the Irish as well as of the 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 as the Divine bounty dispenseth itself to the Sinful yet with respect to the Government of the World. And as the love of an Indulgent Father may be measured more by the kindness he would shew an obstinate son were he qualified to receive it then by what he doth who tryes all methods to reclaim him by his Will Disinherits him and goes down to the shades below without revoking such a Will and yet in his life-time with the tenderest bowels and softest language he was constantly bemoaning that Sons being not a Subject fit or capable to participate in the Estate equally with his Brethren Thus too may the love of the Pater Patriae and of the Country it self be demonstrated to these our obstinate Brethren more by the Favour we do not afford them then by what we do having often seen the truth of what Solomon saith that the prosperity of fools destroys them But as I said before I would be glad that the Papists themselves would try to find out what way of security the Wisdom of His Majesty and His great Councel may acquiesce in so that any bitter way may not be prescribed to them by public Authority as perhaps this of Transplantation or some other may seem and that persons of innocent Tempers and Principles may not be carryed off with those of noxious ones as all strong purging Phisic disposesseth the body of some good Humours as well as bad and I therefore wish that they may rather satisfie His Majesty that they have transplanted into their minds some such Principles as are to be found not only in Protestant but Heathen Authors to incline men to be Gods and not Devils to one another and those Principles growing in the Soil of Nature when transplanted into the mind of a Christian are much more generous and improved like the Vines on the Rhine transplanted into the Fortunate Islands and whereby a Protestant King may Sit securely in His Throne and His Protestant Subjects sleep securely in their houses and walk securely in the Streets without fear of the fate of Sir Edmond Godfrey and Mr. Arnold pursuing them upon a declaratory sentence that they are Hereticks by a shabby Consult of a few ignorant Priests in a blind Cabaret without citing them to shew cause why they should not be knock't on the head by Villains who account themselves the Popes Sheriffs and at the worst that happens to them his Martyrs a fate of Proteâ—â—ants worse then they suffered in the Dog-days of Queen Maryes Reign that Canicula Persecutionis as Tertullian's phrase is for then they were not murder'd but after a Tryal for their Lives and Liberty granted to recant at stake Methinks when they consider the Popes Decree made at Rome the second of March 1679. condemning some Opinions of the Iesuits and other Casuists the which in Latin and English was printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1679. and see thereby that the Augean Stable of the Casuists being so full of Filth that it could hold no more the Pope to avoid the scandal of the World and danger to those Souls who by the practice of those Opinions were not at that time sent to the place from whence there is no Redemption though yet as the excellent Author of the Preface to that decree here printed judiciously observes That the Pope treats those Opinions very gently and mercifully and indeed doth not declare them ill in themselves or such a Nusance to souls that he could not dispence with and when they likewise consider that most of those Opinions if not all were Rules allow'd by Iesuits or other Casuists for Confessors and Penitents to go by in the securing of the great concern of Eternity till that time and that Guymenius with the approbation and permission of his Superiors in the year 1665. favours most if not all of those Opinions with a colourable gloss out of Councels Fathers School-men and Divines and endeavours to throw off the Odium from the Iesuits for them upon the whole Roman Church they should now be so awaken'd as throughly to examine both those and other points in that Religion supposing that some future Pope may declare the Souls left in the lurch that hold some other Opinions recommended to them by their Spiritual guides without their having obtained a papal dispensation to hold them My Lord though I believe your Lordship to have ever had as keen an Antipathy against Caballing with any Papists as good old Iacob shewed he had against that with Simeon and Levy of which he said O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their assembly mine honour be not thou united yet their necessary applications to your Lordship in your administration of the Privy Seal and their voluntary recourse to the hospitality of your noble and constant Table where any one in the habit of a Gentleman is allowed to be your Guest giving you opportunities of discoursing sometimes with Papists I suppose your advice to them to consult with one another in peace how to satisfie His Majesty that all bloody Consults being by them abandon'd he himself may enjoy the Kings peace and we his Subjects enjoy that Peace of the King which his very Wild Beasts in the Forrest enjoy as I said before and where any of the Inhabitants if they have lights in their Windows that may affright the Kings Deer are lyable to punishment by the Forrest law and that we being delivered from the hands of our Enemies may serve God without fear in holiness and righteousness all the dayes of our Lives and not be in danger of being in the Kings High-way knock't on the head like Weasels or Polecats by base Ruffians not worthy to feed the Dogs of our Flocks I say I suppose your Lordships advice backt with those reasons against Popery that you alwayes carry ready told may especially at this time when the ecce duo gladii or two Votes of the House of Commons in the last two Parliaments cannot be forgot by any of them occasion their offering that to the consideration of His Majesty and his great Councel that may render the Kingdom safe from any hostility of their Principles or Practises Your Lordship hath one advantage in giving advice beyond most men I know and perhaps no man is Master of that advantage more then your Lordship and that is your advice to any of Mankind is the advice of a friend for both by your natural temper and a habit that can plead the prescription of sixty years for its continuance in your Soul and a sharpe edge of Wit and Reason to justifie your claim to it so it is that you are in a constant readiness to shew your self a friend
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
the exhalations of which may cast such Mists before Mens understanding Faculties as to hinder them from seeing their way in the observance of the Oaths they took and therefore as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or premuniment as I call'd it against our being future Enemies to our selves and against poor little Mortals as it were standing for the Office of Conservators of Gods glory while they are losing their own Souls by Perjury and against some Loyal Timid People troubling themselves with falling Skies and fears of Gods not upholding his Church just as Galen tells us of a Melancholy Man who by often reading it in the Poets how Atlas supported Heaven with his Shoulders was often in a Panic fear least Atlas should faint and let Heaven fall on mens heads instead of taking pains to uphold and maintain their Oaths which they swore to God in Truth and Righteousness it may perhaps be always of importance to our English World to have right Notions of the Obligation of those Oaths left behind in it When I have read many of the late Pamphlets against the Succession the Venom of which was stolen out of Doleman's alias Parson's Book and have often considered that the Government in King Iames's time might we ll be apprehensive of the mischief that Book might do with its Poyson and perhaps with its Sting in following Ages I have then wondered why none was employed to Answer it throughly a thing that I do not find was ever done unless it may be said that an Answer to the 1st part of it was in the year 1603 published by Sir Iohn Haward and that its 2d part hath been confuted by some Loyal and Learned Persons since the late Conjuncture of our Fermentation and in which time that Book of Parsons was Reprinted I am sorry that that Book and some others of Father Parsons were in some part of King Iames's time Answered as they were by the real Characters of severity that then fell on some innocent Papists and who I believe were Abhorrers of the Sedition his Books contained and on whom Dr. Donne's Pseudo-Martyr printed in the year 1610 reflects in The Advertisement to the Reader saying That his continual Libels and incitatory Books have occasioned more afflictions and drawn more of that Blood which they call Catholick than all our Acts of Parliament have done And with a just respect to the Learning in Sir Iohn Haward's Answer to the first part of that Book and by him Dedicated to King Iames it may yet be wished that with less Pomp of Words and greater closeness of Argument referring to the Principles of internal Justice and natural Allegiance and the lex terrae he had shewn the perfect unlawfulness of defeating the Title of Proximity of Blood in the Case and instead of so much impugning the Book by References to the Civil Law and old Greek and Latin Authors making for Monarchy in general or even by the places cited out of the old Testament favouring primogeniture and indeed I do not find among all our late Writers for the Succession that so much as one of them by so much as once quoting this Book of Sir Iohn Haward tho so common hath thence brought any Aid to their Noble Cause But however the Oath of Allegiance having been enjoyned since the writing of Sir Iohn Haward's Book hath given an ordinary Writer the advantage of bringing the Cause of the unlawfulness of disturbing the Course of Succession to a quicker hearing and speedier issue in the Court of Conscience which is the point I have endeavoured to carry after the end of this Discourse leaving it to Candid Men to judge of the sincerity of my performance therein and of my fair stating of the Question and the deducing genuine Propositions from it so stated and which shall yet be reviewed by me when I come to Review this Discourse The truth is when I began it I observed the generality of Men who writ against the Exclusion-Bill with a great deal of good Law History and State-policy did shew both their Learning and their Loyalty and did very usefully set forth the dreadful Confusions it would introduce and perpetuate in the State and the Illegality and indeed Nullity of any Exclusion tho by Act of Parliament was by them likewise usefully shewn but yet I think it would have been some scandal to the present Age if it had passed away without transmitting to the next some instances of Protestants who had leisure to write writing of the unlawfulness of such a Bill with relation to our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and I was sorry to find that when the late Loyal and Learned Bishop of Winchester had afterward appear'd as the first Dâ—vine who in Print asserted That the Exclusion of the Right Heir was contrary to the Law of God both Natural and Positive and that such Exclusion was against the Law of the Land also his judgment in his Book called the Bishop of Winchester ' s Vindication given so Learnedly in the point seemed to so many of our new pretenders to Loyalty and to Conformity to the Church of England to be a kind of a Novelty But yet I observed that that Learned Prelate thought not fit there to strengthen his Assertion of the unlawfulness of such Exclusion by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Nor did I observe that among all the Loyal Writers for the Succession I had met with from first to last any one had surveyed the Question of the unlawfulness of the Exclusion resulting from our Obligation by the Oaths of Allâ—giance and Supremacy tho yet some few of them hinted the thing in general and were still answered with the haeres viventis till at last another Divine namely Dr. Hicks Vicar of All hallows Barking and Dean of Worcester honoured both himself and the Question by taking notice of it in his Iovian and in the Preface to a Sermon of his printed in the year 1684 and Entituled The harmony of Divinity and Law in a Discourse about not resisting Sovereign Princes and he in the 3d p. of that Preface observes That some men did pervert the meaning of the word Heirs in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy from its common and usual acceptation to another more special on purpose to elude the force and obligation of them which otherwise they must have had upon the Consciences of the Excluders themselves The Doctor had made himself Master of Law enough to Master the true notion of the point and did in his Preface exorcise the Fantom of haeres viventis a Noon-day Spright raised by one who was thought a great Conjurer and which had before haunted the Question and had affrighted so many from lodging their thoughts in it And tho no other of our Divines that I have heard of writ of the same nor any of the Layety otherwise than starting the Notion of it in Print yet considering the great weight of his Learning and Reason with which in
