under all the crimes thus falsly imputed to them it being their Adversaries principal design That the Irish whose Estates they enjoy should be reputed persons unfit and no way worthy any Title to your Majesties mercy That no wood comes amiss to make Arrows for their Destruction for as if the Roman Catholick Clergie whom they esteem most criminal were or ought to be a society so perfect as no evil no indiscreet person should be found amongst them they are all of them generally cryed down for any crime whether true or feigned which is imputed to one of them and as if no words could be spoken no Letter written but with the common consent of all of them the whole Clergie must suffer for that which is laid to the charge of any particular person amongst them We know what Odium all the Catholick Clergie lies under by reason of the Calumnies with which our Tenents in Religion and our Dependence upon the Popes Authority are aspersed And we humbly beg your Majesties pardon to vindicate both by the ensueing Protestation which we make in the sight of Heaven and in the presence of your Majesty sincerely and truly without equivocation or mental reservation We do acknowledge and confess your Majesty to be our true and lawful King Supream Lord and rightfull Soveraign of this Realm of Ireland and of all other your Majesties Dominions And therefore we acknowledge and confess our selves to be obliged under pain of Sin to obey your Majesty in all civil and temporal affairs as much as any other of your Majesties Subjects and as the Laws and Rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at our hands And that notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope or Sea of Rome or any sentence or declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by the Pope His Predecessors or Successors or by any Authority Spiritual or Temporal proceeding or derived from Him or his Sea against your Majesty or Royal Authority We will still acknowledge and perform to the uttermost of our abilities our faithful Loyalty and true Allegiance to your Majesty And we openly disclaim and renounce all forreign Power be it either Papal or Princely Spiritual or Temporal in as much as it may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from this Obligation or shall any way give us leave or license to raise tumults bear arms or offer any violence to your Majesties Person Royal Authority or to the State or Government Being all of us ready not only to discover and make known to your Majesty and to your Ministers all the Treasons made against your Majesty or Them which shall come to our hearing but also to lose our Lives in the defence of your Majesties Person and Royal Authority and to resist with our best endeavours all conspiracies and attempts against your Majesty be they framed or sent under what pretence or patronized by what forreign power or authority soever And further we profess that all absolute Princes and Supream Governours of what Religion soever they be are Gods Lieutenants on Earth and that obedience is due to them according to the laws of each Commonwealth respectively in all Civil and Temporal affairs And therefore we do here protest against all Doctrine and Authority to the contrary And we do hold it impious and against the word of God to maintain that any private Subject may kill or murther the Anointed of God his Prince though of a different belief and Religion from his And we abhor and detest the practice thereof as damnable and wicked These being the Tenents of our Religion in point of loyalty and submission to your Majesties Commands and our Dependence of the Sea of Rome no way intrenching upon that perfect Obedience which by our Birth by all laws divine and humane we are bound to pay to your Majesty our natural and lawful Soveraign We humbly beg prostrate at your Majesties feet That you would be pleased to protect us from the severe persecution we suffer meerly for our profession in Religion leaving those that are or hereafter shall be guilty of other Crimes and there have been such in all times as well by their Pens as by their Actions to the punishment prescribed by the Law Fr. Oliver Dâ—arcy Bishop of Dromore Fr. George Dillon of S. Fran. Ord. Guardian of the Irish Franciscans at Paris Fr. Philip Roch of S. Fran. Ord. Reader Gen. of Divinity Fr. Anthony Gearnon of S. Fran. Ord. one of Her Majesties the Queen Mothers Chapl. Fr. Iohn Everard of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. Anthony Nash of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. William Lynch of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. Fr. Nicholas Sall of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Iames Cusack Doctor of Divinity Cornelius Fogorty Protonot Apost and Doctor of the Civil and Canon Law Daniel Dougan Divine Fr. Henry Gibbon of S. Aug. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. Redmund More of S. Dom. Ord. Conf. and Preac Bartholomew Bellew Dennis Fitz Ranna Bartholomew Flemming Fr. Redmund Caron of S. Fran. Ord. Reader jubilate of Divinity Fr. Simon Wafre of the same Order Reader of Divinity Fr. Iames Caverley of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. Iohn fitz Gerrald of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. Theobald Burk of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. Matthew Duff of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. Peter Geoghegan of S. Fran. Ord. Conf. and Preac Fr. Peter Walsh of S. Fran. Ord. Reader of Div. and Procurator of the Roman Catholick Clergy both Secular and Regular of Ireland This paper without any hands to it for the gentlemen that consulted of and drew it in this form did not then reflect on the necessariness of any subscription to it and if they had they saw the storm so great and furious raised suddenly against those men chiefly who should have subscribed it that it was impossible for them to meet even for any such or other end soever and yet the making of such address to His Majestie could not be delayed so as to send about to search for them where they could not be met with singly one by one but after too much time therefore I say this paper without any hands to it was delivered immediately to Father James Fitz Simons residing and hiding himself the best he could at Dublin to be sent together with the Proclamation of the Lords Justices and ordinances of Parliament and the forged letter of Mac Dermot the Priest and their own discoveries of the imposture to the above Father P. W. then at London as Procuratour of the Clergie to be presented by him to His Majestie and Lord Lieutenant and was accordingly sent and delivered him by the Earl of Fingale who had then some occasions of his own to goe for England Which the Procurator had no sooner received then after communicating all to some others of the Irish Clergy and Gentry then at London and press'd by them all to
six months were over and the Clergie had been ashamed of their own obstinacy and no less confounded at their own scarce credible inconsiderancy But it pleased God to dispose affaires so that His Grace the Lord Lieutenant albeit otherwise very desirous to see these letters take effect as he was timely acquainted with the drawing and signing of them yet as they were ready to be dispatch'd to the several Counties and most of them too by Noblemen considering the dangerous plot then in hand amongst those disloyal Fanaticks who were to seize the Castle of Dublin and thinking prudently that if any papers whatsoever were carried about at that time by the Catholicks for getting hands or subscriptions those wicked plotters and their party would misinterpret them and pretend thereby a plott or some dangerous conspiracy a preparing amongst the Papists whereby to excuse the better themselves for meeting frequently in armed troups by day or night and considering moreover what influence the Irish Clergie had in the late warrs on the Layety of their communion yea notwithstanding any former Oath and that the same might be again unless the Clergie themselves had subscribed His Grace was pleased for these reasons to countermand for that time and suspend ever since the sending about of those letters expecting it might be done more seasonably when the Clergie had signed first and questionless too expecting the Clergie would sign as soon as their pretence of not dareing to meet by Representatives in a general Congregation were layed aside though it happen'd otherwise as will appear in the second Part of this first Treatise XLVI However the Catholick Gentry or old proprietours of the County of Wexford and few survivours of the Cittizens of that Town expected no such invitation by letters from the Noblemen but without any other then that they had gathered out of The More Ample Account and their own reason having framed for themselves a suitable both Petition to the Lord Lieutenant and preamble to His Majesty subscribed the Remonstrance with about two hundred hands for they wanted only three of that number and sent it His Grace by Mr. William Stafford of Lambstown who took great pains in this business Which Instrument of theirs I would not omit to insert here at length as an eternal monument of their honest loyal hearts however they have been abused in the late warrs by some of their spiritual leaders though perhaps that too more out of ignorance and blind zeal then any malice and whatever or how sad soever their condition above most other Counties be ever since as it was then when they signed so freely of themselves yea notwithstanding the contrary endeavours used by some Clergiemen especially two Fathers of the Society to disswade them Whether those Fathers behaved themselves so undiscreetly out of any disaffection to the King or rather out of mistaken Religion and prepossession by such foolish arguments as they had learned in their own Schools or by reading Bellarmine Suamz or such other by ass'd writers or whether by special command or direction of their Superiours I knew not To His Grace the Duke of Ormond Lord Lieutenant General an General Governour of Ireland The Humble Petition of the Subscribers MOst humbly sheweth that they come with the same alacrity and cheerfulness to present to your Grace the ensueing Remonstrance and Protestation which some of their fellow Subjects of the Nobility and Gentry of this Kingdom not long since humbly laid at His Majecties Feet Who was graciously pleased to accept thereof And they with the same zeal acknowledging themselves to be bound in the same duty and indispensable tyes of obedience to His Majesty His Heirs and Successors in all temporal matters do humbly beseech your Grace that this their most hearty concurrence to the same faithful Protestation and humble Remonstrance may be made the more acceptable by your Graces conveyance thereof to His Majesty And they shall pray c. To the Kings Most Excellent Majesty The faithful Protestation and humble Remonstrance of the Roman Catholick Gentry of the County of Ireland WHereas a considerable part of the Roman Catholick Nobility and