est unless the Magistrate who is Virtute Officii Gods Vicegerent in rewarding the Good and punishing the Evil interpose and shew himself really a Terrour to Evil doers and a Rewarder and Encourager of such as do well Thirdly I take it also for an undoubted truth that by our English Laws no person is punished or as his Grace and the Discenters call it Persecuted purely for that which he calls his Religion which is his private Opinion And it raises my admiration to wonder how his Grace who hath had his share in the preparation of those Laws for the Royal Assent should be so far mistaken in the nature and necessity of them All the Laws of the Land shewing the Reason of their Penal Nature to be purely Political and not Spiritual and it is the Overt Acts of Treason Sedition and Rebellion and the fatal Consequences of pretended Religion which the Laws endeavour by Penalties to obviate or prevent and to punish if men be so wicked or so foolish not to take the fair Caution that is given them A man may be to himself of any Religion nay so great Indulgence does our Law give that they may privately exercise it provided they exceed not such a number besides their Family by which it is most evident that the Quarrel is not immediately at the Opinion which is pitied because False and indulged because the Assertors are obstinately Foolish but at the practical Consequences which by terrible Experience have been found to be fatal to the Prince and People to the Peace and Prosperity of the Community even that dreadful 35th of Eliz. tells us in the Title that it is An Act to retain the Queens Subjects in their due Obedience If there be severe Laws against Papists Priests and Jesuites the reason of them was for their Turbulency and continual Unchristian Machinations against the Life of the Prince and the Peace of the Nation for their Doctrines of the Lawfulness of Excommunicating Deposing and even Murdering Soveraign Princes and disposing of their Realms and Dominions for pretended Heresie or Incapacity Doctrines able to ruine the whole Earth and lay the Foundations of Eternal Mischiefs to mankind And if the Dissenters on the other hand complain of the severity of Penal Statutes or suffer by them it is because they have actually been guilty of the most horrible Crimes of Rebellion and the most consummated Wickedness in Murdering the Best of Princes and overturning the Best of Governments it is because the lewd Principles of Democracy are inconsistent with Monarchy and contain in them the Seeds of Sedition Rebellion Anarchy and Confusion And though in Charity we may conclude that all Dissenters of different Perswasions are not so tainted with the worst of Principles as to become Rebels and Regicides yet there being an absolute impossibility to distinguish the Innocent from the Criminal since none will acknowledge themselves such the Innocent must be content to suffer with the Criminal and partake of their Punishments unless they can make us Momus his Windows to see into their Hearts and Souls not onely what they are but what they will or may be And to conclude this particular I dare confidently aver That neither the Intention of the Laws was to punish men for their different Opinions or that any have been punished by virtue of any Penal or Capital Law but upon the account of the Political not Religious necessity to secure the Peace and Safety of the Government And if a Political punishing the Disturbers of publick Peace Order and Government be so great a Crime as in his Graces Opinion to be near a kin to the Sin against the Holy Ghost and to render men Persecutors and Antichristian the whole World and all Ages Places Times Governments and Governours must have been are and will be Antichristian and Persecuting to the World end even David and Solomon not excepted the one the Wisest and the other the Best King being a man after Gods own Heart And how his Grace will escape the lash of his own Censure I cannot imagine who hath I presume often given his Consent to penal Bills and may yet to others for the securing the Person of his Prince and the Peace of his Country from Religious Rumbalds and Conventicling Blunderbusses as he is in duty bound as well as from any other Irreligious Rebels And upon the whole if all those who prosecute Dissenters are Persecutors and all Persecutors Antichristian his Grace will be at a great loss where to finde any sort of People in the World that call themselves Christians who by this Logick may not be proved Antichristian And certainly this is a notable way of Arguing Men and Athiests into Religion to lay that down as a Fundamental Maxim which if admitted for Truth will infallibly prove there never was any true Religion in the World since it is impossible to finde any Society or Government which hath not endeavoured to preserve it self by Rewards and Punishments by Penal and Capital Laws against Usurpers Rebels and Seditious Persons and Principles though never so fairly gilded over with fine and glittering Titles of Holy Leagues Holy Covenants