whom any one hath spoken of killing the King will dare to reveal it to any one for fear of being put in Prison and punished for that he was willing to save the life of the King and preserve the whole Kingdom whereas in Cases of such Consequence it ought to be free to any man to Accuse another not only without fearing any thing but further with hopes of great Recompence having a respect never the less not to believe too lightly nor to Condemn any Person upon the bare Affirmation of another without good Indications and Proofs I believe that the King advertised of this matter will at least take care of the Deliverance and Safety of him that could not endure to hear any speak of murdering him I am apt to think that the horror of the Fact of such an Out-rage to the Persons of Kings so much astonishing the imaginations of the Loyal and the very Idea of it being so ghastly as to affright them from Contemplating it hath partly contributed to some Omissions in the Worlds providing against it and it hath been so incident to Writers to mention it without thinking of its horror that a late useful voluminous Collector we had began the first Edition of the first Part of his Works with a very inauspicious Sentence telling us of King Iames his declaring his being so much disinclined to Popery because it holds Regicide and other grosser Errors as if it were possible for any man of Sense to call such an execrable outragious Treasonable practice an Error or to range it in the Class of Errors or as if even any damnable Error or Heresy either could be more gross than that In the next Edition he a little mended the matter by saying and other gross Errors but he afterward mended the Book to better purpose by causing that Sentence to be quite left out My intended Review of this Discourse that I lately acquainted the Reader with is mentioned particularly at the end of it where I observe the Customariness of Authors of large Discourses bestowing on them a short Review and do think that the Corroborating some of the various important Calculations therein relating to matters Political may perhaps be of publick use I shall not trouble my self with Corroborating any thing of the Plot which hath so much weakened the Nation nor with strengthening any sayings of Witnesses that have weakened the Plot. Let about 2 or 3 Lines that I think in this large Discourse may have referred to the propping up any little matter by citing for it the Plot-Witnesses in general take their Fate to be either remembred or forgot by others as much as they are almost by me and but one of whom is on the Account of Testimony so much as named and whose name hath been mentioned in this Preface Nor shall I have occasion to choque any Party or as I may rather say all Parties with any thing of Controversy that may be called Religionary or matters that refer not to numbers But the fixing of Political Observations on numbers in some things so great as I have attempted is a Task very difficult for a person much Superior to me in intellectual endowments to do so clearly and satisfactorily as the matter will bear and is not possible to be done by any without the Expence of that time in consulting Records and Registries and Offices of Accounts and many particular Persons which I hitherto could not spare but hope to be shortly able to do for my Readers satisfaction as well as my own and having so done I shall publish a Review of this Work by it self making such Additions or other Alterations as to what I have here observed as I shall see cause And as I have shewed that Reverence to the Age as not to expose my thoughts Magisterially of matters relating to Numbers but have therein either cited Authors of Note about the same that so their Credit may vouch for the thing asserted and not mine or have fairly my self Calculated the things or if I have omitted either to cite Authors or to make Calculation when I have asserted any thing relating to Numbers I have still endeavoured to keep within Compass and Bounds in my reckoning and not to favour my assertion by exceeding them so I shall most readily on occasion acknowledge my mistake in any point however or from whomsoever arising nor can any man I think be tempted to do other in a matter of this Nature and wherein his mistake amouâ—ts not to any thing like the making of false Money or the designed putting it off in Exchange but only to the false telling of true and which I desire the Reader to tell after me as often as he pleaseth and do wish him if ever he hopes that men would receive the belief of matters of moment upon his Authority that he would first satisfie them that he hath implicitly believed no man and for which purpose I once writ my mind by a poor plain Verse in the Album of a German on his importuning me there to write my name with some saying or other viz. Is nulli credat credi qui vellet ab omni Meaning it as to matters that may be reduced ad firmam by Calculation I remember not that I have cited any Authors extravagant Calculation or Error without somewhat of a fair Remark on it and do suppose any one to labour under a Disease of Credulity who doth otherwise and do account that Cicero himself was therewith infected when as to the Error in a Childish Report he saith so gravely in his 2d Book De divinatione Tages quidam dicitur in agro Tarquiniensi cum terra araretur sulcus altius esset impressus extitisse repente eum affatus esse qui arabat c. For Ovid in his Metamorphosis to tell us this of Tages that Famous Hetruvian Sooth-sayer was not so much to be wondered at Our Excellent Historian therefore of Harry the 8th when he mentions that Harry the 7th left in his Coffers a Million and 8 hundred thousand Pounds Sterling to Harry the 8th and such as might be thought effectively quadruple to so much in this age did but right to his own Credit by inserting the Clause of if we may believe Authors I have in p. 109 mentioned that when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown which was in the year 1558 the Customs made not above 36000 l. per Annum and which I was induced to believe partly on the relation of some whose Ancestors were Officers of the Customs in her Reign and whose Papers and Accounts they now have But I found after the printing of that Sheet that I had made sure of being within the Compass of Truth and likewise Modesty as to my Estimate and looking into my Notes out of Cambden about it I found that about the year 1590 and after all her Glories of 88 her Customs were farmed but for 14 thousand Pounds Sterling a year One would wonder that our
Treaty cited in the Margent of the Author of The Reasonable Defence as I have mentioned the thing with Historical Truth Arch-Bishop Brambal in p. 178 of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of that Peace and how thereby freedom of Religion was secured to Protestants and Bishopricks and other Ecclesiastical Dignities conferred on them and that many Lands and other Hereditaments of great value were alienated from the Church in Perpetuity and yet the Popes Nuntio protested against it and having there in his Margent referred to the aforesaid Bull of Pope Innocent saith yet the Emperor and the Princes of Germany stand to their Contracts assert the Municipal Laws and Customs of the Empire and assume to themselves to be the only Iudges of their own Privileges and Necessities And moreover Sir William Temple in his said Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire writ in 1671 mentioning The Domestick Interest of the Empire to be the limited Constitution of the Imperial Power and the Balance of the several free Princes and States of the Empire among themselves saith that those Interests have raised no doubt since the Peace of Munster While the Iesuites make the Pope infallible and some Anti-Papists generally make him a meer natural Agent that must always Act Ad extremum virium I fear not to take a middle way and to suppose him to be a rational Animal and one that knows when the Papacy is not to exert its former Principles against the Power of Kings and lives of Hereticks and for this reason namely Quia deerant vires and one who will not do it for the Future in all places Quia deerunt vires He is not to learn the reasonableness of that Gloss in his Canon Law that Canes propter pacem tolerantur in ecclesiâ and especially when the Heretical Dogs are there the most numerous nor needed he or the Popish or Protestant Princes of the Empire to have been minded of the Dutch Proverb so well known there viz. Veel Honden Zyn de' haez dâ—ot i. e. Many Dogs are the Hares death and that the old sport of hunting down Hereticks with Crusado's was hardly practicable when both Popish as well as Protestant Princes were weary of it and that therefore according to the saying Difficile est ire venatum invitis Canibus Nor was either the Pope or the Popish Princes of Germany to be taught that if ever there was to be that wild thing of a Crusado against Hereticks again better use might be made of them then by killing them and that it would turn to better Account to deal with them as Mathew Paris tells us on the year 1250 the time about which Crusado's were most in fashion and when Popes that had a mind to ravish the Regal Rights of Princes would take an opportunity to do it by sending them on Fools Errands to the Holy Land that the Pope dealt with the many Pilgrims who were Cruce signati in an Adventure for that Land namely that he very fairly sold those crossed Pilgrims for ready Money as the Iews did their Doves and their Sheep in the Temple And if the 100,000 Hereticks that I mentioned out of Bellarmine as slain by one Crusado had been sold but for 20 l. Sterling each a fond might have been thereby provided for the incommoding the Turk very much more than by the taking from him the Holy Land. But the Pope and those Popish Princes are sufficiently sensible of their want of Power for any such Nonsensical Outrage and I wish that our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance and who with Bellarmine have agreed in that being the Cause of the Primitive Christians not attempting to shake the Empire namely because they had not strength to do it were but as sensible as the Papacy is of their wanting strength to do it in England No marvel therefore that the Iupiter Capitolinus in his Bull of Nullity did not discharge the old Artillery of the Lightning and Thunder of Anathemas and the greater Excommunications against the Emperor and Roman-Catholick Crown'd Heads and Princes concerned in the Munster Peace as I have shewn nor according to the Expression in the Reasonable Defence damned them to the Pitt of Hell for it No both the World and the Papacy were so Metamorphosed and their old fashions so far passed away that those Popish Crown'd Heads found that there was in this Bull only what partly resembled that which Ovid tells us of in his Metamorphosis viz. Est aliud levius sulmen cui dextra Cyclopum Saevitiae flammaeque minus minus addidit irae Tela secunda vocant superi c. But as I just now expressed my wishes that some of our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance were as sensible of their wanting strength to subvert the Rights of the Monarchy in England as the Pope was of his wanting it to break the Measures of the Crown'd Heads relating to the Munster Peace I have in this Discourse expressed not only my hopes but belief that nature it self which is thus always Acting to the extremity of its Power will overpower the Arts by which they have been seduced to Principles for endeavouring it and will render the Principles of many of our Protestant Recusants coincident with those of the Primitive Christians instead of those of the Jesuites and that this Storm which the World hath brought on the Irreligionary part of their Principles as well as of the Iesuites both of which have brought so many dismal Storms on the World will make them come to an Avarage and to submit to the casting many of their Principles over-board as well as the Iesuites have been obliged so to do by the Pope as Master of the Vessel commanding the same And as in a Storm the very Victuals of the Mariners are often according to the Maritime Law cast into the Sea to lighten the Vessel it may resemblingly be expected that many of our Dissenting Religionaries will now part with some of those Principles that have in their Religion-Trade afforded them a Subsistance and that when they shall consider how this present Pope notwithstanding the Privilege of a Master of a Ship by which he may refuse to begin the Iactus by throwing out first his own Wares and Goods did about a year before he threw out the Lumber of the Iesuites and Casuists throw over-board a vast Treasure of Papal Indulgences and by which the Ship of the Papacy was formerly victualled It was by the Popes Decree of the 7th of March 1678 that a Multitude of Indulgences was suppressed and the Names of 14 Famous Popes are there mentioned as having granted some thereof and great numbers of others are by him quashed without mentioning the Popes by whom granted and there was a particular Clause in the Decree that did shake the whole Body of Indulgences And tho the Virgin Mary hath been by many of the Vulgus of Papists oftner pray'd to in Storms than the Trinity
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 â—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
and likewise any one that owned any of those Pernitious Principles that strike at the heart of the Civil Government and that they would presently give his Majesty an accompt of all their own Names Places of abode and Numbers of their Families and that they would not live in nor come to the Court nor into any of our Cities or great Towns without leave obtain'd pursuant to the Statute of the 35 th of Elizabeth Ch. 2. wherein 't is Enacted under several Penalties That they shall not remove above Five miles from their dwellings and to give in their Names to the Constables Headborough and Minister c. and that the people might be delivered not only from any danger by them but any fears that might fall on a wise man either of their power or numbers encreasing I should joyfully entertain such an invention But what way of that kind is practicable I am altogether ignorant But do suppose that the present Lawes Oaths and Tests ought to continue till with the Consent of His Majesty and Lords and Commons in Parliament we are further secured I know that we ought to be much more vigilant over English Papists then over any Forrainers for that 't is a kind of a Rule that Angli nil modicum in Religione possunt and therefore that no Popish Priest who is a Subject to England can with the public safety live here Your Lordship hath I think as comprehensive a knowledg of the affairs of Ireland as any man can have and therefore I shall here tell you that a Gentleman of Ireland told me that in the times of the usurpt powers 't was in the Act of Settlement for Ireland by the Parliament declared that it was not their intent after almost a National Rebellion to extirpate the whole Irish Nation but that after an exception of certain persons as to Life and Estate the Act orders some Irish to be banish'd the Kingdom and other Irish to be transplanted to some part of Ireland allowing them such proportion of Land and Estate there as they should have had of their own elsewhere in Ireland if they had not been removed What effect that Transplantation had I know not but I suppose it easier to remove a handful of men from one corner of the Land to another then 't was to remove almost a Nation And do suppose there are some Papists in