by his dying breath to make it evaporate for ever There was no guile found in his mouth and his followers were only then wise as Serpents while they were innocent as Doves and the first Crying in the Cradle of the Puer Hebraeus of the holy child Iesus was as Thunder to strike the old Equivocating Oracles Dumb that had so long cheated the credulous World. When he branded the Scribes and Pharisees with sharper language he calls them Hypocrites He alarms us of false Prophets coming in the Masquerade of Sheeps clothing tells us That he who calls his Brother fool shall be in danger of hell fire and therefore he may much more fear that danger who makes a Fool of him and plays the Knave with him he Commands us not to Calumniate or kill but to bless those that curse us which is more than to praise them as I said before of blessing being the tribute due to Men heroically Virtuous To shew that he intended nothing of Artifice in the Propagation of his Doctrine a hated Publican and a few poor Fishermen and a Tent-maker are used in his Embassy to the World men not likely to be able Mentiri pro patriâ coelesti if such a Commission as Go Cheat all Nations had been given them And lest it might be thought that with Oratorical Harangues that he or they led Men by the Ears as an implicit faith is said to lead them by the Nose he us'd no hony of Phrase or sting of Epigram no Politic Remarks nor scarce more lenocinium of words than is in He that hath an ear to hear let him hear He tells us That for every Idle word we must give an account and therefore certainly abhorr'd Equivocation which makes all words and speech Idle and of no effect and since as I think 't was truly said Eloquentia non nisi stultos Movet Eloquence moves none but Fopps he did as I may say put that generous Complement on mens understandings not to Commission his Ministers to try to sooth men out of one belief into another by bribing their imaginations with the excellency of speech or the inticing words of man's Wisdom but the contrary He thought it worthy of God to be worship'd by the world in Spirit and in Truth and not to encrease the number of his Homagers by Lies Legends and Impostures It was for the honour of the Christian Religion that the Son of God chose to take flesh in the time when Augustus Reign'd when the Roman World being freed from a long Civil War had leisure to â—â—ltivate the Arts of Wit and Reason and had brought them to their highest Perfection and took not the advantage of a dark and barbarous Age to surprize the World in as afterward both Papism and Mahumetanism did and 't is therefore no Marvel if either of those two Hypotheses of Religion did in one Point so much resemble the Christian Religion in so soon with its ferment levening so Great a lump of the World. But the Christian Religion came not into the World like a Fireship with prepar'd smoke to blind mens eyes as it was assailing them No for to the end that the Christian reveal'd Doctrine might like a great Pyramid be conspicuous to the whole world and last together with it and reach from Earth to Heaven the Divine Providence was long laying its Foundation very deep in Nature and very wide in the world I mean Iustice and Reason so agreeably to Humane Nature then at their height appearing in the Laws of the Roman Empire and its subjugating the World and its reducing Mankind to the Law of Nature first imprinted on Man's heart were by the Care of Heaven used as previous in qualifying the World to receive the Glorious Superstructure of the Christian Religion the which would certainly not have been so much as res unius aetatis if at that time when the Roman Laws inculcating the Natural Cognation between all Mankind and placing Actions that wound Piety or Reputation or good Manners in the Number of things Impossible and intimating their abhorrence of Collusion Combining Circumvention and Disanulling things done thereby and branding of those acts that do fraudem facere legi and rendring that to be but a pittiful innocence that is but as good as the Law requires and making him in the eyes of the Law to be still in Possession of any thing who is actually trickt out of it quia pro possessione dolus est providing against Calumny by an Oath in all litigations and when a person is render'd to do a thing infamously expressing it by dolo facit having the regard of Pudor verecundia Humanitatis ac Religionis ratio and other such words of the like charming signification which were like Trees in the Body of the Roman Laws planted as thick by one another as they could well stand the Christian Religion had in the Congruity of its Precepts to Humane Nature come short of those of the Romans who as Cicero says did not Calliditate ac Robore sed Pietate ac Religione omnes gentes nationesque superare and especially if in those against Calumny Fraud and Circumvention the Christian Faith had not reach'd as high as the bona fides of the Heathens and much more if the Model of Christian Morality had been in that Knowing Age like that of the Jesuits in this But certainly since it hath often proved fatal to the Ministers of Kings to be or seem wiser than their Masters the Iesuits by affecting in their Platforms of Morality to be wiser than him who in the style of the Scripture of God is made to us Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification and Redemption may easily take a prospect of their ruine and as the Serpents trying to out-wit Heaven and its Poisoning the Morals of our first Parents with its subtlety made the Scene of its motion to be in the Dust and it to be more accurs'd than any brute Animal such is likely to be the fate of this Serpentine Order after they have been by their subtle Casuistical distinctions so long nibbling at the Sacred word a thing the old Serpent did and tempting Men in a fool's Paradise according to their several Palates by their Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil I mean the Experiments of Vice by their pretended Moral Theology but what is so far from deserving the Name of Theology that if it were imagin'd that a general Counsel of Devils were by their Chief call'd to debate of a Model of credenda and agenda for the world 't is likely they would unanimously agree to set up this and no other for no doubt they would pass no Article to deny the existence of a God for they believe that and tremble nor yet any Article that might be controul'd by Natural light or of which any Matter of Fact would be over-rul'd by Authentic History but they would among the unwary Judges of things and such whose Judgments are choak't up with the fumes
