been among us and even to forget the Injuries that have been done us all that we do now one against another is to shorten the work of our Enemies by destroying one another which must in Conclusion turn to all our Ruin. It is a mad Man's Revenge to destroy our Friends that we may do a pleasure to our Enemies upon their giving us some good words and if the Dissenters can trust to Papists after the usage that the Church of England has met with at their Hands all the Comfort that they can promise themselves when Popery begins to act its natural part among us and to set Smithfield again in a Fire is that which befell some Quakers at Rome who were first put in the Inquisition but were afterwards removed to Bedlam so tho those false Brethren among the Dissenters who deceive them at present are certainly no Changlings but know well what they are doing yet those who can be cheated by them may well claim the priviledg of a Bedlam when their Folly has left them no other Retreat XI I will not digress too far from my present purpose nor enter into a discussion of the Dispensing Power which was so effectually overthrown the other day at the King's Bench Bar that I am sure all the Authority of the Bench it self is no more able to support it Yet some late Papers in favour of it give me occasion to add a little relating to that Point It is true the Assertor of the Dispensing Power who has lately appeared with Allowance pretends that it can only be applied to the Test for Publick Imployments for he owns that the Test for both Houses of Parliament is left entire as not within the compass of this extent of the Prerogative But another Writer whom by his Sense we must conclude an Irish Man by his Brow a Jesuit and by the bare designation in the Title Page of James Stewart's Letter a Quaker goes a strain higher and thinks the King is so absolutely the Sovereign as to the Legislative part of our Government that he may dissolve even the Parliament Test so nimbly has he leap'd from being a Secretary to a Rebellion to be an Advocate for Tyranny He fancies that because no Parliament can bind up another therefore they cannot limit the Preliminaries to a subsequen Parliament But upon what is it then that Counties have but two Knights and Burroughs as many that Men below such a value have no Vote that Sheriffs only receive Writs and return Elections besides many more necessary Requisites to the making a legal Parliament In short if Laws do not regulate the Election and Constitution of a Parliament all these things may be overthrown and the King may cast the whole Government in a new Mould as well as dissolve the Obligation that is on the Members of Parliament for taking the Test It is true that as soon as a Parliament is legally met and constituted it is tied by no Laws so far as not to repeal them But the Preliminaries to a Parliament are still Sacred as long as the Law stands that settled them for the Members are still in the quality of ordinary Subjects and not entred upon their share in the Legislative Power till they are constituted in a Parliament legally chosen and lawfully assembled that is having observed all the Requisites of the Law. But I leave that impudent Letter to return to the most modest Apology that has been yet writ for the Dispensing Power It yields that the King cannot abrogate Laws and pretends only that he can dispense with them And the distinction it puts between Abrogation and Dispensation is that the one is a total Repeal of the Law and that the other is only a slackning of its obligatory Force with Relation to a particular Man or to any Body of Men so that according to him a simple Abrogation or a total Repeal is beyond the compass of the Prerogative I desire then that this Doctrine may be applied to the following words of the Declaration from which the Reader may infer whether these do import a simple Abrogation or not and by Consequence if the Declaration is not Illegal We do hereby further declare that it is our Royal Will and Pleasure that the Oaths commonly called the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and also the several Tests and Declarations shall not at any time hereafter be required to be taken declared or subscribed by any Person or Persons whatsoever who is or shall be imployed in any Office or Place of Trust either Civil or Military under us or in our Government This is plain English and needs no Commentary That Paper offers likewise an Expedient for securing Liberty of Conscience by which it will be set beyond even the Dispensing Power and that is that by Act of Parliament all Persecution may be declared to be a thing Evil in it self and then the Prerogative cannot reach it But unless this Author fancies that a Parliament is that which those of the Church of Rome believe a General Council to be I mean Infallible I do not see that such an Act would signify any thing at all An Act of Parliament cannot change the Nature of Things which are sullen and will not alter because a hard Word is clap'd on them in an Act of Parliament nor can that make that which is not Evil of it self become Evil of self For can any Act of Parliament make the Clipping of Mony or the not Burying in Wollen evil of it self Such an Act were indeed null of it self and would sink with its own weight even without the burden