Murmurs their Petitions Protestings and Association-Votes will be remember'd to the purpose He that has gone a long and tiresome Journey through Brakes and Briars to a splendid Palace when once in possession will send out to Root up all those Thorns and Weed those Thistles that gor'd him in the way Alas too sure he 'll make good that old Promise of God to the Seed of the Woman He 'll crush their Heads that bruised his Heels And would it not be hard that the Folly and Fall of one Man should renew our old Adam's Misfortune and entail a Curse on our whole English Generation If the policy of Rome like the old Serpents subtilty has puft him up into an ambition and lust of being equal to Gods may he have Adam's success too whilst the Protestant hearts and hands of England stand like the Angels Flaming Sword to expel him from that once Hereditary Paradise which now his Apostacy has justly forfeited and lost Besides that the Disinheriting of an Heir to the Crown of England may not appear a thing so illegal or indeed so monstrous as some people would make it I would only refer those vehement assertors of the inviolable right of Succession to our own Chronicles for their confutation For they 'll find not only the Succession was scarce ever kept for Three Kings Reigns together in a direct line of descent since the Conquest but that the Crown and Succession were frequently disposed and settled by Acts of Parliament I shall need instance but in some few particulars In the 25. of Henry the 8 th we find the Parliament ordering the Succession and enacting That the Imperial Crown of this Realm shall be to King Henry the 8th and to the Heirs of his body lawfully begotten on Queen Anne and the heirs of the bodies of such several sons respectively according to the course of inheritance and for default of such Issue then to the sons of his body in like manner and upon failure of such issue then to the Lady Elizabeth c. By the same Statute is every subject at full age obliged by an Oath to defend the contents of this and the refusal made misprision of Treason In the 28 th year of his Reign was that Act repealed and the Parliament entailed the Crown on the Heirs of his Body by Queen Jane the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth being both declared illegitimate the first as the Daughter of Katharine formerly his Brothers Wife and divorced and the last as the Daughter of Anne Boleign atainted of High Treason And in case he died without issue then the Parliament empower'd him by the same Act to dispose of the Succession by his own Letters patents or his last Will. In the 35th year of his Reign the Parliament granted the Succession to Edward and for want of Heirs of his Body to the Lady Mary and the Heirs of her Body and for want of such Heirs to the Lady Elizabeth but both subject to such conditions as the King should limit by his Letters patents or by his last Will signed by his Hand and if the King left no such Conditions by his Will or under his Letters Patents then either of them should enjoy the Imperial Crown with the limitations only made in that Act. By these Acts we may plainly see that the Succession of the English Crown was wholly subjected to the disposal determinations and limitations of Parliament And that we may be well assured that that right lay in them Henry the 8th was a Prince of that Wisdom and Prudence and so far from submitting to Parliaments that we may be very well assur'd that he would never have complimented them with a power that was not their due If he had thought in the least that he could have disposed of the Succession himself no doubt but he would have challenged the Prerogative had he had it to challenge And as in every one of these three Acts they declared that their zeal for setling the Succession was for prevention of those mischiefs and that bloodshed that might possibly be occasioned by future disputes Here 't is observed that whilst they thus bandied the Succession so many various ways by three several Acts in one Kings Reign they did not so much respect the preservation of the Right Heir as the Kingdoms safety For had they been so passionately tender for the next of blood in that Age as some would have us be in this they would never have excluded the Lady Mary and Elizabeth from the Crown in one Act or never have re-admitted them again in another Besides one thing is remaâ—kable in these Acts of Parliament viz. The last Act of Parliament gives the Succession to those very Ladies whom the King and Parliament had before declared and recorded Illegitimate Nay they had proceeded so far as to make it Treason for any man by Writing or Printing to say or declare that either the Lady Mary or the Lady Elizabeth were legitimate and yet afterwards these were no impediments to debar them from a Throne And England was never more blest than under the long and glorious Reign of that excellent Princess Elizabeth how Illegitimate soever she had been rendered I shall onely cite one Act more and