his Great thoughts intent on restoring England to its ancient Figure in the World namely of balancing it and coming to the Throne when he found the Land so impoverish'd â—y the Witnesses Plot and the spirits of the Inhabitants so much intimidated with Fears and Iealousies he by his own noble Iealousie for the Honour of the Nation hath chased away all ignoble Iealousies for ever and by shewing so great an Example of Universal Confidence in his People hath by his Augusâ— Genius found out so expedite a way to make the Confidence between the Prince and People mutual and which is the hinge on which the Happy State of any Country turns as hath made any general Relapses into Principles of disloyalty during his Reign almost morally impossible For according to that Saying of Tully Perditissimi est hominis eum laedere qui laesus non esset nisi â—redidisset and the Common Notion that next to the being perfectly good it is the most difficult thing to bring Humane Nature to be perfectly bad we may well expâ—ct a general growth of Loyalty from the Effects of that great Confidence and the great Spectacle it affords the World that may be partly expressed in the words of the Prophet viz. The heart of the Father's being turned to the Children and the natural Consequence of the turning the heart of the Children to their Father a more noble work then for an Elias to come and solve Doubts And thus while the Principles of some narrow-hearted Divines might seem confined like the Sands in their Hour-glasses yet His Majesty's great Thoughts and largeness of heart given him by God being as was said of Solomon's like the Sands of the Sea shoar and he having without setting up Weigh-houses for Loyalty or Religionary Principles created universal Charity and Peace in the Nation and allow'd his Subjects a paulò majora canamus then verbal Recantations he by thus trusting his Subjects at once with their Consciences hath provided an otherguess Prospect for English Minds then what can rise from disputacity or the Ecclesiarum Scabies and hath likewise secured the transmitting of his Character into the English Chronicles with such Rays of Glory as are brighter then those that have there adorn'd our former Princes under whom the Roses and Scepters and Kingdoms were united through his having so much united the hearts of People of all Religions to himself and to one another My Lord It is here but just that I should acknowledge it to your Lordship that you have been and are Pars Magna in so highly Contributing by your great Figure at the Helm in the last and this present Reign to this happy State of England For while in that Reign so many were so intent by what an ingenious late Writer calls The Wheel within a Wheel i. e. the Real Plot within the Nominal one of the Witnesses and by Out-cries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick your Lordship by your most wise Councels and indefatigable diligence in guarding the Monarchy and effecting that it should not be plotted away by Names or Things will appear in the History of the Age as one who perhaps beyond any one now a Subject secured the old Fundamental Government of England and upon which only the new future Happiness of it could subsist I have entertain'd the Reader with a new Argument of Republicks generally growing more impracticable but I shall do but justice to your Lordship in representing your very Character as an Argument of sufficient weight to poise the minds of the ingenious and the ingenuous against innovations by that sort of Government For the World would soon want the benefit of the Example of the perfect justice inherent in your nature that glorious Virtue that is the allow'd Continent of all the rest and necessarily attracting the Eyes and Hearts and Veneration of the Populace if Heaven had not fix'd you in the Sphere of Monarchy a dull Mediocrity of Vertue and of Wit and reason being only easie to a popular Government and nothing but an Oyster-Shell or an Olive-Leaf being to be there expected by a Person heroically just to his Country as his recompence and his being always liable to such liberae accusationes Calumniationes as were under what I have call'd the Martyrocracy here in the turbid Interval of the Plot-times and of the Fears and Iealousies Your Lordship was then by the help of your great Vnderstanding and excellent Temper and your constant Serenity of thought saevis tranquillus in undis and while so many of the timid were with their narrow spirits in that stormy Conjuncture toss'd about with excessive Fears and Iealousies and nauseous to themselves and others your Lordships great thoughts like a well built first Rate-Ship allow'd you both Ease and Triumph on the Sea of Time and in the Night of the Popular Fears your great Reason was directive to the Loyal tanquam lucerna in navi Praetoriâ how and where to steer their Course with safety to the Publick While toward the End of the following Discourse I recollected how much and how far my belief had been with that of many Loyal embarqued in the belief of a Plot or the Plot I there in p. 359 and 360. took notice that the Notions that men had of a Plot were very various Some then were so far gone in credulity as like the Fool that Solomon saith believeth every word they were resolv'd to believe every thing the Witnesses had said or would say the Loyal generally acquiesced in the Notification of it as Publish'd by the Government and I likewise call'd to mind what I had during my belief of somewhat of it mention'd in those hot Times and while I was writing the warmest part of my Discourse in that Conjuncture and when generally every heat of mens Passions was Feverish and every Fever Pestilential and when the Vitium temporis was Concurrent with the Faults of the Writer and there in p. 14. observing that since according to the expression of God's not being the God of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles so it being true that the King is King of the Papists as well as Protestants King of the Irish as well as English and a Common Father to them all it may be worthy of his royal goodness and a god-like thing in him to distribute to them all the kindness that would not undo themselves and others i. e. that they were capable of and having then in p. 44. urged the possibility of Recusants being a sound part of the State here as well as in Holland I held my self obliged to do them and the Course of my Impartial observing the right as toward the end of the Discourse to mention it that whatever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of yet that the deportment of the generality of them hath of late appear'd with such a Face of Loyalty as was necessarily attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion And
and Principles Religionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is Irreligionary and against Nature The words of exterminating and recalling are often used by Cicero as signifying the contrary and when Mr. Coleman's Letters shewed such an imperious design in him for the Revocation of Popery that had been driven away and banished or exterminated hence by so many Acts of Parliament and even for the Extermination of Heresie out of the North as occasioned such apprehensions in the Government of what was intended by other innocent and modest Papists that made the gentlest of Princes in a Speech in the Oxford Parliament say and if it be practicable the ridding our selves quite of all of that Party that have any considerable Authority c. none need wonder at the past warmth of Subjects expressed against the Recalling of the Exterminated Papal Power nor yet at the warmth of their Zeal against the Principles of the Iesuites propagating an Internal Power here when they had been exterminated from Rome it self and when the Lord Chancellors Speech to both Houses had mentioned the Proceedings against Protestants in Foreign Parts to look as if they were intended to make way for a general Extirpation They are poor Judges of things who think that Doctrines of Religion cannot be said to be exterminated out of Kingdoms and their Laws without the Banishment of the Persons professing them Who accounts not Protestancy sufficiently exterminated from being the State-Religion in Italy and yet Sandies his Europae speculum tells us That there were 40000 professed Protestants there Is not Iudaism sufficiently Exterminated from being the Religion at Rome tho thousands of professed Iews are there tolerated 'T is the publick approbation of Tenets or Doctrines and not any forbearance