laws that are made against them unless at the same time the Test be likewise repealed This will be indeed a great unhappiness to them but the Roman Catholicks are only to blame for it who will rather be content that they and their Posterity should lie still under the weight of the Penal Laws and exposed to the hatred of the whole Nation than he still restrained from a capacity of attempting any thing against the Peace and the Security of the Protestant Religion And be deprived of that small advantage if it is at all to be reckoned one of having a share in the Government and publick Enjoyments since in all places of the World this has been always the priviledge of the Religion that is established by Laws and indeed these Attempts of the Roman Catholicks ought to be so much the more suspected and guarded against by Protestants in that they see that Roman Catholicks even when liable to that Severity of Penal Laws do yet endeavour to perswade his Majesty to make the Protestants whether they will or not dissolve the Security which they have for their Religion And to clear a way for bringing in the Roman Caâ—â—â—licks to the Government and to publick Employments In which case there would remain no relief for them but what were to be expected from a Roman Catholick Government Such then will be very unjust to
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 contrary both to the Laws of the Realms his often repeated Promises and his Coronation Oath assumes a power of introducing those into Offices who by the Statutes of the Land stand precluded from them and of thrusting them out who alone are the Person that are legally capable of them Which manner of proceeding in his Majesty hath besides the injustice that attends it towards all that are laid aside a signal piece of ingratitude accompanying it to many of them as having been the Persons whose Zeal for his Person brought him to the Throne and whose courage maintained him in it But I shall not think it enough meerly to have exposed his imprudence and indiscretion in the forementioned accusation against the whole Governing Body of this Country but I shall likewise shew it to be false slanderous and unjust in every part and branch of it And that I may act with more truth and candour than our Author hath done I do acknowledge that at the first commencement of the War against the King of Spain for the defence of the Laws and Priviledges of these and the neighbouring Provinces that not only they of the Reformed Religion but likewise the Roman Catholicks took Arms and hazarded their Lives and Estates in that just quarrel And I do also grant that thereupon there was Liberty of Conscience allowed and established by several Treaties in the vertue of which both parties were to be equally tolerated and the one not to disturb or disquiet the other Nor was there ever any thing done by way of Ordinance or Law to lessen or restrain the liberty of the Papists nor to abridge much less deprive them of any Power Jurisdiction and Authority that they possessed so long as they remained faithful in the common cause and behaved themselves with Equity Justice and Peace towards those who had withdrawn from the Roman Communion But such was the ascendency of the Priests over the Roman Catholicks and so powerful was their influence upon them that in a little time they not only hindred and molested the Protestants in the exercise of their Religion and committed many unjust and cruel severities against them but they proceeded to various attempts of betraying the Rights and Civil Liberties of the whole Country and of enslaving it both to the Tyranny of the King of Spain and to the bloudy and cruel Inquisition So that from hence it became a matter of necessity rather than at first of choice that the Government should be disposed into Protestant hands and that the liberty of the Papists should have those limits and regulations given unto it as might render it both consistent with the peace freedom and safety of those of the Reformed Religion and with the preservation of the Civil Rights and Priviledges of these Provinces This is the account which all who have written with any knowledge and integrity of the Transactions of those Times do give us of the many Changes and Revolutions that fell out in reference to Religion till all matters both concerning it and the Political Government of these Countreys came to be established in the Form and Way wherein they do still continue and subsist And this I do undertake to make good by all publick Authentick and approved Histories if our Author shall have the confidence to insist upon the justification of his criminations And all that I shall at present direct men unto for the confirmation of what I have said is that admirable Apology of William I. Prince of Orange whom his present Highness does in Wisdom Steddiness and true temperate Christian Zeal so signally imitate and which that great Prince who was the first and happy Founder of this Republick published in defence of himself and of those actings for which the slavish and mercenary Factors of Rome and Spain had traduced and aspersed him But let us advance to a particular Examination of those matters of Fact upon which our Author challengeth these States for violating their Faith with their Roman Catholick Subjects And the things he is pleased to specifie are their departing from the Terms of the Pacification of Gant and their breaking the Articles of the Vnion agreed unto at Utrecht 1597. Nor am I unwilling to acknowledge that soon after the Pacification concluded at Gant there were several indecent and undiscreet things done contrary to the purport and tendency of it both by those of the Romish and by them of the Reformed Religion Which proceeded from the Superstitious Fury of the former and the imprudent Zeal of the latter Yet it is certain that the ground of its coming to be rendred wholly ineffectual arose from a design of the King of Spain's under the cloak and palliation of that Treaty to subvert the Civil Rights and Priviledges of all the Provinces to the Defence and Preservation of which the Roman Catholicks as well as Protestants were sworn and bound by the said Pacification For after that Philip II. had in compliance with the necessity of this Affairs consented unto and ratified all the Terms Provisions and Conditions which both the Papists and the Reformed had in that Pacification League and Confederacy insisted upon and agreed to adhere unto it was soon after discovered by Letters intercepted to Don John who was at that time constituted Governour over the Low Countreys that all which Philip aim'd at was thro the having rendred them secure by the Ratification of that Treaty to take advantages whereby to enslave them and under the Covert of it to provide himself of means by which he might be established in an unbounded Tyranny over them So that by reason of what was detected in those Letters and from Don John's proceeding to possess himself of Namur and his endeavouring to corrupt and debauch the German Troops which were in the States service and paid by them
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 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
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 Laws But to go on with our Author who with his accustomed ignorance but personating here the wisdom of a Solon or a Lycurgus takes upon him to instruct us that as nothing can be called the fundamental Law of a Kingdom or a Republick but what was enacted at the commencement of that State or Society before any alterations could fall out in it with reference to Religion so nothing deserves the name of such a Law save that which is to the advantage and benefit of all the Subjects It were not amiss here to enquire by what Authority our Author fastens on Mijn Heer Fagel this Term of Fundamental Law in reference to the Tests seeing he never used it in his Letter much less applyed it to such a purpose But falsifying is so natural to this Gentleman that he could not avoid it even when he might have been sensible that he would not escape the being challenged for it There is a Countrey in the world that is said to bear no poysonous animal nor had it need seeing if any number of the Natives be of the mould and frame that some are there are brutal and venemous Creatures enough in it tho there be neither Toad nor Serpent there But may not the Test Laws answer the end they were designed unto of being a Fence about Religion tho they be none of the Fundamental Laws of the Government It is not the name that alone gives value to a Law but the Sanction of the Legislative Authority and the usefulness of it to the publick good A Statute that was occasioned by a necessity arising in reference to the publick Safety ought as much to be stood by and upheld while that necessity continues as if it were an original Law and Coaeval with the Constitution And if it was the indispensable dependance of the Welfare and Safety of the Community upon such and such Provisions at first that gave them the Name of Fundamental Laws I am sure that under our present Circumstances we may call the Test Laws absolutely needful if we assume not the vanity to stile them Fundamental Besides I would fain know of our Author that if all Laws lye exposed to an easie Abrogation that are not coaeval with the Kingdom what will then become of the Magna Charta for Liberty of Conscience which his Majesty not only promiseth but undertakes to make irrepealable And withal may not some Laws be as necessary to the being and preservation of a State under the notion of Protestant as others are to its being and subsistence under the consideration of an embodied and formed Society Every Society is bound to use all necessary means to preserve it self and while it maketh no provisions in order thereunto that derive inconvenience upon others unless it be only to keep them from being able to do hurt it would be a wickedness as well as a folly to neglect them In a word as the making no Laws necessary for the Safety of a people under any knowledge of God they may be grown up into but what were coaeval with their first formation into a Kingdom or Republick were the weakning and undermining the Security of the Christian Religion in all parts of the world where it hath obtained to be embraced and setled so by the same reason that it is lawful to make provisions for the preservation of Christianity in a State professing the Gospel of Jesus Christ it is also lawful to make the like provisions for the Security of the Reformed Religion in these Kingdoms and Common-wealths which have judged it to be their duty to God and their Souls to receive and establish it And for our Author 's saying that no Law deserves to be called Fundamental save that which is to the benefit and advantage of all the Subjects it is wholly impertinent to the case for which it is alledged and does no way's attack or weaken what the Pensionary had said For as the Laws contended for to be maintained were never stiled Fundamental so many thousands may have benefit by a Law whom nevertheless all persons of sense and wisdom will account unfit to be advanced to publick Trusts As no man will judge it unreasonable to require that all who are held capable of publick employments should have some degree of wit and understanding so I think it is very reasonable that they should be qualified with so much honesty as to be well affected to the Government as it is by Law established And to speak properly it is not the Law that makes the Papists uncapable of Offices and Employments it only declares they shall not be admitted because they were incapable before and had made themselves unfit to be trusted partly through their dependance upon a forraign power that is at enmity with the State and seeks to subvert it and partly by reason of that principle which they are possessed with of its being their duty to destroy us whensoever they can And as it 's a great favour vouchsafed by the Government to suffer such to live under it as stand so ill affected to it and want only means to overthrow it so if the Roman Catholicks will not be content with the first without the latter it will be a great temptation upon the Kingdom to deprive them of the Priviledge they have because they would not be content with it unless they might obtain that which the Nation could not grant without being Felo de se and without abandoning the means both of our safety here and Happiness hereafter And whereas our Author takes the confidence to tell us That there are many States and Cities in Germany where without the giving occasion to any disturbance the Government is shared between Papists and Protestants and where both those of the Roman Catholick and Reformed Religion do
