of Ceremonies among the Iews as would have made it forgot that it was ever made for man. The thinking sort of men found that tho the Principles of those Divines did not like the Jesuits make Calumny no mortal Sin that yet as the Adherents to Presbytery did calumniate the Constitution of the Church of England for bordring on Popery and the Royal Martyr for being a Fautor to it so they did by their Censorious tempers transfuse such an acid humour among the people that very much loosned the Nerves of the English good nature and distorted the English hospitality and therefore 't is but by a natural instinct that that old Pharisaical Leven is now so nauseous that probably any one suspected of an inclination to replant the old Presbytery here and its Arbitrary Power to excommunicate would too be staked down to a narrower tedder in Conversation and be it as it were excommunicated from Gentlemens Company as much as Make-bates or common Informers upon Penal Statutes The people heretofore found out that as Popery endangers men by the Priests not intending to make the Sacrament of the Eucharist when he administers it So that these as I said intended it should not be at all administred but to their own Sect and that the gesture of sitting at the Communion that they invited men to and thereby to their being rescued from the Popish Posture of Kneeling was but a sort of Sham in its way for that kneeling was the gesture used in the ancient times of the Church and the first that was ever observ'd to sit then was the Pope to express his State. The observing sort of Men then judged that as Sibthorpe and Manwaring had been exploded for going beyond their Credentials from Heaven as God's Ambassadors in straining the Prerogative of Princes these deserv'd to be so too for scruing the Power of Parliaments above Law and for thrusting down the King into the Class of The Three Estates and that as Sibthorpe was exposed to severe Animadversions from the Age for his Sermon of Apostolic Obedience shewing the Duty of Subjects to pay Tribute and Taxes to their Princes c. And p. 21. of that Sermon applying the words of Curse ye Meroz yea curse them bitterly c. to the promoting his illegal purpose they deserved to be censur'd for going on too with the Alarm of Curse ye Meroz thousands of times over when the Subjects were slack in paying Tribute to one another to dethrone their Prince They saw that those Divines in trying to salve the Phaenomena of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Covenant that they had taken were in the Course of their Theology continually put to it to deliberate of Rebellion and that their very deliberation of it was ipso facto one and a thing that included the horror of a mans deliberating to kill his Father and 't was but natural for the people representative and diffusive to fancy it lawful for them silently to resume the power given to those Church-men and abused by them who were always in the Pulpit and Press lowdly trumpeting forth the Iesuitical Notion of the lawfulness of the peoples resuming the Power given to Kings and as I shall never fear that the King of Spain will ever be able to take the World in a Ginne by Campanellas advise to him in Chap. 5. of the Spanish Monarchy to employ Divines to set up the Roar of unus Pastor and unum Ovile every where for the Pope so neither shall I that mens vociferating the Clause in the Covenant viz. That the Lord may be One and his Name One and in the three Kingdoms will ever again be able to embroyl them In short any one who shall consider that in Scotland Presbytery's former Kingdom of Darkness the people have been so of late illuminated as to find the way to be Latitudinarians need never have any fears and jealousies of that Governments jus Divinum again Marching hither In the first Session of the second Parliament of this King at Edenburgh November the 16th 1669. There passed an Act wherein 't was declared That his Majesty hath the Supreme Authority over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastical within this his Kingdom and that by vertue thereof the ordering and disposal of the external Government and Policy of the Church doth properly belong to his Majesty and his Successors as an Inherent Right to the Crown and that his Majesty and his Successors may settle Enact and Emit such Constitutions Acts and Orders concerning the Administration of the External Government of the Church and the Persons employed in the same and concerning all Ecclesiastical meeting and matters to be proposed and determined therein as they in their Royal Wisdom shall think fit c. And his Majesty with Advise and Consent aforesaid doth rescind and annual all Laws Acts and Clauses thereof and all Customs and Constitutions Civil or Ecclesiastick which are contrary to or inconsistent with his Majesties Supremacy as it is here asserted and declares the same void and null in all times coming This Act of Parliament is the more observable for that it declared the extent of the Regal Power in Ecclesiasticks after that in the Year 1663 An Act passed there for a National Synod under the Government of Bishops and for that Presbytery which was before like Hame the only body in Nature that doth not content it self to take in any other body but would either overcome and turn another body into it self as by victory or it self to dye and go out was then grown so amenable to the Course of Nature in all other bodies of which one is a glue to another that not satisfied with its own former consistence it did as suddenly and easily and quietly receive in the body of Episcopacy as I may say as Air takes in light and as readily as Metals themselves receive in strong waters and then it was that Episcopacy which in the Forms of Church Government seems by its weight as Gold among Metals and indeed all bodies to be the most close and solid did there greedily drink in the Quicksilver of Presbytery But tho Presbytery then was and now is considerable in the Internal part of the Government of the Church of Scotland and is likely so to be till Christ's second coming humanly speaking with a non obstante to any thing that time can cause and will be preserved in perpetuity by the means of what my Lord Bacon calls the drowning of Metals namely when the baser Metal is incorporated with the more rich as Silver with Gold yet so willing were they in Scotland to give to Caesar the real Supremacy that was Caesars that knowing the Protestant Religion can be no more there destroyed under any external form of Church Polity then as I said Gold can be destroyed in Nature they thought it more prudent to trust the Crown with a Power of melting down that on emergent occasions and altering the Superscription of its