that is the 13 of Elizabeth where 't is made Treason to affirm the Right of Succession of the Crown to be in any other than the Queen or to affirm that the Laws and Statutes made in Parliament do not bind the Right of the Crown and the descent limitation inheritance and governance thereof If after so plain and evident proofs of the undeniable power of Parliaments we meet so many snarlers against the proceedings of the last I know no excuse they can make for themselves but by owning their Ignorance to be as great as their Impudence If then which no man in his right wits can deny our Religion Lives and Liberties are only held by a Protestant Tenure and the Majesty of England not only by the force of his Coronation-Oath but by all the tyes whatever ought to be the pillar and bulwark of the Protestant Faith and at the same time granting that we have a Popish Prince to inherit the Imperial Crown of England he ought certainly in all Justice as little to ascend this Throne as Nebuchadnezzar ought to have kept his when the immediate blast of Heaven had made him so uncapable of ruling as a King that he was only a companion fit for brutes and savages And if he had no injustice done him when he was thrust out into his proper Element to feed and herd with the Beasts of the field a Papist Heir of England with that perswasion and principles so destructive to the British State has as little wrong done him in being debar'd from the Succession as a fitter Guest for a Cloyster than a Throne I remember Story tells us That the Mother of Paris the Son of King Priam dreaming before his birth she had brought forth a
Flanders of late years has not liv'd so merrily nor so peaceably as so Royal a Voucher one would have thought might have assured them they should And now let us a little balance the difference between the Breach of his Oath and that of a Popish Princes in England All the Motives that could provoke him to the breach of his Oath was only his Ambition a Lust of being Great And at the same time that he is an Invader of his Neighbouring Princes his Conscience must tell him his Conquests are at best but so many glorious Robberies and all his Trophies but shining Rapines Was it not the sense of this that made Charles the Fifth who may be also called Great after all his Victories retire from a Throne into a Cloyster out of meer remorse for all the Streams of Blood he had shed to make the last part of his Life an Attonement for the Faults of the first And then if a Roman Catholick can break an Oath only for the pleasure of Conquering which he knows is doing ill shall not a Popish Prince in England have ten times more inclination to break an Oath for the propagation of his own Faith which his Conscience tells him is Meritorious For besides the specious flattery That Kings can do no ill and That all Crimes are cancelled in a Crown he has Religion to drive the Royal Jehu on Religion that from the beginning of the World thro' all Ages has set all Nations in a Flame yet never confesses it self in the wrong Besides how can a Popish Prince in attempting to establish his own Religion believe he does his Subjects an Injustice in that very thing in which he does God Justice or think he injures â—hem when he does their Souls right Alas no When Rome by her insinuating Witchcrafts has lifted the full Bowl of her Inchantments to his Lips what will his holy enthusiastick Rage do less than the hot-brain'd drunken Alexander All his best Friends and every honest Clytus that dares but thwart his Frenzy is presently his Frenzies Sacrifice only with this difference the frantick Alexander after his drunken Fit was over in his milder and more sensible Intervals with all the compunctions of penitence could mourn and groan for what his blinder Rage had murder'd But Religious Frenzy leaves that eternal Intoxication behind it that where it commits all the Cruelties in the World 't is never sober after to be sorry for 't Thus whilst a Popish King sets his whole Kingdom in a combustion how little does he think he plays a second Nero Good consciencious Man not he Alas he does not tune his Joys to the Tyrannick Nero's Harp but to David's milder and more sacred Lyre whilst in the height of his pious Ecstasie he sings Te Deum at the Conflagration Thus with an Arbitrary unbounded Power what does his licencious holy thirst of Blood do less than make his Kingdom a larger Slaughter-house and his Smithfield an Original Shambles Thus the old Moloch once again revives to feast and riot on his dear Humane Sacrifice And whilst his fiery Iron Hands crush the poor burning Victime dead the propagation of Religion and the Glory of God as he calls it are the very Trumpets that deafen all the feeble Cries of Blood and drown the dying Groans of what he murders Thus whilst the Bonds of Faith Vows Oaths and Sacraments can't hold a Popish Successour what is that in an Imperial Head but what in a private Man we punish with a Gaol and Pillory whilst the perjur'd Wretch stands the