equally partake in publick Trusts and Employments He must pardon me if I not only say he is mistaken but that it is a down-right Falsehood and that herein he betrays his wonted ignorance or at least gives us a new discovery of the insincerity that is natural to him Nor would he have vented this in so general Terms but that he did foresee if he should have condescended to particulars how easy it would have been for persons of very ordinary acquaintance either with History or the World to have both contradicted and refuted him And if there were some one or other small City where by reason of the Fewness of those of one Religion to exercise the Government and to take care of the Welfare of the Society those of the other Religion are sometimes received into Employments in order to prevent the inconveniencies which the want of a competent number of Magistrates would be attended with and where the Jealousie and Fear of being swallowed up by some envious and potent Neighbour may lay them under a necessity of agreeing better together than otherwise they would or than the principles of some of them incline them unto must we thence conclude that it ought to be so in a great Kingdom where there is so vast a number of Protestants admirably qualified with Wisdom Interest and Estates to discharge all the Offices of the Government and to manage the universal care of the Society without running the hazard of the many mischiefs that would accompany the taking the Papists into partnership with them Nor could Mijn Heer Fagel in representing what is safe or unsafe to so great and noble a Nation take notice of what is practised upon necessity in some mean Town or Corporation supposing that it were there as our Author alledgeth without transgressing against all the Rules both of prudence and decency But as the Pensionary had no where in his Letter affirmed that there were not any States or Cities in which the Protestants and Papists bear Office in Government together but had only said that Reason and Experience do shew us how impossible it will be for them when joyned together in places of Trust and publick Employments to maintain a good Correspondence and to live peaceably with one another so this is found to be so just a truth and so pertinently observed that in all the places where it hath been practised tho not in Germany as our Author ignorantly suggests they have not only lived in continual heats and dissentions but have often come to open Hostility against each other Nor hath it meerly fallen out thus in private and particular States within themselves but the like evils have often followed and ensued where more States have associated into Union for the common preservation of the Generality and where the Government hath been in some in the hands of Protestants and in others executed by Roman Catholicks Of this we have diverse Examples in the Cantons of Switzerland where thro the Magistrates being in some Cantons of the Reformed and in others of the Roman Catholick Religion they have not only been often hindred from joyning and acting vigorously as they ought to have done for the interest of all and the benefit of the common Confederation and Union but they have sometimes come to open ruptures and have been embarqued in War against one another And forasmuch as our Author makes bold to say That there was never any Christian Kingdom where the Religion that the Prince professeth and which had in former ages been Dominant was so far laid aside and banished that his Subjects professing the same with himself were shut out and precluded from Trusts and Employments I will take the freedom to tell him that it is so gross and palpable a Falsehood that none but a person of his ignorance and impudence would have had the face to have asserted it For there are Christian Kingdoms that have done more than this amounts unto and who to prevent the danger of having Papists preferred to Trusts and Employments in case a Prince of their Religion should come to the Throne have been so wise as to declare Roman Catholicks incapable either of obtaining or keeping the Soveraignty And it was in the vertue of such a Law and by reason of the dread of it that Christina Queen of Sweden upon the having taken up a resolution to turn Papist chose to demit her Crown before she declared her self as knowing that immediately after such a Declaration she would have been deposed from the Throne and possibly not have had so liberal an allowance assigned her afterwards as by that conduct she did obtain Nor is it unknown to any except it be to such as our Author is for natural and acquired accomplishments that there were not only Laws in Scotland for precluding a Popish Prince from coming to the Government but that the same thing was imployed in the English Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy as being Oaths of such a frame and nature that it had been most incongruous to impose them upon Subjects to a King of the Roman Catholick Religion And tho these two Nations did not improve the advantage which they had by means of their legal provisions to hinder the present King from inheriting the Crowns of the respective Realms yet those Laws serve to inform us how far some Christian Kingdoms thought it lawful to go and to what heighth to Act not only against Popish Subjects but against Catholick Princes themselves Yea the time was that the very Papists were so far from condemning the having men of their Religion debarred from Trusts and Employments in Protestant Kingdoms under a Popish Prince that they made the Test Laws by which they are shut out from Offices and Declared incapable of them the great Argument against the necessity of having the Bill passed for excluding the Duke of York from the Crown and improved them as the main Engine for allaying the fears of the Nation under the apprehensions they had of his being a Roman Catholick and coming to the Throne But by their different Language now from what it was then all Englishmen understand how far they are to be believed in other cases and whether the many promises which they do make at this time in order to a further design and the putting a new Trick upon the Nation ought to be depended on by them whom they have already deceived And whereas upon Mijn Heer Fagel's having observed that the conduct of Roman Catholicks is much more severe towards Protestants than that of those of the Reformed Religion towards Papists our Author is pleased to reply that in order to judge as we should of that different procedure we are to consider whether it be not less just to banish a Religion that had been so long dominant as the Roman Catholick had been than to withstand the introduction of a new Religion that would depress and supplant the old All I shall say in reference to this is
our Jealousie but to stir up severer passions to be told at a season when we know what the Catholicks are doing in France and in most other places where they have any power that the Papists through having burnt their fingers with persecution may be grown so wise as to do so no more and yet to have it asserted in the same Page that they who can be prevailed upon to believe that the Church of England is sorry for what She hath done and that she will not be guilty of such a thing again have little reason to quarrel at the unaccount ableness of Transubstantiation Good Advice p. 8. Nor is it becoming one who stiles himself a Protestant no more than it is consistent with Truth to extenuate our being scandal'd at the severity upon Protestants in France by affirming that he can parallel some of the severest passages in that Kingdom out of the Actions of some Members of the Church of England in cool Blood ibid. p. 7. And though I have all the kindness imaginable for Mr. Pen's Person and am loath to think otherways of him as to his Religious Principles than as his avowed profession discovers him yet these and diverse passages more of that kind together with the accession he must necessarily have had to the apprehension and imprisonment of Mr. Gray c. for abandoning the Benedictine Order are things I can neither reconcile to the title he assumes nor to his many Discourses for Repealing the Test Laws And to speak freely considering the Nature of our Laws against Papists and that it was their manifold Treasons and onely our care to preserve our selves that both gave the first rise unto them and has necessitated their continuance I know neither how to construe that Assertion of Mr. Pen's Good Advice p. 13. that the Principle which the Church of England acts by justifies the King of France and the Inquisition nor that other Letter first of there having been eight times more Laws made for ruining men for their Conscience since the Church of England came to be the National Establishment than were all the time that Popery was in the Chair Nor can this be designed to any other end but the giving the Church of Rome the commendation of Mercy and Moderation above a Protestant Church For as 't is certain that the one Law of Burning and Extirpating Hereticks was a thousand fold worse and hath produced infinitely more Sanguinary effects than all the Laws and Rigours that the Church of England can be charged with so there is nothing can be falser than that either her Principle or Practice do parallel or justifie the barbarous and brutal severities of the French King and the Inquisition Moreover were all Protestants agreed that Liberty in meer matters of Religion should be immediately granted in a Legal way yet I do not see how the Papists should pretend to any benefit by it or be able to lay a just claim to a share in it So that the foundation which Mr. Pen goes upon of mens having a Right to be indulged in matters of Religion is too narrow to support the structure he raiseth upon it For though there may be some things retained in Popery which may be called matters of Religion yet in the bulk and complex of it it is a Conjuration against all Religion and a Conspiracy against the Peace of Societies and the Rights of Mankind 'T is one of the Crimes as well as the Miseries of this Age that out of a dread of some and in complacence to others we have avoided representing Popery in its native colours and calling it by the Names properly due unto it But I have always thought that 't is better fail in our Courtship to Men than in our duty to God and fidelity to the Interest of Jesus Christ and the safety of Mankind Nor do I doubt but that they will be better approved in the Great day of Account who Character Persons Doctrines and Practices as the Scripture doth than they who that they may accommodate themselves unto and be acceptable with the world speak of them in a softer stile Now if either Blasphemies against God or Tyrannies over Men if either the defacing the Ideas of a Deity or corrupting the Principles of Vertue and Moral Honesty if either the subverting the foundations of natural Religion or the overthrowing the most essential Articles of the Christian Faith if either the most avowed and bold affronts offered to heaven or the bloodiest and most brutal outrages executed against the best of men if all these be sufficient to preclude a party from the benefit of Liberty due to people in Religious Matters I am sure none have reason to challenge it in behalf of the Papists nor cause to complain if it be denied them Can there be any thing more unreasonable than that they should claim a Toleration in a Protestant State whose Principles not only allow but oblige them to destroy us as soon as their power inables them to do it Is not the Doctrine of the Pope's Supremacy and his having a Right to Depose Kings and absolve Subjects from their Allegiance together with that of breaking Faith to Hereticks and the extirpating all those who cannot believe as the Church of Rome doth mighty inducements to those whom they have baptized with that Name and to whom they long to exercise that courtesie for the Repealing of the Penal and Test Laws against Papists Nor are these Principles falsely charged upon them but they are the Oracular Decisions of their General Councils and Popes whom they stile Infallible So that Mr. Pen's Book and Letters which seem to have been written not so much in favour of Dissenting Protestants as of Roman Catholicks can little advantage the latter even allowing the Principle which he goes upon and admitting all he hath said for Mens Right to Liberty in meer matters of Religion to be unanswerable And his telling us Good Adv. p. 42. that Violence and Tyranny are not natural consequences of Popery does onely discover his kindness to Rome and the little Friendship and care he hath for the Protestant Interest For we know both the Principles of their Religion too well and have at all times experienced and do at this day feel the effects of them too sensibly to be deluded by this kind of Sophistry and imposed upon by so palpable a Falsehood to abandon the means of our safety Wheresoever any Popish Rulers Act with Gentleness and Moderation towards those whom their Church hath declared Hereticks 't is either because there are Political Reasons for it as might be easily shewed in reference to all those States and Governments which he mentions or because there are some Princes of the Roman Communion in whom the Dictates of Humane Nature are more prevalent than those of their Religion But should the gentle Temper of the English Nation sway them beyond the strict obligations of duty and make them willing to Repeal the