convellere and it may well be supposed that I having partly grounded my Conjectures of the happy Future State of England on the former fashion of Polemical Writing being passed away could not be much tempted to Controversy The Iesuites and Casuists may still hold the 23d Tenet branded in the Pope's â—ecree as long as they will without any disturbance from my Pen viz. Faith in its large sense only from the Evidence of the Creation or some such Motive is sufficient for Iustification and so likewise the 46th Tenet there viz. frequent Confession and Communion even in those that live as Heathens is a Mark of Predestination and many other Tenets there relating to Religion and which the Pope with so great a Pastoral Sollicitude hath damned as at least scandalous and pernicious in Practice and hath prohibited to be defended by any under the pain of Excommunication ipso facto But there are other Tenets by him in that Decree condemned that I have in this Discourse dilated on as Convulsive of Humane Society which the Pietas in patriam occasioned in me such transports of passion against that I wished he had signalized with sharper words of Censure than those beforementioned and that I thought the Excommunicatio Major with the Ceremony of lighted Torches too little for and even an ordinary Anathema in their case to be a Complement or a kind of sham censuring them as abominable and not good or somewhat like the Censure pro formâ shot off against the Munster Peace and I supposed that if he had Sentenced them to be absolutely in themselves evil he would have satisfied every one that he had put the World out of their Gun-shot by his putting it out of his power to dispense with them However finding that Decree of great moment to Christendom and yet by the generality of Papists or Protestants to have been not much more regarded than are the Copies of the Dialogues between Pasquin and Marphorio that come here I have deliberately Surveyed it and done it what right I could And by occasion hereof do here call to mind a Remark on the Papacy I met with in a Pamphlet of one of our Dissenters viz. That if the Pope were a good man he might do a great deal of good Tho for sometime after I had begun this Discourse I was somewhat a Stranger to the great Character of the present Pope and so continued till reading the Preface of Dr. Burnet's very learned Book of the Regale I sound he there Celebrated him in these words viz. That he is a man of great probity and that on his advancement to the Papacy he conceived a very ill opinion of the whole Order of the Iesuites I since found cause from the Universal Concurrence of all Impartial men about the same to have the firmer opinion of the quiet of England and do expect from the influences of such a Pope on the Loyalty and Religion of the Roman Catholicks of England some advance of its happiness Tho most men may have only little Ideas of the Deity as of somewhat above the Clouds that as a great Cypher only surrounds the World yet the wiser few who have particularly observed the watchful Eye of Providence over the Critical passages and windings and turnings in their own lifes cannot but be sensible that in the designation of persons at stated times to be at the Helm of the Church of Rome and who are necessarily to have so great a share in the External and a much greater in the Internal Government of the World the great Governor of it and preserver of men is no unconcerned Spectator It is I think most highly probable that at a time when the World being filled with the Jesuites Principles and Casuistick distinctions Vertue it self was grown an empty Name and the Casuists Project of finishing Transgression and making an end of Sin in a subtle way and contrary to the plain Method intended by our Saviour had in a great part of the World almost finished the most Vital part of Christian Religion I mean plain and downright Morality and at a time when some Virtuosi in Italy and elsewhere half-witted and half Atheists taking it for granted that in what hearts soever the Jesuites and Casuists Religionary Model had prevailed the simplicity of the Gospel was extinguished were observed to talk of Albumazar's fond prediction of the Christian Religion lasting but about 1460 years and Criticising of the time from whence its promulgation and likewise the promulgation of those Casuistical Tenets bore date did prophanely insinuate their Miscreant-Conceptions of the Christian Religion not lasting till the time assigned in the Scripture for Christs surrendring his Mediatory Kingdom to his Father I say it is most highly probable that at such a time and when the Jesuites Interest too had so much Prosperity as to tempt them to think that the Mountain of their Religion should never be moved that nothing less than the great Vertue and Courage of this Pope appearing by his said Decree could secure Vertue it self and the true Christian Morality and give the World occasion to say with some Alteration of the Question put to Esther viz. Who knoweth not that he is come to Rome ' s See for such a time as this is The Mountainous heap of Rubbish in the Iesuites and other Casuists Principles and even in the Canon Law appears very stupendious to the World but considering the Christian Heroical Acts of this Pope and who for his severity against the abuses of Indulgences hath been by some Papists called the Lutheran Pope as I said and for his anger against the Jesuites Principles been called the Iansenist Pope by others I think another great Question in the Prophet Zechary may be here not improperly applied viz. Who art thou O great Mountain before Zerubbabel Little did the Iesuites think that when they Crowned the Papacy with a double Crown I mean of its infallibility in Law and likewise in Fact a Crown much more glorious than its Triple one any Pope would ever uncrown their Principles and expose their baldness to the World and little do they who fear that ever this Pope will occasionally dispense with any mens practising these Principles think of the security they have against the same from his inflexible Virtue and perfect Antipathy to injustice and which are judged to be so inherent in his Nature that I shall here occasionally say that as I was somewhat a Stranger formerly to the Character of this Pope so I believe some of the Plot-witnesses were that reflected on him so ignominiously for undoubtedly had it been understood by them they would never have thought their Credibility could have out-lived their first attacquing it It may possibly be here objected by some Critical Inspectors into the late Papal Transactions that Alexander the 7th as this Pope observes in the beginning of his said Decree did first damn some of the Iesuites Principles viz. in the year 1665 and that
