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A41194
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Whether the preserving the Protestant religion was the motive unto, or the end that was designed in the late revolution in a letter to a country gentleman as an answer to his first query.
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Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.
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1695
(1695)
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Wing F766; ESTC R35674
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40,307
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48
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that traded thither to disclaim being Christians and only to own themselves Hollanders who knew no Religion but Profit nor had other Ends or Aims save to gain and heap up Wealth And besides many other Instances which might be assigned of their abandoning all Care and Concernment for the Protestant Religion in other Nations when the doing so is reconcilable to their Safety and worldly Advantage it may not be amiss to put you in remembrance of their furnishing Lewis the XIII with Ships to subdue Rochel when it was the chief Cautionary Town as well as the strongest and most opulent which the Reformed in France had to entitle them to a quiet and peaceable Enjoyment of their Religion Nor is it unseasonable to ask That if they embarked to assist in the dethroning of the King of Great Brittain out of zeal for preserving the Protestant Religion to these Nations how comes it then that they have so little interposed with their Confederate the Emperour for some Lenity and Favour to his Protestant Subjects in Hungary And that they have not dealt with their other Allie the King of Spain for abolishing the Inquisition And that he would not continue to make Bonfires of his Subjects whensoever any of them turn Protestants Nay their entering into the Conspiracy for subduing and deposing his Majesty was so far from being done from Motives relative to the Honour and Safety of the Protestant Religion that it was laid and forwarded by the greatest Falshood and Treachery that ever either a Crowned Head or a Republick was guilty of For what can be more inconsistent with good Morals namely with Truth and Justice or less reconcilable to the Principles of Christianity than not only to attack a King upon his Throne with whom they were in League without giving him Warning or seeking for Reparation of Injuries if he had done them any and without desiring an Adjustment of Differences and Misunderstandings where there were such but to invade his Kingdoms with a Naval and Land Strength after the solemnest Protestations made to the King himself by Cittars their Ambassador here and the greatest Assurances given immediately by the States General to the Marquess d'Albeville his Majesty's Envoy there That they had no Design against him and that their Preparations were not in order to disquiet him on his Throne or disturb the Peace of his Kingdoms but that they were for a purpose meerly relative to themselves and in which his Majesty was no ways interested So that after so fraudulent and perjurious an Act the Commencement of the War being in Violation and Contempt of actual and subsisting Treaties I do challenge any Man to believe without doing violence to his Mind that the Dutch are in the practical Belief of any Religion and much less that they co-operated to the Revolution out of care to preserve the Reformed Doctrine and Worship to these Three Nations Alas It was upon other Inducements that they concurred to involve these Nations in War and Blood which we might easily have discovered but would not For they no sooner observed the King's putting an end to Persecution in his Dominions and thereby doing that which might have reconciled his People to one another and should have united them all to him nor sooner found that he had too much Honour and Courage and withall bore more Love and Tenderness to his People to suffer them either to be wormed or insulted out of their Trade And had likewise perceived that as he was an admirable Oeconomist of the publick Treasure so he was a great Encourager of all over whom God had set him to Industry and Vertue but that they grew immediately thereupon apprehensive that we would become more Strong and Opulent than would be for their Interest or prove consistent with the Tricks and Rapines they had been accustomed to practise in ways of Commerce And as these were the Provocations upon which they desired to see his Majesty dethroned so the Ambition of the Prince of Orange of whom it may be said in the Words of Tacitus That cupido dominandi cunctiâ— affectibus flagrantior that all his Lusts as well as his Obligations give place to his Aspirings after Sovereignty together with the Discontents in England which the Means and Methods to our Happiness had filled us with administred them an Opportunity of stepping in to ruin the King and to make us miserable which they easily foresaw would be the effect of it And as they speedily had the Satisfaction to see the first performed so they have now also the Pleasure to behold us impoverished and weakened to that degree which was the second Thing they longed for That an Age under the mildest wisest and justest Government will not restore us to that Condition at least in their Opinion as to beget either their Jealousy or their Envy or which may hinder them from wresting from us what parts of our Trade they please For they are a People that will call it Friendship to us to rob us ubi solitudinem â—â—ciunt pacem appellant to borrow another of Tacitus's Phrases Noâ— will any meanâ— in human View prevent our becoming in a very litâ—le time the Contempt of all Nations about us for Weakness and Poverty and much less raise us again to that State of Strength Opulency and Glory in which we were but the calling home the King with all the Expedition we can and combining together with united Hearts and Hands to shake off the Usurper with his Benâ—ings and Ginckles Qui se partem nostrae Republicae faciunt that I may use an Expression of Tacitus but are in an apparent Conspiracy with the High and Mighty at the Hague to reduce these Kingdoms to a Feebleness and Indigency out of which they have a Design we shall never emerge Nor did the great Man who keeps his Palace at Kensington bring an Army into England and serue himself to the Throne upon any Motives of saving the Protestant Religion or out of any Intentions of kindness and good will to it but meerly upon the Impulse of Pride Haughtiness and Ambition and to gratify his Aspirings after a Crown I am not ignorant how he hath been represented and painted forth by your Temporizing Mercenary and Sycophant Divines as the Saviour of our Religion and Liberties and that the godly Saint and the heavenly divine Man would not have violated all the Tyes and Bonds of Nature and trampled upon the Precepts of the Decalogue and the Sanctions of the Bible but upon the Inducements of Zeal for God and his holy Religion which by Examples taken from Phineas and Ehud transform Murther into Sacrifices and by Presidents derived from the Israelites borrowing the Ear-rings of the Egyptians consecrate and hallow Rapines and Robberies The Panegyricks upon him on this Account of your Tillotsons Tenisons Patricks and Burnets c. are more Frontless and Fulsom than what your Shadwels Settles or any of your Grubstreet Poets who claim a Dispensation of Lying