Penal Laws against Papists yet to do it in their present Circumstances and at such a conjuncture as this were the highest act of folly in the world and a betraying both their own safety and that of their Religion Had the Roman Catholicks forbore to assume a liberty till it had been legally given them they had been the more capable objects of such a Grace but to bestow it upon them after they have in contempt and defiance of all our Laws taken it 't were to justify their usurpation and approve their crime Could they have been contented with the private practice of their Worship and the non-exaction of the penalties to which our Statutes make them liable without leaping into all Offices of Trust and Command and invading our Seats of Judicature our Churches and our Universities their modesty might have wrought much upon the generosity and candor of all sort of Protestants but their audacious wresting all power into their hands and their laying aside all those that have either any zeal for our Civil Rights or for the Protestant Religion is enough to kindle our further indignation in stead of influencing us to thoughts of moderation and lenity And should we once begin to cancel our Laws according to the measure and proportion that they break them and usurp upon them no man can tell where that will terminate and they will be sure to turn it into an encouragement to further attempts For having in compliance with their Impudence and to absolve them from the guilt of their Crimes and Treasons abrogated the Laws against Popery they will not fail in a little while to betake themselves to the same Methods for obtaining the abolition of all the Laws for Protestancy 'T is but for the King to declare that he will have all his Subjects to be of his own Religion and then by the Logick of the late Cant which he used in his Speech to the Council at Windsor That they who are not for him are against him we must immediately either turn Papists or be put into the same List with them and be thought worthy of the same Royal Displeasure which they are become obnoxious unto who cannot find it to be their duty and interest to destroy the Tests And Mr. Pen's Argument of being afraid of His Majesties and the Papists power and yet to provoke it Good Advice p. 43. will hold in the one case as well as in the other Nor do I see but that the Court may improve another Topick of his against us Ibid. p. 44. viz. That we were ill Courtiers by setting him up first to give him Roast-meat and then to beat him with the Spit by refusing to be of his Religion To which I may add that the brutal severities exercised towards Protestants in France and Piedmont are but ill inducements to prevail upon a Reformed Nation to give Liberty to Papists 'T is an Axiom founded in the light of Nature as well as an Oracle of Revelation That with what measure any do mete unto others it shall be measured to them again and that whatsoever any would that we should do to them they should do so to us Would the Papists once perswade Catholick Rulers to give Indulgence to those of our Religion it would be an argument that they acted sincerely in their pleading against Penal Laws for matters of Religion and would mightily prevail upon all of the Reformed Communion to Repeal such Statutes as are Enacted against them But while they continue and increase their Persecution against us in all places where they have power I do not see how they can reasonably expect that we should believe them either to be just or honest or to deserve any measure of lenity Reprizals are the onely methods whereby to bring them to peaceable and equal Terms Had Protestant Princes and States given Papal Soveraigns to understand that they would act upon the same square that they do and retaliate upon those of the Romish Faith whatsoever should be inflicted because of Religion upon those of ours I have ground to think that the Clergy in France and Savoy would have had more discretion than to have been Instrumental in stirring up the late Persecutions and of instigating Rulers to such unparallelled Barbarities 'T is not many years since a Prince in Germany begun to treat Protestants with an unjust severity and to Banish them his Countrey contrary to his word and the Stipulation he had made with them but upon the Duke of Brandenburg's both threatning and beginning to do so by the Roman Catholicks in his Dutchy of Cleve the other Prince immediately forbare his rigour and the Protestants had fair Quarter allowed them And therefore if Mr. Pen and his Catholick Friends in stead of reproaching the Church of England of justifying by her principle the King of France and the Inquisition would prevail for abolishing the one and for putting an end to Persecution by the other they would thereby do more for inclining the Nations to Tolerate Papists than either by all their invidious Satyrs against the conformable Clergy or by their Panegyricks upon a Popish Monarch and the Romish Church In the mean time 't is most unreasonable for them to demand or expect and unwise as well as unseasonable for British Protestants to consent to the Abrogation of the Tests and the Repealing of the Penal Laws against Papists Moreover though 't is possible that we might defend our selves against the dangers that might ensue upon it had we a Prince of our own Religion on the Throne yet it would be to surrender our selves unto their power and to expose our selves to their Discretion should we venture to do it while a Papist of His Majesties humour hath the weilding of the Scepter One of the main Arguments by which Mr. Pen would perswade us against all apprehension of danger from the Papists in case the Test and Penal Laws were abolished is the inconsiderableness of their number in comparison of Protestants Good Advice p. 49. And yet if there be so many ill Men in the Nation as he intimates Letter 3d. p. 12. who being of no Religion are ready upon the motives of worldly Interest to take upon them the profession of any were it not for fear of being at one time or another called to an account I do not see but that as the Papists through having the King on their side are already possessed of what he stiles the Artificial Strength of the Kingdom why they may not in a short while were those Laws once destroyed by which the Atheistical and profane sort of Men are kept in awe come to obtain too much of the natural strength of it and raise their number to a nearer equality to that of Protestants And though they should never multiply to any near proportion yet we may easily imagine what a few hands may be able to do when Authorized by a Popish Soveraign and seconded by a well-disciplin'd Army commanded by Roman Catholicks
what Mr. Pen intends when he tells us that such a Bargain will be driven with the Kingdom as will make the Church of England think that half a Loaf had been better than no Bread Good Adv. p. 43. and that one year will shew the Trick and mightily deceive her and the opportunity of her being preserved lost and another Bargain driven mightily to her disadvantage Ibid. p. 42. But as it will be impossible for Papists and Dissenters should they conspire together to be able to effect it considering the interest which her integrity in the Protestant Religion and her tenderness for the Rights and Liberties of the Kingdoms have justly acquired unto her so it were both the most foolish as well as criminal thing which any pretending themselves Protestants can be guilty of to be in any measure accessory unto it For as there is nothing in reference to their own Religious Liberties and the Priviledges of the Nation which they may not undoubtedly expect from her Justice as well as from her Mercy and Moderation so there is no means left within our view either to give a lasting Peace and a firm settlement to Three distracted Kingdoms or to bring the Protestant Interest into such a condition as may ballance the Papal grandure in Europe and give check to the rage of Persecution in all places but her happy advancement to the Thrones of Great Brittain and Ireland when it shall please God to remove his Majesty Until which time I hope all who call themselves Protestants will submit to the worst of fate rather than to fall under the Curse of this Age and Ignominy with all that shall come after for becoming an United Party with the Church of Rome in any of her Designs how plausible soever they may appear The Ill Effects of Animosities 'T IS long since the Court of England under the Authority of the late King and his Brother was embark'd in a design of subverting the Protestant Religion and of introducing and establishing Popery For the two Royal Brothers being in the time of their Exile seduced by the Caresses and Importunities of their Mother allured by the Promises and Favours of Popish Princes and being wheedled by the Crafts and Arts of Priests and Jesuites who are cunning to deceive and know how to prevail upon persons that were but weakly established in the Doctrine and wholly strangers to the practice and power of the Religion they were tempted from they not only abjured the Reformed Religion and became reconciled to the Church of Rome but by their Example and the Influence which they had over those that depended upon them both for present Subsistence and future Hopes they drew many that accompanied them in their Banishment to renounce the Doctrine Worship and Communion of the Church of England though in the War between Charles the First and the Parliament they had pretended to fight for them in equal conjunction with the Prerogatives of the Crown So that upon the Restoration in the year 1660 they were not only moulded and prepared themselves for promoting the desires of the Pope and his Emissaries but they were furnished with a stock of Gentlemen out of whom they might have a supply of Instruments both in Parliament and elsewhere to co-operate with and under them in the methods that should be judged most proper and subservient to the Extirpation of Protestancy and the bringing the Nation again into a Servitude to the Triple Crown And besides the Obligations that the Principles of the Religion to which they had revolted laid them under for eradicating the established Doctrine and Worship they had bound themselves unto it by all the Promises and Oaths which persons are capable of having prescribed unto and exacted of them Nor can any now disbelieve his late Majesty's having lived and died a Papist who hath either heard what he both said and did when under the prospect of approaching Death and past hope of acting a part any longer on the present Stage or who have seen and read the two Papers left in his Closet which have been since published to the World and attested for Authentick by the present King And had we been so just to our selves as to have examined the whole course of his Reign both in his Alliances Abroad and his most Important Counsels and Actions at Home or had we hearkened to the Reports of those who knew him at Collen and in Flanders we had been long ago convinced of what Religion he was Nor were his many repeated Protestations of his Zeal for Protestancy but in order to delude the Nation till insensibly as to us and with safety to himself he had overturned the Religion which he pretended to own and had introduced that which he inveighed against And while with the highest asseverations he disclaimed the being what he really was and with most sacred and tremendous Oaths professed the being what he was not his Religion might in the mean time have been traced through all the signal Occurrences of his Government and have been discerned written in Capital Letters through all the material Affairs wherein he was engaged from the Day he ascended the Throne till the Hour he left the World His entring into two Wars against the Dutch without any provocation on their part or ground on his save their being a Protestant State his being not only conscious unto but interposing his Commands as well as Encouragements for the burning of London His concurrence in all the parts of the Popish Plot except that which the Jesuites with a few others were involved in against himself his stifling that Conspiracy and delivering the Roman Catholicks from the Dangers into which it had cast them His being the Author of so many forged Plots which he caused to be charged on Protestants His constant Confederacies with France to the disobliging his people the betraying of Europe the neglect of the reformed in that Kingdom and the encouraging the Design carried on against them for their Extirpation His entailing the Duke of York upon the Nation contrary to the Desires and Endeavours of three several Parliaments and that not out of Love to his person but Affection to Popery which he knew that Gentleman would introduce and establish All these besides many other things which might be named were sufficient Evidences of the late King's Religion and of the Design he was engaged in for the Subversion of Ours So that it would fill a sober person with amazement to think that after all this there should be so many sincere Protestants and true English Men who not only believed the late King to be of the reformed Religion but with an insatiableness thirsted after the Blood of those that durst otherwise represent him And had it not been for his receiving Absolution and Extream Unction from a Popish Priest at his Death and for what he left in writing in the two Papers found in his strong Box he would have still passed for a Prince