or indulgence to persons who prosess them that gives Doctrines a place within the Religion of a State for to make any State approve of a Doctrine contrary to what it hath Established is a Contradiction But the truth is the famous Nation of the Iews formerly Heavens peculiar People on Earth having not been more generally guilty of Idolatry during their prosperity than of Superstition during their Captivity and Oppression and Extermination from their Country hath taught the World this great truth that the readiest way to propagate Superstition and Error is by the Exterminium and Banishment of Persons Whatever Church any men call their Mother if the Magistrate finds them to own the Interest of their Country as their Mother and to honour their true Political Father they cannot wish their days more long in the Land than I shall do I remember under the Vsurpation there passed an Act of Parliament as 't was called for the banishment of that famous Boute-feu Iohn Lilburn and under the Penalty of the Vltimum supplicium and he shortly after returning to England and being tried in London where he was universally known and the only thing issuable before the Iurors being whether he was the same John Lilburn those good men and true thought him so much transubstantiated as to bring him in not guilty and when ever I find any Papist not only willing to change the Name Papist for Catholick but the thing Papistry for the Principles of the Church of Rome under its first good Bishops and before Popes beyond a Patriarchal Power aspired to be Universal Bishops and Universal Kings and that even a Iesuite instead of the Rule of Iesuita est omnis homo hath alter'd his Morals and Principles pursuant to the Pope's said Decree so far as truly to say Ego non sum ego I shall not intermeddle in awakening Penal Laws to touch either his life or liberty Nor can any Presbyterians with justice reflect on the Zeal of any for the Continuance of the Laws for the Extermination of Presbytery when they shall reflect on the Royal Family having been by their means as is set forth in this Discourse exterminated out of the Realm into Foreign Popish Countries and of which they might easily have seen the ill effects if their understandings had not been very scandalously dull But there is another happy Extermination that I have in this Discourse from Natural Causes predicted to my Country and that is of the fears and jealousies that have been so prevalent during our late fermentation concerning which the Reader will shortly find himself referred to in many Pages in this Discourse and to have directed him to all of that Nature would have made the Index a Book I have in this Discourse designing to eradicate the fears of Popery out of the Minds of timid Protestants by the most rational perswasions I could shewed somewhat of Complaisance in sometimes humouring their Suppositions of things never likely to come to pass I have accorded with them in the possibility of the Event of Arch-Bishop Vsher's Famous Prophecy tho I account the same as remote from likelihood as any one could with it and do believe that if that Great and Learned Man could have foreseen the mischief that Prophecy hath occasioned by making so many of the Kings good Subjects disquieted thereby and which by at once Chilling their Hearts and heating their Heads hath rendered them less qualified for a chearful and steady discharge of their respective Duties he would have consulted privately with many other Learned and Pious Divines about the intrinsick weight of the matter revealed to him before he had exposed it to the World for that in the days when God spake by the Prophets yet even then the Spirits of the Prophets were always subject to the Prophets and there is no Fire in the World so bad a Master as the Fire of Prophecy It is observable that there hath scarce since this Prophecy been a Conjuncture of time wherein men uneasie to themselves would make the Government so but this Prophecy hath been reprinted in it and cryed about and few Enthusiasts but are as perfect in it as a Sea-man in his Compass The substance of it was to foretel Persecution that should happen in England from the Papists in the way of a sudden Massacre and that the Pope should be the Contriver of it and that if the King were restored it might be a little longer deferred A person less learned than that Great Prelate could easily give an Account of the past Out-rages of Massacres that have been perpetrated by Papists and of the tendency of the Iesuites Principles to the very legitimating of Future ones but the most Pious and Learned Man in the World ought with the greatest Caution imaginable to pretend to Divine Revelation of Future Contingencies in a matter both so unlikely and so odious as this and which might probably occasion so much Odium to so many innocent Papists and so much needless trouble to so many timid Protestants That Pious and Great Prelate did not I believe foresee that at the time when his Prophecy should dart its most fearful influence St. Peter's Chair would be filled
Advenae from the Country and to which it may be added that the Burials from what they were in the Year 79 viz. 21730 falling back about 700 in the Year 80 yet in the Year 1681 were in all 23971 and so for every Thousand gradually dying more in those Years referred to 29000 were supposed to have in the same gradually lived more than in the former and all which years before mentioned were of ordinary health But the Year 1681 having produced that Pacific Royal Declaration and the Congratulatory Addresses thereupon and likewise that encrease of the Burials before mentioned that might be supposed to happen partly by the Advenae from the Country being for some time necessarily detained in the Metropolis in making preparations there to leave it and by some of them in the mean time dying and partly from some new Pâ—upers then coming from the Country to hide their heads in obscure places in London and which they durst not shew in the Sun-shine that Declaration had made in the Country and partly by the deaths of many Loyal Persons in London whom the Addresses and expectations of Preferment for their Loyalty brought thither yet the Burials in the following year viz. 1682 being but 20690 was a considerable indication of the abatement of the popular fears which led so many timid Persons from the Country with hopes to find our Metropolâ—s to be the most quiet part of the Nation as the most quiet part of a Ship is naturally that which is nearest the Main-mast and the Burials in the year 83 being but 20587 gave an indication of the Advenae from the Country not then encreasing and although the Total of the Burials for this year 84 was 23202 yet it being most probable that there dyed above 3000 of Infants and of Aged and infirm and indigent People by the Accidents of the extraordinary Frost it may be well accounted that the popular fears have not been in this year augmented Altho during the so long continuance of the general ferment in the Kingdom after the Plot-Epoche and in which interâ—al so great a part of the following Discourse was printed Sheet by Sheet I could not after the King and Pope had both of them by written Edicts as it were denounced War against the Tenets of the Iesuites that included so much Hostility to the Church of Rome as well as of England but participate in the general heat against those Tenets and improve the occasion of writing polemically about the same yet I think none could more carefully observe the Laws of Military Discipline than I have those of Loyalty