of the Prerogative to press it down and yet upon such a Sandy Foundation would these Men have us build all our Hopes and our Securities Another Topick like this is that we ought to trust to the Truth of our Religion and the Providence and Protection of God and not lean so much to Laws and Tests All this were very pertinent if God had not already given us humane Assurances against the Rage of our Enemies which we are now desired to abandon that so we may fall an easy and cheap Sacrifice to those who wait for the favourable Moment to destroy us By the same Reason they may perswade us to take off all our Doors or at least all our Locks and Bolts and to sleep in this exposed Condition trusting to God's Protection The Simily may appear a little too high though it is really short of the Matter for we had better trust our selves to all the Thieves and Robbers of the Town who would be perhaps contented with a part of our Goods than to those whose Designs are equally against both Soul and Body and all that is dear to us XII I will only add another Reflection upon the renewing of the Declaration this Year which has occasioned the present Storm upon the Clergy It is repeated to us that so we may see that the King continues firm to the Promises he made
so familiar to them that they can no more be put out of countenance But it seems very strange to us that some who if they are to be believed are strict to the severest Forms and Sub-divisions of the Reformed Religion and who some Years ago were jealous of the smallest steps that the Court made when the danger was more remote and who cried out Popery and Persecution when the design was so mask'd that some well-meaning Men could not miss being deceived by the Promises that were made and the Disguises that were put on that I say these very Persons who were formerly so distrustful should now when the Mask is laid off and the Design is avowed of a sudden grow to be so believing as to throw off all Distrust and be so gulled as to betray all and to expose us to the Rage of those who must needs give some good words till they have gone the round and tried how effectually they can divide and deceive us that so they may destroy us the more easily this is indeed somewhat extraordinary They are not so ignorant as not to know that Popery cannot change its Nature and that Cruelty and Breach of Faith to Hereticks are as necessary parts of that Religion as Transubstantiation and the Pope's Supremacy are If Papists were not Fools they must give good Words and fair Promises till by these they have so far deluded the poor credulous Hereticks that they may put themselves in a posture to execute the Decrees of their Church against them and though we accuse that Religion as guilty both of Cruelty and Treachery yet we do not think them Fools so till their Party is stronger than God be thanked it is at present they can take no other method than that they take The Church of England was the Word among them somst Years ago Liberty of Conscieece is the Word at present and we have all possible reason to assure us that the Promises for maintaining the one will be as religiously kept as we see those are which were lately made with so great a profusion of Protestations and shews of Friendship for the supporting of the other III. It were great Injustice to charge all the Dissenters with the Impertinencies that have appeared in many Addresses of late or to take our measures of them from the impudent strains of an Alsop or a Care or from the more important and now more visible steps that some among them of a higher form are every day making and yet after all this it cannot be denied but the several Bodies of the Dissenters have behaved themselves of late like Men that understand too well the true Interest of the Protestant Religion and of the English Government to sacrifice the whole and themselves in Conclusion to their private Resentments I hope the same Justice will be allowed me in stating the matter relating to the so much decried Persecution set on by the Church of England and that I may be suffered to distinguish the Heats of some angry and deluded Men from the Doctrine of the Church and the Practices that have been authorized in it that so I may shew that there is no reason to infer from past Errors that we are incurable or that new Opportunities inviting us again into the same Severities are like to prevail over us to commit the same Follies over again I will first state what is past with the Sincerity that becomes one that would not lie for God that is not afraid nor ashamed to confess Faults that will neither aggravate nor extenuate them beyond what is just and that yet will avoid the saying of any thing that may give any cause of Offence to any Party in the Nation IV. I am very sorry that I must confess that all the Parties among us have shewed that as their turn came to be uppermost they have forgot the same Principles of Moderation and Liberty which they all claimed when they were oppressed If it should shew too much ill nature to examine what the Presbytery did in Scotland when the Covenant was in Dominion or what the Independents have done in New-England why may not I claim the same priviledg with relation to the Church of England if Severities have been committed by her while she bore Rule yet it