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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54580	The happy future state of England, or, A discourse by way of a letter to the late Earl of Anglesey vindicating him from the reflections of an affidavit published by the House of Commons, ao. 1680, by occasion whereof observations are made concerning infamous witnesses : the said discourse likewise contains various political remarks and calculations referring to many parts of Christendom, with observations of the number of the people of England, and of its growth in populousness and trade, the vanity of the late fears and jealousies being shewn, the author doth on the grounds of nature predict the happy future state of the realm : at the end of the discourse there is a casuistical discussion of the obligation to the king, his heirs and successors, wherein many of the moral offices of absolution and unconditional loyalty are asserted : before the discourse is a large preface, giving an account of the whole work, with an index of the principal matters : also, The obligation resulting from the Oath of supremacy to assist and defend the preheminence or prerogative of the dispensative power belonging to the king ...	Pett, Peter, Sir, 1630-1699.	1688 (1688)	Wing P1883; ESTC R35105	603,568	476

THE HAPPY Future State of England OR A DISCOURSE by way of LETTER to the late EARL of ANGLESEY Vindicating Him from the Reflections of an AFFIDAVIT Published by the HOUSE of COMMONS Ao 1680. by occasion whereof Observations are made concerning Infamous WITNESSES The said Discourse likewise contains various Political Remarks and CALCULATIONS referring to many Parts of Christendom with Observations of the Number of the People of ENGLAND and of its Growth in Populousness and Trade The Vanity of the late Fears and Iealousies being shewn the Author doth on Grounds of Nature Predict the Happy future State of the Realm At the End of the Discourse There is a Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation of the KING His Heirs and Successors wherein many of the Moral Offices of Absolute and Vnconditional Loyalty are Asserted Before the Discourse is A large PREFACE giving an Account of the whole WORK with an Index of the Principal Matters ALSO The Obligation resulting from the Oath of SUPREMACY to Assist and Defend the Preheminence or Prerogative OF THE Dispensative Power Belonging to the KING His Heirs and Successors In the Asserting of that Power various Historical Passages occurring in the Vsurpation after the Year 1641. are mentioned and an Account is given of the Progress of the Power of Dispensing as to Acts of Parliament about Religion since the Reformation and of diverse Judgments of Parliaments declaring their Approbation of the Exercise of such Power and particularly in what concerns Punishment by Disability or Incapacity LONDON Printed MDCLXXXVIII To the Right Honorable the Earl of Sunderland Lord President of His Majesty's most Honorable privy-Privy-Council and Principal Secretary of State and Knight of the most Noble Order of the GARTER MY LORD FOR one who is sensible how little he knows of things past or present to Dedicate a Discourse of the future State of his Country to your Lordship who are by the Age allow'd to be as Critical a Iudge of Men and Things as any it affords may seem to have in it somewhat of Presumption But when your Lordship shall have had leisure to consider the plain Grounds of Nature on which my Prediction in the following Papers hath gone I will not so much hope that what I have attempted may appear to have been no Presuming as I will expect that your Censure will cast the Presumption on the other side namely on such who were Predictors with a continuando of the Unhappy State of their Country and especially on the account of the Religion of our most Gracious Prince And were I now to have my Iudgment tryed only by that of the Mobile who measure all things by the Events I account I should be out of the Gunshot of Censure since the course of Providence after my writing of the following Work having Conducted His Majesty to fill the Throne of his Ancestors with so many Royal Virtues it has been Conspicuous to them that the Glories of his Reign have transcended the highest flights of my mentioned Expectation And indeed as I remember to have long ago heard one of the Fathers cited for a Passage to this purpose namely that on a Supposal that God recounting to him the Perfections of the Creation should ask him what he could name wanting and that he could wish he would answer Unum Laudatorem Domine so it might till of late be said that in this new Creation or Restoration of England under His Majesty's Reign the only thing we had with anxiety to wish and desire from God next to the ennabling us to Praise his divine Goodness was one whose Talent of noble thoughts and words might be adequate to the celebrating the many Talents of our Prince and their successful Improvement both for the Honour and Security and Ease of his People But neither is such one Praiser now wanting for he who shall read the many late Loyal Addresses from all Parts of the Kingdom will find the People of England to be the Unus Laudator My Lord as I in the following Discourse almost wholly Printed long ago in the last Reign during the freedom of the Press adventured on Grounds of Nature to predict such a growth of Loyalty as would make all England become one sober Party of Mankind and that the more ingenious sort of Iesuits would by natural Instinct throw off those Principles condemned in this Pope's Decree and with Iustice then acknowledged a Sober Party in that order and have at large in p. 322. particularly shew'd my Abhorrence of charging the belief or practice of those Principles on all Persons in that Order So I have likewise in p. 238. given my Iudgment that all Seditious Principles own'd by any who call'd themselves Protestants must naturally decay and have at large in my Preface opposed my measures of futurity to those of a late Father of the Church of England