Guymenius shortly after in that year appearing in Print as a Champion for the Principles so damned the College of Sorbon shortly after that damned the Work of Guymenius in the 11th of May the same year and that in the latter end of Iune so shortly following in the same year the same Pope Alexander the 7th damned that very Sorbon Censure of Guymenius and that therefore 't is possible the great Scene of Vertue appearing in this Popes said Decree may with a short turn of Apostolical Power receive too the Fate of Pageantry and presently disappear and that the great Mountain which his Faith hath removed into the midst of the Sea may in little more than the twinkling of an Eye return to its old place But in Answer to which I shall do that right to the Papacy to clear the mistake in the objection and inform the Reader that tho Alexander the 7th did Ex Cathedra damn that Sorbon-Censure as aforesaid yet it appears out of the Condemnatory Bull it self that what that Pope there did was not out of favour to Guymenius or the Iesuites themselves or their Tenets and that to satisfie the World in that point he there gives the reason for his damning the Sorbonists Censure namely because it intermedled in Censuring some other Propositions or Principles of the Jesuites that concerned the Authority of the Pope the Iurisdiction of Bishops the Office of the Parish Priests and the Privileges granted by Popes and but for the Sorbons complicating which with their Censure of the other Scandalous Principles of the Iesuites no doubt but the Sorbon Censure had stood as a Rock unshaken Let therefore such who fear every thing fear that this great Pope will after his said Condemnatory Decree appear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Condemned while I observe it for the honour of his Iustice that he made that Decree and for the honour of his Prudence that before Nature had caused the detestable Principles therein censured silently to evaporate he gave the World this loud warming of them as it likewise may be for the honour of that great Seminary of the Divines of our Church of England our University of Oxford observed that before the Seditious Principles and Tenets of Iesuites and some Dissenters came to be naturally exterminated out of the English World by fear and shame they notified them to this Age and to Posterity There is no Subject that hath since the year 1641 more employed the English Press than that of Liberty of Conscience pro and con and the fiercest and sharpest of the Writings concerning it were what passed between the Independents and Presbyterians on the occasion of Presbytery's great Effort to make the English Nation by one short general turn Proselyted to its Model and when it pushed for the auspicious fate of former great Religionary Conversions happening as it were simul and semel and when Nations seemed to be like the Hyena which having but one Back-bone cannot turn except it turn all at once But the Independents observing the Kingdom and Presbytery frowning on one another thought they could do nothing more popular than to take the Arguments they found in the many Pamphlets of the Presbyterians lying on every Stall for toleration under the old Hierarchy and turn them upon Presbytery and every one then who had fears and jealousies of the Arbitrariness of Presbytery seem'd to be a well wisher to those Books for Liberty of Conscience and the destroying of the Credit of Presbytery by Books that had so much contentious fire in them was really an acceptable sweet-smelling Sacrifice to the Nation And after the King's Restoration tho some few Books were writ of that Subject and with much more Candour than the others yet the Yoke of the King 's Ecclesiastical Laws was so easie to the People as that the Writing of Books against it was not encouraged by Popular Applause The King's Declaration of Indulgence afterward appearing and as not gained by dint of Pen but ex mero motu was applauded by some few particular Writers among the Popish and Protestant Recusants discoursing in Print at their ease of Liberty of Conscience But as if Nature meant that Books of that Subject should no more here divert the curious World the Empire toleration had thereby gained did presently labour under its own weight and the Non-Conformists being jealous of that Declaration proving a President of the Prerogatives suspending Acts of Parliament in general and suspecting that the Popish Recusants would have the better of that Game as supposed to have many great Court-Cards here and abroad in the World and likely to have more while the Protestant Recusants had not so good in their hands tho yet they had here what amounted to the point in Picquet I mean the advantage of their Numbers did presently thereupon cause all the Cards to be thrown up but first had in Concert with the dealers provided for the packing them to their own advantage in a new Deal In plain English some Loyal Persons and firm Adherents to the Church of England in the House of Commons thinking that Declaration illegal and whether justly or no I here presume not in the least to question endeavoured tanquam pro aris focis to get that Declaration Cancell'd and knowing they could not effect the same without the help of the Dissenters Party in Parliament engaged their help therein by giving them hopes to carry an Act of Parliament for their Indulgence but what a little fore-sight would have made appear to them impossible to be gained for many Considerations too obvious to be named And the natural result of this Fact which is on all hands confessedly true cannot but be the making of the former fashion of Polemical writing for liberty of Conscience to pass away We have since seen some few Florid Sheets published by some of the Dissenting Clergy on that Subject but they have made no other Figure then that of the poor Resemblances of Flowers extracted by Chimical Art out of their Ashes and any little shaking them in the Glass of Time must make them presently fall in pieces I have in this Discourse expressly owned my having no regret against any due or Legal Relaxation of the Penal Laws against Recusants but what any due or legal way may be therein I enquire not The power of the King in dispensing with the Penalties in case of particular Persons was not that I hear of in the least Controverted in the Debates of the Commons about that Declaration And Fuller in his Church History relateth that when Bishop Williams was Lord-Keeper there was a Toleration granted under the Great Seal to Mr. Iohn Cotton a Famous Independent Divine for the free exercise of his Ministry notwithstanding his dissenting in Ceremonies so long as done without disturbance to the Church and the lawfulness of which particular Indulgence I suppose none in that Age controverted as I think none would any thing of that kind in this