Gentry of Ireland by the name of the Roman Catholick Nobility and Gentry of Ireland presented to your most Excellent Majesty a sincere Protestation and humble Remonstrance intituled the faithful Protestation and humble Remonstrance of the Roman Catholick Nobility and Gentry of Ireland for divers substantial and solid reasons in the said faithful Protestation and humble Remonstrance ingenuously and conscientiously expressed and set forth Now we the said Roman Catholick Gentry of the said County of Wexford whose names are hereunto subscribed being members of the said Roman Catholick Gentry of Ireland being bound in Conscience and duty to own the said faithful Protestation and humble Remonstrance as well as our Countreymen first subscribing thereunto for the motives in the said faithful Protestation and humble Remonstrance expressed and in imitation of our said Countreymen and to avoid all jealousies and misopinions which may be concieved of our selves and of our Religion and feareing least we may be thought to vary from the said first Subscribers in doctrine in Religion or Religious Tenets do sincerely and truly without Equivocation or mental reservation in the sight of God and in the presence of your Majesty Acknowledg and confess your Majesty to be our true and lawful King Supream Lord and rightful Soveraign of this Realm of Ireland and of all other your Majesties Dominions and therefore we acknowledg and confess our selves to be obliged under pain of sin to obey your Majesty in all civil and temporal affairs as much as any other of your Majesties Subjects and as the laws and Rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at our hands and that notwithstanding any power or pretention of the Pope or Sea of Rome or any sentence or Declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by the Pope his Predecessours or Successours or by any authority spiritual or temporal proceeding or derived from him or his Sea against your Majesty or Royal Authority we will still acknowledge and perform to the utmost of our abilities our faithful loyalty and true Allegiance to your Majesty And we openly disclaim and renounce all forraign power be it either Papal or Princely spiritual or temporal or us much as is may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from this Obligation or shall any way give us leave or licence to raise tumults bear Arms or offer any violence to your Majesties Person Royal Authority or to the State or Government being all of us ready not only to discover and make known to your Majesty or to your Ministers all the Treasons made against your Majesty or them which shall come to our hearing but also to loose our lives in the defence of your Majesties Person and Royal Authority and to resist with our best endeavours all conspiracies and attempts against
do acknowledge and confess Him to be so So that their said oath formal or virtual if an oath at all immediately going before or premised to the Act of Recognition doth not fall upon the verity of Things as in themselves objectively or upon the conformity of their words or of their sentiments to the things Objects or Laws as in their true Nature but only on the conformity of their outward or verbal Acknowledgments Confessions Renunciations Promises Resolutions c. to their own inward thoughts and hearts Which I thought fit to Note here for their sake who pretend for a Reason of not subscribing that it is not just they should swear that which is controverted or may be controverted or that they should swear that which they cannot otherwise know but by probable Arguments or swear that either formally or virtually which is in debate twixt great Divines As for Example That the Pope cannot de jure dethrone or depose our King for this Position must be virtually supposed by the Subscribers of our Remonstrance For their sake I say it is I give this Advertisement here That there is no kind of oath formal or virtual in that Act of Recognition or in any Clause or Appendage of it and that the antecedent Proposition in the sight of Heaven or oath if it be an oath immediately going before it falls only on the conformity of their words to their mind that is signifies only That however the Things Objects Laws c. be in their own nature yet the Subscribers do sincerely and truly without equivocation or mental reservation acknowledge and confess renounce disclaim protest detest abhor c. so and so And yet I confess they cannot honestly or conscientiously do so or profess or subscribe so unless at the same time they persuade themselves of the absolute certainty or at least of the undoubted probability of all such Positions as are either formally contained in or virtually supposed by the said Act of Recognition or in or by all or any of the Clauses and Appendages of the same Act and unless they resolve also at the same time never to change their opinion in that or concomitant Resolution to be ever accordingly faithful to the King For otherwise by doing so or professing or subscribing so the Subscribers must be guilty before God of most grievous sins against both God and the King that is first of Perjury by calling Heaven to witness their sincere profession of that which either they do not believe or persuade themselves at all that they ought by any means to profess or if they persuade themselves that they ought or might without sin profess they do not resolve in their heart to perform what in word they promise at least virtually for the future and in the second place of Hypocrisie or of the