England as innocent of this late Plot as there were some in Ireland of that Rebellion The Dean of Canterbury doth in his incomparable Sermon before the House of Commons on the 5 th of November 1678 acknowledg the Piety and Charity of several persons who lived and dyed in the Roman Communion as Erasmus Father Paul Thuanus and many others who had in truth more goodness then the Principles of that Religion do either incline men to or allow of And so I think my self bound in justice to Judge in that manner of some Papists of my acquaintance Thus the Epicureans of old tho their Principle of making happiness consist in pleasure was detestable gained this point that many of their Sect were honest men And so much Tully acknowledged to be true but with a Salvo to his exception against their Doctrine Speaking of Epicurus and his Followers L. 2. De Finibus Boni Mali he saith Ac mihi quidem videtur quod ipse vir bonus fuit multi Epicurei fuerunt bodie sunt in amicitirs fideles in omni vita constantes graves nec voluptate sed officio consilia moderantes It seems to me that Epicurus was a good man and many of his Sect have been and are faithful in their friendships and constant and serious men in every condition of life and managing the conduct of their life 's by duty and not pleasure But then saith he hoc videtur major vis honestatis minor voluptatis and afterwards he saith atque ut caeteri existimantur dicere melius quam facere sic hi mihi videntur melius facere quam dicere As much as if he had said No thanks to their Principles but their honest inclinations the force of honesty shew'd it self more Predominant in them then that of pleasure and as other mens Principles are accounted better then their Practises these mens Practises are better then their Principles It is I think Gods standing Miracle in the world who is able to make a divulsion between the formal and the vital Act namely to make fire not burn to keep some men from undoing themselves and Mankind by the genuine consequences of the Opinions they profess in matters of Religion And thus it is happy for the World that Caliginosa nocte premit Deus nepotes discursus And he can by an Omnipotent easiness when he pleaseth Divert a mans understanding from seeing any first-born consequence from his opinion as well as a more remote one Moreover the Divine Power doth in the Government of the World interpose it self sometimes between professed Notions or Principles themselves and mans intellectual faculties Good men sometimes do not believe even the existence of that and of some other divine Attributes where the things to be believed are to be seen by the light of Nature And bad men habituated to lying sometimes do at last believe the lyes and shamms themselves made though yet for the most part it happens what is perfectly worthy of the Divine Power and goodness when men are with Candor and purity of mind seeking after Truth that-Heaven does so influence their understandings as that they are not by false lights artificial seduced to believe any thing against the light of Nature nor given up by weak arguments to strong delusions These things considered I think that that great Divine of our Age the Lord Bishop of Lincoln hath with a Noble modesty and charity in the Title of his unanswered and unanswerable Book against Popery exprest the Principles of that Religion when really believed to be pernicious And having said all this I need not trouble your Lordship or my self much further about finding a way to prevent the Papists from troubling us but do suppose that the Papists themselves are most concerned to labour in such an invention And instead of their being led by any hellish Principles to destroy any City of Course by Sinister means That is by burning it they may if they please in their Devotion address to Heaven for that favour to its old chosen People on Earth mentioned in Psalm 107. v. 7. And he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a City of Habitation I suppose that after so eminent a Person as the Lord High Chancellor of England in his Speech at the Condemnation of the Lord Stafford made that great interogation Does any man now begin to doubt how London came to be burnt and after the Vote of the last Parliament the last day of their Sitting in these words viz. Resolved That it is the Opinion of this House That
shall when he comes on shore by a protestation bid defiance to the pride of the whole Ocean he deserves not the name of a Hero that Safe-guarded by both the Land and the Law of the Land shall not on occasions offered continually have the courage to protest against the dammages both his King and Country have from the Rage of Popery My Lord I have been the longer in discoursing of the insignificancy of words or indeed ought but the emphasis of works requisite to shew a Protestant faith at this Juncture because I am sure you are willing as you may well be to joyne issue on that point and to be judged a Protestant in mans day by your works as you must in Gods stand or fall by the Test of them at the last Audit and to appear a Protestant too by works above the poor level of a dull opus operatum by works that represent the continual employment of your life with an Heroical vigour and your going from strength to strength as the Scripture expression is in the defence of Protestancy by works that speak you like the heavenly bodies incessant in your influence and haveing rest only in Motion 'T is not without wisdom ordered by the Pope That no men shall be Cannonised till after death for fear of Apostacy nor then likewise unless it shall appear that they wrought Miracles And the truth is our people were all so far born with Popes in their bellies as to this point that they will not now Cannonize any Great Men for Protestant Saints unless at this time they do Miracles and indeed I think they have reason to insist on their doing as great miracles for our Religion as any Papal Saints dead or alive have done against it And when I consider the real Great Things that have been by the heads and hands of your Lordship and other Noble Persons performed for the Statuminating of the Protestant cause and enabling us to say to our underminers with the confidence of the Psalmist As a bowing wall shall ye be and as a tottering fence I do think you may expect with Justice that which is greater then our praise the acclamations of our blessing as Aristotle saith that to heroick qualities in men not praise but pronouncing blessed is due 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and as St. Paul saith it is more blessed to give then to receive And here my Lord going by this exact Rule of measuring things by things and not by words your Life hath enabled me to give the strictest Aeropagus of Censurers the world can produce and who would damn the use of Proems and the art of moving passions by words an irrefragable instance how you have secured the Nation formerly from being enslaved to and by Popery and at that time when we seemed to our selves as secure from it as from Mahumetanisme which was when you were the great Conductor of the Publick Councels in the Conjuncture that brought in the King and hindred Lambert's usurpation of the English Scepter who tho at that time he was not generally suspected to be a Papist was on very rational grounds believed to be such then by many very knowing particular persons and that too to be not only a Papist but a Iesuited one He was at that time suspected by some for having advised at a military cabal of the then great ones that the Cavaleers should be Massacred a cruelty that could enter into no breast but one abandoned to Jesuitisme And as on such a Monster your Lordship then had your eye on him and of his being such some of the depositions and examinations took about the late plot have been very particular and satisfactory Nor is his haveing petition'd some few years before the discovery of the late Plot That he might have his Liberty and of a very great Roman Catholic Lord's having then offer'd to be security for his quiet demeanor Now unknown so that the Kingdom then scaped falling into Popery before the danger was by it apprehended like the Man who in the Night scaped that of Rochester Bridge and whom the light of the following day almost confounded with his deliverance Your Lordships activity and prudence appearing in the public Councels and in your Secret correspondences to the defeating of the councels of that Romish Achitophel and seisure of his person will no more be forgiven you by the Papists of England then it either by the Papists of England or Ireland will be forgiven or forgot that you shew'd your self a true Father of your Country in Ireland in the Conduct foremention'd of that great Affair of the Metropolis and many Garrisons of that Kingdom being wholly put into the hands of the Parliament rather than the Child as I may say should be divided between any of his Majesties Subjects and the Pope the pretended supream Father of that Country and that you preserved it to come into the hands of the true Supream One. Your Lordship and other well-wishers to the Crown then were not of the humour of some of our young vulgar Protestants who as the Papists parrots have been by them taught to speak it commonly That they love a Papist better than a Presbyterian 'T is sinful not to love the persons of both but ridiculous to love the Yoke of either opinion and it seems his late Majesty of glorious Memory and his Councel and his noble Lieutenant of Ireland and your Lordship thought it safer for the Crown for Ireland to be trusted with that sort of disobedient Children that depended on no forraign Ecclesiastical Head then on such as did And it is to be acknowledged to your Lordships care of the freedom of your Country that when you sat in the long Parliament till you and other Members thereof were torn thence by Cromwel's Souldiers you crusht the Iure-divinity of Presbytery in the Egg by its being ordered to be setled only for three years so that it saw it was to be expeditated at the end of three years and had no power to trample upon the consciences of others and in effect had but a tolleration I think that no Church-Government at all is better then that rigid one of Presbytery intended then by some Zealots As the good and learned Dean of Canterbury said in his Sermon on the Fifth of November before the House of Commons That as to Popery 't were better there were no revealed Religion and that humane Nature were left to the conduct of its own principles and inclinations then to be acted by a religion that inspires men with so wild a fury and prompts them to commit such outrages c. and there renders Popery worse then Infidelity or no Religion and so indeed in fact the Kingdom had then no Church-Government paramount at all in it and instead of the imagined fierce pedagogy of the Scotch Presbytery that made every Levite a Rabby Busy every Pulpit Rhetor a Consul and every Lay-Elder Major General of the Parish we had a tame insignificant
of lust try to puzzle the Cause of Religion and by distinctions to make Golden Bridges for Men to retreat from Morality And this Course the Iesuits have took By their Casuistical distinctions they have broke both the Tables of the Moral Law into innumerable pieces they have broke not only the least but greatest of the Commandments and have taught men so to do and how to do it with a Salvo to them and how Salvo metu fide peccare and by being Casuistical Splitters of Sin have been as troublesome to the World as Splitters of Causes are to a Country The Christian Religion that great Tye intended by Heaven to be like a substantial and great Cable as I may say to supply the great Anchor of our hope they have made it their great business to untwist by their nice distinctions and to make it so fine that it will not hold and by encouraging Lies and Calumnies for the honour of Holy Church they have help'd the Politic-Atheists-would be to a new occasion of trying to insinuate that old impotent-Slander that Religion it self is a Cheat and moreover since it is on all hands Confessedly true that Religion is necessary for the Government of the World and that every Ligament of Humane Society without Religion is but like a rope of Sand 't is probable that the Iesuits Morality being destructive of Religion that the Nations of the World will look on it and their Society as an Association against Humane Society and that one Nation after another will declare themselves Abhorrers of it And it must by necessity of Nature appear that they cannot be Confessors of truth nor Martyrs for any but the Devil that make lying venial nor can their fate who pretend to be Witnesses in the Cause of Religion be any other than is that of some according to the Law and Practice of Nations who are Witnesses in any Cause to have their whole Deposition rejected upon the Discovery of one falsity therein And since 't is confessed to be the Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and particularly of the Trent-Council that the intention of the Priest is necessary to the validity of a Sacrament who can promise to himself safe anchoring in the Depths of a Jesuits intentions to make the Sacrament while he makes Cheating lawful If any one shall say that so vile a thing is not to be supposed in a Priest as upon any occasion not to intend the making of the Sacrament let him consult the Additionals to the Mystery of Iesuitism and there he shall see p. 95. Proposition 23. no meaner a Iesuit than the Great Casuist Escobar cited for this Assertion That it is lawful upon Occasion of some great fear to make use of Dissimulation in the Administration of the Sacraments as for a man to make as if he Consecrated by pronouncing the words without attention Escobar Theol. Moral Tom. 1. l. 6. Sect. 2. C. 7. Prob. 26. p. 27. And in this point the Pope's said Decree is infallible namely to shew the fact of this Doctrine of Devils having been own'd by Jesuits and Casuists as appears by the Proposition 29th in the Decree viz. Vrgens metus gravis est Causa justa Sacramentorum administrationem simulandi O Blessed Jesus can any Jesuit think it is lawful for him so far to fear those that can kill the Body as by his Dissembling his making of thy Body to destroy anothers Soul by Idolatry 'T is among both Papists and Protestants confessedly true that if the Host I worship should not be the Body of Christ I were a great Idolater and therefore if a Priest by that incident