universal Mark of Infamy and then is driven from all Conversation and like a Monster hooted from Light and Day But the Pope and a Royal Hand may do any thing there 's a Crown in the case to gild the Deeds his Royal Engins act Et quod Turpe est Cerdoni Volesos Brutosque decebit They are still that adorable Sovereign Greatness we must kneel to and obey What if a little perjur'd Villain has sworn a poor Neighbour out of a Cow or a Cottage hang him inconsiderable Rogue his Ears deserve a Pillory But to Vow and Covenant and forswear three Kingdoms out of their Liberties and Lives that 's Illustrious and Heroick There 's Glory in great Atchievements and Vertue into Success Alas a vast Imperial Nimrod hunts for Nobler Spoils flies at a whole Nations Property and Inheritance A Game worthy a Son of Rome and Heir of Paradise And to lay the mighty Scene of Ruine secure he makes his Coronation Oath and all his Royal Protestations those splendid Baits of premeditated Perjury the Cover and Skreen to the hidden fatal Toil laid to insnare a Nation But now to their main Objection Some People will tell us That 't is wholly impossible for any Popish Successour by all his Arts or Endeavours whatever to introduce Popery into England To this I answer If he 's a Papist that says so he knows he belies his Conscience for our late Hellish Plot is a plain Demonstration that their whole Party believed it possible For did not the late Secretary St. Coleman's Records tell us That the pestilent Northern Heresie was to be rooted out and that now they had as much hopes of accomplishing that Sacred Work of Rome as they had in Queen Marys days Could any thing be plainer than that the subtle Jesuits had formed a Design to effect it For it is contrary to Reason and even Nature it self as bloody as their Principles are to think they aim'd at the Life of their King and would play the Regicides only to commit the blackest of Murders for meerly Murders sake No They had the assurance under a presumptive Popish Heir of making a National Conversion and how little privy soever he might possibly be to their principal and hellish Blow yet they had that perfect in-sight into the very Soul of a Papist that they were satisfied that under that Notion it was impossible for him to be otherwise than a Man of Romes right stamp and their Hearts own liking And if under such a Successour their hopes of a Nations Conversion were equal to those in Queen Marys time no doubt the converting Means must have been as Bloody or Bloodier than hers For if after the short Infancy of seven years Reformation under the Protestant Edward the Sixth's Reign there wanted Fire and Faggot to restore the Pope how much more will he want them for his Restoration after an Exclusion of almost Seven-score years together with all the necessary Difficulties of regaining his Empire where his Throne has been so long demolish'd Nay in Edward's Days the only detestation of the Fopperies Idolatries and Superstitions of Rome was all that went to make a Protestant Reformation Alas the Beast was then but young But his Horns are since grown stronger and his Teeth and Tallons sharper For since that we have had the notorious Paris and Irish Massacres when at one riotous Festival above 100000 bleeding Protestant Hearts were all gorged by
Firebrand that should one day set their Troy in flames immediately upon this the afflicted King as a true Father of his Country notwithstanding all the compunctions of Nature and tyes of Blood was so far from cherishing even his own Race and a Branch of himself that he ordered the Infant to be brought up amongst Swains as the Son of a Shepherd where divested of all his Princely Fortunes and ignorant of his own high Blood he should end his days in ignoble obscurity And all this out of the prophetick horror but of a dream that seemed to threaten the peace and safety of his Kingdom And how much more reason has the present power of England for effectually opposing Popery by disinheriting a Popish Successor when under a Popish Monarch our Troynovant has the undeniable assurance of being put into a flame when Priams fear was but a Dream How fabulous soever this Story may appear yet I am certain we have too much reason to esteem the Moral of it Oraculous And surely our present greatest Sticklers for an unbroken Succession of the Crown must of all Mankind set but a very little price upon their Countrey and conclude our England the most inconsiderable part of Christendom when the interest of one man shall outweigh that of Three Kingdoms with the whole safety of Religion itself and the Glory of God to fill up the Ballance But indeed they are resolved to be positive and be the next of Blood a Papist or a Mahumetan yet if he be born to it let him Govern us And truely I cannot forbear to repeat one of their commonest Arguments and as they think strongest which is If the Son of a private Gentleman though a Papist shall inherit and quietly possess his hereditary Estate is it not hard nay