in not going beyond the Measures of the Government and in following the Standard of the Royal Pen set up in the Proclamations and likewise in the Declaration aforesaid Dr. Donne dedicating his Pseudo-Martyr to King Iames begins his Epistle by saying that as Temporal Armies consist of pressed men and voluntaries so do they also in this War-fare in which your Majesty hath appeared by your Books and not only your strong and full Garrisons which are your Clergy and your Vniversities but also obscure Villages can Minister Souldiers c. Besides since in the Battel your Majesty by your Books is gone in person out of the Kingdom who can be exempt from waiting on you in such an expedition That Learned Monarch in his printed Premonition to all Crowned Heads free Princes and States doth Magno Conatu go about to prove the Pope to be Anti-Christ and very subtilly discusseth the Moot-points out of the Apocalypse that refer to it and from that one word of Anti-Christ the Papacy hath since the Reformation received much more prejudice than hath the Reformation from that other famous word of Heresy and the Compellation of Anti-Christ is especially a more terrible weapon against the Pope when used by the hand of a King. But I must frankly say should my Prince Combat the Pope with this name in Print and descend to Command my poor Service in that Warfare I should humbly apply to him to excuse me therein and as it was observed concerning Aretine that he left God untouched in his Satyrs giving this reason for it Ille inquit non mihi notus erat so I shall say the same thing of Anti-Christ But when the Thunder of the Royal Power was in so great a number of Proclamations heard all over Christendom against particular persons and their known Principles and Designs his Subjects might well think it a part of Loyalty during that time to wear Clouds in their Brows and to be tributary to the Royal Cares by endeavouring in their several Capacities to support the Throne and to concur with the constant Practice of Nations in receiving the beliefs of Matter of Fact as stated by Soveraign Power according to the common saying of Imperatori seu Regi aliquid attestanti plenè creditur It is this Teste of the Sovereign as I may say with allusion to the words in our Writs of teste me ipso that will be the Clew to the Historians to guide them in that dark and intricate Labyrinth of time I before spoke of and will probably be helpful to any ingenious Protestants or Papists who shall write its History when they shall from the many Collections of the Pamphlets relating to that time treasured up by the curious see so many bold and contradictory Shamms and Affidavits fighting with each other for that belief in a Future Conjuncture that they could not obtain in the past and 't is nothing but the declared Sense of the Government that in such odiosa materia will qualifie a judicious Historian to do right to himself or his Reader or even to his History and keep it from being thrust down among Narratives It may be rationally supposed that when Princes and their Ministers do think fit to notifie their judgments of some matter of Fact wherein they might receive the first Information from Persons lyable to exception that there were many concurrent Circumstances lay in the Balance before them and which perhaps they might not think convenient to divulge and moreover it is a thing commonly observable that Divine Providence doth influence the understandings of Princes who are its instruments in the Government of the World more signally than of other men and that Crowned Heads are still blessed in some measure as of old by another Spirit coming on them than what animated them while private persons and that therefore their asserting of Facts of State is more to be revered than that of other men I therefore in the Case of the shamm of throwing the Odium of a Plot upon Protestants in one particular Conjuncture have not come short of or gone beyond the Measures of the Government nor do I believe that any Historian of it will. And when I did read the various Pamphlets and did confer Notes with some of the Curious about the last mentioned Shamm and participated with the Loyal Protestants in their Concern and Sollicitude for
and a printed Devotional Office called The Office of the immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin our Lady approved by the Sovereign Pontiff Paul the 5th had been much in vogue in the Papal World yet the Pope by his Decree of February the 17th 78. damned that Office and as I may say threw it over board And of this the Author of Iulian the Apostate might have took notice if he had pleased when in his Comparison of Popery and Paganism he instanced in the transprosing of part of the Psalms to the Virgin Mary after the mode of this Office that had been suppressed about 4 years before The old stubbornness of Popes against the making any Reformation of Abuses and Errors in their Church hath been commonly observed but I believe that considering the great Figure England makes in the World it may not be unlikely that the brisk Spirit of Opposition against Popery that had displayed it self in England for about 8 years before the Plot-Epoche and the sharp and learned Books that were in that Conjuncture printed here against the Abuses of the Church of Rome might much contribute to the laudable Proceedings of this Pope in those Decrees I have mentioned And therefore when Nature had thus enforced the Papal Chair in so great a Measure upon Recantation and a great deal of pretended infallibity was thrown over-board and that even relating to some Principles that might be called Religionary it may reasonably be thought that the same operation of Nature will produce among our little Protestant Recusants a tacit renuntiation of the Irreligionary part of those very Principles that both the World and themselves must needs see they have transcribed from Popery The Complication of the Principles of Irreligion that hath joyned the Iesuites Popery with that of our former Presbyterians Popery hath long been as visible as the great Isthmus I spake of that joyns the Mexican and the Peruan parts of the new World and as I being to explain as in a Dictionary what I meant by Popery I would not expose my self to the Critical Religionary Controvertists by nicely defining Popery the Observation being no less than a Rule in the Civil Law that omnis definitio in jure Civili periculosa est parum est enim ut non subverti possit but gave the Description of my sense of it as before in this Preface so if I were to give a Description of our Scotch Presbytery as Covenanted to be here introduced I would take the said Description of Popery and only mutatis mutandis say that by Presbytery I mean the power of our Presbyters in imposing Creeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on men and the Presbyters jurisdiction interloping in that of our Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Jus Divinum and as they are Christs pretended Vicars and do account that its intended Arbitrariness here in England justly appeared as terrible as that of Popery and that our Consciences being enslaved to a Foreign Bishop is not more inglorious than their being so to our fellow Subjects and that a blush being divided among ten thousand Ecclesiasticks after they had out-raged our Laws and our Consciences would have here been no more seen by us than one at Rome on occasion of any Popes there blushing after they had so done I have observed in this Discourse how that part of Presbytery that may tho erroneous be