Passion of fear may lawfully forbear to intend to make the Body of Christ I may well have such a constant fear as do's cadere in Constantem virum of the danger of my worshipping only a Wafer and consequently of my being an Idolater and since a Miracle is Heaven's Broad Seal to the truth of any Doctrine and since Transubstantiation is the greatest Miracle that can be thought of I may well conclude that God will not commit the Power of making Millions of Miracles every day to men that make Cheating lawful more than a Prince will commit the Custody of his Broad Seal to a professed Impostor And therefore I shall 〈◊〉 the way affirm that the Protestant Religion not making the intention of the Prâ—est essential to the Sacrament of the Eucharist is more strongly assertive of the Real presence there then is the very Popish Hypothesis The truth is 't is a very inglorious and a very imprudent thing to use fraud even in the Conduct of Political Government My Lord Herbert in his Life of Harry the Eighth speaking of a foreign Monarch saith with great Judgment but while he escaped not the Opinion and the Name of false which yet his Country Writers pallâ—aâ—e no otherwise than with calling it Saberraynar he neither comply'd 〈◊〉 his Dignity nor indeed the Rules of Wisdom true reason of State consisting of such solid Maxims that it hath as little need of Deceit as a sure Game at Chess of a false Draught there is no use of it therefore among the wiser sort it being only a supply of Ignorance among the Ruder and worse kind of Statesmen Beside it appears so much worse in Public Affairs as it is never almost hid or unrevenged Reputation again is still lost thereby which yet how much it concerns Princes none can better tell than such as Imagine them without it But to use Fraud in or for that great concern of Mankind call'd Religion is more absur'd and 't is the vilest Nonsence imaginable for Men to talk deceitfully for God and that style of a foreign Monarch of Dissembling his Indignation need not be used by him who made the World with a fiat and can unmake it with a thought and whatever Religion in the World is true I am sure that is and must be false that attempts to support it self by falshood or fraud and by the Violation of Faith given For I am sure that to stand to Promises to abhor Deceit is a thing in its own nature simply good and that it is impossible that God should lye and if it be simply good in God it is necessarily so in Man whom he hath made after his own Image the Image being to answer the Archetype and that Religion therefore that doth approve of falsarii and which cannot have the true God for its Founder and in which every honest man may justly say to the Deity of its worshippers Stand by thy self come not near me for I am holier then thou as the Scripture expression is must expect to be exterminated out of the Knowing World. Such worshippers can be no more judged parts of the Ecclesia Catholica than Pick-pockets in Churches are of the Coetus fidelium there and as when these petty Larceners are there discovered they are glad silently thence to steal themselves away such perhaps will 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 Conâ—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
Resort as I call'd it of their use and application of their erroneous or rather diabolical doctrine of Calumny must certainly be fatal to them according to that Proverb in the Gospel about the last error erit novissinus error pejor priore The High Priests and Pharisees came to Pilate saying Sir we remember that that deceiver said while he was yet alive After three dayes I will rise again Command therefore that the Sepulchre be made sure till the third day lest his Disciples come by Night and steal him away and say to the people he is risen from the dead So the Last error shall be worse than the first and they Judged right enough of the Last error Confounding more than the First as it is the force of the Last motion from a Precipice that breaks a man in pieces and this effect of the last error was presently exemplify'd in themselves for they having caus'd the holy Sepulchre to be very strongly guarded and the Door of it to be barricado'd with a very great Stone and that Stone to be seal'd and the Lord of Glory after all this over-powring the Grave and Guards they had a Consult and gave the Guards Money to spread that Shamme in the World that his Disciples did steal him away while the Guards slept and saith St. Mathew this is reported among the Iews to this day And lo as Christ did rise for our Iustification so did this Subornation used by those Impostors justify the truth of his Resurrection which else could not so well have confronted the Worlds incredulity for if after his Resurrection his Disciples believed not Mary Magdalen Ioanna and the Mother of Iames who told them that he had appear'd to them and if the two Disciples that told the Rest that he had appear'd to them going to Emmaus were not believ'd by them and if when he appear'd in the midst of Ten of them at once and shew'd them his hands and his side they believ'd not for joy and if when he appear'd to the Women and bade them tell the Disciples and St. Peter that according to his Promise they should see him in Galilee and if the Eleven Disciples went into Galilee to a Mountain which he had appointed them and yet when they saw him there they worship'd but some doubted and if Christ almost in his Last words upbraided them with their unbelief because they believ'd not them who had seen him after he was risen the Pagan and Iewish World would not have been brought to easily as they were to the belief of his Resurrection the great hinge on which the Christian Religion turns and without which the Preaching of the Cross would not so much have seem'd foolishness as been madness Thus did that last Jewish error prove most fatal to Judaisme and as Heaven was extracted by the Divine Power out of the Hellish act of Murdring the holy Iesus so was the propagation of the truth of his Resurrection out of the Calumny Subornation and Bribery used to suppress it those artifices being so odious in the eye of the Law of all Nations that they make any that uses them to gain infamy and loose his Cause and to make sure of the hatred ofone very Considerable Enemy namely Mankind and justly for against that great Body is every one that professeth Calumny an aggressor and has proclaim'd War. And Granting that Nature is Constant to it self and that conslusions of the working of the Passions in humane Nature in future times may be made from the pass'd Our Quintadecimani thô their Order seems in many political Principles to be close compacted like the scales of Leviathan by the publishing of the Tenets before mentioned and constant practice of them have brought themselves into the shallows and they are like Whales on ground gazed on by the Critical World and there labouring under the fatality of their own weight It has been observed by that deep Enquirer into Nature Monsieur Descartes that Le bon sens est chose du monde mieux partagè c. Nothing is more equally distributed by Nature among Meu than Vnderstanding and Reason for every Man thinks he has enough and of this opinion was Mr. Hobbes in that Chapter in his Leviathan of the Natural condition of Mankind Where he saith That as to the Faculties of the Mind there is a greater equality among men then that of strength for prudence saith he is but experience which equal time bestowes on all men in those things they equally apply themselves to That which perhaps makes such equality incredible is but a vain conceit of ones own wisdom which all mortal men think they have in a greater degree than the Vulgar that is then all men but themselves and a few others whom by fame or for Concurring with themselves they approve for such is the Nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledg many others to be more Witty or more Eloquent or more Learned yet they will hardly believe many so wise as themselves for they see their own witt at hand and other mens at distance But this proves rather that men are in that Point equal than unequal For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of any thing then that every man is Content with his share Admitting this great observation of those two great Masters of Witt and Philosophy to be true One would suppose that Nature did not in vain implant in men such a general notion of their equality in Wisdome nor without an intent of promoting the good of humane Society thereby The God of Nature hath not only not given us any members of our bodies but not the very hair of our eye-browes nor even the hairs of our eye-lids in vain for our eye-lids are fortify'd with those little stiff bristles as with palisado's against the assaults of Flyes and such like bold animalcula and I may say that that general Notion doth defend the Eyes of mens Minds from being too easily imposed on by particular Notions and Shammes occurring to us from any And as to that notion so universally planted in mens Souls by Nature one may well imagine that what a Gardiner plants in every bed of his Garden is no weed and perhaps one great End of Nature in the general implantation of this principle in men may be The shewing them the folly and danger of their attempts who think to engross that great Staple Commodity of the intellectual World call'd Wisdome and to force others to buy that Commodity of which they think they have enough of their own by them and especially when they see that others would force a trade on them by counterfeit Wares and have been already branded for so doing The truth is every man's life who pretends to a greater share of Wisdome than his Neighbour is in the better state of security by this Notion before-mentioned for if a man thought others by their Wisdom could render his ineffectual for
the causing each of them to be with the darts of Calumny and obloquy forever stuck round like the figure of the man in the Almanac but how foolish Father Parsons was to write this when the Protestants had the Ball at their foot and when he could not be sure that the Papists would ever arrive at the state to have it alwayes at theirs let any one Judge He had before used that rhetorical expression that so the Ship be well and happily guided I esteem it not much important of what Race or Nation the Pilot be but he was extremely impolitic by so early and public an alarm to notify it to many who thought that embarqued in the Civil Government of a Prince of any Religion they might be safely transported from this World to the Next that Popish Masters of the Ship have determin'd before-hand to throw all heterodox Passengers overboard and their own Oaths and engagements to them likewise But what ever person takes a promissory Oath with an intent of not keeping it may well be Concluded as actually guilty of perjury in the Court of Heaven as he who knowingly takes a false assertory Oath They have both equally presumed to try by solemn lying to weather the fear of Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence and both their assertory and promissory Oaths are of equal weight in the ballance of humane judgment And because I think the Argument will hold from the falsity of their Oaths promissory in this their dernier Resort aforesaid to the obtaining the Worlds Sentence against the truth of their Oaths assertory I shall entertain your Lordship with an instance of one of the Church of Rome of whom it may be said that a Greater than Father Parsons is here to vindicate the making of Oaths promissory with an intent of breaking them and 't is Pope Clement the 8 th of whom Danaeus saith in his Chronology of Popes that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ' O Politician as I may say of whom D'Ossat in his Third Book Letter 81 viz. to Villeroy in the Year 1597 speaking there how he had discover'd the Popes Inclinations that the King of France should break with England and that he told his Holiness that the King 's making a particular profession to keep his word would not suffer him to break that Alliance that had been so lately renew'd and sworn saith that the Pope thereupon reply'd That that Oath was made to a heretic and that his Majesty had made another Oath to God and the Pope And further mentions what the Pope had told him at other times and in the precedent audience That Kings and Soverain Princes did permit to themselves all things that turn'd to their profit and that none blamed them for it or took it ill from them and alledged to that purpose a Saying of Francisco Maria Duke of Urbin who was wont to say That if a plain Gentleman broke his word he would be dishonour'd by it but that Soveraign Princes for Reason of State without any great blame might make Treaties and break them and Mentir trahir toutes telles autres choses i. e. Ly and betray and do all things of that nature whereupon saith D'Ossat I had but too much to reply to that but I did not think it my duty there to stay my self in a place so slippery But toward the close of the Letter he adds By what is abovesaid you see tho the Pope has no disrespect for the King of France nor any love for the King of Spain yet the hatred that he has for Heretics transports him so far that he lets fall from his Mouth tho under the Name of another some pernicious Maximes unworthy of an honest man and that the Pope accounts all ways good for his Majesty to break with his Allyes because they are not Catholics altho those ways are infamous I am so far a Concurrer with that Pope as to think that according to the Law of Nature and Nations the Oath and Promise to the first of any Prince's Allies is most obligatory and therefore the Pope doth very honestly notify his opinion that Harry the 4 th intended not to keep any promissory Oath Contrary to that made to God and himself But the Pope mistakes the factum of that Great Prince's Oaths and 't is for the honour of the Roman Catholic Religion that it has left to Posterity so great an instance of a Protestant Prince turn'd a Papist and Continuing kind to the persons of Protestants But they owed no thanks to the Pope or Iesuites for his making or keeping Promises and Alliances with Protestants The Bohemian History tells us how Ferdinand about the Year 1617 before he was possest of that Crown did by Oath bind himself that Matthew being alive he would not meddle with any of the affairs of Bohemia much less with Religion but immediately after his Coronation he going into Moravia to receive homage the Iesuites erected at Olumacium a Triumphal Arch and painted on it among the Arms of Austria the Lion of Bohemia tyed to it with a Chain and the Eagle of Moravia with a sleeping Hare lying with open Eyes and this Emblem writ under it I have practiced But the Year following a new erected Academy of Iesuites spoke out in Print that tho Ferdinand at his Coronation took an Oath to the Heretics yet first he left it in the Vestry of the Church that he would not suffer Heretics to prejudice the Rights of holy Church But I believe I may without offending any Candid Papists say of that Pope that when he discours'd as that Letter mentions the glory of his Infallibility shined not out of his Mouth as Porphry said that Plotinus his Soul did when he spake The Story is trite concerning a Popes Excommunicating a Bishop of his Church for owning that there were Antipodes but there is a sort of greater Excommunication that any Jesuited Papists are to expect that are the Antipodes to ingenuous Mankind and who make Assertory or Promissory lying to be venial or lawful and that is thus to be excluded from the Communio fidelium tho without the Ceremony of lighting Torches and extinguishing them namely by Gentlemens forbearing to keep them Company and esteeming them worse than Publicans or Heathens and accounting it neither safe nor honorable to Correspond with the Enemies of Mankind and this is the Sentence namely that of a kind of Civil Excommunication or seclusion from ingenuous mens Conversation that they are likely to obtain in England after all their charge and pains in their dernier Resort and the having seen the birth of their Plott confounded and the after-birth of it namely its Shams thrown away Since No injury wounds so much as a Contempt and since they by trampling on our Understandings with More pride than ever Bajazet walk'd over the dead heads of Christians affect to try to bring us implicitly to believe their Shammes they are to thank themselves for our not