barbarous Injustice That the Son of a King and the Heir of a Crown should lose his Patrimony of Three Kingdoms for being a Papist Though this Argument as Argumentum à Fortiori has mighty sound in 't yet how feeble will it appear when the Analogy shall be examin'd The Papist Gentleman that 's born to an Estate may peaceably inherit it yes and with some reason for it For he 's a Subject of a Protestant Kingdom and as such has Protestant Laws to rule him He can neither force his Neighbour or his Tenant to Mass or imprison or burn 'em for Hereticks nor seize their Estates as forfeited to Rome whilst he is a Papist His Religion is only to himself and if he takes any violent or unlawful course to propagate his own Perswasion he 's not so big but he may be brought into Westminster-hall to answer for it Nay possibly the Papist Subject under a Protestant Government may sometimes behave himself as a more harmless and quiet Common-wealths-man than a Protestant himself if for no other than his own preservation as not daring to awaken that Justice that may inflict the penal Statutes against him for his Recusancy But how directly contrary to all this is the influence of a Romish Heir when there is not one of all these destructive qualities of which a private man can ne're be guilty that he on the other side shall not vigorously and undoubtedly put in execution when once the acquisition of a Crown has Enabled him for it as we have at large discoursed before And if the Princely Popish Heir be disinherited when a private Gentleman escapes 't is not for his Religion for that may be alike in both but for his uncontrolable power of establishing that Religion which a Royal station will inevitably give him Alas the Protestant strength is above the fear of any little Popish Beasts of prey It only behoves their safety to hunt the Imperial Lyon down If then the English Blood boils so high and the access of a Papist to a Throne must necessarily meet a passage so difficult with all these solid Bars between if his Religion were as Honourable as 't is invincible what deathless Fame and what eternal Trophies might a Popish Heir atchieve if the welfare of a King and Kingdoms could so far influence him as freely of himself to make the union of King and people a work of his own creation by slacking the fatal strength of a too generous Brothers over-violent Friendship and so rendring our universal peace his inclination and not necessity I remember in the old Roman History when a long Plague had reigned in Rome and an Earthquake had opened a prodigious Gulph in the middle of the Forum their Consulteo Oracle told 'em that neither the Plague should be stopt nor the breach closed till the most noble Victim in Rome had appeased their angry Deity When Curtius a Noble Youth of Rome of the best and highest Roman quality most princely adorn'd and most gallantly mounted on Horseback with a look so gay and so cheerful more like that of a Bridegroom than a Sacrifice amidst a thousand wondering tender eyes around him rode headlong into the yawning pit Thus falling unterrified at so dreadful a precipice for his Countries deliverance he extorted the promise of the Oracle for the Pestilence ceased and the closing Earth sealed up his Grave The voluntary resignation of a Popish Heir would be no less a signal National service in the present exigence of England than that of Curtius in Rome only 't is attended with milder circumstances Our State as dangerous as it is does not require any Sanguinary Sacrifice The Cure he might make to all our plagues would be only the easier oblation of quitting the doubtful prospect of a remote and Craggy Throne and that too to refix a shaking Crown to regain the hearts of a whole Nation and build himself that Pyramid of Honour which would outshine the wearing a Diadem Besides let Plotting but once end and the Pendant Sword which like that of Damocles hangs but by a Hair o're our Soveraigns Head be safely sheath'd and give Nature fair play the little disparity of their years considered the resigning of a Crown in all humane probability would not appear at so much distance and such uncertainty altogether so extravagant an offering especially when 't is made for a King and Brothers safety and glory a Kingdoms peace and prosperity nay indeed the whole repose of Christendom when the concordance of the King and Parliament is the greatest means for strengthening those Forreign Alliances that may give check to the fatal growth of France Nay above all this what Immortal Glory would it bring even to the Romish Religion it self when a Prince so immediately Allied to a Crown shall voluntary lay aside the hopes and pretensions to a Temporal Diadem for an Immortal one And how many more at least more Hearty Converts would so transcendent an example of piety make beyond the utmost severer influence of a Throne Nay I may even without flattery say the deed would make him so adorable that for losing a Crown he would almost raise himself an Altar But Rome