Antiochus or the Primitive Christians did under a Nero Domitian Dioclesian Maximinian or Julian and yet you see no end of this fury c. I would ask any Loyal Roman Catholick if a Clergy that could console such Lachrymists and preach Loyalty to them was not then necessary And I am sure he will say it was for that the Doctrine preached by the Author of that Book appeareth thus in the Contents of the Chapters after the end of that Epistle viz. Regal Power proceeds immediately from the Peoples Election and Donation c. By the Spiritual Power which Christ gave the Pope in his Predecessor St. Peter he may dispose of Temporal Things and even of Kingdoms for the good of the Church and the many Republican and Seditious Assertions in that Book are such that any Asserters thereof would in the judgment of our Loyal Populace be thought to merit what the Iews or Primitive Christians suffered as aforesaid And that no man dares now partly so fear of the Popular displeasure and being thought absurd say that the English Monarchy is otherwise than from God and not from Mens Election just as for fear of the People the chief Priests and Scribes and Elders durst not say that the baptism of Iohn was not from Heaven but of men is most eminently to be attributed to the late Loyal Sermons made expressly of Loyalty by the Divines of the Church of England But that I may draw toward an end of this long INTRODVCTION or PREFACE wherein yet if I have happened to acquaint any Reader with any valuable point of Truth it will be the same thing to him as the payment of a Bill of Exchange in the Portico or in the House I am necessarily to say that by the inadvertence of an Amanuensis employed in writing somewhat of this Discourse for the Press there happened to be several mistakes of words and names and one of them I shall mention here and not trust to its being regarded among the Errata viz. that whereas 't is said in p. 39 that Creswel a Iesuite writ for King Iames his Succession when Parsons writ against it it should have been said that Chricton a Iesuite then did so and so the latter part of the Volume of the Mystery of Iesuitism relates it and any indifferent man would think that Chricton writ not in earnest and that his Book appeared not on the Stage of the World but only to go off it since so necessary a Counterpoyson to Parsons his Book could never yet be heard of in any Library Some little Omissions and Errors about Letters and Pointing easily appearing by their grossness are not put into the Errata and some the Reader will find amended with the Pen. Moreover I am to Apologize for the carelesness of the Style and to acquaint the Reader that the Rule of any ones writing in any thing that is called a Letter being the way of the same Persons speaking I do thereby justify the freedom I have taken in not polishing any Notions or delivering them out with the care employed on curious Pictures and that require twice or thrice sitting and in using that colouring of words and such bold careless Touches as are to be used in the finishing up any piece at once and which the Nature of Discourse necessarily implies and in sometimes using significant expressions in this or the other Language for any thing as I do in my common Conversation with those who understand those Languages and by the same Rule I have exempted my self from the trouble of that nice weighing of things as well as of words that a Professed History or Discourse otherwise then in the way of a Letter would have required and the same excuse may serve for the Style of this Preface If the Date of this Discourse had not at the writing of the first Sheet been there inserted a later one had been assigned it but I thought it not â—â—nti on the occasion thereof to have that Sheet reprinted I hope to be able in my Review to gratifie the Readers Curiosity with somewhat more of satisfaction as to the Monastic Revenue and which in p. 92 I mentioned as not adequate to the maintenance of 50000 Regulars by my not considering how plentifully it was supported by Oblations of various kinds and other ways not necessary to be here enumerated In p. 1. I say I think it was St. Austin who said Credo quia impossibile est and have since thought it was Tertullian I care not who said it as long as I did not I have in p. 13 mentioned the Order of Iesuites as invented by the Pope in the year 1540 wherein I had respect to the time of its Confirmation from the Papacy and not of its founding by Ignatius There are other omissions and faults in the Press that the Reader is referred to the Errata for without his consulting which I am not accountable for them I am farther to say that there is one thing in this Preface that I need not apologize for and wherein I have done an Act of common Justice namely in Celebrating the Heroical Vertue and Morality of this present Pope that were signalized as I have mentioned Almighty God can make the Chair of Pestilence convey health to the World and can preserve any Person in it from its mortal Contagion But the truth is I was the more concerned to do the Pope the right I have done because I observed that after that Credit of the Popish Plot began to die that depended on the Credit of the Witnesses several Persons attempted to put new Life into it by their renewed impotent Calumnies cast on the Character of the Pope and as appeared by a bound 8 o printed in the year 1683 called The Devils Patriarch or a full and impartial Account of the Notorious Life of this present Pope of Rome Innocent the 11th c. Written by an EMINENT Pen to revive the remembrance of the aâ—most forgotten PLOT against the life of his Sacred Majesty and the Protestant Religion What AVTHOR was meant by that EMINENT PEN I know not in the least The Preface to the Reader concludes with the Letters of T. O. The vain Author having throughout his Book ridiculously accused the Pope of immorality and scandal and of being a friend to Indulgences and of favouring the loose Principles of the Iesuites and of contriving the Popish Plot and carrying it on in concert with the Iesuites concludes by saying in p. 133. This Pope had great hopes of re-entry into England by his hopeful Plot hereupon Cottington 's bones were brought to be buried here c. It was high time then for People to be weary of the Martyrocracy when the Plot came to be staruminated by Cottington's bones and the pretended immorality of so great an Example of severe Vertue as this Pope and when the belief of the Testimony against some men as Popish Ruffians was endeavoured to be supported by the Childish Artifice of