called Religionary as practised in some Foreign Churches hath here decayed and must so naturally more and more and was glad to hear That since the putting the Laws in Execution against Protestant Recusants those of them who were called Presbyterians have on recollection of thought and after Conference had with our Divines forborn their former Schismatical Separation from our Churches and that particularly in our Metropolis they have in all things been ameinable to the Doctrine and Discipline of our Church except as to the submitting to have their Children baptized with the use of the Sign of the Cross there and their Superstition in not complying with which will I hope not be long lifed The gradual encrease of the Christenings in some Parishes in the Country that I have seen Accounts of and in which places the Dissenters formerly were very numerous hath been to a far greater Proportion than the gradual Encrease by me remarked as to London and within the same years And a Learned Divine who is Minister of a Parish not far from London hath acquainted me That the number of Communicants being there about the beginning of those years but a 100 hath since arisen to 400 and I believe that generally the numbers of Conformists may have much encreased in the Country beyond the proportion of their Encrease in the City and may probably do so for some years Tho there are several Merchants and rich Traders in our Metropolis who are Dissenters yet I have observed that the gross of their numbers consists there of ordinary Retail-traders and as these have been naturally Sufferers there by the Cities so much removing Westward and by the Retail-trade being so much gone to the other end of the Town and are likely so to be more and more so it hath been and will be natural to them to be more and more querulous according to the saying of Omne invalidum est Querulum And in this Case it will be natural to them both to support their decaying Trade by Religionary Combinations and perhaps to fancy Religion it self breaking together with their Bankrupsy and both for the Consoling one another as Socii doloris and likewise relieving one another thereby to endeavour to keep Heterodox Religionary Societies as long and as much as they can But Necessity the known Mother of Industry must naturally in time cure them of their Poverty and Temptation to Heterodoxy thereby Our Quakers are by many thought to be a kind of a Roma subterranea but whether justly or no I enquire not nor shall I give my opinion in it till the Principles of their Light within shall be exposed to that without many of which Principles have hitherto been by them kept as hid from the World as were the Subterraneous Lights preserved in the Roman Monuments and as to which Principles they are perhaps conscious that when they shall be exposed to the Air and Light of the Sun they will be as naturally extinguished as those Monumental Lights were when occasionally brought into the open Air. But one of their known Tenets being the unlawfulness of Oaths I account they have an advantage thereby beyond the Presbyterians or Independents in their Claim to Indulgence by demanding it in a Doctrinal point wherein there is Dâ—gnus vindice nodus by reason of some words in the 5th of St. Matthew and 5th of St. Iames seeming primâ facie very emphatically and vehemently to forbid all manner of swearing as the Commentators generally observe And in this point they are entituled to a very true and
business of England and in case of a Prohibition to any mans little Court of Conscience in that cause he will certainly give himself a consultation The very humour of the English Nation long hath and still doth run against what they think but like Popery or makes for it and that with such a rapid current of Antipathy as is never likely to be stem'd and nothing is more out of fashion then a kind of Sir-positive or Dictatorian humour in common discourse much less then will a dogmatical Popes infallibility ever be digested here while he makes himself a St. Positive The gentile humour of the Age here that abhorrs hard words as loathsom pedantry will never be reconcil'd to one certain long hard word in Popery namely Transubstantiation nor to another namely Incineration or burning men for not understanding the former word according to the style of the Historian Imperator aegrè tulit incinerationem Johannis Husse and people will account their Protestant Bibles more agreeable to them then the English one published by the Colledge of Doway where the Translator studied for hard words in the room of plain ones as for the Passeover phase for foreskin praepuce for unleaven'd bread azyms for high places excelses and other such words we have in the English Rhemish Testament viz. exinanite parasceue didragmes neophyt spiritualness of wickedness in the Celestials In our Busy English world while men are most yary after profit and pleasure and the study of things if very few or none can be brought to learn the universal real character and which would tend to the propagating Real Knowledge among the Nations of the World accordingâ—y as the excellent propounder of it in Print with great modesty saith in his Epistle dedicatory that he had slender expectation if its coming into common use our Ingeniosi or Witts which all men pretend to be now as they did in the Late times to be Saints tho yet as few are Witts now as were Saints then will not care for troubling their brains with the studying of the Religion whose pretended universality appears but a kind of universal character and not real and tending to obscure the knowledge of things in the World. If they should see here a Religion that was full of pageantry and seem'd to be wholly theatrical they would think it was as much their birthright to censure it as 't is to be eternal talking Critics in the Pit to damn Playes and would think two Supremes in a Kingdome to be of the low nature of two Kings of Branford and rather then part with their money and stake down their Souls for seing such a Moral Representation of an absolute spiritual and absolute temporal power on the stage of the Kingdom they would be too apt with Mr. Hobs to thrust the whole Nation of Spiritual Beings out of the world I mean rather then they would be to their faces cheated and harras'd by a spiritual power and our people inspir'd with witt as well as those with the zealous spirit of Religion would cry out conclusum est contra Manichaeos I and against the Schoolmen too I mean our Romanist Manichaei who make two summa Principia in every State. In this age where the lower or Sixth rate Witts do so over-value themselves on turning every thing into ridicule the Mass would have here a Reception according to what the gloss in the Canon Law observes that when a place had layen long under an interdict the people laughed at the Priests when they came to say Mass again Nor would any Papal interdiction unless it could interdict us from the use of Fire and Water be of any moment The World would now laugh at any Prize that should be play'd between the Two Swords the very glossator on the Clementines saying occasionly that resipiscente mundo the World being grown wiser there must be no longer striving for both Swords And any one that would obtrude on us gross exploded errors in Church or State will appear as ridiculous as St. Henry the Dane who as the Martyrology mentions when worms craul'd out of a corrupted Vlcer in his Knee put them in again My Lord I will further offer it to your Lordships consideration That if it be found so hard to keep up the external