by some accidents be made to cast Anchor or they may be sunk but they cannot be forced to go back When a man hath long been compell'd to creep with Chains on him through a toilsome dark Labyrinth and having extricated himself out of it and being come to enjoy his liberty in the light of the Sun the persuasion of words cannot make him go back again My Lord I lately mentioned the Motto of the Royal Society of England of which your Lordship is a Member and I look on the very constitution of that Society to be an inexpugnable Bulwark against Popery In which Society many of our choice English Witts have shew'd as much subtilty and curiosity in the Architecture of Real Science and such as tends to the edification of the world as any of our Countrey men heretofore did in those curious but useless Cobwebs of holy Church call'd School Divinity And the constitution of that Society hath not only been useful in encreasing the Trade of Knowledge among its members by a joyned stock but moreover hath tended to the raising in the Kingdom a general inclination to pursue Real science and to contemn all science falsly so call'd and the Raising of this inclination I will call a Spirit that can never be Conjur'd down nor can the knowledge that depends on number weight and local Motion be ever exterminated by Sophisms or Canting or terms of Art Nor will they who have from this Society learned to weigh Ayre give up their Souls to any Religion that is all Ayre without weighing it or notwithstanding any hard name that may come to be in vogue ever forget that bread is bread His Majesty by the founding of this great Conservatory of knowledge presently after his Restoration wherein his great Minister then the Earl of Clarendon was an honourable Member did convey real knowledge and a demonstration of his being an Abhorrer of Arbitrary Power to all that can understand Reason and affect not the ridiculous Treasonableness of Bradshaw's Court to say that they will not hear reason for had he like the Eastern King 's affected Arbitrary Power he would have used their artifice of endeavouring to cast mists before the understanding faculties of his Subjects and to detain them from knowledge by admiration and to deprive them of sight like horses that are still to drudge in the Mill of Government by blind obedience But to shew that he abhorr'd both such obedience and implicit Faith and that he intended to establish his Throne as well in the heads as in the hearts of his Subjects he presently setled this Great Store-house of Knowledge that shew'd it was his desire and ambition by the general Communication of Knowledge in his Dominions to Command Subjects whose heads were with the Rays of Science crown'd within And therefore I think His Majesties Munificence to the Royal Society in giving them Chelsey-Colledge at their first institution was very Consistent with the Primary Intention of the erecting that Colledge which was to be a Magazine for Polemical-Divinity wherewith to attaque the Writers for Popery for the very planting of a general disposition to believe nothing contrary to Reason is the cutting of the graâ—s under Poperies feet and His Majesty providing for the growth of reason did apparently check the growth of Popery as well as of Arbitrary Power without the prop of which Popery can never run up to any height more then the Sun-flower without a supporter and the setling in men an humour of Inquisition into the truth and nature of things is as I partly said before an everlasting barricade against the Popes darling Court of the Inquisition That great and noble notion of the Circulation of the blood took its first rise from the hints of a common persons enquiring what became of all the blood that issâ—â—d out of the heart seeing that the heart beats above Three Thousand times an hour thô but one drop should be pump'd out at every stroke and if any one shall tell me that he believes that Popery with its retinue of implicit faith and ignorance can over-run us I will ask him what will then become of all that knowledge the vital blood of the Soul that hath issued from the heads of inquisitive Protestants and been Circulating in the World for above a Hundred and Fifty years and I doubt not but it will be in mens Souls as long as blood shall have its Circular Course in their bodies and maugre all the Calumnies cast on the Divines of the Church of England for being fautors of Popery I shall expect that our learned Colledge of Physicians will as soon be brought to disbelieve the Circulation of the blood of our Royal Society to take down the Kings Standard that they have set up against implicit faith as our learned Convocation the learnedest that ever England had be brought to believe the principles of Popery I know My Lord ' tâ—s obvious against this my hypothesis of the unpracticableness of Popery being here the State-Religion to say that in little more then Twenty years time Four great changes in Religion happen'd in England and that the generality of the people then like dead Fishes went with the stream of the Times but I ask if the generality of the people had been throughly enlighten'd in the rationality of the Protestant Principles Twenty years together would they have return'd to the belief of the Popish Will they now do it after the establishment of a Rational Religion for above a Hundred years together Can Popery now find the way into most Mens brains here presently after the whole Nation almost were Preachers and when all our great and little unruly disagreeing Sects yet agreed in this as a fundamental that the Bishop of Rome is the Antichrist If Printing had been free in Turky for a Hundred years and a libera Philosophia and Theologia had been there in fashion for a Hundred years and every man had been allow'd his Judgment of discretion so long about the sense of the Alchoran or of the holy Scripture and of all Books of Religion could ignorance even there come into play again or if the Turkes had drank Wine for a Hundred years together could any one Conjure the glasses out of their hands by telling them there was a Devil in every grape If that Law in Muscovy that makes it death for any Subject to travel out of that Kingdom without the Emperors Licence lest his Subjects having seen the freedome of other Countreys should never again return to the Arbitrary Power in their own again I say if that Law had been repeal'd for a Hundred years and multitudes of oppress'd mankind had thence found the way to breath in the ayre of Liberty like men could they be persuaded to return to the Yokes of Beasts again When a floating Island has been a Hundred years fixt to the Continent can any teach it to swim again Consulitur de Religione is likely to be the eternal
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
confesseth and that by God's own appointment three times the Annual Revenue of the greatest of the twelve Tribes Doctor Covel in his Modest and Reasonable examination of some things in use in the Church of England Printed Anno 1604 saith in Chapter the Eleventh Thatâ—the Levites were not the Thirteenth part of the Jews and yet had the Tenth Wherein that Doctor agreed with the sense of the Fathers of the Council of Trent who as 't is mention'd in the latter end of the History of that Council said That in the Mosaical Law God gave the Tenth to the Levites who were the Thirteenth part of the people prohibiting that any more should be given them But the Clergy now which is not the Fiftieth part hath gotten already not a Tenth only but a Fourth part But by exacter Calculations 't is apparent that the Levites though a small Tribe if a Tribe there being twelve beside scarce the sixtieth part of the House of Iacob had perhaps a Sixth of the whole profits of the Land They had the Tenth or Tith of the Land together with its Culture they had in Iudaea a small Country 48 Cities with their Suburbs 2000 Cubits from the Wall on every side and their first-fruits and a great part of the manifold Sacrifices and free-will-offerings of the Male Children of Israel which were to appear thrice yearly before the Lord with some Offering and whatsoever House Field Person Beast c. was by a singular Vow given to God which was to be valued by the Priest himself and all these duties were brought in to the Priest without charge or trouble and those Cities and Lands descended from them to their posterity from generation to generation as also did their Tithes and Offerings I shall here observe that that which hath probably induced so many to err in making the number of the Levites so great as aforesaid was their not considering what yet is really true in Nature namely That the number of people of any Nation from a month old and upwards for so the Levites were counted Numb 3. 39. is more then double their number from Twenty years old and upward and so the rest of the Tribes were numbred Exod. 33. 26. Numb 26. 62. And therefore I infer that the Levites were but about a sixtieth of the number of the other Tribes But during the Theocracy that the Iews sometimes lived under or while God was their King it being worthy of the Divine Empire to design and promote the wealth of its Subjects and consequently that they should encrease and multiply for that alone is real wealth there was no Celibate among the Levites or any degree of Ecclesiasticks to hinder the same Having thus in the way of Calculation glanced on the Ecclesiastical Polity of God's peculiar People or Subjects I suppose the rectitude of that Rule will shew the obliquity or warping of the practice of the Papal Clergy For if we do admit as I believe we well may that there are seven Millions of people in England of which 120000 is a sixtieth part this old Church Polity of the Popes Clergy doth Toto Caelo differ from that of the Israelites in that they spend double the proportion of the wealth of the Kingdom and yet live in Celibate or without multiplying And as Mr Fish in effect said in that his Book do hinder procreation by promiscuous coupling with other Mens Wives But 't is a known great truth that the great business of the Monks and the Ratio studiorum of the Papal Clergy was not to make the Kingdom populous but to depopulate We have for this the testimony of Walter Mappe Arch-deacon of Oxford who was bred up with Henry the Second that the Abbots and Monks in that time were very Criminous in the point of depopulation whence that Proverb arose Monachi desertum aut inveniunt aut faciunt wherever they seated themselves they either found the place a Desart or made it one 'T is said of them That they laid more places waste then ever William the Conqueror or his Son Ruâ—us did when they demolished and destroyed many Parishes to enlarge the bounds of the new Forrest In that Fleet of depopulators there was one first-rate one namely The Abbot of Osney who was for his Talent of depopulating so remarkable that 't was observed that he made all paupers that dwelt within the purlieus of his Possessions And of this Henry the Second took such notice that one day when he had not poor people enough for his Alms on some great Festival he said in a fit of anger That rather then his bounty should be unemployed he would make as many beggars as the Abbot of Osney had done One would think that the Monks should have been well willers to the encrease of the populousness of the Kingdom for that thereby the values of their Lands would have been encreased a thing no doubt that appeared visible to the Reasons of the more Sagacious among them But there was another thing they found palpable that is they found themselves well at ease even to envy in their vast share of the wealth of the Nation whereby they Lorded it over both God's inheritance and the Laity and therefore they did not fancy the sight of the Sea of the people increase by the coming in of the Tide of new generations that would have produced much more persons to maligne and perhaps contest with them they naturally therefore wished the sweet absence of such company from the World just as in Ireland and other thin peopled Countries the Natives living at their ease have sharp regrets against the accession of strangers though they know it would raise the value of their Lands and as in America the Natives wish no improvement to their Country from the Spaniards The Monks had got the Monopoly of Religion and near half the Land by it and not having any certain Issue to endear posterity to them and consequently to oblige them to promote the wealth of the Kingdom in general and to consult thereby the good of surviving parts of themselves for that figure Children make as to Parents they and the Abbots and Popish Bishops cared for no more then being warm in the Pyes Nest while they lived and 't was as natural to them to repel the thoughts of Colonies of people advancing the wealth of the Kingdom by new generations as 't is natural to present Trading persons to prevent the publick good of an Act of Naturalization And as this advancement of depopulation was therefore the interest of the present Monks and Priests so was it of the present Popes who knew they were sure of receiving Aids and Contributions from them as long as numbers of other fresh comers did not drive them off the Stage One would rather wonder that our Popish Monarchs saw it not sooner their Interest to crush the Politics of these holy Depopulators and Pastors that turned the Kingdom into Sheep-walks and who minding chiefly the encrease