concerning the two Plots that he thought the Papists and Dissenters would be ever carrying on and without his Lordships excepting the Loyal in those religionary Parties But having said this I must likewise say that these happy births of Fate having been but as it were the Births of a Day under the Powerful Influences of His Majesty's Government or as I may say a Nation 's being thus born in a Day are beyond what I did expect and I did little think that with the suddenness of the motion of Lightning when it melts the Sword and spares the Scabbard His Majesty's Declaration of Indulgence to Dissenters would at the same time melt so many hearts and all hostile Principles of the Doctrine of Resistance wrapp'd therein as it spared the Persons of the deluded Opiners I account that any indifferent Observer of the extraordinary sweetness of the way of painting their Loyalty in their Addresses and which resembleth the way of Corregio and is as excellent in its kind as that of the Sons of the Church of England after the way of the bolder touches of Titian in their former Addresses with the Style of LIVES AND FORTUNES was in its must be very hard-hearted if he likewise be not melted into a new kind of Compassion toward such his Brethren and into a noble sense of a great and good Prince having made his Subjects of all Religionary Perswasions Lachrymists for Joy and turned all their hearts to invoke Heaven in wishing for him according to that old Style a long Life a secure Kingdom a safe House valiant Armies a faithful Senate loyal Subjects the world at Peace c. The comparatively narrow Idea's of Charity and Beneficence that Subjects Minds are capable of toward one another do incline them to think chiefly of particular Toleration and such as we call Dispensation and that too with the nicety of Caution and upon Persons making the notification of their Principles and their particular disclaiming of all Disloyal ones previous to their Toleration and beyond this pitch the flights of my poor thoughts have not gone in the following Work. But His Majesty having

to the Persons of the Papists and likewise of the Divines of our Church but was afterwards sufficiently sensible of their intolerable rancour and animosities against both and of the infamous use and application they made of the Iesuits Doctrine of Calumny and of the Weapons they borrowed from Parson's of the Succession to promote the detestable Exclusion and of their borrowing from Athens and old Rome the Thunderbolts of their old REPVBLICAN Curses viz. of ENEMY c. and throwing them at the most Loyal of our Patriots and absurdly calling them Enemies to the King and Kingdom because they asse●ted the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy in opposing the Exclusion By that kind of Republican Curses they gave us the omen of what they would have been at And so extravagant was the use of that anathema in the late Conjuncture that when one in a great Assembly moved against Sir G. I. a Person that all the Loyal must own for his steadiness to the Hereditary Monarchy and for his having first kindled that great Zeal for Loyalty which doth now like a wall of Fire defend our Metropolis that he might be voted such an Enemy as aforesaid a Burgess for that City as I was info m'd did Ridiculously and Presumtuously move that he might be voted an Enemy to Mankind But it was easie for such as had took Gods name in vain so to take Mankinds I shall not degenerate from the Moral Offices of Charity to mens Persons if I call the Ex●lusion that would have broke the Balance of the Monarchy that was the old Balance of the World enmity to Mankind but shall without my here calling any men names leave it to the soft voice of God's Herald called Conscience to suggest it that tho a man who was deluded a while by the error of the Exclusion that would have been so fatal to the Realm might by reason of any good intentions so for a while ill guided not deserve perhaps to be judged to be an enemy to the King and Kingdom formaliter yet that if after Consideration and all thoughts made about his Sworn Allegiance he doth not make a stand but shall at any time again endeavour the going over the Rubicon of the Bloud Royal in its Line of Succession stated by God and Nature and the defending his false-steps beyond it by Association or Arms ●I say I shall leave it to Conscience to tell him or warn him by the indeleble Characters of natural right there so legibly Engraved how much he will deserve the censure of such an enemy as hath been mentioned and shall be glad he may be thereby to better effect warn'd then Caesar was from his Vsurpatio● by the great Senatus Consultum which Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law Printed in the year 1530. saith that he saw remaining Engraved on a Marble Pillar by the River Rubicon viz. Iussu mandatúve P. R. Commilito armate quisquis es Manipularisve Centuriove turmaeve legionarie hic sistito vexillumve sinito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa ductum commeatumve traducito Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo ad●ersus praecepta ierit fueritve adjudicatus esto P. R. H. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit penatesque è sacris penetralibus asportaverit S. P. Q. R. Sanctio Plebisciti S● ve C. He likewise saith that In Portu Arimini alterum est adhuc ejusdem sententiae senatusconsultum and which appearing to be a Noble piece of Curiosity and expressive of the same sense wi●h the former tho with some difference of words I shall here entertain the Reader with viz. Imp. Mil. Tiro armate quisquis es hic sistito vexillumve sinito arma deponito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa arma exercitumve traducito Si quis ergo adversus praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto Hostis P. R. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit sacrosve penates è penetralibus asportaverit Sanctio plebisciti senatusconsulti ultra hos fines arma proferre liceat nemini Rivallius having cited these Senatusconsulta saith that Quibus senatusconsultis Caesar fortassis territus cum è Galliâ rediens ad Rubiconem usque pervenisset adversus Pompeium populumque Romanum bellum gesturus esset militibus dixisse fertur et etiam nunc regredi possimus quod si Ponticulum transierimus omnia armis agenda erunt And thus let all members of the● true Church Militant in these Realms by what name or title soever known who have been tempted to think the Exclusion lawful thank Heaven that they have lived to repent of the same and that even now they may go back from the sinfullness of such thought and consider that if they had passed over this Rubicon they were to expect beside the fate of their Involving their Country in War the other tremendous one of being found fighters against God to whom they were sworn I have little further to add but to acquaint the Judicious READER that I desire if he findeth any thing here-said that he may reasonably think to be not according to the Theological measures of the Church of England or the Political ones of the State or against the moral Offices of Charity toward the Persons of 〈◊〉 men or against the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians tho I know of no such thing here said it may by him be taken as non dictum There is no keeping of Passion in number weight and measure and particularly of that of Anger The Excellent Bishop of Downe that was Doctor Ieremy Taylor hath often told me That when he was to return an answer to a Friends Letter that had Anger in it he never concern'd himself to return an answer to the angry part of it because he considered that the anger of his Friend was over before the Letters arrival But against all the Irreligionary Principles of the Iesuits and particularly that of the Founding Dominion in Grace I would crave aid from Posterity for the continuance of my Indignation in the known words of O me propè lassum juvate Posteri but that the Pope hath saved me the labour and so I hope those Principles in them are retiring to the●r Eternal rest and I desire not to hinder their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that no pious Roman Catholick may labour under the weight of being Censured as one who is necessarily to believe and practice some Principles beforementioned out of the LATERAN Council I have mentioned various things that may be of use to that effect and perhaps more satisfactory than what hath by any of their Church been said who have denyed it to be a General Council Such denyal will not effectually do their work since Cardinal Perron hath as I said shew'd it to be a general one and his reputation for his profound Judgment and Learning being so great and such that the late Learned Lord Faulkland the Secretary of State was wont to say That Baronius and

of the Papal Usurpations to expose himself to the fencing with two enraged Multitudes which would have produced the same effect as would a Iesuit's Preaching a Postilling Sermon here against the Yearly burning of the Pope to the Populace employed in that Solemnity My Lord I find my self her engulfed in writing a long Letter and the truth is having a great concern for your Lordship's Honour I am willing to take pains to satisfie my self exactly by thus tracing your Lordship's steps on the Stage of the World that I may satisfie others so about your being as averse as any one can be from supporting any Papal Power to invade the rights of Conscience or those of Princes The Roman Historian speaking of Nero saith Tyrannum hunc per quatuordecem annos passus est terrarum orbis And it may truly be said That England formerly has endured the Popes Tyranny and the Artifices of its Favourers for some Ages But the Patience of Man has bounds and the Propagators of such Usurpation who had so long maintain'd a separate Soveraignty here the which is like an Animal living within an Animal did find that as the lesser creature is evacuated by the greater or destroyed therein or doth else destroy the greater Animal it was so held to be in the case of such Power among us and as no doubt it always will be by your Lordship When your Travels were ended and you had with the help of the Education your Father gave you saved him by your knowledge of the Lex terroe from falling as a prey to Arbitrary Power and thereby shewed your self both a good Son and great Patriot the first Scene of publick Employment wherein your Lordship appeared with Eminency was as Governour of Vlster by Authority under the Great Seal of England a Charge of difficulty when the Forces from Scotland under the Command of Major General Munro had so long ruled absolutely there that the English Interest had suffered a great eclipse and diminution How you managed Affairs during your Government there and how by your Councils the most pernitious and potent Rebel Owen Roe O Neil was opposed and his design to swallow up that Province and the Province of Connaught disappointed and the Protestant Interest in both united and encouraged and under your Conduct and Command the Titular Popish Archbishop of Tuam taken and by the seisure of his Cabinet and Papers the Popish design upon Ireland discovered and broken in due time I doubt not you will more particularly inform the World. From that Service your Lordship was upon the ill success of those Commissioners who were first sent to the then Marquess of Ormond employed to make the Capitulation with the said Marquess then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of the City of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands for securing them from the Irish Rebels who had invested and streightned the same Which happy work was effectually accomplished by the Articles made with the said Marquess already published to the World And so the Protestants Interest in that Kingdom made entire and so considerable that they daily gained ground of the Confederate Rebels till at length they were wholly subdued and vanquished After those Articles concluded and reception of the said City and Garrisons your Lordship was called back into England where being a Member of the House of Commons you