who had lived and died a cordial and zealous Protestant and whosoever had muttered any thing to the contrary would have been branded for a Villain and an execrable person But with what a scent and odor must it recommend his Memory to them to consider his having not onely lived and died in the Communion of the Church of Rome in contradiction to all his publick Speeches solemn Declarations and highest Asseverations to his People in Parliament but his participating from time to time of the Sacrament as Administred in the Church of England while in the interim he had Abjured our Religion stood reconciled to the Church of Rome and had obliged himself by most sacred Vows and was endeavouring by all the Frauds and Arts imaginable to subvert the established Doctrin and Worship and set up Heresy and Idolatry in their room And it must needs give them an abhorrent Idea and Character of Popery and a loathsom representation of those trusted with the Conduct and Guidance of the Consciences of Men in the Roman Communion that they should not onely dispense with and indulge such Crimes and Villanies but proclaim them Sanctified and Meritorious from the end which they are calculated for and levelled at And for his dear Brother and renowned Successor who possessed the Throne after him I suppose his most partial Admirers who took him for a Prince not onely merciful in his Temper and imbued with all gracious Inclinations to our Laws and the Rights of the Subject but for one Orthodox in his Religion and who would prove a zealous Defender of the Doctrine Worship and Discipline of the Church established by Law are before this time both undeceived and filled with Resentments for his having abused their Credulity deceived their Expectations and reproached all their Gloryings and Boastings of him For as it would have been the greatest Affront they could have put upon the King to question his being of the Roman Communion or to detract from his Zeal for the introduction of Popery notwithstanding his own antecedent Protestations as well as the many Statutes in force for the preservation of the Reformed Religion so I must take the liberty to tell them that his Apostacy is not of so late Date as the World is made commonly to believe For though it was many Years concealed and the contrary pretended and dissembled yet it is most certain that he Abjured the Protestant Religion soon after the Exilement of the Royal Family and was reconciled to the Romish Church at St. Germains in France Nor were several of the then suffering Bishops and Clergy ignorant of this though they had neither the Integrity nor Courage to give the Nation and Church warning of it And within these five Years there was in the custody of a very worthy and honest Gentleman a Letter written to the late Bishop of D. by a Doctor of Divinity then attending upon the Royal Brothers wherein the Apostacy of the then Duke of York to the See of Rome is particularly related and an Account given how much the Dutchess of Tremoville though without being her self observed had heard the Queen Mother glorying of it bewailed it as a dishonour unto the Royal Family and as that which might prove of pernicious consequence to the Protestant Interest But though the old Queen privately rejoyced and triumphed in it yet she knew too well what disadvantage it might be both to her Son and to the Papal Cause in Great Brittain to have it at that Season communicated and divulged Thereupon it remained a Secret for many Years and by virtue of a Dispensation he sometimes joined in all Ordinances with those of the Protestant Communion But for all the Art Hypocrisy and Sacrilege by which it was endeavoured to be concealed it might have been easily discerned as manifesting it self in the whole Course of his Actions And at last his own Zeal the Importunity of the Priests and the Cunning of the late King prevailing over Reasons of State he withdrew from all Acts of Fellowship with the Church of England But neither that nor his refusing the Test enjoyned by Law for distinguishing Papists from Protestants though thereupon he was forced both to resign his Office of Lord High Admiral c. nor his declining the Oath which the Laws of Scotland for the securing a Protestant Governour enjoyn to be taken by the High Commissioner nor yet so many Parliaments having endeavoured to get him Excluded from Succession to the Crown upon the account of having revolted to the See of Rome and thereby become dangerous to the Established Religion could make impression upon a wilfully deluded and obstinate sort of Protestants but in defiance of all means of Conviction they would perswade themselves that he was still a Zealot for our Religion and a grand Patriot of the Church of England Nor could any thing undeceive them till upon his Brother's Death he had openly declared himself a Roman Catholick and afterwards in the fumes and raptures of his Victory over the late Duke of Monmouth had discovered and proclaimed his Intentions of overthrowing both our Religion and Laws Yea so closely had some sealed up their Eyes against all beams of Light and hardned themselves against all Evidences from Reason and Fact that had it pleased the Almighty God to have prospered the Duke of Monmouth's Arms in the Summer 85. the present King would have gone off the Stage with the Reputation among them of a Prince tender of the Laws of the Kingdom and who notwithstanding his own being a Papist would have preserved the Reformed Religion and have maintained the Church of England in all her Grandure and Rights And though his whole Life had been but one continued Conspiracy against our Civil Liberties and Priviledges he had left the Throne with the Character and under the Esteem of a Gentleman that in the whole course of his Government would have regulated himself by the Rules of the Constitution and the Statutes of the Realm Now among all the Methods fallen upon by the Royal Brothers for the undermining and subverting our Religion and Laws there is none that they have pursued with more Ardor and wherein they have been more successful to the compassing of their Designs than in their dividing Protestants and alienating their Affections and embittering their Minds from and against one another And had not this lain under their prospect and the means of effecting it appeared easie they might have been Papists themselves while in the mean time they had been dispensed with to protest and swear their being of the Reformed Religion and they might have envied our Liberties and bewailed their Restriction from Arbitrary and Despotical Power but they never durst have entertained a Thought of subverting the Established Religion or of altering the Civil Government nor would they ever have had the boldness to have attempted the introducing and erecting Popery and Tyranny in their room And whosoever should have put them upon reducing the Nation
unnatural Heats wherewith Protestants have been enflamed and enraged against Protestants many weak ungrounded and unstable Souls have been tempted to question the Truth of our Religion and to Apostatize to the Church of Rome and thereupon have become united in Inclination Power and Endeavours with the Court and our old Enemies the Papists for the Extirpation of Protestancy and the alteration of the Government As it hath been matter of Offence and Scandal to all Men so it hath been ground of stumbling and falling unto many to see those who are professedly of the same Religion to be mutually embittered against one another and so far transported with Malice and Rage as to seek and pursue each others Destruction For such a Carriage and Behaviour are so contrary to the Spirit and Principles of Christianity and to the Genius and Temper of True Religion that it is no marvel if persons ignorant of the Holy Scriptures and strangers to the converting and comforting Vertue of the Doctrine of the Gospel asserted in our Confessions and insisted upon by our Divines should suspect the Orthodoxy of that Religion which is accompanied with so bitter Fruits even in the Dispensers of the Word as well as in others and betake themselves to the Communion of that Church where how many and important soever their Differences be one with another yet they do not break forth into those Flames of Excommunicating and Persecuting each other that ours have done How have some among us through having their Spirits fretted and exasperated by the craft and cunning of our Enemies not onely loaded and stigmatized their Brethren and fellow Protestants with Crimes and Names which were they true and deserved would justly render us a loathing and an Abomination to Mankind but having Libelled and Branded those whom God had honoured to be Instruments of the Reformation with Appellations and Characters fit to beget a Detestation of their Doctrine as well as their Memory The worst that the Papists have forged and vomited out against Luther Zwinglius Calvin c. hath been raked up and repeated to the disparagement of the Reformation and to the scandalizing the Minds of weak Men against it And as the Jesuites and Priests have improved those Slanders and Calumnies to the seduction of diverse from the Church of England and to a working them over to a Reconciliation with the Church of Rome so the Court hath thereby had an increase of their Faction and Party against our Religion and Liberties and have been enabled to muster Troops of Janisaries for their Despotical and Unlimited Claim Nor have our Divisions with the Heats Animosities Revilings and Persecutions that have ensued thereupon proved onely an occasion of the Seduction of several from our Religion and of their Apostacy to Popery but they have been a main spring and source of the Debauchery Irreligion and Atheism which have over spread the Nation and have brought so many both to an indifferency and unconcernedness for the Gospel and all that is vertuous and noble and have disposed them to fall in with those that could countenance and protect them in their Impiety and Prophaneness and feed their Luxury and Pride with Honour and Gain What a woful Scheme of Religion have we afforded the World and how shamefully have we painted forth and represented the Holy Doctrine of the blessed Jesus while we have not onely lived in a direct opposition to all the Commands of Meekness Love and mutual Forbearance which our Religion lays us under the Authority of but have neglected to practise good Manners to observe the Rules of Civility to treat one another with common Humanity and to do as we would be done unto while we have been more offended at what seemed to supplant our Dominations and Grandeurs than at what dishonoured God and reproached the Gospel while we weighed not so much whether they whom we took into our Sacred Communion as well as into our personal Friendship were conformable in their Lives to the Scripture as whether they complied with the Canons of the Church while we reprobated all that were not of our way though never so vertuous and devout and Sainted all that were though never so wicked and prophane while we branded such for Fanaticks whom we could justly charge with nothing save the not admitting that into Religion which came not from the Divine Author of it and hugged those for good and Orthodox Believers that would sooner consult the Statute-Book for their Practice in the Worship of God than the Bible while we haled those to Prison and spoiled them of their Estates to whom nothing could be objected except their being too precise and consciencious in avoiding that through fear and apprehension of sinning which others had a liberty and latitude to do as judging it lawful and in the mean time esteemed those worthy of the chiefest Trusts in the Church and Common-wealth whose Folly and Villanies made them unfit for Civil Societies while they who lived most agreeably to the Laws of God and the Example of Christ were persecuted as Enemies to Religion and the Pests of the Kingdom and in the interim too many of the very Clergy were not onely Countenancers of the most Profligate Persons as their best Friends but joined and assisted in scandalous Debaucheries under pretence of sustaining the Honour of their Tribe and doing Service to the Church I say while these were the unhappy but too obvious Fruits of our Divisions and of the bitter Heats that accompanied them how was the Reverence for the Sacred Order lessened and diminished the Veneration for Religion weakned and lost the Shame and Dread of appearing prophane and wicked removed and banished and such who took the measures of Christianity from the Practices of those that were stiled Christians rather than from the immaculate and holy Scriptures tempted to think all Religion a Juggle and Priesthood but an Artifice and Craft to compass Honour and Wealth And though nothing but a shortness of Understanding and an immoderate Love to their Lusts could occasion the drawing such a Conclusion from the foregoing Premises yet I must needs grant that there was too just a ground administred unto them of saying that many did not believe that themselves the Faith whereof they recommended to others But that which I would more particularly observe is that it is from among those who by the foregoing occasions have been tempted to Debauchery and Irreligion that the Romish Emissaries have made the Harvest of Proselytes and Converts to the Church of Rome For as they who fear not God will be easily brought to imitate Caesar and such who are of no Religion will in subserviency to Secular Ends assume the Mask and Profession of any So Popery is extreamly adapted to the Wishes and Desires of wicked and profane Men in that it provides for their living as enormously as they please here and flatters them with hopes and assurances of Blessedness hereafter They who can be ascertained of