the English language that the Spaniards caus'd to be made by an English Iesuite call'd Parsons and 't was by the way of the low Country dispersed about England c. And further in the 7 th book p. 301. in the letter to Villeroy letter 133. what he saith of that book of Parsons may be thus made English and from that book of Father Parsons one might draw reasons in favour of his Majesty which would be more weighty then those he deduceth for the King of Spain and his Sister the said Father Parsons does contradict himself very often and very grosly as it happens to all persons in passion as able as they are who are not guided by truth and by reason but transported by Interest and by passion And in the last letter of the 8th book and to Villeroy from Rome the 30th of December 1602 he speaks of Father Parsons having made application to himself to desire that there might be a treaty prepared from Rome between the Pope the King of France and the King of Spain to agree among themselves of a Catholick that may Reign in England after the Queen be it the King of Scots if he will turn Catholick or be it some one else c. But there in p. 367 year 1603 letter 174. from Rome to Villeroy and on April 21st it appears that all the Machinations of the hot Iesuitical heads against King Iames his Succession were overturn'd by providence for he there saith that the Queen was no sooner dead then that the King of Scotland was in England peaceably received and the Controversie of King Iames his title evaporated and for the honour of our English understandings he there saith Les gens de cet Isle là ont bien Monstrè qu' ils scavoient faire leurs affaires entr ' eux tost seurement que ceux de dehors se sont fort mescontez en leurs desseins esperances i. e. the people of England have well shewn that they knew how to do their own business among themselves quickly and safely and that others abroad took very wrong Measures in their designs and hopes I have here said enough to entertain your Lordship with the View of their unreasonableness who would impose on us That Father Parsons wrote not that Impious and Treasonable Book and likewise with the more pleasant View of Gods Confuting it as I may say by the happy determination of his over-ruling Providence And Now because I would make it appear to your Lordship that I have not been unjustly severe to the Jesuitical Principles in rendring them such as are the sturdy extravagances of those offals of Mankind call'd Bullyes and Hectors I shall entertain you with one Instance of a Bravado of threatning from one English Iesuite to all Protestant Crown'd Heads a bravado that is like the High Water Mark to shew in words how high 't is possible for the foam of the raging Sea of Anger to reach and 't is in a Letter of Campian the Iesuite to Queen Elizabeths Privy Councellers printed afterwards at Triers 1583. as I find it Cited in that most learned Preface of my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's to the Book concerning the Gunpowder Treason in the Year 1679 and 't is thus in English viz. That all the Iesuits throughout the World have long since enter'd into a Covenant to kill heretical Kings any manner of way and as to our Society know That we Iesuites who are spread far and wide throughout the whole World have enter'd into an holy Covenant that we shall easily overcome all your machinations and that we shall never despair of it as long as any one of us remains in the World. Lo here a Drawcansir that will not only snub all Protestant Kings and take the bowles from their mouths and beat out their Brains with them himself but he saith there is a Society or Corporation of such brethren of the bladed Ecclesiastical who have enter'd into a Covenant or Association to murder all Protestant Kings and that every single Member of the Corporation should have that dead-doing talent of Valour that should awe and subjugate the Protestant World. And here then my Lord every Jesuite values himself on being a Mutius Scaevola and more than Three hundred of these new Romans or so many thousands of them I mean all of them according to Campian have Covenanted to destroy every Porsenna that lays siege to Rome but in that time of Queen Elizabeth there was an industrious Gentleman who fear'd not the terror of these Huffes but with his secrecy and silence did reduce these mad dogs into the Condition of neither barking nor biting in England I mean Sir Francis Walsingham of whom 't is said in Cotton's Posthuma That his bountifull hand made his intelligences so active that a Seminary could scarcely stir out of the Gates of Rome without his privity And no wonder then if Campian was soon brought to the end of a Traytor here in England by the Care of one of Queen Elizabeths Privy Councellers in the Year 1581. who did both defie and scorn that Rhodomantado address wherein the Iesuite did Goliah-like defie All Protestant Kings and their Armies and as if he would give their flesh to the Fowls of the ayr but the event shew'd his own flesh was so given as a Traytors to that use here in England It was a kind of a bravado in the great Archimedes to say Give me where to stand and I 'le shake the Earth He well knew no such place could be found The Iesuits it seems would have every one of their Order to be an Archimedes and able to shake the Earth as he pleas'd and the hypothesis of Popery they know offers them a place divided from the Civil and Imperial Government where to stand with their Engines namely the Ecclesiastical but things will not be ill administred and holy Church it self will sink into the Earth if its Foundation be not laid as God and Nature would have it and the Man who stands for the place to be an Archimedes and to Move the Earth will soon find his fate of being dissolv'd into his own little dust and that among the artificial lines he is making It seems that boasted association or Covenant of the Jesuites did help to occasion another among the Protestants in Queen Elizabeths time which was ratify'd by Act of Parliament in the 27 th of Eliz. which was about three years after the death of Campian who was Convicted of High Treason by vertue of the Statute made in the time of our Popish Ancestors namely in the 25 of Edward the Third and thereupon executed and yet by the Romish Church made a Martyr tho as I said convicted on that Statute But according to this thundring denuntiation of War against all heretical Kings by Campian as the Jesuites Herald and his boasting when he did put on his armour that every one of his Order should be like an Alexander an adequate match for at