shewed your self no less useful to this Kingdom And have since in Parliament and Council and other great Imployments in both Kingdoms shewed your self an Eminent Instrument both in his Majesties happy Restoration who entirely trusted you with the Management thereof and in other great Affairs of State and Government to general satisfaction being never by those that knew you so much as suspected for Evil Council or want of Zeal and Faithfulness to your King or Countrey but every day gaining more the Love and Esteem of Protestants and Patriots as you had incurred the implacable hatred of the Popish and Arbitrary Factions I cannot here but observe That a little before the Kings Restoration the spirit of the people universally shewing its resentments so strong and vehement against Lambert and his Committee of Safety and against all the propounders of projects of Government that nothing but his Majesties return to the Throne of his Ancestors could quiet the people and your Lordship then as President of the Council by your great Wisdom Contributing highly to the dispatch of many arduous and intricate Affairs requisite to make that great Revolution without bloudshed when things near their Center were moving so fast it may well be reckon'd among impossible things that your Lordship should now espouse the Papal interest when the Vogue the Humour the Sense and Reason and Spirit of the People are bent against it with as keen and strong and general an antipathy as can be imagined And when I consider that great real power you had in the Kingdom at that time testify'd not so much by your signing all the great Commissions then for Military and Civil Employments as by both the King and the best and wisest of the people in the Three Kingdoms putting themselves in your hands and having their eyes chiefly upon you as to the management of the Political part of that mighty concern I cannot but thinking of your Lordship whom thus the King and Kingdom delighted to honour apply to you these words in Valerius Maximus where he speaks of Agrippa Menenius whom the Senate and People chose Arbitrator of their differences and to ●ompose matters between them Quantus scilicet esse debuit arbiter publicae salutis Yet as great as this Man was he could have no Funeral unless the people had by a pole given the sixth part of a penny to defray his Funeral Charges But your Lordships case in one particular seems harder then his for they who unjustly go to take away your good Name and to make a Papist of you go about to bury you alive Had your Lordship after the King's Restoration aspired after the power of a chief Minister or suffered any such to be committed to you you must have took it with the concomitance of universal envy that hath always in England been fatal to such power England having always thought such power fatal to it 'T is the power it self of such a Minister that is look't on as a popular Nusance and t is impossible for such a great Man by raising his power only to what he thinks a moderate height to keep it secure and lasting For tho a Steeple be built with firm Stone great Art and but with a moderate height yet are there Clouds charged with Lightning and Thunder and moving in the Ayr sometimes not higher than the top of such a Steeple and the Pryamid or sharpness of such a Steeple then as I may say tapping or broaching such a Cloud that comes that way is instantly Burnt and Thundered down And the Multitude of the

Humane Nature and all the Jesuit's Skill in Divinity will never be able to render them otherwise to the World. I must seriously profess that one saying of the Great Cicero in that little Book viz Ea deliberanda omnino non sunt in quibus est turpis ipsa deliberatio i. e. Those things are not at all to be deliberated wherein the Deliberation it self is filthly has in it I think more frank generous Morality included and that which is more worthy of the ancient Roman and Primitive Christian simplicity then what all the Libraries stuff'd with Bauny Escobar Layman Le Moine Navarrus Azorius Molina Tanuerus Lessuis Emanuel Sa Henriquez and other Numerous Casuistical Jesuits have furnished the world with wherein they do so nicely and infinitely divide the body of Sin in semper divisibilia and indeed make it an infinite Nothing But the world I think will not long deliberate what to do with this Casuistical Divinity of which no truer Description can be given then that 't is a Deliberation of Sin. I do not know any that would eate or drink with another that he thought did deliberate to Poison him Dum deliberant saith Tacitus desciverunt i. e. While they do deliberate whether they should revolt they have revolted their very deliberation and consulting was ipso facto a Revolt I doubt not but many Pious Christians of the Roman Catholic Communion have Complain'd of the effect of their subtle and innumerable distinctions destroying Christianity in that style of the Woman in the Gospel They have taken away My Lord and I know not where they have Layd him and that Considering those Casuists had so far sear'd their Consciences and brazen'd their Foreheads as in the Patronizing of Calumny and other Impieties to defy not only Christs Gospel but the Pope's own Canon Law many Papists importun'd the Pope with their Zeal sutable to that of the Psalmist's to give that decree saying It is time for thee to work for they have made void thy Law. 