polity of the Church of England thô in it self so rational and so meriting the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the Twenty years discontinuance of it insomuch that Dr. Glanvile in the first page of his Book call'd the Zealous and impartial Protestant hath these words the first occasion of our further danger that I shall mention is the present diminution not to say extinction of Reverence to the authority of the Church of England c. and he p. 4. writes largely to that Effect what quarter can Popery expect here from an Age of sense and reason when it should break in upon both after the forementioned Hundred years discontinuance According to the foresaid Argument of the Bees for the Popes spiritual Monarchy we see it improbable for him ever to bring us to a Rendevouz in his Church again for the sad experience we have had of the Sects here that left the Hive of the Church of England not gathering together into any one new Hive but dividing into several swarms and hives and never returning to the old may shew the Hive of holy Church how little of our Company 't is to expect Having said all this about the mists of Popery being to contend with knowledge in its meridian I think I shall comply with the measures taken by our Philosophers in this Critical Age in founding their observations upon Experiments if I further add that the former Experiments England hath had of Poperies being pernicious to its external Polity and Grandeur will perpetuate and heighten the fermentation in the minds of our angry people against it All our Monkish Historians do attest the experience our Kings had in being bereav'd of great Sums of Money while they enrich'd the Pope here by giving him the Office to keep the Theological Thistle which he Rail'd in with so many censures and distinctions and non obstantes that our Kings could not pass to their Palaces but by his leave and on his terms An English King then was but the Popes Primier Ministre and yet paid great wages too for the being a Servant to the Servus Servorum King Iohn used to say That all his affairs in the World were unprosperous and went cross and untowardly after he had once subjected himself and his Kingdom to the Church of Rome His words were Postquam me mea Regna Romanae subjecâ— Ecclesiae nulla mihi prospera omnia contraria advenerunt And 't is obvious to consider on the other hand what a great figure Henry the Eighth made in the World after he had manumitted himself and his Kingdoms from the Papal Usurpation And how he held the Balance of the World in his hand and trod on
of Cattle by pasture hindred that encrease of Men that the advancement of Tillage would have produced and the furnishing the Crown with more Subsidy Men and Soldiers But this supineness of our Kings was not only caused by Superstition and a vitiated fancy in Religion an Idol to which Philip the Second sacrificed his Son and therefore might be well supposed prevalent with others to wish the generation of their Children or Subjects restrained but our Kings were not then stimulated by necessity to promote the populousness of their Realm for that their riches and strength depending on comparison the same Religious Orders did by Celibate and Depopulation equally obstruct the Wealth and Power of the neighbouring Kingdoms as well as this and by that means they were not our over-match But the course of encreasing Generations having operated so far as to awaken the World and Men for not having so much Elbow-room as they had jostling one another by the violence of War the politics of Statutes against Depopulation were forced and reinforced on this Realm And like as Men so too will such Statutes beget one another as I may say to the end of the Chapter Nor is the power of the Kingdom ever likely again to be really emasculated by such as pretended To make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake and honoured not the Founder of Christianity of whom since he for the good of Mankind made his first Disciples fishers of Men it may seem unworthy that he should intend the hurt of States and Kingdoms by making the following Doctors of his Church Pastors of Sheep Sir Thomas Moor in the first Book of his Vtopia doth with a sharpness worthy his excellent wit tell us That certain Abbots holy Men God wot not profiting but much damnifying the Common Wealth leave no ground for Tillage they enclose all in pastures they throw down Houses they pull down Towns and leave nothing standing but only the Church to make of it a Sheep-house And afterward saith That one Shepherd is enough to eat up that ground with Cattle to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite And he in that Book calls the Fryers errones maximos and desires they might be treated like Vagabonds and sturdy Beggars And in the Second Book contrives a Model of the Priesthood so as not to make it such a Nusance to the Civil Government as the Papal one was accordingly as has been before discoursed For one of his fundamentals there is That the Priests should be very few and that they should be chosen by the people like other Magistrates and with secret voices and enjoyns to his Priests marriage and makes them to be promoted to no power but only to honour Sir Thomas More it seems was far then from Writing at the Pope's Feet the Character that was afterward given to Bellarmine's style and there was as little occasion for a peace-maker's interposal between him and Fish as is between two wrangling Lawyers at a Bar. But the matter is well mended with our English World since the time of the Supplication of Beggars as appears by the multitudes of the healthy and robust Plebs of our Nation that Till the Earth and Plough the Sea and who by the proportion of the Mony Current coming to their hands having fortify'd their Vital Spirits with good diet there is finis litium and an end of such Lamentations as the beginning of that Supplication to the King in part before referred mentions viz. Most lamentably complaineth of their woful misery to your Highness your poor daily Beads-men the wretched hideous Monsters on whom scarcely for horrour any eye dare look the foul unhappy sort of Lepers and other sore people needy impotent blind lame and sick c. How that their Number is daily so sore encreased that all the Alms of all the well disposed people of this your Realm is not half enough to sustain them There is no doubt but their indigence was extream when they were to glean not only after the Reaping of the Monks but after the Ecclesiastick Beggars the Fratres Mendicantes or as they were then called Manducantes had been satiated in diebus illis and when Holy Church almost engrossed not only the wealth but the begging in the Kingdom And he who now looks on our English infantry when they turn their Plough-shares into Swords will see nothing of the horrour of starvelings in their faces and the Writ de leproso amovendo is in effect obsolete in nature as that too de haeretico comburendo is abrogated And within the Term of about twenty years that the Observator of the Bills of Mortality refers his Calculations to he mentions but six of 229150 dying of the Leprosie What the Bills of Mortality in France may contain about deaths by the Leprosie happening there in late years I know not but do suppose that the general Scurâ—e appearing in the skins of the Pesantry there condemned to Sell their Birth-right of nature for no Pottage and to eat little of the Corn they Sow and to drink as little of the Vines they Plant and to taste little of Flesh save what they have in Alms from the Baskets