most horrid odious scandalous and dangerous dissimulation and deception may be of the very King Himself and in a matter of highest concernment to His Majesty and all His People And I say yet that without such persuasion and resolution the Subscribers must be guilty of such enormous sins let the Protestation it self and in it self objectively taken be admitted by all sides to be in all respects the most Christian Catholick and Conscientious hath ever yet been framed Because that according to the Rule of the great Apostle Paul to the Romans chap. 14. vers 22. Omne autem quod non est ex fide peccatum est whatever is done or professed or promised contrary to the dictate of ones own inward conscience must be to him a sin be it otherwise in it self and according to the very Law of God himself the most holy action profession or promise can be Whereof to give here a further Reason is as needless as it is obvious to all knowing men That our inward practical dictate is and must be to us the measure and very next Rule of our Actions Dictamen practicum regula proxima humanorum actuum And that although our conforming our selves to it be not sufficient alwayes or at all times to render our Actions just as when it is not just in it self according to the objective Truth of Things or Laws in themselves yet our varying from it in our Actions is abundantly sufficient to render our Actions unjust evil and vicious quia bonum ex integra causa malum ex quocunque defectu Thirdly And consequently the Reader is to be Advertised That to save him the trouble of turning back to the beginning of this Book I give here word by word all that Act of Recognition otherwise called the Protestation of our Remonstrance and the Petition following it immediately concerning both which Recognition and Petition or some passages of both or either all the Controversie and Censure of Louain is For without any interjection presently after the last passage given before in my second Advertisement of the Remonstrance of what or of that odium the Irish Clergy lay under that Instrument thereof proceeds thus and begins continues and ends the Act of Recognition thus WE do acknowledge and confess Your Majesty to be our true and lawful King Supreme Lord and Rightful Sovereign of this Realm of Ireland and of all other Your Majesties Dominions And therefore we acknowledge and confess our selves to be obliged under pain of Sin to obey Your Majesty in all Civil and Temporal Affairs as much as any other of Your Majesties Subjects and as the Laws and Rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at our hands And that notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope or See of Rome or any Sentence or Declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by the Pope his Predecessors or Successors or by any Authority Spiritual or Temporal proceeding or derived from him or his See against Your Majesty or Royal Authority we will still acknowledge and perform to the uttermost of our Abilities our faithful Loyalty and true Allegiance to Your Majesty And we openly disclaim and renounce all Forreign Power be it either Papal or Princely Spiritual or Temporal inasmuch as it may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from this Obligation or shall any way give us leave or licence to raise Tumults bear Arms or offer any violence to Your Majesties Person Royal Authority or to the State or Government Being all of us ready not only to discover and make known to Your Majesty and to Your Ministers all the Treasons made against Your Majesty or Them which shall come to our hearing but also to lose our Lives in the defence of Your Majesties Person and Royal Authority and to resist with our best endeavours all Conspiracies and Attempts against Your Majesty be they framed or sent under what pretence or patronized by what Forreign Power or Authority soever And further we profess that all absolute Princes and Supreme Governors of what Religion soever they be are Gods Lieutenants on earth and that Obedience
sense of them and moreover also their doctrine or perswasion of the exemption of Clergy-men in particular from the Secular or civil Power and Laws as will at large appear in the end of this discourse give just occasion to believe they do not mean any obligation under pain of sin by that theirs of conscience I say that not to take notice of these or of any more such of lesser moment or less appearing changes either in the words or sense I observe secondly the great and clear and most material change can be in four several Instances and this partly by a manifest and purposed omission and partly by equivocation First Instance That the former printed Remonstrance of 61. hath in clear express words Line the 2 3 and 4. a Declaration of a tye under pain of sin on the Catholick Subjects to be obedient in all civil and temporal things to his Majesty as much as the Laws and rules of Government in this Kingdom require at their hands For the words of the former as to this point are these And therefore we acknowledge our selves to be obliged under pain of sin to obey your Majesty in all civil and temporal affairs as much as any other of your Majesties Subjects and as the Laws and rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at our hands This later hath of set purpose and to evade the acknowledgment of of any tye of conscience what ever they mean by conscience from the Laws of the Land or rules of Government hath I say changed that clause and formed it thus Consequently we confess our selves