'T is notorious that the Canon Law as bad as it is is very severe against Calumny and Calumniators and especially against Clergy-men that are such and pronounceth a Clergy-man infamous who is convicted of defaming another and 't was very well worthy the Vigilance of the Pope not to let the Jesuits steal away his Canon Law from him But this must needs be very diverting to this inquiring Age to see Protestants as well as Papists accounting the Popes reducing some immorallities to the Test of his own Canon Law a piece of Reformation and the Pope struggling to effect it and hindred by the Jesuits therein According to the former expression it is time for the Pope to work and to Null that Order that thus nulls his aforesaid Decree in the sight of an awaken'd World and is else likely to Null his Church the Patience of Mankind being the less able longer to bear the weight of Jesuitical Calumnies by its having endured them so long The truth is the Great and Original Cause of the founding of that Order being to cut Heretics Throats for at this plain rate we must speak and call a Spade a Spade when they are digging our Graves with it it was necessary for them to use the art of blackening of Heretics by Calumnies as the Prologue to that Tragedy the which would cause the Heretics to fall unpity'd and 't was necessary to make that black art as lawful as they Could that so they might have their quietus from the World for the arrear of their pass'd frauds and not fear accounting for future ones But as these men will not recede from their Art so neither will Nature recede from it self and our Critical English World now having occasion to pass Judgment of their Calumnies is naturally enforced to Con●ider their former Shammes in States and Kingdomes to aggravate their present ones as Judges still in the Case of Malefactors are obliged to take notice of their having been formerly branded for the same Crimes The execrable Shamme made against the Admiral and others as conspiring to kill the King of France and giving provocation to the Parisian Massacre will never be forgot nor the Shamme that was provided to have charged the Puritans with the Gun-Powder Treason nor that of the Irish Rebels who were so outragiously impudent as to pretend the Commission of our Royal Martyr for their Butcheries Nor yet that of the Jesuites having effected heretofore in Bohemia and lately in Hungary that Counterfeit and forged Letters should be found in the Custody of the Protestants to charge them with Crimes against Caesar. The Memorial of the Sufferings of the Protestant Ministers in Hungary at the Instigation of the Popish Clergy there printed for William Nott in the Pallmall 1676. shews it at Large where 't is said They did not against the Ministers insist much on the Particulars that relate to Religion but great endeavours were used to prove them Complices of the Rebellion the which their Advocates and Councel did manifestly disprove and the Resident of the States of the Vnited Provinces at Vienna did afterward in a Memorial to the Emperour fully and solidly refute Tho the Ministers were indicted in form of Law for having assisted the Rebels by their Councel and supply'd them with Provisions and for having Made way for the Turks to Come in and wast that Kingdome yet none of them as that Discourse sets forth was convicted thereof nor one clear Testimony brought to prove that any one was a Complice of that Rebellion That discourse shews that the Advocatus Fisci did exhibit everal Letters to prove all the Ministers Complices of that Rebellion but that many and great presumptions evinced that these Letters were never produced tho it was frequently demanded by the Ministers and their Advocates that they might be and that yet they could never obtain any thing but a printed Copy of them and thô the Advocates for the Ministers did often press the Fiscal to declare when where or how he came by these Letters yet that was never done That Author having p. 10. mentioned the vile art of Calumny That the Jesuits try'd to exterminate the Protestants out of Hungary by speaks in p. 11 th of the effects of their endeavours saying that upon a Iust account it can be made appear that at several times before and after the Citation against the Protestants meaning the Citation to that vile Process there were above 1200 Chruches of them suppressed It must needs then appear very Ridiculous to the World that when there is not a third part of Hungary that old Bulwark of Christendom against the Turks remaining in the Emperor's hands for so Dr. Brown in his late Travels there Computes it that these Nominal fellows of Christ by nominal crimes charged on real Christians should endanger the exterminating of Christianity out of the European World and the making the Emperor not long so much as a Nominal King in Germany it self

in that Quarter to put an end to that which begins in Nomine Domini and that they will not be the rather willing so to do in regard that the North made the World feel the Malignity of both those Proverbs by its old well-meant charity to the Bishops of Rome And since in the days of Popery here in Harry the 8th's time it did pass in Rem Iudicatam that the Pope had no more power over us by the Scripture then any other forrain Bishop it cannot now but seem ridiculous to scruple whether he can thence claim more authority here than any other forrain Prince and he who was exploded here formerly when the Critical Spectators were not so many for having ill acted the part of a King on our stage of the World would be thought mad for personating one after the Play is over Thus too in a less people World Bartolus the famous Lawyer pronounced it to be Haeresie to deny the German Emperor to be King of the Vniverse the which any one would now account Madness to affirm And if in France hundreds of Years ago its Monarch greeted the Pope with the terms of fatuus amens for claiming a Supremacy in Temporals there 't is impossible he can be otherwise thought there now prosecuting a claim to Supremacy in things Ecclesiastic for even his pretensions to that the Clergy of France have damned in their Declaration by setting a General Council above him and which Declaration the great Monarch hath there ratify'd by a perpetual and irrevocable Edict And 't is but with a Consonancy to the nature of things that the Papal Infallibility should be concluded against in that Declaration and since as the Author of the Policy of the Clergy of France relates the Roman Catholick Church there doth so much swarm with New Phil sophers there call'd Cartesians and Gassendists whose new Philosophy has been there by Zealous Catholics observ'd to have ruin'd the mystery of the Real Presence for so the words are