of the Abbies and who are Dieted only for Vassalage may be an indication of the Leprosie having still its former effects among them But our English Husband-men are both better fed and taught and the poorest people here have so much of brown Bread and the Gospel that by the Calculations on our Bills of Mortality it appears that for so many years past but One of Four Thousand is starved 'T is therefore I think by instinct of Nature That our Yeomanry in the Country though not addicted to mind niceness of Controversie in Religion nor to be dealers in the Protestant Faith by Retaile are great Whole-sale Traders in it and will as soon suffer their Ploughs to be took out of their Hands as their Bibles from under their Arms And they have been generally observed since the Plot and some years before to manifest in common discourse their robust abhorrences of Popery as supposing that under that Religion they could neither save their Souls nor their Bacon Doleman alias Parsons in the Second part of his Book of the Succession speaking of the Numbers of the Papists here makes it very considerable In that the most part of the Country people that live out of Cities and great Towns in which the greatest part of the English forces are wont to consist are much affected ordinarily to their Religion meaning the Popish Religion by reason the Preachers of the contrary Religion are not so frequent with them as in Towns c. But were he now alive he would find the Scene of things changed in our Country Churches since Queen Elizabeth's time in whose Reign a Book was printed Anno 1585 called A lamentable complaint of the Commonalty by way of Supplication to the High Court of Parliament for a learned Ministry He would find
into the Field of Time have yet grown up and how many even of the higher Class of understandings have been tempted to believe the predictions of the illiterate and that such could read the Book of Fate who yet could read no other as appeared by Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop Fisher being tainted with some belief of the holy Maid of Kent's Sayings or at least seeming so to be and that the prediction of things as I partly before hinted may help as a Natural Cause to give them Birth I wishing so well to my Country and its Religion by Law Established have however adventured from Natural Causes to give my judgment for the future State thereof as I have done not despairing of its influences on some present Despairers And moreover the Class of Magna nomina who have faulter'd in their measures of Prophecy is so great that an obscure mistaken person may well hope to hide himself among them Father Parsons aliâ—s Doleman in his Book of the Succession doth p. 258. give his final Conjecture of the great future Event of the Succession after the death of Queen Elizabeth saying My opinion is that this Affair cannot possibly be ended by any possibility moral without some War at leastwise for sometime at the beginning and gives his reasons for that his opinion And how all our hot Apocalyptick Men and Teazers of Anti-Christ have erred in the times of the great Changes they have predicted in the World is obvious and therefore the most sagacious of that sort of Expositers have made the things they have foretold to be far distant in time and before which they knew they should long be in the number of Non entes doctores as one calls the Schoolmen and thus likewise the ingenious Author of the Treatise of Taxes and Contributions printed in London 1667 doth p. 23. say that Before five hundred years we may be all transplanted from hence into America these Countries being over-run with Turks and made wast as the Seats of the famous Eastern Empires at this day Mr. Herbert our pious Vates made Religion standing a tiptoe to take its flight thither many years ago And the ingenious Author of the Zelanders Choice hath therein told us that the French would never part with Vtrecht and that our King's Declaration of Indulgence would never be recalled but the contrary happened in both Cases and the Vote of the House of Commons in order to his Majesties recalling the latter was carried by the Party there favouring the Nonconformists and could not have been without them which that Author did not foresee and that those Nonconformists would be well neither full nor fasting and therefore their reflections on the King's Ministers for denying Indulgence to them since ought to be very gentle Mr. Fox in his Martyrology in one Volume p. 694. gives us this conjectural prediction that the Turk will seize Rome and founds one of his reasons for it on the 18 Ch. of the Rev. and that he shall consume it with fire and Ribera the Iesuite in Chap. 14th of the Rev. saith Romam igitur non tantum propter priora peccata conflagratarum esse magno incendio sed etiam propter illa quae extremis illis temporibus commissura est ex hujus Apocalypsis verbis adeo perspicue cognoscimus ut ne stulâ—issimus quidem negare possit Neither Mr. Fox nor the Iesuite name any particular time when Rome shall be consumed with Fire but many whose Enthusiastic fancies have played with the fire of Rome adventured to lay the Scene of its ruine in the Year 1666 and to assert this a Latin Book was professedly writ and called Romae ruina finalis Anno Dom. 1666. and printed in London in the Year 1663. in the Title whereof 't is said that Rome shall be incendio delenda in the Year 1666. And no doubt our many Prophetic Writers that read that Sentence as from Gods Tribunal that Rome shall be destroyed that year angered the Conclave there and they might well think that to such hot heads there belonged incendiary hands and accordingly as it was before cited out of the Pampâ—let called The Arts and pernicious designs of Rome wherein is shewn what are the Aims of the Iesuites c. the Author makes the Conflagration of London in case it were a practice of Humane Contrivance to have been caused by Rome and the Consistory there and the Iesuites as being willing to signalize that year of 666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some that predicted Romes utter destruction then 't is possible that they might grant against our City the reprisal of performances for our Prophecies against theirs which if they did was a Revenge very disproportionate for according to that rule of the Pharisees revenge namely an Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth they should only have equipped Airy Prophecies against us and not Fire-ships and by a little obvious Art have hounded the number of the Beast 666 upon us And though I am sufficiently convinced by the Quotations out of the Canon Law and the Canonists referred to in Gundissalvus that the Tenet of burning whole Cities if the Majority thereof are Hereticks is chargeable on the Church of Rome as approved by it and tho the Lord Chancellor and two Houses of Commons and the Magistrates of London have given their judgment of the Causers of that Fire as aforesaid and tho one of our great Divines and whose Name all Protestants in our Land must mention with great honour Dr. William Lloyd Dean of Bangir hath in his Funeral Sermon of Sir Edmund Godfrey p. 38. speaking of the incredible patience found in the Citizens of London at the time of its Conflagration as an effect of the Protestant Religion further said Tho so many believed and very few much doubted whence it came that it was from the same hands which we justly suspect for this wickedness meaning the Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey yet was there no Tumult rose upon it no violence done that extended to the life of any Person yet shall I never without the knowledge of convincing proofs of such a Fact projected or modelled by some in Authority in the Church of Rome and the Spiritual Guides of our Lay-Papists charge the Odium of the Fact on more of them than make the least of numbers nor yet the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists here at home or abroad in the World and would say that as infallible as the Pope was he knew not what spirit he was of when he thus in his Law called for fire on Heretical Cities I allude to our Saviour's words to the Disciples that importun'd him to call for Fire from Heaven to burn the Samaritans I know the Roman Catholick Author of the forementioned Pamphlet called the Arts of Rome c. in the Epistle of it saith of the Jesuites and Fryars that what they hold lawful to be done