that I affirm therein we have obliged our selves to by our Oaths is so incomparably asserted in a long Speech of that Great Man of the Church of Rome Reginaldus Belnensis Arch-Bishop of Bourges in France I shall refer any one to it as printed in â—huanus The Speech was spoke in a Famous Assembly and on a great occasion for to make way for the quiet Reception of Harry the 4th of France while a Protestant into the Throne and it was framed with such profound thoughts of Loyalty and with such extraordinary Learning referring both to the old and new Testament and to Fathers and Church History and Civil and Canon Law and with such close and nervous argumentation to evince the Divine Right of Allegiance due to Princes and particularly without any respect had to their Religion that it may pass for one of the best Bullwarks of absolute Loyalty I know of next to the 13th of the Romans and other things contained in Holy Writ And because I think no serious Christian who reads â—t will ever find in his heart afterward to ridicule passive oâ—edience or make ridiculous Platforms of Conditional Loyalty I do intend to Translate and Publish it Moreover because there is in that Speech one Noble peculiar Character of the Moral Offices of Loyalty wherein it is pity that the proverbial English good nature should in any men come short of that of the French Civility and any Protestants Loyalty of a Roman-Catholicks I mean that Arch-Bishops honouring the Mind and Soul of his Prince who was not of the Communion of his Church and even then vindicating him from Heresy and saying That he ought not to be thought a Heretick and propping up his honourable thoughts of his Prince with a Quotation out of St. Austin viz. That he was not to be reckon'd among Hereticks who without pertinacy defended his opinion tho erroneous c I think the hanging up so great a Picture in publick view wherein that Man of God did with such exquisite draught design and colour thus paint his Princes Character and that of his own Loyalty to Eternity may be variously useful and the very sight of the great Colours in which cannot methinks but raise the little ones of Blushes in any Nominal Protestants who do with such foul and hard hands handle the Religionary Concernments of Kings who are Nominal Gods and make no difference between the danger of Heterodoxy in Subjects and in Princes I have mentioned it that there is less danger of any Princes believing or practising what may favour the Papal Usurpation than of such Belief or Practice in a Subject and it were an easie matter to instance in many erroneous Religionary Tenets which as held by Parties among Subjects may cause general apprehensions of danger but from which as held by a Prince it would be ridiculous to fear any ill or to imagine that the Prince can imbibe the dregs of those Tenets as they discriminate discontented Parties as for example how can any one fear that a Prince by believing that Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years would hurt his own Government or that a Prince by â—eing a Socinian â—ould hold the Tenet of the unlawfulness of Defensiâ—e War or that a Prince who favoured the Order of the Iesuites would approve of their Teâ—ets of Calumny and Equivocation c. and several of their vile Casuistical Tenets or that any Magistracy would permit some of their Apologies and particularly that of Guymenius to be so much as published in the Laâ—guage of the Country But the truth is we are Morally bound to make a great difference in our Demeanor toward our Princes when supposed to erre in opinions about Religion from the Measures we are allowed to take in relation to our â—ellow Subjects so erring Error is a part of Humane frailty and Subjects are Morally bound to conceal the frailties of their Kings and not to censure or publish them to their dishonour and are to be more ready to Apolâ—gize for their Princes on all occasions than for their Parents Sâ— Peter in that Verse where the Duty of honouring all Men and loving the Brotherhood is mentioned subjoyns a particular Precept of honouring the King. We are never to think of the hearts of Kings but as being in the hâ—nds of God nor of any Mists of Errors that may be in their heads without thinking of the Rays of the Divine Power that like a Glory surrounds theirs and which in the usual Concourse of Providence do dissipate all danger from any Errors within them Tho in mens beliefs who are Subjects Religionary Errors are often complicated with Irreligionary ones yet we are to think of the Oyl of the Lords Annointed as uppermost and appearing above such latter Errors and suppressing the Fumes of them in the minds of Princes and are to fear no more harm from the Persons of our Princes than from our Guardian Angels differing from us in many great Religionary Speculations and are to think with honour of our King as an Angel of God to discern between good and bad Religion and Irreligion and it is an absurd thing for any not to imitate the Popish Arch-Bishop aforesaid in clearing his Prince tho of another Communion from Pertinacy since such a Moral defect is a humour of positiveness that of all men Kings are most naturally free from and whose becoming dissidence of their own understandings how great soever is Conspicuous by the wearing away so much of their lives in hearing the advise of their Council And when ever Passive Obedience is called for by Princes and must be readily payed as a due Debt we are even then to strain our most improved thoughts to find an honourable Interpretation of our Princes Actions in like manner as some of the Loyal Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church have done as appears by a Great Observation in their Book called the Policy of the Clergy of France a Book that Maimbourg in print hath acknowledged to be the best lately published by their Party viz. That their Princes never made any great Assault on the Papal Power but what cost their Protestant Subjects dear This This is Loyalty worthy the name of Christian and after all if yet any men will make wanton Suppositions of the beliefs or practices of Sovereigns being never so contrary to Religion let those know that an absolute and irrespective Loyalty is that which by these Oaths they have obliged themselves to and that therefore it is an absurd thing to attempt to exclude any Heir of the Crown from his Birth-right on any pretence of his Religion or other pretence whatsoever since we must pay an absolute Obedience and Allegiance to him immediately on the Descent of the Crown to him and accordingly as by these Oaths we have obliged our selves to do Having thus in these Conclusions asserted the Obligation relating to our Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the plain and genuine Sense of the
overthrown and the Scope of the Book is to plant Loyalty throughout the Kingdom and to make the Oath of Allegiance be re vâ—râ a Premuniment in all mens Consciences against Faction and Rebellion The Sect of King Iames's old Enemies in Scotland the Puritans and whom he said he found there more dishonest than the Highlanders and Border Thieves is not named in that Book and he having cleared them from being participants in the Gun-powder Treason did with Justice as well as perhaps with hopes of their emendation after the Tenets of Loyalty that had been then lately published by the English Non-Conformists order that Sect not to be in that Book marked Nigro carbone But he could not but know their former Principles as well as Practices here as exactly as any one and in his Canons here published a Year before the Gun-powder Treason The impugners of the Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England were variously censured the Authors of Schism in the Church of England were censured by the 9th Canon and the maintainers of Schismaticks by the 10th and by the 27th Schismaticks were not to be admitted to the Communion The maintainers of Conventicles were censured by the 11th and the maintainers of Constitutions made in Câ—nventicles censured by the 12th and it refers to the wicked and Anabaptistical Errors of some who outraged the King's Supremacy and Regal Rights and who did meet and make Rules and Orders in Causes Ecclesiastical without the King's Authority and therefore as the King knew that such Persons who had made Schisms in the Church had thereby made Factions in the State and would make more the Church being necessarily included in the State and would be as dry Tiâ—der ready to take the Fire of Rebellion from such Republican Tenets as were in Parson's Book of the Succession and the Writings of Bellarmine and other Romanists and being justly apprehensive that such Antimonarchical Principles as had infected the Scotch Puritans might in time infect the English ones as well as that the Principles of the Powder-Traitors might infect other Loyal Papists he applied the Oath of Allegiance as a general necessary Antidote to the Consciences of his Subjects to prevent such infection In p. 109. of his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance he cited Bellarmine for the Tenets That Kings have not their Authority nor Office immediately from God and that Kings may be deposed by their People for divers respects and when such Writers did so spitefully with the Papal Power endeavour likewise to bring in the Sea of the People to overwhelm Kings it was time to raise the Bank of that Oath the higher against the same and for the Takers of that Oath to be obliged to bear Faith and True Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs c. and him and them to defend c. against all Conspiracies c. which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by reason or colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or OTHERWISE and to declare that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve them of this Oath When therefore I see any serious man disloyal who hath took the Oath of Allegiance and whom Necessity as we say doth not draw to Turpitude I still attribute much of his disloyalty to his not with intense and recollected thought dwelling on the view of his Moral Obligations in the clear Mirror of that Oath but to his cursory viewing them and as St. Iames's words are like a man beholding his natural face in a Glass but beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straitway forgetteth what manner of man he was How many outragious Acts of Disloyalty after 41 had been avoided if the Law of the Oath had been writ in the hearts of the Takers of it as it ought to have been As for Example since to Prorogue or Dissolve Parliaments was ever a known Right and Privilege belonging to the Crown could any Person who had sworn to defend its Rights and Privileges endeavour to retrench that particular one by the Act for the perpetuating the Parliament of 40 How easie would Princes find their Reigns and Subjects their Consciences if these would think of all the Royal Rights they have sworn to defend and how they are to defend them I have mentioned the great Law of Athens against any ones bearing Office under an Usurpt Power and the terrible Oath for the confirmation of that Law and I have likewise mentioned the Author of the EXERCITATION and Mr. Prynn as asserting the unlawfulness of bearing Office under our late usurp'd Powers by reason of the Oath of Allegiance having before obliged them to the King his Heirs and Successors The Author of the Exercitation doth very appositely to strengthen that his Loyal Assertion cite an excellent passage out of Tully's Epistles ad Atticum viz. of his doubting the lawfulness of his bearing the Office of a Councellor of State in such a Case Ec magnum sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 veniendumne sit in Consilium Tyranni si is aliquâ— de re bonâ deliberaturus sit Quare si quid ejusmodi evenerit ut accersamur quid censeas mihi faciendum utique scribito Nihil enim mihi adhuc accidit quod majoris Consilii est And the truth is the great thing that inclineth so many to desire Changes in Governments being the hopes of the Acquest of Offices it was but natural for the Athenian Wisdom to fence with sharp precaution against the lusciousness of Authority under an Usurper and to let every man know as I may say in terrorem that in the day of his eating the forbidden fruit he would die the death by the hand of every man and for the wisdom of the Government in King Iames's time by the effect and necessary Consequences of the Clauses in the Oath of Allegiance to tye mens Consciences from supporting any Vsurpation by bearing Office under it That Law and Oath of Athens were no doubt as almost all other matters of Learning known to King Iames and could he have foreseen how the guest after Offices occasioned the Demagogues to promote the â—ebellion of 41 for 't is known they were then mighty Nimrods after mighty Offices in the State and after what particular ones and how the several Vsurpations supported themselves here afterward through mens supporting themselves by Offices under them and how in this present Fermentation men have been tempted to Faction by hopes of Offices and in pursuit of which men were never generally so wary as iâ— this Conjuncture I am apt to think that in uberâ—orem cautelam for Loyalty and the making men appear perjured even to all of the grossest understandings who should bear Office under any Vsurper and consequently deterring them from projecting to altâ—r the Hereditary Government he would have inserted into the Oath a particular express Clause of not bearing Office here under any other But further to illustrate the intent of the Government