good a Title to be ravished from them either by Monks or Janizaries though authorised thereunto by the Princes Commission Even they who had formerly suffered themselves to be seduced to prove in a manner Betrayers of the Rights and Religion of their Country will now being undeceived not only in conjunction with others withstand the Court in its prosecution of Popish and Arbitrary Designs but through a generous exasperation for having been deluded and abused will judge themselves obliged in vindication of their Actings before to appear for the Protestant Religion and the Laws of England with a Zeal equal to that wherewith they contributed to the undermining and supplanting of them For they are not only become more sensible than they were of the Mischiefs of Absolute Government so as for the future to prize and assert the Priviledges reserved unto the people by the Rules of the Constitution and chalk'd out for them in the Laws of the Land but they have such a fresh view of Popery both in its Heresies Blasphemies Superstitions and Idolatries and in the Treachery Sanguinariness Violence and Cruelty which the Papal Principles mould influence and oblige Men unto that they not only entertain the greatest abhorrency and detestation imaginable for it but seem resolved not to cherish in their Bosom a Thing so abominable to God execrable to good Men and destructive to Humane as well as to Christian Societies Nor are the Dissenters meerly to believe that the Conformists are equally zealous as themselves for the Reformed Religion and English Rights but they are to consider them as the only great and united Body of Protestants in the Kingdom with whom all other parties compared bear no considerable proportion For though the Nonconformists considered abstractly make a vast number of honest and useful people yet being laid in the Scale with those of the Episcopal Communion they are but few and lye in a little room And whosoever will take the pains to ballance the one against the other even where Dissenters make the greatest Figure and may justly boast of their Multitude they will soon be convinced that the number of the other doth far transcend and exceed them And if it be so in Cities and Corporations where the greatest Bulk of Dissenters are it is much more so in Country Parishes where the latter bear not the proportion of one to a hundred Nor doth the Church of England more exceed the other parties in her number than she doth in the quality of her Members For whereas they who make up and constitute the separate Societies are chiefly persons of the middle Rank and Condition the Church of England doth in a manner vouch and claim all the Persons of Honour of the Learned professions and such as have valuable Estates for her Communicants And though the other sort are as necessary in the Common-wealth and contribute as much to its Strength Prosperity and Happiness yet they make not that Figure in the Government nor stand in that Capacity of having influence upon Publick Affairs For not only the Gentlemen of both the Gowns who by reason of their Calling and Learning are best able to defend our Religion and vindicate our Laws and Priviledges with their Tongues and Pens but they whose Estates Reputation and Interest recommendeth them to be elected Members of the great Senate of the Nation as well as they who by reason of their Honours and Baronages are Hereditary Legislators are generally if not all of the Communion of the Church of England So that they who conform to the established Worship and Discipline are to be look'd upon and acknowledged as the great Bulwark of the Protestant Religion in England and the Hedge and Fence of our Civil Liberties and Rights And though it be true that this great Breach made upon our Religion and Laws is fallen out under their hand while the poor Dissenters had neither accession to nor were in a condition to prevent it yet seeing their own Consciences do sufficiently load and charge them for it with Shame and Ignominy it were neither candid nor at this Juncture seasonable to upbraid it to them or improve it to their Dishonour and Reproach For as they have tamely look'd on and connived till our Religion and Liberties are so far undermined and supplanted so it is they alone who have been in a condition of stemming the Inundation of Idolatry and Tyranny with which we were threatned and of repairing our Breaches and reducing the Prerogative to its old Channel and making Popery sneak and retreat into its holes and corners again And should the Church of England have been overthrown and devoured what an easie Prey would the rest have been to the Romish Cormorants And could the King under the Conduct of the Jesuits and with the assistance of his Myrmidons have dissolved the established Worship and Discipline they of the Separation would have been in no capacity to support the Reformed Religion nor able to escape the common Ruine and Persecution 'T is therefore the Interest as well as the Duty of the Dissenters to help maintain and defend those Walls within the skreen and shelter whereof their own Huts and Cottages are built and stand And the rather seeing the Conformists are at last though to their own Religion's and the Nations Expence become so far enlightned as to see a necessity of growing more amicable towards them and to enlarge the Terms of their Communion grant an Indulgence to all Protestants that differ from them And as we ought to admire the Wisdom of God in those Providences by which Protestants are taught to lay aside their Animosities and let fall their Persecutions of one another so it would be a Contradiction both to the principles and repeated Protestations of Dissenters to aim at more than such a Liberty as is consistent with a National Ecclesiastick Establishment Yea it were to proclaim themselves both Villains and Hypocrites not to allow their Fellow-Protestants the Exercise of their Judgments with what further Profits and Emoluments the Law will grant them provided themselves may be discharged from all obnoxiousness to Penalties and Censures upon the account of their Consciences and be admitted a free and publick Practice of their own respective Modes of Discipline and be suffered to worship God in those ways which they think he hath required and enjoyned them And were England immediately to be rendred so happy as to have a Protestant Prince or Princess as we are not now quite out of hopes ascend the Throne and to enjoy a Parliament duly chosen and acting with freedom no one party of the Reformed Religion among us must ever expect to be established and supported to the denial of Liberty to others much less to be by Law empowered to ruine and destroy them Should it please Almighty God to bring the Princess of Orange to the Crown though the Church of England may in that case justly expect the being preserved and upheld as the National
which they cannot help but bear his Misfortune and Lot with Patience in himself and with Compassion and Charity towards them and have his Indignation raised only against that Court which forced them to be instrumental in their Oppression and Trouble The Protestant Dissenters could not be so far void of sense as to think that the Person lately in the Throne bore them any good-Will but his drift was to screw himself into a Supremacy and Absoluteness over the Law and to get such an Authority confessed to be vested in him as when he pleased he might subvert the Established Religion and set up Popery Forby the same Power that he can dispense with the Penal Statutes against the Nonconformists he may also dispense with those against the Roman Catholicks And whosoever owneth that he hath a Right to do the first doth in effect own that he hath a Right to do the last For if he be allowed a Power for the superseding some Laws made in reference to Matters of Religion he may challenge the like Power for the superseding others of the same kind And then by the same Authority that he can suspend the Laws against Popery he may also suspend those for Protestancy And by the same Power that he can in defiance of Law indulge the Papists the Exercise of their Religion in Houses he may establish them in the publick Celebration of their Idolatry in Churches and Cathedrals yea whereas the Laws that relate to Religion are enacted by no less Authority than those that are made for the Preservation of our Civil Rights should the K. be admitted to have an Arbitrary Power over the one it is very like that by the Logick of Whitehall he might have challeng'd the same Absoluteness over the other Nor do I doubt but that the eleven Judges who gratified him with a Despoticalness over the former would when required grant him the same over the latter I know the Dissenters have been under no small Temptations both by reason of being hindred from enjoying the Ordinances of the Gospel and because of many grievous Calamities which they suffer for their Nonconformity of making Applications to the K. for some Relief by his suspending the Execution of the Laws but they must give me leave to add that they ought not for the obtaining of a little Ease to have betrayed the Kingdom and Sacrifice the Legal Constitution of the Government to the Lust and Pleasure of a Popish Prince whom nothing less would serve than being Absolute and Despotical And had he once been in the quiet Possession of an Authority to dispense with the Penal Laws the Dissenters would not long have enjoyed the Benefit of it Nor could they have denied him a Power of reviving the Execution of the Law which is part of the Trust deposited with him as Supreme Magistrate who have granted him a Power of Suspending the Laws which the Rules of the Government precluded him from And as he might whensoever he pleased cause the Laws to which they were Obnoxious to be executed upon them so by virtue of having an Authority acknowledged in him of superceding the Laws he might deprive them of the Liberty of meeting together to the number of Five a Grace which the Parliament thought fit to allow them under all the other Severities to which they were subjected Nor needs there any further Evidence that the Prince's challenging such a Power was an Usurpation and that the Subjects making any Application by which it seem'd allowed to him was a betraying of the Ancient Legal Government of the Kingdom whereas the most Obsequious and Servile Parliament to the Court that ever England knew not only denied this Prerogative to the late King Charles but made him renounce it by revoking his Declaration of Indulgence which he had emitted Anno 1672. And as it will be to the perpetual Honour of some of the Dissenters to have chosen rather to suffer the Severities which the Laws make them liable unto than by any Act and Transaction of theirs to undermine and weaken either the Church or the State so it will be a means both of endearing them we hope not only to the Prince of Orange now by a miraculous Providence brought in amongst us but to future Parliaments and of bringing them and the Conformists into an Union of Counsels and Endeavours against Popery and Tyranny for ever which is at this season a thing so indispensibly necessary for their common Preservation Especially when through a new and more threatning Alliance and Confederacy with France than that in 72 the King had not only engaged to act by and observe the same Measures towards Protestants in England which that Monarch hath vouchsafed the World a Pattern and Copy of in his carriage towards those of the Reformed Religion in France but had promised to disturb the Peace and Repose of his Neighbours and to commence a War in conjunction with that Prince against Foreign Protestants For as the King 's giving Liberty and Protection to the Algerines to frequent his Havens and sell the Prizes which they take from the Dutch is both a most infamous Action for a Prince pretending to be a Christian and a direct Violation of his Alliance with the States General so nothing can be more evident than that he thereby sought to render them the weaker for him to assault and that he was resolved if some unforeseen and extraordinary Providence had not interposed and prevented to declare War against them the next Summer in order whereunto great Remises of Money were already ordered him from the French Court So that the Indulgence which he pretends to be inclinable to afford the Dissenters was not an effect of Kindness and Good-will but an Artifice whereby to oblige their Assistance in destroying those Abroad of the same Religion with themselves Which if he could once compass it were easie to foresee what Fate both the Dissenters and they of the Communion of the Church of England were to expect Who as they would not then have known whither to retreat for shelter so they would have been destitute of Comfort in themselves and deprived of Pity from others not only for having through their Divisions made themselves a Prey to the Papists at Home but for having been accessary to the Ruin of the Reformed State Abroad and which was the Asilum and Sanctuary of all those that were elsewhere oppressed and persecuted for Religion Gloria Deo Optimo Maximo Honos Principi nostri celcissimo pientissimo A Representation of the Threatning Dangers Impending over Protestants in Great Britain With an Account of the Arbitrary and Popish Ends unto which the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in England and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland are designed THey are great Strangers to the Transactions of the World who know not how many and various the Attempts of the Papists have been both to hinder all Endeavours towards a Reformation and to overthrow and subvert it