Acquaintance as to judge them free from any Complication of the belief and practice of any irreligious Principles with the Principles of their Religion and particularly from the owning any Principle of Disloyalty or the Iesuites Doctrine of Calumny or the Obligatoriness of the Lateran Council will not rashly pronounce any other particular Papist guilty of the belief or practice of such Principles Nor is it any great honour that I have done to any men of extraordinary Vertue in thus judging that they cannot believe or practise such Principles for that it being true in the Course of Nature what Machiavel said that next to the being perfectly good 't is the most difficult thing to be perfectly bad the World hath had thereby some Garranty against the belief and practice of such Principles and by necessity of Nature must still have But since Mankind in general may expect to find in our esteem the benefit of the presumption of Law viz. That every man is presumed to be good and that the high Births and Educations of Princes and the great Examples of their Magnanimous Ancestors may well pass as strong presumptions of Nature against their doing any low ungenerous Acts of Cruelty and since in Gods great Ordinance of Magistracy an especial Divine presence may by Virtue of Holy Writ be presumed to accompany the very Magistrates appointed by Sovereign Prinâ—es according to that in 2 Chron. 19. 6. where after it was said to the Judges Take heed what you do for yee judge not for man but for the Lord the following words are Who is with you in the Iudgment and that therefore as Christ is said to be present with those Officers he appointed in the Church because there is a special Virtue and Efficacy of Christ manifest in their Ministry there may likewise be expected a special presence Divine in the Administration of Magistracy from the like manifestation of God in his Wisdom Power Goodness c. for the Well-fare of Societies as Mr. Ny observes and since Kings and Princes are an Oâ—dinance of God or Medium by which in a more special and peculiar way he communicates his Goodness to Christians according to the Style of the 13th of the Romans the great Sedes materâ—ae of Loyalty for he is the Minister of God to THEE for good it may well be thought profaneness and Sacrilege for men to bode and presume ill of the future Acting of any Heirs to Crowns and particularly as to their believing or practising any thing pernicious to their Realms What Roman Catholick Prince doth not deride Innocent the 3d under whom the Lateran Council was held for telling it in the Canon Law that the Papal Power is as much greater than the Imperial as the Sun is greater than the Moon and at the Marginal Note there for saying That the Papal Power exceeds the Imperial no less than 7744 There is a Prince whose Emblem is the Suâ— and whose Power exceeds the Papal in every ones account to more than that Proportion And is it not therefore but according to reason and common sense that we should believe that of all men in any Realm the Prince will be the latest brought to the belief of that Papal Power so categorically asserted by that Council That Kings may be Excommunicated by their own Bishops for not obeying the Pope and their Subjects in such Case be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance Do not all the French Kings notwithstanding that Council claim the liberty of so much freedom from the Papal Power that Popes can neither directly nor indirectly command or ordain any thing concerning Temporal Matters within their Dominions and that neither the French King nor his Realm nor his Officers can be Excommunicated or interdicted by the Pope nor his Subjects absolved from their Oath of Allegiance As I have therefore in my Writing to a Noble Lord one of his Majesty's Ministers who was barbarously accused by one of the Plot-Witnesses for being a Papist and designing to advance the Papal Power said that I would be the last man in England who would believe he could be a Papist meaning it as impossible that he could believe or practise any irreligionary Tenet of Popery I will account it more impossible that any Roman Catholick Prince now living in the World should favour the Usurpation of the Papal Power however any of the Popish Clergy or Layety in his Realms might perhaps be addicted to favour the same That great Affair of the Munster Pâ—ace wherein so many great Roman Catholick Crown'd Heads agreeing perhaps in the Lateran Council being a General one did yet certainly agree together in the Year 1648 for Lutheran and Calvinistick Princes and States and their Subjects quietly possessing forever their Properties both in their Religions and Estates hath afforded the World an important Instance of Heavens so far influencing the understandings of those Crown'd Heads that they thought not themselves obliged to put the Decree of that Council in practice by exterminating Hereticks but to the contrary And because the Affair of that Peace and the great Pacta Conventa therein for the effect aforesaid have been scarce more taken Notice of here than the Transactions in China and that the notification of the same may advance the measures of our Duty by Internal Communion and help to un-blunder some of our Nominal Protestants in their fancying it so necessary for the quiet of Christendom that Christian Princes and their Subjects should agree in the belief of the Speculative points of Religion I intend to take an opportunity to publish some Account of the same I account my having thus largely dilated on the Moral Offices as aforesaid hath tended to corroborate this my 8th Conclusion I am here conversants in the great Court of Conscience the Court whose Seat is in the Practical and not Speculative intellect and the great things of which it holds Plea are as Sanderson tells us Actus morales particulares proprii and therefore particular urging of Records against which lies no averment is not more pertinent in Courts of Law than of Moral Offices in this And moreover I observing in this Conjuncture when many mens zeal hath been so hot against the Speculative points of Popery which disturb not Civil Society that yet they have believed the more pernicious Tenet of it and would have practised the same viz. The founding Dominion in Grace and that tho they have been altogether neglectâ—ul of their Actus morales particulares proprii they have both presumed to judge dishonourably and rashly of the Actings of others and to trouble the World not only with their Anxiety about the Acts of Kings and Princes but the Actus Dei and his illuminating Princes understandings with the Heavenly Mysteries I have thought this discoursing of our Moral Offices as aforesaid the more a Propos and seasonable as tending to fortify the rationality of this 8th Conclusion by exposing the absurdity of a respective or conditional Loyalty a