in that Book 't is no wonder if the growth of the Messieurs les scavants encreasing with the Populacy of that Realm makes any man's belief of his infallibility pass for a degree of madness accordingly as Mr. Hobbes Chap. 8. Of Man well observes that excessive opinion of a man 's own self for Divine Inspiration and Wisdome becomes distraction and giddiness and this probably may be the final result there of the late fermentation about the Regalia c. and the Pope be tacitly thought so as aforesaid and his Power there insensibly evaporate and without any visible distrubance given to it by the ratio ultima Regum for no prudent person would declaim reproachfully against any of a quiet Phrensy or molest and vex such a one tho living near him and would much less project the disgrace or mischief of such an one living at a great distance tho he should assume to himself bigger Titles than ever the Kings of India or Persia did and call himself Son of the Sun or Lord of the Sea and Land or like some of the Roman Emperors challenge Divinity or be styled Dominus Deus noster Papa And thus may the Pope quietly go on longer to call himself Monarch of the World without being call'd Names for it in France just as the Dukes of Savoy style themselves Kings of Cyprus without any gainsaying from the Turk who likewise did not menace the Pope for causing the Brother of the Vice-Roy of Naples to be in Rome proclaim'd King of Ierusalem nor when that Gentleman in Requital of that favour from his Holiness caused the Pope to be in Naples proclaimed Caliph of Bandas was the Mogul aggrieved thereby And thus probably too will the Enthusiast's who assert a Millennium or Universal Reign of Christ on earth with that quietness and gentleness that the ancient Fathers before the first Nicene Council did pass off the Stage of the World but it will seem ridiculous not to bind such Fifth Monarchy Men in Chains as Mad-men who have in England and Germany endeavoured to bi●d Kings so and Nobles with Fetters of Iron and who would again make Convulsions in the State by the Diseases of their minds as once Mahomet's Epileptic Fits shook the World and who by promising us a new Heaven and a new Earth would confound the old and only give us a new Hell broke loose But the World will not now be blunder'd into Confusion by such wild Reformers In the Book of the Apocalypse of which Bodin tells us in his Methodus ad facilem Historiarum Cognitionem that Calvin's Opinion being ask'd he answer'd Se penitùs ignorare quid velit tam obscurus scriptor it must be confessed that the Majesty of the Style is agreeable to that of the rest of the holy Text and that the predictions of the future State of the Church and of its splendor in the World are not grosso modo utter'd or attended with any irregularity but on the contrary that God appears there as the God of Order and applying all the exactness of proportion and number and its very fractions to the great things foretold After one Verse hath accounted the number of the Beast to be 666 the next mentions St. Iohn's Vision of a Lamb standing on Mount Sion and with him an hundred forty and four thousand The Bodies of the Witnesses are mentioned to be unburied three days and an half The 4 Angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour and a day and a Month and a Year for to s●ay the third part of Men. The Woman was to be in the Wilderness 1260 days and to be nourished there for a time and times and half a time Blood came out of the Wine-Press by the space of 1600 Furlongs There were Seal'd of all the Tribes of Israel 144000. And in the State of Babylon mentioned in Cap. 18th where the voice from Heaven is heard Come out of her my People though all the various Sects of Religion that thrust one another into Babylon will admit of no proportion in their revenge yet it is there say'd Reward her even as she rewarded you and double unto her double according to her works in the Cup which she hath filled fill to her double But near the end of that Book where the great Scene of The New Heaven and the New Earth opens and the Vision of the New Ierusalem is described a Golden Rod was given the Angel to measure the City and the Measures thereof are particularized And tho I pretend not to understand the meaning of any of these obscure passages of Scripture yet one thing seems to me there as Conspicuous as the Meridian Light namely That as the Divine Providence did found the Old World in Number Weight and Measure so it likewise will the foretold New One. The exactness of the Numbers described by St. Iohn in that Prophetick Book written in the Island of Pathmos hath assured us that his imagination was much above the Vapors that

it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender Branch thereof will not cease tho the Root thereof wax old in the Earth and the Stock thereof die in the Ground yet through the Scent of Water it will bud and bring forth Boughs like a Plant and the hand of the God of Nature kept her hands from extirpating it and the irrigation of Nature wrought more powerfully than her Fi●es and the Scent of Water made Sagacious Loyal Protestants with their Lachrymae verae and lachrymae antiquae presage the growth of Protestancy but as our Laws now are and likely forever to be Protestants here may not only take their measures of the natural duration of their Religion from the similitude of the sublime Prophet viz. as the days of a Tree are the days of my People but from the stability of the Lex terrae and the very Earth I have before spoke of the Papal Power ending in England under Harry the 8th per simplicem desinentiam and by the power of Nature and without the Midwifery of the trouble of his Conscience or any Artifice in troubling the Divines and Academies of Christendom about his Marriage with his Brothers Relict the birth of Fate would by necessity of Nature have I think happen'd as it did Alas His Marrying her who had been his Brothers Wife was only against the Iudicial Law of the Iews and I am sure was not against the Law of Nature as all granting the Law