most considerable The most sagacious sort of false Prophets whose chief business it was to be true to themselves as the falsest Dice of Gamesters are most true to the users did often choose to alarm the People with disastrous Events and thus the Witch of Endor chose to make the Shamm-Samuel entertain Saul with the prediction of his and his Sons death the next day But 't is time for us to follow that great admonition of Beware of false Prophets when we hear so many foretelling us as by inspiration of nothing but lamentation and weeping and great mourning in England for the continuance of the decay of Trade and unavoidable ruine of the Protestant Religion and when many such deluders and counterfeit Lachrymists cannot I fancy about our weeping on this account take their measures together without smiling according to that Say of Tully Potest augur augurem videre non ridere It is a very great saying of Tully's in his 2d Book de Divinatione Nam ut vere loquamur superstitio fusa per orbem oppressit omnium fere animos atque hominum occupavit imbecillitatem And as wise as Socrates was yet in Xenophon he disputes that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Oracles were necessary to the preservation of Common-wealths and Plutarch doth alledge experience in Confirmation thereof and the murmuring Iews thought themselves ill used by Providence when the age wanted a Prophet among them tho yet the Prophets were so frequent in denunciations of wo to them and like Seamen they liked weather that was somewhat like a storm rather than to lie in the World becalm'd 'T is said in Psalm 74. There is no more any Prophet we see not our signs And as much as Superstition had in Tully's words dasterded almost all mens spirits yet the Cheat of the Augury was so contrived and diversified as sometimes on occasion to heighten and enlarge them and in effect to enlarge the Empire it self Augusto augurio postquam inclyta condita Roma est But many of our Augurs endeavour only to enlarge our fears and jealousies and to intimidate our spirits and to render the Genius of the Nation less august and only to enlarge their own fortunes But the ill ominous Birds are flying away and the many Loyal Addresses with which the Land re-echoes and the avowed readiness of so many good men to serve the best of Princes with their Lives as well as Fortunes upon occasion import the best of Auguries to England and such an one as Homer mentions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Vnum augurium est praestantissimum pugnare pro patriâ— and to which Verse of Homer Tully probably intended a reference when in his de senectute he said Optimis auguriis ea geri quae pro Reip. Salute gerentur Your Lordship hath formerly among the great transactions of your life shewn your self a noble Adventurer for the honour and danger that this kind of Augury can import and particularly by your carrying at once your Law in your head and your life in your hand in the sight of a Party that had been so successful with their Swords and even to wind-ward of all others by inspiration and when the Conduct of your Politicks so highly advanced your Prince's Restoration and so much helped to effect the quashing of all the furious Prophecies of Monarchy ceasing in England Not without apologizing for my guilt of a solecism like his who discoursed of War before Hanibal by my having so largely addressed my Sentiments of the Future State of England to such an Oracle as your Lordship I must at last say Non ego sum Vates sed prisci conscius aevi c. and have only taken my measures from natural Causes and judging of things to come by what have been and by nature's most firm Constancy to it self and things not being ill administrable and at this rate can further very safely predict that according to Iuvenal Nunquam aliud natura aliud sapientia dicet And moreover I have in my predictions of the Future State of England interspersed many Remarks that may be directive and naturally tend to enrich the Land and advance its Trade and Industry and thus I do account that our Writers of Almanacks do some way compensate the loss of Peoples time employed in regarding how they turn the hand of the Lottery of Fate round the World and foretel various Revolutions and Events here at home and abroad by their likewise telling them in what Months to set Quick-sets and Fruit and Timber-Trees dig Gardens fell Timber uncover the Roots of Trees and to trim all sorts of Fruit-trees from Moss Canker and superfluous Branches when to transplant Trees and when to remove Grafts or young Trees and when to sow all manner of Garden Seeds and Herbs when to sow Wheat and to sow Hemp and Flax and by raising in them rational expectations of the Future State of the Earth meliorated by its Culture My Lord according to the common connexion of thoughts it here comes in my way to think that it is usual in the Scripture and in several Books to express the sense of placing Notions and Tenets and Doctrines in the World by the Terms of Seeds and Plants and the spreading of the same by the growth encrease and propagation of Plants and the ceasing of them by the Terms of decrease withering or extirpation Our Saviour's Parables of the Sower and some Seeds falling by the way side and being devoured by the Fowls and some falling upon stony places where they had not much Earth and forthwith springing up because they had no deepness of Earth and being scorched when the Sun was up and because they had not root withering away and his Indication of false Prophets by the similitude of Trees and knowing them by their Fruit and his reference to false Doctrines when he saith That every Plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up and his expression of false Religionary Notions by Tares in the Parable are known to all conversant with their English Bibles as is likewise his resembling himself to the Vine and his Father to the Husbandman and his saying that every Branch in me that beareth not Fruit he taketh away and St. Paul's calling the Church God's Husbandry and when he tells the Corinthians of his Planting and Apollos his watering And we have heard enough of a Collegium de propagandâ fide among the Romanists and their many laboured points De extirpandis haereticis and of the Exterminium Haereticorum and of their Arts to exâ—irpate whatsoever Religionary Notions they are pleased to call Heretical and of Nature in this Realm having extirpated those Arts and we know how naturally Protestancy did shoot up again in this our Soyle under Queen Elizabeth's Reign after its being cut down near the Ground in Queen Mary's Quippe solo natura subest and accordingly Iob regarding the Nature of the Soyle saith There is hope of a Tree if