Gods People and Saints Vizors with which ill men have endeavoured to conceal the most Flagitious Crimes Having thus shortly run over the two main things I hope we shall with more ease surmount the third which seems by being put as the Sting in the Tayl to have been the efficient Cause of the Book which Logicians tell us is always first in Intention though last in the Execution and that is the necessity of a Toleration For in truth if Persecution be really Antichristian and no Man ought to be forced in Religious Matters then Toleration is absolutely necessary in order to the very Essence of being a Christian a good Man and able Polititian Now if I be able to shew that Toleration of all Religions is neither good Politicks nor Divinity in a Monarchy I think I shall have done with his Graces Paper and this I belive to unprejudiced or undesigning Persons will not appear either difficult or impossible to be proved First therefore It is ill Divinity unless my Lords new Scheme of the Possibility of being saved by the conduct of Humane Reason in any Religion which acknowledges a God and teaches Morality be granted for a Truth And if it should I cannot see any manner of necessity of Faith or Christian Religion nor according to this Divinity was the Incarnation of the Son of God so great a kindness to the World as all Pious Men believe if Men might go to Heaven before this Stupendious Mercy was known to them or may so still by the help of that Instinct which his Grace tells us is so near a-kin to God and we must now after almost 1700 Years come to question the truth of Canonical Scripture which assures us there is no other Name under Heaven by which Salvation is to be obtained but the glorious and the blessed
Name of Jesus the Saviour of the World Again It is most certain that as there is but one God so there is but one Faith and one Truth Whereas there are many Errours and Doctrines of Devils in all dresses even that of Christian Religion Now these will all plead as strongly for Toleration and Liberty of Conscience as the true Religion and upon my Lords Hypothesis will have as undoubted a Right to it So that the whole World must be suffered to continue in damnable Errours and Heresies which they call Religion and no Person under Penalty of being guilty of one of the greatest Crimes and being Antichristian must punish them for their blasphemous Tenents or charitably indeavour by the fear and terrour of Humane Laws and Penalties as well as by Reasons and Arguments to oblige them to procure a better information of their Understanding and a clearer Notion of these necessary Truths wherein they have been by their folly and obstinacy mightily and it may be long mistaken for want of the Rod of Correction to cure them of that folly which is naturally bound up in the Hearts of the Children of Men. Now if it be true as it must if we believe every Word of God is true That no Man can be saved but by comming to the knowledge of the Truth by Supernatural Revelation and that they must all be damned who believe a lie that there is but one Name to give Salvation and one Truth to be believed Is it not a very fine way of leading Men to that glorious Truth and Light to tell them all who pretend to it have it how far remote from it soever and to render it almost morally impossible among so many authoriz'd Counterfeits to find the real Truth And is it not a charitable Doctrine to give Men Liberty of Conscience to go headlong to the Devil for God's sake without endeavouring to stop their Carreer when we see them mounted upon the blackest and most furious Steeds of damnable Errours and Heresies Will his Grace think it convenient to Tolerate the Conscience of a Calvinist who rides Whip and Spur upon the Pegasus of his Sanguinary Divinity and has the blasphemous impudence to compare Almighty Mercy which he says Gods Revealed Will seems to offer to all to be only like the Artifice of a little Vermin-catcher who baits his Trap with it only that by their refusal to which they are precondemned by his secret Will he may have something to say against them And were I at leisure to write or his Grace to read I could furnish him with a Bill of Items of this Nature in the Opinions of our several Dissenters longer then a Taylor of the greatest Faith ever trusted a promising Courtier for But let this pass only with this Remark that if it were for my life that I indeavoured either to make a witty Man an Atheist or to propagate Atheism in the World I would desire no other Favour or Foundation but a Toleration of all Opinions and Liberty of Conscience to effect it Nor is Toleration worse Divinity then Politicks I cannot say how it may stand with the Nature of a Commonwealth though because our Republicans are so fond of it one would think it calculated for their Meridian but certainly not onely Reason but dreadful Experience have assured us it is inconsistent with Monarchy Nothing can make a Monarchy Great and August but the Love and Union of the People and if his Grace will enquire of Lewis