where it hath obtained and prevailed For beside the innumerable Executions and Murthers committed by means of the Inquisition to crush and stifle the Reformed Religion in its Rise and Birth and to prevent its Succeeding and Settlement in Spain Italy and many other Territories there is no Kingdom or State where it hath so far prevailed as to come to be universally received and legally established but it hath been through strange and wonderful Conflicts with the Rage and Malice of the Church of Rome The Persecutions which the Primitive Christians underwent by vertue of the Edicts of the Pagan Emperors were not more Sanguinary and Cruel than what through the Laws and Ordinances of Popish Princes have been inflicted upon those who have testified against the Heresies Superstitions and Idolatries and have withdrawn from the Communion of the Papal Church Nor were the Martyrs that suffered for the Testimony of Jesus against Heathenism either more numerous or worthier of esteem for Virtue Justice and Piety than they who have been slaughtered upon no other Pretence but for Endeavouring to restore the Christian Religion to the Simplicity and Purity of its Divine and first Institution and to recover it from the Corruptions wherewith it was become universally Tainted in Doctrine Worship and Discipline How have all the Nations in Europe been soak'd with the Blood of Saints through the Barbarous Rage of Popish Rulers whom the Roman Bishops and Clergy stirred up and instigated in order to support themselves in their secular Grandeur and in their Tyranny over the Consciences of Men and to keep the World in Slavery under Ignorance Errors Superstition and Idolatry which the reducing Christianity again to the Rule of the Gospel would have redeemed Mankind from and been an effectual Means to have Dissipated and Subverted They of the Roman Communion having strangely corrupted the Christian Religion in its Faith Worship and Discipline and having prodigiously altered it from what it was in the Doctrines and Institutions of our Saviour and his Apostles they found no otherway whereby to sustain their Errors and Corruptions and to preserve themselves in the Possession of that Empire which they had usurped over Conscience and in the Enjoyment of the Wealth and secular Greatness which by working upon the Ignorance Superstition Lusts and Prophaneness of People they had skrewed and wound themselves into but by adjudging all who durst detect or oppose them to Fire and Sword or to Miseries to which Death in its worst shape were preferrable Nor have they for the better obstructing the Growth and compassing the Extirpation of the Reformed Religion omitted either the Arts and Subtleties of Julian or the Fury and Violence of Galerius and Dioclesian Whosoever hath not observed the Craft and Rage that have been employed and exerted against Protestants for these 170 Years must have been very little Conversant in Histories and strangely overlook'd the Conduct of Affairs in the World and the Transactions in Churches and States during their own time And tho the Papists do not think it fit to put their Maxims for preserving the Catholick Religion and converting Hereticks in Execution at all times and in every place yet some of their Writers are so Ingenuous as to tell us the reason of it and that they do not forbear it upon Principles of Christianity or good Nature but upon Motives of Policy and Fear lest the cutting one of our Throats might endanger two of their own However they have been careful not to suffer a period of twenty Years to clapse since the beginning of the Reformation without affording us in some place or another renewed Evidences of Papal Charity and of the Roman Method of hindering the Growth of Heresie either by a Massacre War or Persecution begun and executed upon no other Account or Provocation but merely that of our Religion and because we cannot believe and practise in the Matters of God as they do And having obtained of late great Advantages for the pursuing their Malice against us more boldly and avowedly than at another Season and that not only through a strange Concurrence and Conjunction of Princes in the Papal Communion who are more intoxicated with their Superstitions and Idolatries or less wise merciful and humane than some of their Predecessors of that Fellowship were but through having obtained a Prince intirely devoted unto them and under the implicit guidance of their Priests to be advanced unto a Throne where such sometime used to sit as were the Terror of Rome the Safeguard of the Reformed Religion and the Sanctuary of oppressed Protestants they have thereupon both assumed a Courage of stirring up new and unpresidented Persecutions in divers places against the most useful best and loyallest of Subjects upon no other Charge or Allegation but for dissenting for the Tridentine Faith and denying Subjection to the Tripple Crown and are raised into a Confidence of wholly Extirpating Protestancy and of re-establishing the Papal Tyrannies and Superstition in the several Countries whence they had been expelled or stood so depressed and discountenanced as that the Votaries and Partizans of their Church had not the Sway and Domination Nor need we any other Conviction both of their Design and of their Confidence of Succeeding in it than what they have already done and continue to pursue in France Hungary and Piedmont where their prospering to such a degree in their Cruel and Barbarous Attempts not only gives them boldness of entertaining thoughts of taking the like Methods and Acting by the same Measures in all Places where they find Rulers at their beck and under their Influence but to unite and provoke all Popish Monarchs to enter into a holy War against Protestants every where that by Conquering and Subduing those States and Kingdoms where the Reformed Religion is received and established they may extirpate it out of the World under the Notion of the Northern Heresie If Principles of Humanity Maxims of Interest Rules of Policy Obligations of Gratitude Ties of Royal and Princely Faith or the repeated Promises Oaths Edicts and Declarations of Sovereigns could have been a Security to Protestants for the Profession of their Faith and Exercise of their Worship in the forementioned Territories and Dominions they had all that could be rationally desired for their Safety and Protection in the free and open Profession and Practice of their Religion whereas by a Violation of all that is Sacred among Men of a binding Virtue unto Princes except Chains and Fetters or that confer a Right Claim and Security unto Subjects the poor Protestants in those Places have been and still are Persecuted with a Rage and Barbarity which no Age can parallel and for which it is difficult to find words proper and severe enough whereby to stamp a Character of Infamy upon the treacherous cruel and savage Authors Promoters and Instruments of it Nor does it proceed from a Malignancy of Nature peculiar to the Emperor the French King and the Duke of Savoy above what
and Historical as may serve to place it in the brightest Light and fullest Evidence that a matter future and yet to come which is only the object of our prospect and dread and not of our feeling and experience is capable of It ought to be of weight upon the minds of all English Protestants that the King of Great Britain is not only an open and avow'd Papist but as most Apostates use to be a fiery Bigot in the Romish Religion and who as the Leige Letter from a Jesuit to a Brother of the Order tells us is resolved either to Convert England to Popery or to dye a Martyr Nor were the Jewish Zealots of whose rageful Transports Josephus gives us so ample an Account nor the Dervises among the Turks and Indians of whose mad Attempts so many Histories make mention more brutal in their Fanatical Heats than a Popish Bigot useth to be when favored with Advantages of exerting his Animosity against those who differ from him if he be not carefully watched against and restrained Beside the innumerable Instances of the Tragical Effects of Romish Bigottry that are to be met with in Books of all kinds we need go no farther for an Evidence of it than to consult the Life of Dominick the great Instigator and Promoter of the Massacre of the Waldenses and the Founder of that Order which hath the Management of the Bloody Inquisition together with the Life of Henry the Third of France who contrary to the Advice of Maximilian the Emperor and the repeated Intreaties of the wisest of his own Counsellors the Chancellor de l' Hospital and the President de Thou not only revived the War and Persecution against his Reformed Subjects after he had seen what Judgments the like Proceedings had derived upon his Predecessors and how prejudicial they had proved to the Strength Glory and Interest of his Crown and Kingdom but he entred into a League with those that fought to depress abdicate and depose him and became the Head of a Faction for the destroying that part of his Subjects upon whom alone he could rely for the defence of his Person and support of his Dignity Nor were the Furies of the Duke de Alva heretofore or the present Barbarities of Louis the Fourteenth so much the Effects of their haughty and furious Tempers as of their Bigottry in their inhuman and sanguinary Religion That the King of England is second to none in a blind and rageful Popish Zeal his Behaviour both while a Subject and since he arrived at the Crown doth not only place it beyond the limits of a bare Suspition but affords us such Evidences of it as that none in consistency with Principles of Wisdom and Discretion can either question or contradict it To what else can we ascribe it but to an excessive Bigottry That when the Frigot wherein he was Sailing to Scotland anno 1682. struck upon the Sands and was ready to sink he should prefer the Lives of one or two pitiful Priests to those of Men of the greatest Quality and receive those Mushroons into the Boat in which himself escaped while at the same time he refused to admit not only his own Brother-in-Law but divers Noblemen of the Supremest Rank and Character to the benefit of the same means of Deliverance and suffered them to perish though they had undertaken that Voyage out of pure respect to his Person and to put an Honor upon him at a Season when he wanted not Enemies Nor can it proceed from any thing but a violent and furious Bigottry that he should not only disoblige and disgust the two Universities of whose Zeal to his Service he hath receiv'd so many seasonable and effectual Testimonies but to the Violation both of the Laws of God and the Kingdom offer force to their Consciences as well as to their Rights and Franchises and all this in favor of Father Francis whom he would illegally thrust into a Fellowship in Cambridge and of Mr. Farmer whom he would arbitrarily obtrude into the Headship of a College in Oxford who as they are too despicable to be owned and stood for in Competition against two famous Universities whose greatest Crime hath been an Excess of Zeal for his Person and Interest when he was Duke of York and a measure of Loyalty and Obedience unto him since he came to the Crown beyond what either the Rules of Christianity or the Laws of the Kingdom exact from them so he hath ways enough of expressing Kindness and Bounty to those two little contemptible Creatures and that in Methods as beneficial to them as the Places into which he would thrust them can be supposed to amount unto and I am sure with less Scandal to himself and less Offence to all Protestants as well as without offering Injury to the Rights of the University or of compelling those learned grave and venerable Men to perjure themselves and act against their Duties and Consciences The late Proceedings towards Dr. Burnet are not only contrary to all the Measures of Justice Law and Honor but argue a strange and furious Bigottry in His Majesty for Popery there being nothing else into which a Man can resolve the whole Tenor of his present Actings against Him seeing setting aside the Doctor 's being a Protestant and a Minister of the Church of England and his having vindicated the Reformation in England from the Calumnies and Slanders wherewith it was aspersed by Sanders and others of the Roman Communion and the approving himself in some other Writings worthy of the Character of a Reformed Divine and of that esteem which the World entertains of him for Knowledge in History and all other parts of good Learning there hath nothing occurred in the whole Tenor and Trace of his Life but what instead of Rebuke and Censure hath merited Acknowledgments and the Retributions of Favor and Preferment from the Court. Whosoever considers his constant Preaching up Passive Obedience to such a Degree and Height as he hath done may very well be surprised at the whole Method of their present Actings towards him and at the same time that they find cause to justifie the Righteousness of God in making them the Instruments of his Persecution whom in so many ways he had sought to oblige they may justly conclude that none save a Bigotted Papist could be the Author of so insuitable as well as illegal and unrighteous Returns For as to all whereof he is accused in the Criminal Letters against him bearing date the 19th of April 1687. I my self am both able to assert his Innocence and dare assure the World that none of the Persons whom he is charged to have conspired with against the King would have been so far void of Discretion knowing his Principles as to have transacted with him in Matters of that kind but whether his Letters since that to the Earl of Middletoune with the Paper inclosed in one of them have administred any Legal Ground for their Second Citation