were as easy as it would be invidious to shew that both Presbyterians and Independents have carried the Principle of Rigor in the point of Conscience much higher and have acted more implacably upon it than ever the Church of England has done even in its angriest fits so that none of them can much reproach another for their Excesses in those matters And as of all the Religions in the World the Church of Rome is the most persecuting and the most bound by her Principles to be unalterably cruel so the Church of England is the least persecuting in her Principles and the least obliged to repeat any Errors to which the Intrigues of Courts or the Passions incident to all Parties may have engaged her of any National Church in Europe It cannot be said to be any part of our Doctrine when we came out of one of the blackest Persecutions that is in History I mean Queen Mary's we shewed how little we retained of the Cruelty of that Church which had provoked us so severely when not only no Inquiries were made into the illegal Acts of Fury that were committed in that persecuting Reign but even the Persecutors themselves lived among us at Ease and in Peace and no Penal Law was made except against the publick Exercise of that Religion till a great many Rebellions and Treasons extorted them from us for our own Preservation This is an Instance of the Clemency of our Church that perhaps cannot be matched in History and why should it not be supposed that if God should again put us in the state in which we were of late that we should rather imitate so noble a Patern than return to those Mistakes of which we are now ashamed V. It is to be considered that upon the late King's Restauration the remembrance of the former War the ill usage that our Clergy had met with in their Sequestrations the angry Resentments of the Cavalier Party who were ruined by the War the Interest of the Court to have all those Principles condemned that had occasioned it the heat that all Parties that have been ill-used are apt to fall into upon a Revolution but above all the Practices of those who have still blown the Coals and set us one against another that so they might not only have a divided Force to deal with but might by turns make the Divisions among us serve their Ends All these I say concurred to make us lose the happy Opportunity that was offered in the Year 1660 to have healed all our Divisions and to have triumphed over all the Dissenters not by ruining them but by overcoming them with a Spirit of Love and Gentleness which is the only Victory that
a Generous and Christian Temper can desire In short unhappy Counsels were followed and severe Laws were made But after all it was the Court Party that carried it for rougher Methods Some considerable Accidents not necessary to be here mentioned as they stopped the Mouths of some that had formed a wiser Project so they gave a fatal Advantage to angry and crafty Men that to our misfortune had too great a stroak in the conduct of our Affairs at that Time. This Spirit of Severity was heightned by the Practices of the Papists who engaged the late King in December 1662 to give a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience Those who knew the Secret of his Religion as they saw that it aimed at the Introduction of Popery so they thought there was no way so effectual for the keeping out of Popery as the maintaining the Uniformity and the suppressing of all Designs for a Toleration But while those who managed this used a due reserve in not discovering the secret Motive that led them to it others flew into Severity as the Principle in vogue And thus all the slacknings of the rigour of the Laws during the first Dutch War that were set on upon the pretence of quieting the Nation and of encouraging Trade were resisted by the Instruments of an honest Minister of State who knew as well then as we do now what lay still at bottom when Liberty of Conscience was pretended VI. Upon that Minister's Disgrace some that saw but the half of the Secret perceiving in the Court a great inclination to Toleration and being willing to take Measures quite different from those of the former Ministry they entred into a Treaty for a Comprehension of some Dissenters and the tolerating of others And some Bishops and Clergy-men that were inferior to none of the Age in which they lived for true Worth and a right Judgment of Things engaged so far and with so much success into this Project that the Matter seemed done all things being concerted among some of the most considerable Men of the different Parties But the dislike of that Ministry and the Jealousy of the ill Designs of the Court gave so strong a Prejudice against this that the Proposition could not be so much as hearkned to by the House of Commons And then it appeared how much the whole Popish Party was allarmed at the Project It is well known with how much Detestation they speak of it to this day though we are now so fully satisfied of their Intentions to destroy us that the Zeal which they pretended for us in opposing that Design can no more pass upon us VII At last in the Year 1672. the Design for Popery discovering it self the End that the Court had in favouring a Toleration became more visible And when the Parliament met that condemned the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience the Members of the House of Commons that either were Dissenters or that favoured them behaved themselves so worthily in concurring with those of the Church of England for stifling that Toleration chusing rather to lose the benefit of it than to open a Breach at which Popery should come in that many of the Members that were of the Church of England promised to procure them a Bill of Ease for Protestant Dissenters But the Session was not long enough for bringing that to Perfection and all the Sessions of that Parliament after that were spent in such a continual struggle between the Court and Country-Party that there was never room given for calm and wise Consultations yet though the Party of the Church of England did not perform what had been promised by some leading Men to the Dissenters there was little or nothing done against them after that till the Year 1681 so that for about nine Years together they had their Meetings almost as publickly and as regularly as the Church of England had their Churches and in all that time whatsoover particular Hardships any of them might have met with in some corners of England it cannot be denied but they had the free Exercise of their Religion at least in most parts VIII In the Year 1678 things began to change their face it is known that upon the breaking out of the Popish Plot the Clergy did universally express a great desire for coming to some temper in the Points of Conformity all sorts and ranks of the Clergy seemed to be so well disposed towards it that if it had met with a sutable Entertainment matters might probably have been in a great measure composed But the Jealousy that those who managed the Civil Concerns of the Nation in the House of Commons took off all that was done at Court or proposed by it occasioned a fatal Breach in our Publick Councils in which division the Clergy by their Principles and Interests and their Disposition to believe well of the Court were determined to be of the King's side They thought it was a Sin to mistrust the late King's Word who assured them of his steadiness to the Protestant Religion so often that they firmly depended on it and his present Majesty gave them so many Assurances of his maintaining still the Church of England that they believed him likewise and so thought that the Exclusion of him from the Crown was a degree of Rigor to which they in Conscience could not consent upon which they were generally cried out on as the Betrayers of the Nation and of the Protestant Religion Those who demanded the Exclusion and some other Securities to which the Bishops would not consent in Parliament looked on them as the chief hinderance that was in their way and the License of the Press at that time was such that many Libels and some severe Discourses were published against them Nor can it be denied that many Church-men who understood not the Principles of Human Society and the Rules of our Government so well as other Points of Divinity writ several Treatises concerning the measures of Submission that were then as much censured as their Performances since against Popery have been deservedly admired All this gave such a Jealousy of them to the Nation that it must be confessed that the Spirit which was then in fermentation went very high against the Church of England as a Confederate at least to Popery and Tyranny Nor were several of the Nonconformists wanting to inflame this dislike all secret Propositions for accommodating our Differences were so coldly entertained that they were scarce hearkned to The Propositions which an Eminent Divine made even in his Books writ against Separation shewed that while we maintained the War in the way of Dispute yet we were still willing to treat for that great Man made not those Advances towards them without consulting with his Superiors Yet we were then fatally given up to a Spirit of Dissention and tho the Parliament in 1680 entred upon a project for healing our Differences in which great steps were made to the removing of all the occasions of
26. and when his Son was Sick he sent his Wife to the Prophet Jehovah c. 14. The Story of the new Idolatry that Achab set up of the Baalim shews also plainly that the old Worshippers of the Calves adhered to the true Jehovah for Elijah states the matter as if the Nation had been divided between Jehovah and Baal 1 Kings 18.21 39. And the whole Story of Jehu confirms this 2 Kings 9.6 12 36. he was Anointed King in the Name of Jehovah and as soon as the Captains that were with him knew this they acknowledged him their King he likewise speaking of the Fact of the Men of Samaria cites the Authority of Jehovah 2 Kings 10 10 16 29. which shews that the People acknowledged it still and he called his Zeal against the worship of Baal his Zeal for Jehovah and yet both he and his Party worshipped the Calves It is no less clear that Micah who called the Teraphim his Gods Judges 18.24 was a Worshipper of the true Jehovah Judges 17.13 and there is little reason to doubt that this was the case of Gideons Ephod and of the Brazen Serpent It were needless to go about the proving that all these corrupt ways of worship were Idolatrous the Calf is expresly called an Idol by St. Stephen Acts 7.41 and the thing is so plain that it is denied by none that I know of so here we