the Fourteenth he will inform him that is his Opinion and indeed nothing begets greater Divisions and Animosities in a Kingdom then Religious Feuds which weaken its Power at home and Reputation abroad but where these diversities in Opinion about Religion all meet as in a Center in the Point of the Lawfulness for the Sake or Name or Cause of Religion for Subjects to take up Arms to Dethrone and Assassinate privately or publickly to Murder their Prince and subvert the Government as the Principles of all Covenanters Associators and Excluders do I appeal to all Crowned Heads to all Persons who have any share in Government to all Ministers of State and Polititians nay even to his Grace himself whether such dangerous Principles and Persons Poisoned with them are not so far from deserving Toleration as to be most pernicious and intolerable in any Monarchy that desires or expects to be safe But what need we to argue from Reason when Fact is so evident Has not Indulgence Toleration and Liberty of Conscience murdered one King set up a thousand Usurpers made England suffer a thousand miseries and cost this Nation many thousand Lives many Millions of Treasure His Grace had a share and a large one in the effects of that Liberty of Conscience It was a Conscientious Felton that robbed him of a Noble Father and the World of a most Illustrious Life it was a Conscientious Rebel that slew his Brother it was Conscientious Rebels that Sequestred his Estate Imprisoned his Person and would have taken away his Life and if he has a mind to run the Gantlet again through all those Risques of Fortune I would recommend him to a Toleration and Liberty of Conscience to gratifie his desires for I dare assure him a Ducal Coronet is no more a Protection against Conscience when once it takes the Field then an Imperial Crown or a much hated though Innocent Mitre Were that late Rebellion onely the single dismal Extravagance of Conscience grown Frantick by Indulgence or wantonly Cruel by too much Liberty something might be alledged in mitigation of its Crimes But it is a Wild Creature in Dissenters whose Chain is no sooner loose but it flies at the Throat of its Keeper And no Man can doubt of this who reflects upon the Troubles and Dangers which have befallen our late Sovereign and His Illustrious Brother our most Gracious King which must date their Aera from the last Indulgence for no sooner had the Dissenters gained that Point but they threw at all and the good and loyal Subjects of the Church of England the best Supporters of the Crown being discouraged the Faction grew Rampant to the highest Degrees of Insolence imaginable and wanted but little of pushing on a more dreadful Revolution than that of Forty one For who were the Petitioners the Addressers the Life and Fortune Men the Associators the Exclusioners the Rye-house Conspirators but the great Friends to the Dissenters to Liberty of Conscience and Toleration And who were to assist these mighty Undertakers but the Dissenters the Band of Pensioners to this pretended Conscience And whoever Indulges those who plead Conscience opens a secret Sally-port to let in Traytors disguised under the Name of Tender Conscience betrays a Principal Gate of the Government to his Enemies and for one Conscience really Tender will find a thousand as hard as Iron and as sharp as Steel and as mortal too in a Dissenters Hand And I cannot but infinitely admire at that Passage
it as an Essay for his own diversion and therefore hath not attended the Consequences which will necessarily and inevitably follow from his Conceptions to the great disadvantage not only of Religion which he would support but even the Politick Frame and Constitution and Government of the World I was onee acquainted with an airy Gentleman who would discourse mighty agreeably and loved to maintain divers odd Opinions and if at any time he was run a-ground by Consequences drawn from his Positions he would cry a Pox upon Consequences I hate these Consequences But I have more Honour for his Grace than to believe him to be of that Gentleman's humor I do not design to read an Anatomical Lecture upon his Grace's Paper or curiously to defect each Nerve and Muscle I hate hashing of Books and serving them up with Limon and Anchovies and shall content my self without distorting his Sense or weighing every Period and scanning every Line to deliver my thoughts of it in the Lump and shall for the sake of method offer these things as being the main matters wherein I take the Liberty to differ from his Grace's Sentiments First I presume to say That his Grace has taken a very improper Method in the whole to confute the witty Atheist or to establish Religion Secondly That his Maxime concerning Antichristianism and the Nature of Persecution for differences in Opinion is built upon an evident mistake of the Nature Reason Intention and Necessity of those humane Laws which punish Dissenters and which they and his Grace call Persecution And Thirdly That the Toleration of several Opinions which in his