were prepared for in case it had succeeded and the foreign aid they had been solliciting and were promised and all for the extirpation of English Hereticks are things so modern and which we have had so many times related to us by our Fathers that it is enough barely to intimate them The Irish Massacre in which above 200000 were murder'd in cold blood and to which there was no provocation but that of hatred to our Religion and furious zeal to extirpate Hereticks ought at this time to be more particularly reflected upon as that which gives us a true scheme of the manner of the Church of Rome's converting Protestant Kingdoms and being the Copy they have a mind to write after and that in such Characters and lines of blood as may be sure to answer the Original At the season when they both entred upon and executed that hellish conjuration they were in a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the private exercise of their Religion yea had many publick meeting-places thro the means of the Queen and many great friends which they had at Court and were neither disturbed for not coming to Church nor suffered any severities upon the account of their Profession but that would not satisfie nor will any thing else unless they may be allowed to cut the throats or make bonefires of all that will not join with them in a blind obedience to the Sea of Rome and of worshipping S. Patrick The little harsh usages which the Papists at any time met with there or in England they derived them upon themselves by their Crimes against the State and for their Conspiracies against our Princes and their Protestant Subjects For till the Pope had taken upon him to depose Queen Elizabeth and absolve her Subjects from their Allegiance and till the Papists had so far approved that Act of his Holiness as to raise Rebellions at home and enter into treasonable confederacies abroad there were no Laws that could be stiled severe enacted in England against Papists and the making of them was the result of necessity in order to preserve our selves and not from an inclination to hurt any for matters of mere Religion Such hath always been the moderation of our Rulers and so powerful are the incitements to lenity which the generality of Protestants through the influence and impression of their Religion especially they of a more generous education have been under towards those of the Roman Communion that nothing but their unwearied restlesness to disturb the Government and destroy Protestants hath been the cause either of enacting those Laws against them that are stiled rigorous or of their having been at any time put into execution And notwithstanding that some such Laws were enacted as might appear to savour of severity yet could they have but submitted to have dwelt peaceably in the Land they would have found that their mere belief and the private practice of their Worship would not have much prejudiced or endangered them and that tho the Laws had been continued unrepealed yet it was only as a Hedge about us for our protection and as Bonds of obligation upon them to their good behaviour To which may be added that more Protestants have suffered in one year by the Laws made against Dissenters and to the utmost height of the penalties which the violation of them imported and that by the instigation of Papists and their influence over the late King and his present Majesty than there have Papists from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign to this very day tho there was a difference in the punishments they underwent However we may from their many and repeated attempts against us while we had Princes that both would and could chasten their insolencies and inflict upon them what the Law made them obnoxious unto for their outrages gather and conclude what we are now to expect upon their having obtained a King imbu'd with all the persecuting and bloody principles of Popery and perfectly baptised into all the Doctrines of the Councils of Lateran and Constance And it may strengthen our faith as well as increase our fear of what is purposed against and impends over us in that they cannot but think that the suffering our Religion to remain in a condition to be at any time hereafter the Religion of the State and of the universality of the People may not only prove a means of retrieving Protestancy in France and of assisting to revenge the barbarities perpetrated there upon a great and innocent people but may leave the Roman Catholicks in England exposed to the resentment of the Kingdom for what they have so foolishly and impudently acted both against our Civil Rights and Established Religion since James II. came to the Crown and may also upon the Government 's falling into good hands and Magistrates coming to understand their true Interest which is for an English Prince to make himself the Head of the Protestant cause and to espouse their quarrel in all places give such a Revolution in Europe as will not only check the present Career of Rome but cause them repent the methods in which they have been engaged These things we may be sure the Papists are aware of and that having proceeded so far they have nothing left for their security from punishments because of crimes committed but to put us out of all capacity of doing our selves Right and them Justice and he must be dull who does not know into what that must necessarily hurry them It being then as evident as a matter of this nature is capable of what we are to expect and dread from the King both as to our Religion and Laws we may do more than presume that the late Declaration for liberty of Conscience and the Proclamation for a Toleration are not intended and designed for the benefit and advantage of the Reformed Religion and that whatsoever motives have influenced to the granting and emitting of them they do not in the least flow or proceed from any kindness and good will to Protestant Dissenters And though many of those weak and easie People may flatter themselves with a belief of an interest in the Kings favour and suffer others to delude them into a persuasion of his bearing a gracious respect towards them yet it is certain that they are People in the world whom he most hates and who when things are ripe for it and that he hath abused their credulity into a serving his Ends as far as they can be prevailed upon and as long as the present Juggle can be of any advantage for promoting the Papal Cause will be sure not only to have an equal share in his displeasure with their Brethren of the Church of England but will be made to drink deepest in the cup of fury and wrath that is mingling and preparing for all Protestants No provocation from their present behaviour tho it is such as might warm a person of very cool temper much less offences of another complexion
emitted his Declaration for Liberty of Conscience there were Commissions of Reprisal prepared and ready to be granted to the English East-India Company against the Hollanders but which were suppressed upon the Court 's finding that they whom the suspending the Execution of so many Laws and the granting such Liberties Rights and Immunities to the Papists had disgusted and provoked were far more numerous and their resentments more to be apprehended than they were whose murmurings and discontents they had silenced and allay'd by the liberty that was granted Now as it will be at this juncture when the Protestant Interest is so low in the World and the Reformed Religion in so great danger of being Destroyed a most wicked as well as an imprudent Act to contribute help and aid to the Subjugating a People that are the chief Protectors of the Protestant Religion that are left and almost the only Asserters of the Rights and Liberties of Mankind so it may fill the Addressers with confusion and shame that they should have not only justified an Act of His Majesty's that is plainly designed to such a mischievous End but that they should by the Promises and Vows that they have made Him have emboldned His Majesty to continue his purposes and resolutions of a War against the Dutch Which as it must be funestous and fatal to the Protestant Cause in case he should prosper and succeed so howsoever it should issue yet the Addressers who have done what in them lyes to give encouragement unto it will be held betrayers of the Protestant Religion both abroad and at home and judged guilty of all the Blood of those of the same Faith with them that shall be shed in this Quarrel That Liberty ought to be allowed to men in matters of Religion is no Plea whereby the King 's giving it in an illegal and Arbitrary manner can be maintained and justified Since ever I was capable of exercising any distinct and coherent acts of Reason I have been always of that mind that none ought to be persecuted for their Consciences towards God in matters of Faith and Worship Nor is it one of those things that lye under the power of the Sovereign and Legislative Authority to grant or not to grant but it is a Right setled upon Mankind antecedent to all Civil Constitutions and Humane Laws having its foundation in the Law of Nature which no Prince or State can legitimately violate and Infringe The Magistrate as a Civil Officer can pretend or claim no Power over a People but what he either derives from the Divine Charter wherein God the Supreme Institutor of Magistracy has chalk'd out the Duty of Rulers in general or what the People upon the first and original Stipulation are supposed to have given him in order to the Protection Peace and Prosperity of the Society But as it does no where appear that God hath given any such Power to Governors seeing all the Revelations in the Scripture as well as all the Dictates of Nature speak a contrary Language so neither can the People upon their chusing such a one to be their Ruler be imagined to transfer and vest such a Power in him forasmuch as they cannot divest themselves of a Power no more than of a Right of believing things as they arrive with a Credibility to their several and respective Understandings As it is in no Man's Power to believe as he will but only as he sees cause so it is the most irrational Imagination in the World to think they should transfer a Right to him whom they have chosen to govern them of punishing them for what it is not in their power to help Nor can any thing be plainer than that God has reserved the Empire over Conscience to himself and that he hath circumscribed the Power of all Humane Governors to things of a civil and inferior Nature And had God convey'd a Right unto Magistrates of commanding Men to be of this or that Religion and that because they are so and will have others to be of their mind it would follow that the People may conform to whatsoever they require tho by all the Lights of Sense Reason and Revelation they are convinced of the Falshood of it Seeing whatsoever the Sovereign rightfully Commands the Subjects may lawfully obey But tho the persecuting People for Matters of mere Religion be repugnant to the Light of Nature inconsistent with the Fundamental Maxims of Reason directly contrary to the Temper and Genious as well as to the Rules of the Gospel and not only against the Safety and Interest of Civil Societies but of a Tendency to fill them with Confusion and to arm Subjects to the cutting of one anothers Throats yet Governors may both deny Liberty to those whose Principles oblige them to destroy those that are not of their mind and may in some measure Regulate the Liberty which they vouchsafe to others whose Opinions tho they do not think dangerous to the Peace of the Community yet through judging them Erroneous and False they conceive them dangerous to the Souls of Men. As there is a vast difference betwixt Tolerating a Religion and approving the Religion that is Tolerated so what a Government doth not approve but barely permits and suffers may be brought under Restrictions as to time place and number of those professing it that shall assemble in one Meeting which it were an Undecency to extend to those of the justified and established way Now whatsoever Restrictions or Regulations are enacted and ordained by the Legislative Authority in reference to Religions or Religious Assemblies they are not to be stop'd disabled or suspended but by the same Authority that enacted and ordained them The King says very truly That Conscience ought not to be constrained nor People forced in matters of mere Religion But it does not from thence follow unless by the Logick of Whitehall that without the concurrence of a Parliament he should suspend and dispense with the Laws and by a pretended Prerogative relieve any from what they are Obnoxious unto by the Statutes of the Realm His saying that the forcing People in matters of Religion spoils Trade depopulates Countries discourageth Strangers and answers not the End of bringing all to an Uniformity for which it is employ'd would do well in a Speech to the Houses of Parliament to perswade them to Repeal some certain Laws or might do well to determine his Majesty to assent to such Bills as a Parliament may prepare and offer for relieving Persons in matters of Conscience but does not serve for what it is alledged nor can it warrant his suspending the Laws by his single Authority And by the way I know when these very Arguments were not only despised by his Majesty and rediculed by those who took their Cue from Court and had Wit to do it as by the present Bishop of Oxford in a very ill-natur'd Book called Ecclesiastical Polity but when the daring to have mentioned them would