in King Iames's time for making the Oath of Allegiance a Praemuniment in our Consciences against Popular as well as Papal Usurpations I shall here call in Testimonium adversarii I mean the publisher of Cardinal Perron's long Oration made in the Chamber of the 3d Estate or Commonalty of France upon the Oath of Allegiance exhibited in the General Assembly of the three Estates of that Kingdom and in his long Preface to which he calls our Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance detestable but saith That the greater number of the Deputies of the 3d Chamber did frame the form of an Oath which they wished might be ministred in that Kingdom as that which bears the name of ALLEGIANCE in ours whereby the same principal Article is abjured namely That no French King can be deposed for any Cause whatsoever and that the contrary Opinion is Heretical and repugnant to the Doctrine of the Scriptures But this difference is found between the two Oaths that whereas the English one in one of the Clauses seems to exclude not only the Authority of the CHVRCH over Kings but even of the COMMON-WEALTH also yea tho it should be accompanied even with that of the Church that of France shoots only at the abnegation of the Churches Authority The Author however in that Preface and which was Permissâ— superiorum contrary to the Loyal Sentiments of the Majority of that 3d Chamber inserts very impiously and disloyally That Kingly Authority cannot come immediately from God to any man but by Miracle and that all the Kings whom we know do either rule by force of Conquest and in that Case the Authority of the Common-wealth if it be Vsurped may be resumed or by Donation Election Marriage or Succession of Blood in which Cases Kings forfeit by not performing the Conditions under which either they or their first Ancestors did enter whether they were expressed or necessarily implyed But neither that Author nor any other Roman Catholick Writer hath writ with greater Contempt of and Spight against the Power of Kings than some Nominal Protestant Authors have to the scandal of Christianity done and that I may shew how necessary it was that the Oath of Allegiance should be levelled at the outragious Principles of Disloyalty in Protestants as well as Papists I shall conclude my Answer to this Objection with a reference to a Book of some vile Nominal Protestants who having according to the Bishop of Winchester's Expression aforesaid derived Doctrines of Sedition and Rebellion from the Church of Rome 's Writers were I may add grown therein perhaps more learned than their Masters It was printed in 8 o beyond Sea in the Year 1556. and called A short Treatise of Politick Power and of the true Obedience which Subjects owe to Kings and other Civil Governors with an Exhortation to all true English men Compiled by D. I. P. B. R. W. Who the Authors of it were I know not nor the meaning of those initial Letters of Names but do judge it to be in Principles of Sedition and Treason as bad as Doleman of the Succession or Mariana and to have startled King Philip and Queen Mary as much as the Book of Killing no Murder did Cromwel I never in the Course of my viewing Books saw but one of them and the Reader will quickly see why no Library durst in the Reign of those Princes harbor it 'T is there asserted That the Body of every State may redress and correct the Vices of their Governors and ought so to do And the Book endeavours to prove the lawfulness of killing Tyrants by the Law of Nature and prophaneth the Book of God by citing for a desperate use some extraordinary Acts of private Persons there recorded and indeed a loyal man cannot read the Book without horror and especially when he shall consider what were the effects of this detestable Book It helped to provoke the fury of Philip and Mary to flie out into the Arbitrary Proclamation several Months before her death for the declaring of any one a Rebel and being without delay executed by Martial Law with whom that and other Books of that Nature printed beyond Sea should here be found And another effect of the publication of that and those other Books was to irritate the Government against those poor Innocents who were here martyr'd and who sufficiently abhorred such Treasonable Books for this Book was published beyond Sea and probably imported here about two years before her death But for the honour of our English Exiles then I judge that none of them had a hand therein I having observed many Words and Idioms and Phrases there to have been Scotish It is probable that King Iames and his Ministers had heard of this execrable Book wherein some Nominal Protestants trumpetted out their Principles of real Rebellion and no wonder then if the Oath of Allegiance was therefore framed with Clauses to secure the Government from all irreligionary Principles of Protestants as well as Papists It hath been objected in the second place against our being become bound to the Kings Heirs and Successors by Virtue of those Oaths that it is by all Casuists agreed that among the Tacit Conditions that are presumed to be in all Oaths and which are to be regarded as much as if they were express'd Rebus sic stantibus is one and that that therefore as none of the King's Heirs was then excluded from the Privilege or Right of his Lineal Succession by the Legislative Power so if things thus stood with him at the time of the Descent of the Crown that is at the time of the Kings decease the Oath obliged to the payment of absolute and irrespective Loyalty to him then and that thus when the King's Heirs and Successors were Kings and Queens of this Realm according to the Style of some old Oaths they would be Entitled to our Allegiance and not otherwise In Answer to this Objection I shall say first that if we should admit that which is not true that the Rebus sic stantibus were so to be applied in this Case yet it is most clear that the Takers of these Oaths who were any Members of the Three Estates in Parliament were thereby ipso facto and actually bound as I have said in the 7tâ— Conclusion not to do any Act there to exclude the Succession according to proximity of Blood and moreover any of the People who took these Oaths were thereby Morally bound not to choose any to represent them in Parliament from whom they might fear their endeavouring of such Exclusion Secondly Premising that there was somewhat of irreverence in supposing that the Legislative Power would ever afterward make a Solutio contiâ—ui as I called it in the Hereditary Monarchy yet it must be said that any supposed Act of that kind would be Null and Void as the Loyal and Learned late Writers of the Succession have shewed and to whose Writers of that Subject I refer and therefore our Obligations to