three Queries he seems to press as necessary both upon a Religious and Civil account is utterly inconsistent with both those ends For the first in which the whole body of the Book consists that I may answer concisely after my Lords method of writing The Position upon which his Grace goes of proving a Deity and every man carving out the measure of his own Worship is too short in matter of Argument and too long in point of Allowance The changeableness of the World falls as much short of disproving its Eternity as the several mutations of his Grace's Body from his Infancy to this Age does of proving that he is not the same George Duke of Bucks that he was fourty years ago nor if he takes notice of the whole System of the Universe of which this Sublunary Body wherein we are is but an inconsiderable point he will find no such great Alterations but that a witty Atheist may say with St. Peters scoffers All things continue as they were and it may as well have been always so and continue always so as we see it does notwithstanding that changeableness Now if I were to discourse an Atheist about the Worlds Eternity I would urge him with this Argument If the World be Eternal then it must of necessity be the Supreme and Ultimate Being and Cause of its own Existence for if we suppose another Being before it it is not Eternal Now if it be the Supreme Being it must not onely have all the Attributes which necessarily fall in with the Conception and Natural Idea of such a Noble and Glorious Essence but many more than we can imagine or conceive and not onely so but every part of it must have all these perfections in the highest measure and even beyond the furthest flights of Reason Fancy and Imagination such as are Invisibility Impassibility Justice Power Mercy and Goodness and a thousand others which no Atheist can be so lost to Sense as to believe the World either in the whole or in part can be possessed of Can the Sun the Moon the Stars the Earth or any of them reward or punish Are they not all separately and conjunctly Insensible and Inanimate Nor will the little Story of the Anima Mundi come in at a dead life to help the grosser matter And he who supposes such a Being separate and distinct from the Heavy Matter grants what he denies and supposes a Superiour Being to the World which Acts Regulates and Governs it in all its Actions and then the difficulty will return of the two Eternals which shall have the upper hand Whether they Act freely or necessarily If necessarily they must have still some Superiour to impose that necessity and then all is lost if voluntarily in co-ordinate Powers one may refuse to Act and then what becomes of the other They must both of necessity cease to be And a thousand other inextricable difficulties and impossibilities will follow too long to be here trifled upon So that to me the plain want of that absolute perfection which must be in the Supreme Being and which is plainly visible is not in the World is a certain Argument that it is not the Supreme Being and if it must have a Superiour it must fall short of that Superiour Being in the essential point of Perfection Eternity For the mind of Man can by no Art be perswaded to believe the foolish imagination of an infinite Series of Causes one hangging like Links in a Chain upon another but must at last come to a point That there must be one Ultimate Supreme and Absolutely Perfect Cause of all Things which since neither the World nor the Anima Mundi are capable of or really possessed of those perfections it must be somewhat Superiour to them in all Things and in this of Priority of Existence which the whole World with an Universal consent hath owned to be the Divinity But his Grace having I hope to the great disappointment of our witty Atheists found out a GOD by his way of Reasoning which I do not intend to disturb but to improve I can by no means be induced to be of his Opinion in his Deductions concerning the Adoration and Worship of this Blessed Being For in truth if his Argumentation be allowed solid and concluding here is as fair a Plea for the Alchoran as the New Testament for Pythagoras his Golden Verses to be as good Divinity as Saint Paul's Epistles For if I be not mistaken in what his Grace calls that part of us which is nearest a kin to the Nature of God and the Instinct of a Diety which is to be our Guide and Director in choosing the best way for our Religious Worship of God which immediately after he tells us highly concerns every man to examine seriously which is the best way of Worshipping and Serving of God that is which is the best Religion This must be Humane Reason and not Humane Reason as regulated by any Publick and Political Reason of a Community but according as every private persons Reason shall dictate to him and then his consequence is That it is one of the greatest Crimes a man can be guilty of to force us to Act or Sin against that Instinct of Religion and something a kin to the Sin against the Holy Ghost Now did I not believe that his Grace is out of his