have a Species of Idolatry plainly set forth in Scripture in which the true God was worshipped in an Image and I fancy it is scarce necessary to inform the Reader that wherever he finds LORD in Capitals in the English Bible it is for Jehovah in the Hebrew XI It is very true that the great and prevailing Idolatry of all the East grew to be the worship of the Host of Heaven which seems to have risen very naturally out of the other Idolatry of the Teraphim which probably was the Ancienter of the two For when men came to think that Divine Influences were tied to such Images it was very natural for them to fancy that a more Soverain Degree of Influence was in the Sun and by consequence that he deserved Divine Adoration much more than their poor little Teraphim But it is also clear that this Adoration which they offer to the Sun was not with Relation to the matter of that shining Body but to the Divinity which they believed was lodged in it This appears not only from the Greek writters Zenophon and Plutarch but from the greatest Antiquity that now is in the VVorld the Bas reliefs that are in the ruins of the Temple of Persepolis which are described with so much cost and care by that Worthy and Learned Gentleman Sir John Chardin and which the World expects so greedily from him He favoured me with a sight of them and in these it appears that in their Triumphs of which a whole Series remains entire they carried not only the Fire which was the Emblem of the Body of the Sun but after that the Emblem of the Divinity that it seems they thought was in it under the Representation of a Head environed with Clouds which is the most natural Emblem that we can fancy of an Intelligent and an Incomprehensible Being It is true as Idolatry grows still grosser and grosser the Intelligent Being was at last forgot tho it seems it was remembred by their Philosophers since the Greeks came to know it and all their Worship was paid to the Sun or to his Emblem the Fire so that even this Idolatry was most probably the Worship of the true God at first under a visible Representation And that this was an effect of the former Idolatry is confirmed from what is said by Moses Deut. 4.14 to 19. where he plainly intimates the progress that Idolatry would have if they once came to worship graven or molten Images or make any sort of Similtude for the Great God this would carry them to lift up their Eyes to Heaven and Worship and Serve the Host of them XII The next shape that Idolatry took was the worshipping some subordinate Spirits their Genii which were in effect Angels or departed Men and Women and this filled both Greece and Rome and was the prevailing Idolatry when the New Testament was writ But that all these Nations believed still one Supream God and that they considered these just as the Roman Church does now Angels and Saints mutatis mutandis has been made out so invincibly by the Learned Dr. Stillingfleet that one would rather think that he had over charged his Argument with too much proof than that it is any way defective And yet this Worship of those secondary Deities is charged with Idolatry both in the Acts and in the Epistles so often that it is plain the Inspired Writers believed that the giving any degrees of divine worship to a Creature tho in a subordinate Form was Idolatry and St. Paul gives us a Comprehensive Notion of Idolatry that it was the giving Divine Service the word is Dulia to those that by nature were not Gods Gal. 4.8 and he throws off all Lords as well as all the Gods of the Heathen as Idols and in opposition to these reduces the VVorship of Christians to the Object of one God the Father and of one Lord Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 8.5 6. So that the Greek and Roman Idolatry being strictly that which is condemned in the New Testament of which we have such a copious Evidence from their writings it is plain that even inferior degrees of worship when offered up to Creatures tho Angels is Idolatry and tho the Heathens thought neither Jupiter nor Mercury the Supream Deities yet the Apostles did not for all that forebear to call them Idols Acts 14.15 XIII Our Author pretends to bear a great respect to Antiquity And therefore I might in the next place send him to all that the Fathers have writ against the Greek and Roman Idolatry in which he will find that the Heathens had their Explainers as well as the Church old Rome has They denied they worshipped their Images but said they made use of them only to raise up their Minds by those visible Objects yet as St. Paul begun the charge against the Athenians of Idolatry Acts 17.29 for their Gods of gold and silver wood and stone so it was still kept up and often repeated by the Fathers tho the Philosophers might have thrown it back upon them with all that Pomp of dreadful words which our Author makes use of against those that fasten the same Charge upon the Church of Rome The same might be said with relation to the Fathers accusing them of Polytheism in worshipping many Gods and of Idolatry in worshipping those that had been but Men like themselves For it is plain that at least all the Philosophers and wise Men believed that these were only deputed by the Great God to govern some Countrys and Cities and that they were Mediators and Intercessors between God and Men. But