the King's Heirs and lawful Successors by Virtue of these Oaths must remain uncancelled in the Court of Conscience and however any Act of Parliament supposed to be made against the Law of God may a while be de facto received in any Courts of Law yet is it in the Court of Conscience to be looked on as a poor Escrole and as not worthy the name of a Law. It is most manifest that by these Oaths there is jus alteri acquisitum I mean to the King's Heirs and Successors as well as to the King and that therefore any supposed relaxation of the Oaths without the consent of all Parties for whose behoof they were made is a thing Nugatory and not allowable in the Court of Conscience And as I have speaking cum vulgo called some Anti-Papists whose Principles tend to Faction in the State and Schism in the Church Nominal Protestants tho yet I should be still as much content with any Law that made it Penal to call them Protestants as with one that should be so to call Quacks Physicians so I should in the Court of Conscience call any Acts of Parliament that are contrary to the Eternal and Natural Rules of indispensable Iustice only Nominal Laws suitably to what is said in the admirable Preface of Aerodius his Rerum Iudicatarum Pandect viz. Quod si quid iniquè malo more sordibus adversus illâ—m sempiternam legem atque immutabilem hic aut illic judicatum tranaâ—ctum sit qualis fuit apud Graecos Socratis Phocionis apud Romanos Mâ—telli Numidici Rutilâ—i Rufi M. Ciceronis damnatio in ecclesiâ Flaviani Johannis Chrysostomi contrà absolutio P. Sexti Clodiorum atque adeo Gabinii quam proptereà legem impunitatis appellarunt non magis judicata aut decreta debent appellari quam Seiae Apuleâ—ae Liviae leges Leges non sunt inquit Cicero But Thirdly The just allowance of the Rebus sic stantibus that can be in this Case is this there being nothing of pretence of relaxation from all Parties supposeable these Oaths bind us to the King's Heirs and Successors as long as there is any ONE of them remaining in the World and without the insertion of the words in the Oath of Allegiance viz. I do believe and in Conscience am resolved that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve me of this Oath or any part thereof its indispensableness to those who know the Obligation of Oaths to be jure Divino naturali would have sufficiently appeared In fine there are Rationes boni mali aeternae indispensabiles and to stand to promises is one of the things that are simply and in their own nature good and it is impossible as the Scripture saith That God should lye and therefore man made after God's image must therein answer the Archetype and hereby our Princes have the Garranty of our Allegiance sworn to them their Heirs and Successors being indispensable by Popes or Acts of Parliament or by God himself for he cannot dispense with the Law of Nature Humanâ naturâ manente eadem Lastly It is most manifest from what I have already said that any such Tacit Condition in these Oaths as before mentioned was contrary to the sense of the Imposer as well as to the Words and was therefore not allowable in the Court of Conscience in this Case and I believe that the Consciences of such who have made this Objection must tell them that when they took these Oaths their sense of them was then contrary to any such condition being allowed And therefore any such After-birth of a strained Interpretation being so contrary to the Law of God and the Land and the sense of the Imposer as well as the words of the Oaths and to the sense in which they actually took them must be thrown away There hath been a third Objection if it may be called one or if yet it may be called a Scruple for I think it hardly deserves the name of that However it having got under some mens feet or into their heads it hath made them so uneasie as frowardly to trample on the Rights of Crown'd Heads and it hath troubled us by the name of Haeres viventis and as if that were a Chymaera when as indeed the Objection is altogether Chymerical When Sir L. I. had with so much clear reason shewed much to this purpose viz. That the Exclusion-Bill was against the Fundamental Iustice as likewise the wisdom of the Nation and that it would induce a CHANGE in the Government and that was likewise against the Religion of the Nation which teacheth us That Dominion is not founded in Grace and that we are to pay Obedience to Princes whether good or bad as accordingly the Primitive Christians did and that it was against the Oaths of the Nation namely of Allegiance and Supremacy and that his R. H. is the King 's lawful Heir if he hath no Child and in the Eye of the Law we are sworn to him and when he had further signalized the weight of his Political Remarks and Learning in that Speech as well of as his Loyalty so as on the account of both to merit a place for it in the English Story and had instanced in some Princes and their Subjects of different Religions living very happily together it may perhaps be a blot in that Story that Sir W. I. in an answer to that Speech granting That we are sworn to the King his Heirs and Successors said further That we are not obliged to any during the King's life but to himself for it were Treason if it were otherwise The King hath no Heirs nor Successors during his life for according to his Law meaning Sir L. I's and ours Nemo est haeres viventis In answer to which I shall say that that Proverbial Latin saying in the Law Books doth amount to no more in nature and hath no more influence on Humane Affairs nor particularly on Moral Offices than that kind of Proverbial Sayings in the New Testament viz. For where a Testament is there must also of necessity be the death of the Testator or a Testament is of no strength while the Testator liveth Every one knoweth that a Will is in its own nature revocable and Legatees and Executors may be altered by the Testator and for any one to quote it as a Maxim Nemo est Executor viventis and for a Legatee or in effect an Executor in a Will the word haeres iâ— often used in the Civil Law and by the Writers of it will be no more significant than the telling the Legatee or Executor is that they must not meddle in the Testators Goods till he be dead and it may usefully operate to divert People from the slothful Omissions of making their Wills in due time out of a fond imagination that their Legatees or Executors would have a Title to any thing before the Testators death But after what hath been said