obliged in conscience to be as obedient to your Majesty in all civil and temporal affairs as any Subject ought to be to his Prince and as the Laws of God and nature require at our hands Declining so of purpose the Laws of the Land or the municipal and humane politick Laws whether those are called common or those are termed Statute-laws and all other rules of State-government by Proclamations or otherwise for the peace of the Country ordained by men whether ecclesiastical or civil And consequently declining the acknowledgment of any obligation of conscience on the Subscribers to this later form from such humane laws and rules For although according to the doctrine and conscience of the former Subscribers to the first Protestation or that of 61. the very laws of God and nature oblige them to be obedient to the King in all civil and temporal affairs even according to the humane laws and rules of Government of the Land albeit they had never expressed it in their Protestation which yet they did of purpose to avoid all jealousies of equivocation or mental reservation and to declare expresly against the ill grounded opinions or doctrines in that point of some late School-men and Writers of their Church whereof some vainly teach the civil Power and Laws cannot oblige any under pain of sin Others no less vainly that at least they cannot so oblige Clergy-men as being no way subject to the coercive part or power of them but at most and only ex aequo bono to their direction yet according to the publickly declared judgment and doctrine of these other Subscribers or the late Assembly subscribing this their own other form and according their judgment I say on the very point and contradiction of it they will have themselves so understood as that they conceive and believe that neither the laws of God or nature oblige them in conscience so to obey his Majesty either by an active or passive obedience in all civil or temporal affairs or to obey him as much as the laws and rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at their hands but on the contrary speak and teach even many of them publickly and almost all universally in private that they do not oblige them in conscience to be so obedient which is the reason they found this change of this clause very material Second Instance is In the total change of the two next and most material clauses of all those contained in that former Protestation of 61. I mean those And that notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope or See of Rome or any sentence or declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by the Pope his Predecessors or Successors or by any authority spiritual or temporal proceeding or derived from him or his See against your Majesty or your Royal Authority we will still acknowledge and perform to the uttermost of our abilities our faithful loyalty and true allegiance to your Majesty And we openly disclaim and renounce all forrain power be it either Papal or Princely spiritual or temporal in as much as it may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from this obligation or shall any way give us leave or licence to raise tumults bear arms or offer any violence to your Majesties person Royal Authority or to the State or Government And this Instance further is in the clear omission not only of this passage in the next period of that Remonstrance of 61. line the 12. Be they framed or sent under what pretence or patronized by what forrein power or authority whatsoever but also in the like wilfull omission of the two intire periods immediatly following viz. And further we profess that all absolute Princes and supream Governours of what religion soever they be are Gods Lieutenants on earth and that obedience is due to them according to the laws of each Commonwealth respectively in all civil and temporal affairs And therefore we do here protest against all doctrine and authority to the contrary All which four intire periods besides that part here likewise noted of a fifth the only material clauses or declarations not only of that Remonstrance of 61. but which might or may be of any other home to the purpose this Congregation of Dublin in 66. wittingly and willingly and purposely and obstinatly would and have accordingly omitted in their Protestation and would have it so notwithstanding so many convincing reasons given them publickly and privatly for six dayes together and notwithstanding that both the expedience and absolute necessity was so declared unto them why they should and ought by such express clauses renounce the doctrines whence their own so well known so late and so fatal practises of the generality of the Clergie of Ireland since 41. but more especially since the congregations of Waterford in 46. and Jamesstown in 50. did flow and so refused to insert them and as well for any part as the whole of them either in word or sense in their own form which they framed or fixed on of purpose to decline both the words and sense and as well the sense as words of those four several periods as likewise of any other material expressions in the Remonstrance of 61. and so I say fixed on this form which now they call their own because signed by them although not framed