Bellarmine were but fit to serve him as amanuenses or by gathering for him the quotatiâ—ns out of Authors he had occasion to consult it would be in vain for any Learned writer of the Church of Rome to think by his Authority to out-weigh that of Perron the Cardinal But by my citing likewise that Cardinals not holding himself obliged to proceed in France according to the measures of that Council I have shewed the vanity of mens Fears of any ill effect of it annoying us here and as I hope I shall be able further to do in my remarks on the Munster Treaty and that since all things with God are possible we may conclude that tho neither Iesuited Papists or Protestants should ever recant any of their former Irreligionary Principles the voice of Nature may in effect do it for them and render such Principles absolete and as insignificant as the Stings of dead Animals Several Learned Prints published by Protestant Authors in this Fermentation have urged the Council of Lateran for Princes exterminating Hereticks and every one knows that in the barbarous old times of Popery that Council did operate barbarously to that purpose and 't is possible that in a certain Country in the World I will not name Hereticks so called have been treated partly after the Mode of that Council by some with an intent to encrease our Divisions and the ferment of the popular hatred against Papists and Popery here But the Great Perron having declared himself not obliged by that Council to shew that severity to the Hereticks in France hath sufficiently instructed the World that Roman Catholick Princes are not by that Council bound always so to do and the Constellation of the Great Roman-Catholick Kings shining in the Munster Treaty hath likewise given us light therein To Conclude we are not from the old former Omissions or Commissions of Princes and People necessarily to infer future ones The Prudential Rule is De futuris semper meliora speranda sunt It is likewise a saying often applied by Magerus De futuro statuere ex praeteritis prudentis non est Seneca having spoke of the continual Changes of things and how that Bis in idem flumen non descendimus c. saith Ego ipse dum haec loquor mutari mutatus sum We have had instances in former times and in the late Conjucture of the Sands of Popery often shifting as I called it The Lord-Keeper Puckering in his famous Speech observed that in one Conjuncture the Puritans did then joyn and concur with the Iesuits and the Doctrinal Measures of the Iesuits and our Nominal Protestants about the lawfulness of Exclusion have lately been the same And I think that such Protestants may reasonably conclude That it was not for nothing and not without some end that Divine Providence permitted so many of them to erre therein and that probably it might be to the end to produce in their minds so great a degree of Compassion and Charity toward the Persons of all Roman-Catholick Christians as may not only last in this Conjuncture but be operative in them by all Moral Offices of Humanity and Christianity during their Lives FINIS As for most of the 〈…〉 which do not endanger the Sense they are 〈…〉 of the Reader as they shall occurr to him But 〈…〉 remarkable he may please to take Notice of as followeth In the PREFACE PAge 2. Lin. 10. after give add it ib. l. 32. for belief read believe p. 3. l. 4. outrage there and generally throughout the following work Printed wrong p. 5. l. 43. for great Truth r. great thing p. 13. l. 3 dele but p. 15. l. 9. for But r. And. ib. l. 30. dele But p. 14. the Word Independant there and generally throughout the following work Printed false p. 18. l. 9. dele by p. 19. for Vilitigation R. Vitilitigation p. 20. l. 38. for thinks r. think ib. l. 45 for Iustifications r. Iustification p. 21. l. 11. for Articles r. Homilies ib. l. 24. dele or Romes to ours ib. l. 49. for as of r. as to p. 23. l. 3. for Divines r. Princes ib. l. 30. after commodabunt end the parenthesis p. 25. l. 18. for the Signing r. the making p. 36. l. 6. for warming r. warning p. 47. l. 38. for naturally r. natural p. 62. l. 28. for I had r. had I. p. 69. l. 2. for Resolution r. Religion ib. l. 24. for Maximinian r. Maximin p. 70. l. 5. after Library add that I have seen In the INDEX PAge 3. Line 1. for being an ill r. being in an ill p. 3. l. 4. for time of David r. the line of David ib. for ten r. nineteen In the DISCOURSE PAge 4. Line 11. for othea r. other p. 7. l. 13. for Lovure r. Louvre p. 7. l. 36. for Voughe r. Vogue ib. l. 51. for Summonarily r. Summarily p. 10. l. 37. for Apostacy r. perversion ib. l. 39. for Apostacy r. perversion p. 12. l. 28. for Course r. ours p. 13. l. 47. after being r. now p. 16. l. 37. after since r. originally p. 17. l. 20. for thus for r. thus far ib. l. 48. after so is dele it with p. 27. l. 24. for the Principles r. those Principles p. 28. l. 1. 4. for Cannonise r. Canonise ib. l. 32. for have been r. have been thought ib. l. 42. for the Papists r. some Papists p. 29. l. 18. for no Religion r. no reveal'd Religion ib. l. 18. there dele and indeed p. 31. l. 13. when they r. when Papists ib. l. 25. after shown r. a full Point p. 32. l. 28. for you who are r. you are ib. l. 38. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 34. l. 4. for Monarchiall r. Monarchicall ib. l. 47. for Actrocius r. Atrocious p. 35. l. 3. for Capital r. Capitol p. 36. l. 30. for the Papists r. some of the Papists p. 37. l. 41. for Lawful r. venial ib. l. 53. for of Protestants r. of some Protestants for page 325. r. p. 225. p. 39. l. 40. for Creswel r. Chreicton p. 40. l. 8. for Pavure r. Pauvre ib. l. 28. and l. 34 for Creswell r. Chreicton p. 41. l. 50. for bladed r. blade after page 42. r. page 43. ib. l. 1. for carry r. carrying p. 44. l. 31. for State there r. State here p. 45. l. 40. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 48. l. 41. for the very r. that very p. 54. l. 23. for Chrâ—ches r. Churches p. 55. l. 49. for serve vertue r. severe vertue p. 60. l. 2 for and think r. think ib. l. 3. for baldring r. bantring p. 62. l. 2. for Danaeus r. Alsted p. 65. l. 38. for of the intolerable r. of the so call'd intolerable p. 66. l. 23. for ten r. nineteen p. 69. l. 4. for Conculcabis r. Ambulabis p 75. l. 32. after to be r. look'd on by many as p. 78. l. 35. for that Queen r. that by Queen p. 83. l. 12. for and the r. any suppos'd p. 86. l. 20. for the Conjuncture r. a Conjuncture p. 89. l. 6. for will r. may p. 106. l. 8. for great late accession r. great accession p. 114. l. 22. for particulars r. peculiars p. 125. l. 29. for the Spanish r. of the Spanish ib. l. 53. for of reason r. of his reason p. 131. l. 41. for ground under the subscription r. groan'd under the superscription p. 137. l. 11. after his name one dele and. p. 139. l. 8. for doing with r. doing which p. 147. l. 23. for that Restoration r. the Restoration p. 155. l. 32. after the words to live add yearly p. 160. l. 24. for 500 r. 5000. p. 164. l. 23. for Idolatry r. will worship p. 166. l. 27. after having dele of p. 167. l. 32. for sent to petition r. sent too to petition ib. l. 37. after the word expire dele and dy and add by ib. l. ult for of many r. of money p. 169. l. 35. after with begin a Parenthesis ib. l. 38. after the word Country dele the mark of a Parenthesis ib. l. 40. for namely r. yet p. 171. l. 2. after of dele the Colon. ib. l. 19. for owne r. one ib. l. 31. after on dele that p. 175. l. 8. after Mary add and. p. 177. l. 11. after mallem add me ib. l. 29. after for add said he ib. l. 39. after eligible add not p. 179. l. 34. for penetrating r. perpetrating p. 182. l. 16. for where r. were p. 195. l. 45. for ever think r. ever thank p. 209. l. 19. for have r. hath p. 210. l. 32. after the word Consistory dele The Cardinals and add Those ib. l. 34. after the word Heretics add were p. 211. l. 38. after that add the. p. 218. l. 13. for and r. or ib. l. 41. after by dele the p. 220. l. 51 after day add cost him p. 223. l. 53. for were r was for causes r. cause p. 226. l. 46. after to dele be and add her p. 227. l. 46. after to add some of p. 243. l. 36 after business r. mostly p. 249. l. 11. dele used and. ib. l. 26. dele when p. 252. l. 23 after Interest add of after England add that p. 265. l. 45. for of r. in p. 271. l. 25. dele subtle p. 273. l. 2. for on r. or p. 275. l. 38. for Lucriferous r. Luciferous for Luciferous r. Lucriferous ib. l. ult for sunt r. sum p. 282. l. 6 after it dele and. ib. l. 7. before till r. were ib. l. 10. for prattiques r. Prattique ib. l. 11. after have r. no. p. 283. l. 27. for Reliogionary r. Religionary p. 286. l. 25. for angry r. ayry p. 292. l. 34. for officii r. officio p. 303. l. 29 after men add in p. 304. l. 37. after them dele these words that is to say immediately on the King's Decease p. 307. l. 10. for Custodii r. Custodiri p. 316. l. 34. for diffent r. different p. 317. l. 32. for Metroplysical r. Metaphysical p. 321. l. 12. for gave r. give p. 323. l. 22. dele the first and. p. 330. l. 25. for Lutheran r. Calvinian p. 345. l. ult for haeredes r. haereditates p. 355. l. 48. after in add sese volvitur and dele se convertitur p. 357. l. 23. for all r. any p. 358. l. 16. dele that
great Oracle of the Law Sir E. Coke could err so grossly by his Credulity and inadvertence as he did when he tells us 2. Instit. and de statuto Iudaismi that from December 17th An. 50. Hen. 3. till Shrove-tide 2. Edv. 1. which was about 7 years the Crown had 4,20,000 l. 15s 6d Sterl de exitibus Iudaeorum And he there attempts to prove it by Records and refers to Rot. patent An. 3. E. 1. m. 17. 26. Middleton reddit Computa But at the rate of Silver being now thrice in value per Ounce to what it was then the Crown would have had then for those 7 years from the Iews as Money now goeth about 1,2,60,000 l. and none can think that the King would have thought a 15 th giâ—en by the Commons to have been an adequate Reward for the expulsion of the Iews had they been such beneficial Guests to him as Coke mentioned We may therefore naturally as to this say Credat Iudaeus c. and Mr. Prynn hath in the second Part of his Demurrer to the Iews c. most plainly shewn Sir E. Coke's mistake in the Record by him cited I hope to be able in my intended Review to give some such further indications of the numbers of the People of England exceeding all the Totals of cautious Calculators I have referred to as may be variously useful to the publick as well as perfectly satisfactory to the Curious among whom the Enquiring into the Totals of the Numbers of People in States and Kingdoms and their chief Cities is of late become as much in request as was the enquiring before of the number and strength of their Ships of War. I have mentioned before how some men of great Name have published it that they think the People of England and Wales are but 2 Millions and shall here take notice that a Book lately printed Entituled Isaaci Vossii variarum observationum liber and Dedicated to his Majesty doth in p. 66 represent somewhat of the Judgment of that Learned Person and who in various sorts of useful Learning is deservedly held not inferior to any one in Europe relating to the Numbers of People in Spain and France Italy England Scotland and Ireland Denmark Sweeden c. and where the People in England Scotland and Ireland are represented to be Two Millions But had he been so fortunate as to see some of the Manuscript Discourses of Sir W. P. giving an account of the People of Ireland to be about 11 hundred thousand after he had Surveyed that Kingdom as Surveyor General and after he had critically perused all the Books relating to the Chimney Money and the late Poles and found that of the People of Ireland who paid their Pole-Money in the year 1661 the Number was 3,60,000 I doubt not but he would have concurred in opinion with him of the Total of the Number of the People in Ireland and I likewise believe that if he had seen some late Estimates of the Numbers of People in Scotland made by inquisitive Persons born and bred in that Kingdom he would have been easily inclined to judge the People of Ireland and Scotland to be at least 2 Millions As I think that Learned Man was much short in his Estimate of the Numbers of People in his Majesties Realms so I likewise think that he was in that of the numbers of the People in France in accounting them to be but five Millions Cardinal Pool I think did very judiciously estimate France to exceed us a 3d part in the number of People as I have mentioned in this Discourse and the Author of The reasonable defence of the seasonable Discourse answering a Romanist who asserted that Popish Countries were as populous as the Reformed hath clearly enough shewn that Englands not being fully peopled is not to be attributed to the Reformation but partly to our being drained by our Plantations c. and he saith in p. 31 If Spain which hath Plantations be compared with us we are much more populous as we are also than Italy which hath none at all 'T is true France exceeds us not having had that drain of Plantations till of late and that sparingly in respect of us and possibly somewhat of the populousness of France may be owing to the Reformation as not obliging any to caelibate But if the Learned Author of that Reasonable Defence who doth so well and carefully weigh the Nations there in the Balance of his Judgment had considered what hath been by Sir William Temple remarked in his Excellent Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire Sweden Denmark Spain Holland France c. viz. That the common People of France are as little considerable in the Government as the Children so that the Nobless and the Souldiers may in a manner be esteemed the Nation he would have agreed that tho France may exceed us in the Numbers of our People it doth not in the weight of our Numbers as I may say by reason of the considerable weight of our Common People in the Balance of the State and especially if he had likewise considered what the ingenious Author of the Book called The power of Parliaments mentions in p. 162 of the English man to man as allowable to be a third stronger than the French and so I believe generally Northern Nations may be allow'd to that proportion to exceed Southern And here by the way it occurring to me that the Author of the Reasonable Defence hath in p. 24 took Notice of his Roman-Catholick Adversaries instance of the Treaty of Munster as upon which so many Papist and Protestant Princes Noblemen and Gentlemen have either Bishopricks Abbies or the like CONFIRMED to them by the Pope and to make out what he had said that none but the Author of The seasonable Discourse fancies the Pope cannot be tied to an agreement as well as other Governors and that the Author of The Reasonable Defence hath impugned that instance by saying But if after all this there be no such matter if the Pope have been so far from confirming those Grants as to protest against them by his Legate in the Treaty and afterward in a particular Bull hath damned them to the Pitt of Hell what shall we say to the honesty and credit of the Author c. I am glad that by my Historical Scheme of the factum of that Peace I have done that which may prevent both these Authors and other Persons from being further mistaken therein Most certainly as I have shewn the Pope did not by any Grant CONFIRM them but they may be truly said to have Confirmed the Papal Religion as far as the prevention of the Ruine of the Empire and Emperor and the Roman Catholick Princes of the Empire and their Subjects may be judged to have amounted to the Confirmation of that Religion But that the Emperor and Princes and States of the Empire did as perfectly slight Pope Innocent the 10ths Bull of the Nullity of that