of Nature to be indispensable and the necessity of Cain and Abel Marrying their own Sisters and Gods Commanding them to increase and multiply and God's calling Sara Abraham's Wife who yet was his Sister when as that Matrimonial Contract if it had been against Nature had been null and granting likewise that God who never commanded any thing against the Law of Nature did yet in the Levitical Law Command a Brother to take his Brothers Wife to Marry her and to raise up Seed to his Brother must grant I therefore concluded that without Harry the 8ths either having any Conscience or any Trouble in it the weakest pretence in the strong hand of Nature would have been an effectual Weapon to have then beat down the Papal Power in England It was Nature that did as I may say raise up that strong Seed at that time both in England and Germany and elsewhere that ended in the Divorce of England and many Territories from the Papal Power And to resume the Comparison of the Seed of Plants 't is obvious to us to consider that while our Ships Royal were formerly made of the Oaks in our Forests that were generally self-sown that is such as sprang from Acorns dropping from Trees or that Birds in their flights let fall it may be said that those materials for rearing the Walls of the Kingdom were themselves reared by the hand of Nature and that those Seeds falling in a Soyle proper for them and by the Forest Laws guarded at first from the fe●t of Men or Beasts and by the Autumnal Rains naturally beaten into the Earth and defended by the procerity of many other Trees from the injuries of the Wind and Sun were by the Husbandry of the God of Nature brought within the high Style of Arbores Dei as the Psalmist's expression is And moreover while it many times happens that we see one Timber Tree grow out of the Body of another and particularly an Oak out of a Beech and which may be well supposed to have so happened from an Acorn dropt by a Bird into the hollow part of a decaying Beech and there meeting with a reception from the putrid parts of the Beech and the Rain there furthering its passage downward and the Dews there watering it from Heaven and the Beech fencing it conveniently from the Wind and Sun the Stem of an Oak doth there naturally shoot up and as naturally pierce its way for its strong Branches through the sides of the Beech and work its Root into the ground through the Root of that Tree and in time causeth it as certainly to be thrust out of Nature as it could have been by any extirpation and when a decaying Oak is thus powerfully vanquished by the Seed of a less famous Tree as to this purpose we are told by Mr. Evelyn in his excellent Discourse of Forest Trees that persons of undoubted truth have asserted it that they have seen a Tree cut in the middle whose heart was Ash-wood and the exterior part Oak we may justly say that Nature did produce all these effects And the Energy of nature thus casually causing one Tree to penetrate through another into the Earth and there without noise forever to displace it is as perfectly applicable to Religionary Tenets and Doctrines and thus as I may with a running view observe the Seed of the Christian Religion being tho from some mean and obscure hands dropt on the decaying great Trees of Iudaism and Paganism presently wrought it self through their Bodies and Roots and afterward the nobleness of the temper of the Primitive Christianity decaying in the World that Religion whose heart of Oak had lasted so long and outbraved all the Storms of Persecution was yet pierced through by Arrianism and Arrius perplexing the simplicity of the Christian Religion with such Intrigues of vain Philosophy that instead of converting mens hearts turned their brains and even Constantine's own as appeared by his banishing Athanasius and then recalling and then banishing him again and when the Christian Divines vexed every vein of his heart more than they did Iulian's and very laudably in his Council of Nice presented him with Lampoons one against another and Christianity so soon proving top heavy when 't was made the State Religion of the World and Athanasius himself was at length the only sober Party and when the Arrians happened to be the first Christians that persecuted men for Religionary Tenets and as Grotius in his De Iure belli l. 2. c. 20. tells us In Arrianam haer●sin acriter invehitur Athanasius quod prima in contradicentes usa esset Iudicum pot●state quos non potuit verbis inducere eos vi plagis verberibusque ad se pertrahere anniteretur and did bastinado People into Conversion and when the Orthodox Christians had groaned longer under the Arrian Persecution than they had done under the Pagan and when the Christian Religion whose Precepts do so nobly transcend the Morality of all others did shortly after appear in the World with such a Figure of a Dotard Tree as gave Salvian cause to exclaim Praeter paucissimos quosdam qui mala fugiunt quid est aliud omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum it was but congruous to ●ature that those rapacious Birds of prey the Mahumetans dropping the Seed of their new invented Religion on the Christian as decayed by Arrianism that it should so soon work it self through all its parts and roots in Asia and Africk and that the