will not agree with the Parliament for not having it We are of opinion the best remedy the King 's Authority being taken away as was said of meeting this inconvenience of the Peoples closing with the Parliament is returning to the Confederacy as was intended by the Nation in case of breach of the Peace of His Majesties part This will keep an union amongst us if men will not be precipitantly guilty of breach of their Oath of Association which Oath by two solemn Orders of two several Assemblies is to continue binding if any breach of the Articles should happen of His Majesties part The King 's Authority and the Lord Lieutenants Commission being recalled by the Declaration abovesaid we are of opinion the Lord Lieutenant hath no such Authority to leave If we must expose Lives and Fortunes to the hazard of fighting for making good that Peace seeing the danger and prejudice is alike to defend that or get a better Peace why should we bound our selves within the limits of those Articles so disavowed Answer To this VVe answer That if they were alwayes of opinion all their endeavours should be employed to keep the King's Authority over them their Declaration and Excommunication is a strange way of manifesting that opinion which Declaration and Excommunication bears date before His Majesties Declaration wherein they say He throweth away the Nation as Rebels So that whatever His Majesty hath done in withdrawing His Authority it is apparent their endeavour to drive it away was first in time In their advice of returning to the Confederacy appears the scope of their dilemma's and arguments against the continuance of the King's Authority over them which that they may be sure to be rid of they say VVe have not Authority to leave Their Reasons why in Conscience they cannot consent to the revocation of their Declaration and Excommunication follow Vpon consideration of the whole matter we may not consent with safety of Conscience to the Provisoes of revoking our Declaration and Excommunication demanded by his Excellency or granting any assurance to him or the Commissioners of Trust for not attempting the like in the future and that for many Reasons especially for First Reason That the King's Authority is not in the Lord Lieutenant nor power in us to confer a new Authority on him being also destructive to the Nation to continue it in him and preservative if in another And that was our sense when we declared against the King's Authority in his person Answer The King's Authority was to Us when the Declaration and Excommunication was framed by them they acknowledge And that it is still in Us notwithstanding His Majesties said Declaration VVe are able to make good if We could find it of advantage to His service or the safety of His good Subjects But that they confess It is not in them to confer a new Authority upon us is one of the few Truths they have set down Yet why they may not pretend to give as well as take away Authority and why they may not to Us as well as to others We know not They further say It is destructive to the Nation if continued in Vs and preservative if in another and this they say was their sense when they declared against the King's Authority in Our person We would gladly know what We have done to change their sense since the time that by their many professions formerly recited they seemed to be of another opinion If it be for doing little or nothing We believe We have made it appear they are principally guilty of Our being out of action That it will be preservative to the Nation to have Authority to govern it in another We shall be glad to be convinced in the event Second Reason We much fear we should lose the few Churches remaining under his Government as we lost under him all the Churches of the Cities of Waterford and Kilkenny and the Towns of Wexford Rosse Clonmel Cashel Fethard Kilmallock c. In this agreeing with the Maccabees Maximus vero primus pro sactitate timâ—r exat templi Answer The loss of the places mentioned here is answered elsewhere We shall only add That as Cashel was lately deserted by some of those these men esteem obedient Children of Holy Church so the same men could neither be persuaded nor forced into Kilkenny when they had orders for it and by that means both places were lost Third Reason His Excellency having declared at Cork That he will maintain during his life the Protestant Religion according to the example of the best Reformed Churches which may be the same in substance with the Oath of Covenant for ought we know we may not expect from him defence of the Catholick Religion Answer Whatever We declared at Cork in this particular was before the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace and was published in Print and then well known to many of these Bishops So that they ought then to have been aware how they had concluded a Peace with one that had made such a Declaration rather than now after almost Two years to make it a ground of breaking the Peace What Our opinion is of the Covenant or the best Reformed Churches We hold not Our Self obliged to declare Resolved We were to defend the Peace concluded by Us in all the parts of it Which We have faithfully endeavoured to do and should still have endeavoured it if We had not been interrupted affronted and wholly disabled therein by the contrivement of those very Bishops their Brethren and Instruments Fourth Reason The scandal over all the world to make choice of one of a different Religion especially in Rome where His Holiness in His Agreement or Articles with the Queen of England had a Catholick Governour granted though not performed And we do fear the scourges of War and Plague that have fallen so heavy upon us are some evidences of Gods anger against us for putting Gods Causes and Churches under such a hand whereas that Trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the King's authority Answer Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to Us which they have endeavoured all the while to disguise under the personal scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of scandal at Rome for making choice as they call it as if they might choose their Governours of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they may not next pretend to the same fear of scandal for having a King of a different Religion and to the power of choosing one of their own Religion We know not Touching any agreement made between the Queen of England and His Holiness for a Governour for this Kingdom We have never heard of any such and We are most confident That in the agreement and consequently in the want of performance Her Majesty is falsely aspersed by the framers of this Paper Fifth Reason That we shall
amongst the same Protestants to perswade themselves that however in our neighbouring Catholick Kingdoms the Article of Transubstantiation and the Doctrine of the Bishop of Rome's universal Monarchy or of his both spiritual and temporal supreme Jurisdiction do not walk hand in hand together yet amongst the generality of Roman Catholicks in these Nations it hath been otherwise continually these last hundred years and is at present whether in the mean time this proceed out of Ignorance or Interest or both XIII That thus at last the only true both original and continual causes on our side of all the severe Laws and of all the other grievous misfortunes and miseries past and present which we complain of and groan under as peculiar to the Professors of the Roman Catholick Religion in these Nation appearing to be and really being such as I have hitherto discoursed none can be so short sighted or so unapprehensive as not without further discourse to understand likewise the only Christian and proper efficacious remedy of all the said evils for what I mean concerns the future and our own endeavours and concurrence with God and man to help our selves For certainly nothing can be more obvious to reason than that since our own either formal or virtual express or tacit owning of so many uncatholick Positions and so many unchristian practises by our continual refusing to disown them or either of them in any sufficient manner or as we ought by any proper Test hath been of our side hitherto the only immediate cause of all our woes and especially of all those legal Sanctions which upon due reflection do without doubt render our best condition even at present anxious it must follow That the only proper true and efficacious remedy on our side also must be at last our own free and unanimous and hearty and conscientious disowning of all and every the said erroneous Positions and wicked practises even by such a publick full and clear Instrument or Declaration and Oath as may satisfie all Protestants of our utter Aversness and Enmity to all Rebellious Doctrines and Practises whatsoever especially to those which tend to the maintaining of any kind of temporal Dominion or Jurisdiction direct or indirect or even any spiritual Power or Authority which may have the effect of such temporal in the Pope or See of Rome over his Majesty or any of his Majesties Subjects or at all within the Realms of England Ireland or Scotland or within any of the other Dominions acknowledging his Majesty even in any case of contingency imaginable especially in case of either true or only pretended Apostacy Heresie Schism c. and such publick Instrument Declaration and Oath so full and clear even also against all equivocations and both mental and vocal evasions whatsoever to be in your name together with your Petition most humbly presented to the King and Parliament some time this present Session by your sufficient Representatives the Roman Catholick Lords or such of them as will be pleased to take these matters to heart XIV That when in such manner as you ought you have performed that duty which you have so long owed to God and the King to your Country and Religion to the Christian Church in general and all mankind and amongst them to your selves and your posterity after you and when you have thereby done your part to disarm all the anger of the Presses and to silence all the clamor of Pulpits and put an effectual stop to a thousand new Invectives and ten thousand more Sermons preparing to incense the Protestant people against you i. e. when by such a publick Instrument or solemn Declaration and Religious Oath of the generality of your Nobles Ecclesiasticks and Gentry you shall have quite rendred unsignificant their I know not which more affrighting or bewitching Theme quite destroyed their Common place and no less effectually than clearly answered their only grand Objection against your Liberty viz. That of The inconsistence of the safety of a Protestant Prince or State or Kingdom or People with Liberty in the same Dominions given to Roman-Catholick Subjects and consequently when by doing so you shall have done your selves all the greatest right you can think of viz. you shall have conform'd to the inward dictates of a good Conscience wiped off from your holy Religion the outward scandal of most wicked Principles yielded to victorious Truth wheresoever you behold her and which is and must be consequential when you shall have thus after a tedious contest of above a hundred years advanced on your side the first considerable step to meet half way the Right Reverend Prelates and other learned Teachers of the Church of England in