Honor and Happiness of those Nations may be established upon Lasting Foundations Given under our Hand and Seal at our Court at the Hague the Tenth day of October in the Year 1688. William Henry Prince of Orange By His Highness's Special Command C. HUYGENS. His Highness's Additional Declaration AFter we had prepared and printed this our Declaration we have understood that the Subverters of the Religion and Laws of those Kingdoms hearing of our Preparations to assist the People against them have begun to retract some of the Arbitrary and Despotick Powers that they had assumed and to vacate some of their Injust Judgments and Decrees The Sense of their Guilt and the distrust of their Force have induced them to offer to the City of London some seeming Relief from their Great Oppressions hoping thereby to quiet the People and to divert them from demanding a Secure Re-establishment of their Religion and Laws under the shelter of our Arms. They do also give out that we intend to Conquer and Enslave the Nation And therefore it is that we have thought fit to add a few words to our Declaration We are Confident that no Persons can have such hard thought of us as to imagine that we have any other Design in this Undertaking than to procure a Settlement of the Religion and of the Liberties and Properties of the Subjects upon so sure a Foundation that there may be no danger of the Nations relapsing into the like Miseries at any time hereafter And as the Forces that we have brought along with us are utterly disproportioned to that wicked Design of Conquering the Nation if we were capable of intending it so the Great Numbers of the Principal Nobility and Gentry that are Men of Eminent Quality and Estates and Persons of known Integrity and Zeal both for the Religion and Government of England many of them being also distinguished by their constant Fidelity to the Crown who do both accompany us in this Expedition and have earnestly solicited us to it will cover us from all such Malicious Insinuations For it is not to be imagined that either those who have invited us or those that are already come to assist us can joyn in a wicked Attempt of Conquest to make void their own lawful Titles to their Honors Estates and Interests We are also confident that all Men see how little weight there is to be laid on all Promises and Engagements that can be now made since there has been so little regard had in time past to the most solemn Promises And as that imperfect Redress that is now offered is a plain Confession of those Violations of the Government that we have set forth so the Defectiveness of it is no less Apparent for they lay down nothing which they may not take up at Pleasure and they reserve entire and not so much as mentioned their Claims and Pretences to an Arbitrary and Despotick Power which has been the Root of all their Oppression and of the total Subversion of the Government And it is plain that there can be no Redress nor Remedy offered but in Parliament by a Declaration of the Rights of the Subjects that have been invaded and not by any Pretended Acts of Grace to which the Extremity of their Affairs has driven them Therefore it is that we have thought fit to declare That we will refer all to a Free Assembly of the Nation in a Lawful Parliament Given under our Hand and Seal at our Court in the Hague the 24th day of October in the Year of our Lord 1688. William Henry Prince of Orange By His Highness's Special Command G. HUYGENS. By his Highness William Henry Prince of Orange A Declaration Printed in the Year 1688. WE have in the course of our whole Life and more particularly by the apparent Hazards both by Sea and Land to which we have so lately exposed our Person given to the whole World so high and undoubted Proofs of our fervent Zeal for the Protestant Religion that we are fully confident no true English-man and good Protestant can entertain the least Suspicion of our firm Resolution rather to spend our dearest Blood and perish in the Attempt than not carry on the Blessed and Glorious Design which by the Favour of Heaven we have so successfully begun to Rescue England Scotland and Ireland from Slavery and Popery and in a Free Parliament to Establish the Religion the Laws and the Liberties of those Kingdoms upon such a sure and lasting Foundation that it shall not be in the Power of any Prince for the future to introduce Popery and Tyranny Towards the more easy Compassing this great Design we have not been hitherto deceived in the just Expectation we had of the Concurrence of the Nobility Gentry and People of England with Us for the Security of their Religion the Restitution of the Laws and the Re-establishment of their Liberties and Properties Great Numbers of all Ranks and Qualities having joyned themselves to us and others at great Distances from Us have taken up Arms and Declared for Us. And which we cannot but particularly mention in that Army which was Raised to be the Instrument of Slavery and Popery may by the special Providence of God both Officers and common Souldiers have been touched with such a feeling sense of Religion and Honour and of true Affection for their Native Country that they have already deserted the Illegal Service they were ingaged in and have come over to Us and have given us full Assurance from the rest of the Army That they will certainly follow this Example as soon as with our Army we shall approach near enough to receive them without the Hazard of being prevented and betray'd To which end and that we may the sooner execute this just and necessary Design we are ingaged in for the publick Safety and Deliverance of these Nations We are resolved with all possible Diligence to advance forward that a Free Parliament may be forthwith called and such Preliminaries adjusted with the King and all things first settled upon such a foot according to Law as may give Us and the whole Nation just Reason to believe the King is disposed to make such necessary Condescensions on his part as will give intire Satisfaction and Security to all and make both King and People once more happy And that we may effect all this in the way most agreeable to our Desires if it be possible without the Effusion of any Blood except of those execrable Criminals who have justly forfeited their Lives for betraying the Religion and Subverting the Laws of their Native Country We do think fit to declare That as we will offer no Violence to any but in our own necessary Defence so we will not suffer any Injury to be done to the Person even of a Papist provided he be found in such Place and in such Condition and Circumstances as the Laws require So we are resolved and do declare that all Papists who shall be found
humbly Pray That His Majesty would Consent to this Expedient in order to a future Settlement And hope that such a Temperament may be thought of as that the Army now on Foot may not give any Interruption to the proceeding of a Parliament But if to the great Misfortune and Ruin of these Kingdoms it should prove otherwise we further declare That we will to our utmost defend the Protestant Religion the Laws of the Kingdom and the Rights and Liberties of the Subject A Letter from a Gentleman at King's-Lynn December 7. 1688. To his Friend in London Sir THE Duke of Norfolk came to Town on Wednesday Night with many of the chiefest of the County and yesterday in the Market-place received the Address following which was presented by the Mayor attended by the Body and many hundreds of the Inhabitants To his Grace the most Noble Henry Duke of Norfolk Lord Marshal of England My Lord THE daily Allarms we receive as well from Foreign as Domestick Enemies give us just Apprehensions of the approaching Danger which we conceive we are in and to apply with all earnestness to your Grace as your great Patron in all humble Confidence to succeed in our Expectations That we may be put into such a posture by your Grace's Directions and Conduct as may make us appear as zealous as any in the Defence of the Protestant Religion the Laws and Ancient Government of this Kingdom Being the desire of many hundreds who must humbly callenge a Right of your Grace's Protection His Grace's Answer Mr. Mayor I Am very much obliged to you and the rest of your Body and those here present for your good Opinion of me and the Confidence you have that I will do what in me lies to support and defend the Laws Liberties and Protestant Religion in which I will never deceive you And since the coming of the Prince of Orange hath given us an opportunity to declare for the defence of them I can only assure you that no Man will venture his Life and Fortune more freely for the Defence of the Laws Liberties and Protestant Religion than I will do and with all these Gentlemen here present and many more will unanimously concur therein and you shall see that all possible Care shall be taken that such a Defence shall be made as you require AFter which the Duke was with his Retinue received at the Mayor's House at Dinner with great Acclamations and his Proceedings therein have put our County into a Condition of Defence of which you shall hear further in a little time our Militia being ordered to be raised throughout the County Our Tradesmen Seamen and Mobile have this morning generally put Orange Ribbon on their Hats Ecchoing Huzza's to the Prince of Orange and Duke of Norfolk All are in a hot Ferment God send us a good Issue of it Lynn-Regis Decemb. 10. 1688. Sir BY mine of the 7th Instant I gave you an Account of the Address of this Corporation to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk and of his Grace's Answer thereto Since which his Grace has sent for the Militia Troops and put them in a posture of Defence as appears by the ensuing Speech The Duke of Norfolk's second Speech at Lynn I Hope you see I have endeavoured to put you in the posture you desired by sending both for Horse and Foot of the Militia and am very glad to see such an Appearance of this Town in so good a Condition And I do again renew my former Assurances to you that I will ever stand by you to Defend the Laws Liberties and the Protestant Religion and to procure a Settlement in Church and State in concurrence with the Lords and Gentlemen in the North and pursuant to the Declaration of the Prince of Orange And so God save the King The Declaration of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in and about the Cities of London and Westminster Assembled at Guild-hall Dec. 1688. WE doubt not but the World believes that in this great and dangerous Conjuncture we are heartily and zealously concerned for the Protestant Religion the Laws of the Land and the Liberties and Properties of the Subject And we did reasonably Hope that the King having Issued His Proclamation and Writs for a Free Parliament we might have rested Secure under the Expectation of that Meeting But His Majesty having withdrawn Himself and as we apprehend in order to His Departure out of this Kingdom by the pernicious Counsels of Persons ill-affected to our Nation and Religion we cannot without being wanting to our Duty be silent under those Calamities wherein the Popish Counsels which so long prevailed have miserably Involved these Realms We do therefore Unanimously resolve to apply our Selves to His Highness the Prince of Orange who with so great Kindness to these Kingdoms so vast Expence and so much Hazard to his own Person hath Undertaken by endeavouring to procure a Free Parliament to rescue Us with as little Effusion as possible of Christian Blood from the Imminent Dangers of Popery and Slavery And we do hereby Declare That we will with our utmost Endeavours assist his Highness in the obtaining such a Parliament with all speed wherein our Laws our Liberties and Properties may be Secured the Church of England in particular with a due Liberty to Protestant Dissenters and in general the Protestant Religion and Interest over the whole World may be Supported and Encouraged to the glory of God the Happiness of the Established Government in these Kingdoms and the Advantage of all Princes and States in Christendom that may be herein concerned In the mean time we will endeavour to preserve as much as in us lies the Peace and Security of these great and populous Cities of London and Westminster and the Parts adjacent by taking care to Disarm all Papists and secure all Jesuits and Romish Priests who are in our about the same And if there be any thing more to be performed by us for promoting his Highness's generous Intentions for the Publick good we shall be ready to do it as occasion shall require W. Cant. Tho. Ebor. Pembroke Dorset Mulgrave Thanet Carlisle Craven Ailesbury Burlington Sussex Barkelay Rochester Newport Waymouth P. Winchester W. Asaph Fran. Ely Tho. Roffen Tho. Petriberg P. Wharton North and Grey Chandos Montague T. Jermyn Vaughan Carbery Culpeper Crewe Osulston WHereas His Majesty hath privately this Morning withdrawn Himself we the Lords Spiritual and Temporal whose Names are subscribed being assembled at Guild-hall in London having Agreed upon and Signed a Declaration Entituled The Declaration of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in and about the Cities of London and Westminster Assembled at Guild-hall 11. Decemb. 1688. Do desire the Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Weymouth the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord Bishop of Ely and the Right Honourable the Lord Culpeper forthwith to attend his Highness the Prince of Orange with the said Declaration and at the same