Acquaintance as to judge them free from any Complication of the belief and practice of any irreligious Principles with the Principles of their Religion and particularly from the owning any Principle of Disloyalty or the Iesuites Doctrine of Calumny or the Obligatoriness of the Lateran Council will not rashly pronounce any other particular Papist guilty of the belief or practice of such Principles Nor is it any great honour that I have done to any men of extraordinary Vertue in thus judging that they cannot believe or practise such Principles for that it being true in the Course of Nature what Machiavel said that next to the being perfectly good 't is the most difficult thing to be perfectly bad the World hath had thereby some Garranty against the belief and practice of such Principles and by necessity of Nature must still have But since Mankind in general may expect to find in our esteem the benefit of the presumption of Law viz. That every man is presumed to be good and that the high Births and Educations of Princes and the great Examples of their Magnanimous Ancestors may well pass as strong presumptions of Nature against their doing any low ungenerous Acts of Cruelty and since in Gods great Ordinance of Magistracy an especial Divine presence may by Virtue of Holy Writ be presumed to accompany the very Magistrates appointed by Sovereign Prin●es according to that in 2 Chron. 19. 6. where after it was said to the Judges Take heed what you do for yee judge not for man but for the Lord the following words are Who is with you in the Iudgment and that therefore as Christ is said to be present with those Officers he appointed in the Church because there is a special Virtue and Efficacy of Christ manifest in their Ministry there may likewise be expected a special presence Divine in the Administration of Magistracy from the like manifestation of God in his Wisdom Power Goodness c. for the Well-fare of Societies as Mr. Ny observes and since Kings and Princes are an O●dinance of God or Medium by which in a more special and peculiar way he communicates his Goodness to Christians according to the Style of the 13th of the Romans the great Sedes mater●ae of Loyalty for he is the Minister of God to THEE for good it may well be thought profaneness and Sacrilege for men to bode and presume ill of the future Acting of any Heirs to Crowns and particularly as to their believing or practising any thing pernicious to their Realms What Roman Catholick Prince doth not deride Innocent the 3d under whom the Lateran Council was held for telling it in the Canon Law that the Papal Power is as much greater than the Imperial as the Sun is greater than the Moon and at the Marginal Note there for saying That the Papal Power exceeds the Imperial no less than 7744 There is a Prince whose Emblem is the Su● and whose Power exceeds the Papal in every ones account to more than that Proportion And is it not therefore but according to reason and common sense that we should believe that of all men in any Realm the Prince will be the latest brought to the belief of that Papal Power so categorically asserted by that Council That Kings may be Excommunicated by their own Bishops for not obeying the Pope and their Subjects in such Case be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance Do not all the French Kings notwithstanding that Council claim the liberty of so much freedom from the Papal Power that Popes can neither directly nor indirectly command or ordain any thing concerning Temporal Matters within their Dominions and that neither the French King nor his Realm nor his Officers can be Excommunicated or interdicted by the Pope nor his Subjects absolved from their Oath of Allegiance As I have therefore in my Writing to a Noble Lord one of his Majesty's Ministers who was barbarously accused by one of the Plot-Witnesses for being a Papist and designing to advance the Papal Power said that I would be the last man in England who would believe he could be a Papist meaning it as impossible that he could believe or practise any irreligionary Tenet of Popery I will account it more impossible that any Roman Catholick Prince now living in the World should favour the Usurpation of the Papal Power however any of the Popish Clergy or Layety in his Realms might perhaps be addicted to favour the same That great Affair of the Munster P●ace wherein so many great Roman Catholick Crown'd Heads agreeing perhaps in the Lateran Council being a General one did yet certainly agree together in the Year 1648 for Lutheran and Calvinistick Princes and States and their Subjects quietly possessing forever their Properties both in their Religions and Estates hath afforded the World an important Instance of Heavens so far influencing the understandings of those Crown'd Heads that they thought not themselves obliged to put the Decree of that Council in practice by exterminating Hereticks but to the contrary And because the Affair of that Peace and the great Pacta Conventa therein for the effect aforesaid have been scarce more taken Notice of here than the Transactions in China and that the notification of the same may advance the measures of our Duty by Internal Communion and help to un-blunder some of our Nominal Protestants in their fancying it so necessary for the quiet of Christendom that Christian Princes and their Subjects should agree in the belief of the Speculative points of Religion I intend to take an opportunity to publish some Account of the same I account my having thus largely dilated on the Moral Offices as aforesaid hath tended to corroborate this my 8th Conclusion I am here conversants in the great Court of Conscience the Court whose Seat is in the Practical and not Speculative intellect and the great things of which it holds Plea are as Sanderson tells us Actus morales particulares proprii and therefore particular urging of Records against which lies no averment is not more pertinent in Courts of Law than of Moral Offices in this And moreover I observing in this Conjuncture when many mens zeal hath been so hot against the Speculative points of Popery which disturb not Civil Society that yet they have believed the more pernicious Tenet of it and would have practised the same viz. The founding Dominion in Grace and that tho they have been altogether neglect●ul of their Actus morales particulares proprii they have both presumed to judge dishonourably and rashly of the Actings of others and to trouble the World not only with their Anxiety about the Acts of Kings and Princes but the Actus Dei and his illuminating Princes understandings with the Heavenly Mysteries I have thought this discoursing of our Moral Offices as aforesaid the more a Propos and seasonable as tending to fortify the rationality of this 8th Conclusion by exposing the absurdity of a respective or conditional Loyalty a