more especially out of all Capacity to revenge it Ill Thoughts and Intentions in a Prince to his People though they abide so artificially and industriously concâ—â—led that none have detected them do yet not only continually haunt the Projector as Informers that his Designs are discovered and understood but are ever councelling him to close with all Methods which may obviate and prevent a Retaliation But the King thought his Protestant Subjects had been as free from Rebellious Designs against his Person Crown and Dignity which indeed most of them were as he was from any usurping and tyranous ones against their Legal Rights Liberties and Religion and that withheld and restrained him from accepting an Assistance in his Defence when there was a plotted formed and maturated Conjunction between the Prince of Orange and States of Holland abroad and too many of several Perswasions Communions and Factions at home to drive him out of his Kingdoms if not to murther him Which he stood not far out of the danger of when the Sunday Night before the Prince of Orange came to London it was proposed and debated at Windsor to make him a Prisoner But that being opposed by some Persons whom it was not then thought convenient and safe to contradict and disoblige It was thereupon resolved the Night following at Sion-house to require him immediately and at a very unseasonable Hour to abandon and withdraw from his Royal Palace Which was so ordered upon prospect and hope that he would not have complied and that thereby a Pretence would have been administred of sending him to the Tower from whence his next Stage would have been to the Neighbouring Hill there being but a few Steps between a King's Prison and his Grave Nor would he in any likelihood have escaped the Snare that was thus artificially laid for him nor have avoided the Danger that was lurking behind it but that some of those entrusted with the Conveyance of the Message delivered it with such Accent Tone and accompanying Circumstances as both awakened him to apprehensions of his Peril and guided him to submit to what was so inhumanly and barbarously prescribed unto him But to return to the Enforcement of the Argument I am upon for proving that the King could have no secret Intentions nor have been carrying on any concealed Designs in order to overthrow our Religion in that he refused French Forces at a Season when they were both Generously offered and he extreamly needed them and when by all the Laws of God and the Kingdom he might have received and employed them for the withstanding a Foreign Army commanded by an ambitious and unnatural Prince which came to divest him of his Sovereign and Legal Rights For if the States of Holland might send and the Prince of Orange bring Troops into England let the Pretence be what it will and the Brittish Subjects that Invited and gave Encouragement unto it be never so many and of what Quality any think fit to have them the King might with much more Justice and Right have desired and received Turks and Tartars as well as French to oppose and beat them out Seeing both the Power of War and the lawful Authority of defending the Kingdom being lodged Sovereignly and Solely in his Majesty and the ways of managing the one and the other being entirely entrusted with his Wisdom save as he pleased to call for Advice he might without any Violation of the Rules of the Constitution have furnished himself with necessary Forces from whence he thought fit for the defence of his Person and the Government whereas none of his Subjects could raise Forces at home or invite them from abroad without rendering themselves guilty of the highest Disloyalty and Treason Nor could the States of the Seven Provinces being in League and declared Terms of Amity with his Majesty send or authorise their Troops to come hither without becoming obnoxious to the Crime and Charge of contemning and violating Publick Treaties of breaking through all that is Sacred and of trampling upon every Thing on which the Peace of Nations doth depend And as for the Prince of Orange himself he being no Sovereign Prince but the Servant of a late though wealthy Republick he possibly might have the Right as Statholder into which he wound himself by Perjury and Murther to exercise some Authority in his own Country or he might have the Privilege to set up for a Knight Errant to combat Wind-mills and kill Dragons but he had no Authority by the Laws of God or Nations to invade and attack a Rightful King in the quiet and peaceable Possessions of his own Dominions And by assuming the Insolence and taking upon him the Injustice to do it he stands proclaimed by all the Revelations relative to Societies in the Bible and by the whole Civil Law which is the Law of Nations to be a Robber and an Usurper and to have all the Blood that hath been shed in Europe by reason of and as an effect and consequence of his Invasion to be charged upon him and laid at his Door and for which he will be made accountable at the great Tribunal Nor can his Majesty's Authority and Right to have received and called French Troops be questioned by our Revolutioners and Abdicators themselves seeing we allow and suffer the like and much worse in that Pageant King we have dressed up and erected For notwithstanding of that vast Army of Brittish and Irish Troops with which to the impoverishment of the Nation we continue to furnish him and notwithstanding he is fulsomly represented in Pulpits and with a flattering as well as a mean Cringingness addressed unto by Corporations as the Saviour of our Liberties and Religion yet he challengeth a Right and we like a tame slavish People both connive at and approve it not only of keeping among us contrary to his solemn Promise given in his Declaration dated at the Hague several Dutch Forces Horse as well as Foot whom he claps and fasteneth upon the Nation as a Badg that he esteems us no better than conquered Vassals but if we may believe the Prints which come from abroad he hath sent for Ten thousand more outlandish Souldiers to insult and triumph over us as his subdued Slaves While in the mean time he sends our native Forces into Flanders to perish by Famine and Sword as Sacrifices to his Ambition and to have the Infamy which he calls Glory of dying in a Dutch Quarrel Nor do I wonder that he will not trust the defence of the Kingdom to our own Troops seeing he cannot but be sensible with what Arbitrariness he hath Ruled over us and how he hath Cheated Impoverished and Ruined us and that if we had but as much Sense Reason and Courage left us as we have Provocation and Cause of Anger and Indignation given unto us we would Revenge our selves upon him for the Wrongs he hath done the Kingdom as well as for those he hath done the King Whereas that