Plot that caused the Vote of its reallity to pass with a Nemine Contradicente there What Fautors of false Testimony the Jesuites principles are I have shewn and at the same time afforded my Testimony to the Heroic Vertue of many others of the Church of Rome and think it great and pedantical kind of Injustice to charge all Lay-Papists with a readiness to obey their Priests Commands by being ministerial in Cruelty to Protestants I remember I have read it in a printed Speech of Sir Audly Mervin the Speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland a Speech glowing with anger enough against the Papists where yet 't is said p. 24. In the Barony of Enishoan there are above two thousand Irish Papists can bring hundreds of Protestants to witness their Civil demeanor through the whole course of the distemper in this Kingdom And as the bloody Sect of the Zealots grew at last so odious among the Iews and another Order of such sicarii among the Turks so I suppose that of the Jesuites will naturally do among Christians and the Jesuites writ de haeretico Assassinando grow obsolete and especially in places where the Scene of Mr. Coleman's Northern Heresie lies it being an old observation that Northern Countries are more hospitable and less cruel than Southern In the very time of the dawn of Learning ushering in that of the Reformation it presently grew odious to the first-rate Ingeniosi to draw Heretics blood Our Famous Countryman Tunstal Bishop of Durham who had imbibed so much of the Mathematical Sciences that Vossus de Scientiis Mathematicis saith p. 40. Ante annos Centum quod excurrit magnâ cum laude praecipue ob sermonem purum perspicuum de arte supputandi egit Cutbertus Tunstallus and whose Book of Arithmetick writ with such pure Latinity is commonly extant was of such a temper that as Fuller tells us in his Church History the Bishopric of Durham had halcyon days of Peace and Quiet under God and good Cutbert Tunstal the Bishop thereof Sir Thomas Moor of whom 't is said that 't was writ on his Tomb that he was furibus haereticisque molestus yet in his Vtopia rouls neither of them in Blood and in his Chapter there concerning the Religions in Vtopia he makes divers kinds of Religion not only in sundry parts of the Island but also in divers places of every City some worshipping the Sun and some the Moon and some other of the Planets and the wisest of them worshipping God Almighty and some embracing the Faith of Christ at first without the help of a Priesthood and minding to choose a Bishop among themselves without sending out of their own Country for the Order of Priesthood and makes them affrighting none to or from the Christian Religion And that that Book of his may rather be thought an Original of his Mind than a mere Copy of his Countenance we have the Suffrage of Dr. Danne in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where having said That Sir Thomas Moor was a man of the most tender and delicate Conscience that the World hath seen since St. Austin and citing of his Vtopia l 2. c. de servis he saith He was not likely to write there any thing in jest mischievously interpretable And if a man would quote things of Erasmus his great Humanity to all humane kind he must quote almost his whole Works But how far his Genius led him from any brutal ferity toward Heretics your Lordship will see by this passage in his Supput error Bedae Dic ecclesiae quod si non audierit sit tibi velut ethnicus publicanus quasi hic ulla sit incendii mentio Rursus Apostolum Post unam alteram correptionem devita An devitare est in ignem conjicere Iterum Auferte malum ex vobis ipsis Num auferte valet idem quod occidere He had said before Quas autem mihi narrat ecclesiae leges An leges ecclesiae sunt quenquam ultricibus tradere flammis And afterward at episcoporum est quod quidem in ipsis est docere corrigere mederi Qualis autem est episcopus qui nihil aliud possit quam vincire torquere flammis tradere Quod si qui tractant hoc negotium tales essent qualem se declarat in hoc libello Beda hoc est si tantum spirarent odii si tantum haberent impudentiae tam impotens calumniandi studium tam corruptum judicium ut videatur citius decem propulsurus in haeresim quam unum revocaturus nonne belle ageretur cum delatis Nisi fallor primum designare cui male vellet eum curaret clam rapiendum in carcerem ibi quaererentur articuli tales quales plurimos objicit mihi partim falsos partim depravatos Disputatio si qua fieret perageretur in carcere si quidhisceret contrà mox accersitis tribus dilectis monachis pronunciaretur sententia diffinitiva Quod reliquum est perageret carnifex Vbi theologus defert rapit in carcerem urget accusationem damnatum tradit judici profano Iudex non ex suâ cognitione sed ex theologi praejudicio tradit flammis Our Martyrologist Mr. Fox could not have expressed more anger against a Bishop Bonner than Erasmus a Papist hath here against Popish Persecuting Prelates Had Erasmus then known of one practice enjoyn'd constantly by the Canons to Popish Bishops at their Condemning of Heretics to salve the Phoenomena of their irregularity by intermedling in Causâ sanguinis and about which your Lordship shewed me once some remarkable quotations in a Letter writ to you by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln and of which quotations I beg a Copy from you by the first opportunity namely efficaciter excorde to intercede with the secular Judge to whom they deliver the Heretic over to bring no pain of death or mutilation of member to him I believe the great Wit of Erasmus would after his ingenious account aforesaid of the Tragedy of the Condemned Heretic pleasantly entertained himself and Posterity with the wanton cruelty of that Farce that ensued it and let us see how the Popish Bishop then using the Speech familiar to some Tooth drawers just before their operation I will do you no harm and put you to little or no pain did at the same time make use of the power of the secular Magistrate but as the Linnen Clout or Silk to wrap and hide the tormenting Pincers of Holy-Church in But to return to my observation of all Popish Canonists themselves not allowing that wanton mode of the cruel usage and interceding with the Magistrate Efficaciter ex corde to do the Condemned Heretic no harm I think the same quotations mention how the famous Panormitan did brand the Hypocrisie of that Practice and the truth is 't is very abominable that Heretics neither living nor dying can be free from suffering Shammes by some Papists But again on the other hand 't is with Justice to be said that
some Papists whose names the Age riseth up to for their great advancement of real Learning I mean Peiresk Descartes Gassendus Mersennus had as much tenderness for any differing in judgment from them as Protestants can have and that mighty hunter after knowledg Peiresk was so far from eagerness in pursuing the blood of Heretics that being one of the Judges for Capital Causes in France he would always come off the Bench when Sentence of death was to be given though against the most outragious Murderer and he always carried in his mind a charity large enough to embrace the whole World and maintain'd a constant Correspondence with Salmasius Causabon and other Protestants and did put Grotius on the writing his De jure belli pacis that hath taught more Civility to Nations than the Modern Papal Christianity hath done and who hath there so perfectly manumitted Secular Magistrates from being obliged implicitly to execute the Sentences of Ecclesiastic Judges that he hath there asserted it l. 2. c. 26. § 4. Quin probabile est etiam Carnifici qui damnatum occisurus est hoc tenus aut quaestioni actis inter fuerit aut ex rei confessione cognita esse debere causae merita ut satis ei constet mortem ab eo commeritam idque nonnullis in locis observatur nec aliud spectat lex Hebraea cum ad lapidandum eum qui damnatus est testes vult prodire populo Deut. 17. By the 7th Verse of that Chapter the hands of the Witnesses were to be first on him to put him to death which Law no doubt had the effect of a Caveat with men against their ambitus of the standing Office of Witnesses by tacking thereunto the standing Office of Executioners Moreover both common observation and Cursory looking into Books and indeed common sense will teach us that the Papal Principles do not oblige men at once to fence against Heretics lives and against impossibilities nor to endanger themselves by fighting with the Wind-mills in Heretics Brains That great Cardinal D' Ossat whom I have so often here cited and who was so renown'd for his probity as well as comprehensive knowledg of matters of State doth in the 86th Letter that is to Villeroy in the Year 1597. give him an account of his discourse with the Pope on the occasion of his Holyness angrily resenting Harry the 4ths observing the Edict of pacification and that D' Ossat thereupon said That it was necessary for the Peace of France that the Edict should be observ'd that for want of such an Edict France had not been quiet for 35 years That the Date of the Edict 1577. shewed 't was not the present King but the late King 12 years before his death that made it that the late King and King Charles his Predecessor and Brother did not make such Edicts of Pacification with their good liking and frankly but were constrain'd to it by necessity even for the good of the Catholic Religion and the Realm after having found that many Wars made by Heretics served for nothing but in many places to abolish the Catholick Religion and in a manner all Ecclesiastical Discipline Iustice and order c. And that besides that necessity hath no Law in whatever Subject and Matter it be Jesus Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn that other Catholick Princes used so to do whom none spoke ill of for it That the Duke of Savoy as great a Zealot as he makes himself for the Catholic Religion doth tolerate Heretics in their Religion in the three Valleys of Italy of which he is Lord. That the King of Poland did as much not only in the Kingdom of Sweden but of Poland that all the Princes of the House of Austria and who are Celebrated for being Pillars of the Catholic Church did as much not only in the Towns of the Empire but also in their own proper Estates as in Austria it self from whence they take their Name in Hungary Bohemia Moravia Silesia Lusatia Stiria Carinthia and Croatia That Charles the 5th Father of the King of Spain was he that taught the King of France and other Princes to yield to such a necessity by making the Interim that every one knows even after his having Conquered the Protestants of Germany That his Son the King of Spain at this day who is reputed to be Archi-Catholic and to uphold the Catholic Religion as Atlas doth the Heavens doth yet tolerate in his Kingdoms of Valencia and Granada the Moors with their Mahumetanisme and hath caused to be offered to the Heretics of Zealand and Holland and other Heretics in the Low-Countries the free exercise of their pretended Religion if they will for the future acknowledge and obey him c. And concludes his discourse to the Pope saying That the Kings ablest Counsellors were of opinion that if his Holyness saw things so near as the King did and that the Pope was to Command France in the State the Realm was at present his Holyness would not in this point do less than the King did To all which D' Ossat saith The Pope made no reply And I think it may with parity of reason be affirmed that if the Pope himself were to Command England in the State it is in at present he would be no hammer of Heretics so as to knock any one of them on the head I know that after the date of that Letter viz. Anno 1597. of D' Ossat's last mentioned the various Revolutions in Christendom made the Scene of the toleration of Heterodoxy in those Countries to be altered with a Vengeance for six years after the death of D' Ossat viz. in the Year 1610. King Phillip the 3d of Spain made an Edict for the exterminating the Moors with their Mahumetatisme out of his Realms and which was executed with great Cruelty and the Vnion of Vtrecht entered by the Provinces in 1579 and the blow given to the Spanish Monarchy by Queen Elizabeth in 1588 and the Patronage the United Provinces had from her and the kindness they found from Harry the 4th of France made his Conditional offers of favour to the Dutch Heretics not thank-worthy but even at this very day tho in the Low-Countries both of the United and Spanish Provinces there is a certain reciprocal liberty for the Papists in the Dominions of the States and for the Protestants in the Dominions of the Spaniard yet is the liberty not equal for in the United Provinces the States allow the Papists a certain number of Priests to officiate among them in sacris which is done by an express Concession But in the Spanish Dominions there is no such Concession and the Ministers who there privately officiate among Protestants do it at their peril And in the Year 1599. Ferdinand of Austria expelled the Lutherans out out of his Provinces and in Austria Bohemia