order to a happy reconciliation at last of the remaining differences then may you confidently expect from their side also i. e. from his most Gracious Majesty and the great Wisdom and Piety of both Houses of Parliament all that ease relaxation indulgence peace kindness love which by any men dissenting yet in so many other points from the Religion established by Law can be in reason expected even a Repeal at least of all the Sanguinary and Mulctative Laws For to expect an equality in all priviledges with those that are of the Protestant Church until God be pleased to bring you nearer them or them to you than in a meer profession how real and cordial and universal or comprehensive soever of Allegiance to the King in Temporal or Civil Affairs only I say till that day come which we pray for it will I believe seem unreasonable to your selves to expect that equality with them which they were not to expect of you if you had the power in your hands and they were in your condition How can they in reason expect so much favour as they now shew us if they retain any memory of former times and consider the now prevailing Party amongst us and Papal Constitutions even at this present governing that Party at least in relation to such as are reputed Hereticks or Schismaticks by the Consistory at Rome XV. That of those Ecclesiasticks who as the English Opposers of the Oath of Allegiance or the Irish Persecutors of the Loyal Remonstrance shall endeavour to persuade your continuing alwayes Rigid Papalins maugre Heaven and Earth and to stifle any motion or thought of giving a Protestant Prince or Parliament any more satisfaction in the principal point either of Consistence or Inconsistence c than your selves or your Predecessors have given hitherto some of them are naturally averse to the Crown of England and would be so though it were as entirely devoted now to the See of Rome as it was at Dover when King â—ohn laid it there at the Legat's feet others are daily expectants of Mitres and Titles and Bulls and Dignities from that City of Fortune others have already taken the Formal or Ceremonial possession of their now most Illustrious and most Reverend Lordships and these also have already at their Consecration
liberty or that ease from the penal laws which they so vehemently desired might be so sollicited and obtained by him That my Lord Aubigny himself though expecting the Cardinal Dignity was so farre from disapproveing that Remonstrance or their concurrence to it when first it came forth in Print That he sayed plainly and often to the Procuratour when complaining to him of his said Confessour Father Peter Aylmer at that time with his Lordship at London If the King would be advised by him there should not be a Priest in any of the three Kingdoms but such as would freely sign it That although a while after when he hearkned to the Jesuits he relented somewhat on consideration of their furtherance of his pretensions at Rome or of removeing the obstacles they might perhaps otherwise put in his waye yet on better consideration again return'd to his former and fix'd principles and therefore advised the said Father Aylmer either to sign or withdraw himself out of England Which was the immediate cause of Mr. Aylmers comming then for Ireland though with design also to do all the mischief he could to cross that business as truly he did by manifest untruths although he protested so lately before and so publickly in the presence of 30. Catholicks Priests and Catholick Bishops too at London when the rest signed it that he singled not himself for point of conscience and that he would with his blood sign the lawfulness and Catholickness of it yet pretending after that he had not sufficiently studied nor understood the point as indeed he never seemed to have before or after That for the rest of the Queens Chaplains ordinary or extraordinary I mean the English Irish who were concern'd and to whom it was proper I must confess the grand mistake was in not offering it them by authority at first when it came forth as to my knowledge it was intended to be offered at Hampton-Court and at Council upon a certain Sunday but none of the copies being at hand that day and other things intervening after they were neglected Which gave so much encouragement to all other dissentors ever since albeit the case of those Chaplains and that of the rest of the Irish Clergie be very different and that none of the rest who have been so expresly particularly and positively desired their own concurrence should on that pretence denye or excuse it That finally for what concerns my Lord Abbot Montague what ever his own peculiar interest was or is in relation to that Remonstrance or to an approbation of it if demanded I am sure that being as well as my Lord Aubigny acquainted with the Divinity of France having his title and so great a benefice there and being so conversant in that Court and Church his judgement must have been for the Catholickness and lawfulness of it And a person of so great both reason and experiance in the affairs of these Nations could not but conceive it was both expedient and necessary for such of the Romish Clergie natives as would live at home in any of them to sign it and for such as were abroad or would be not to hinder those at home by disswasion from the good they might expect thereby And could not but conceive it was both expedient and necessary even for His Majesties greater assurance of them that they should do so That besides nothing more in particular being known of my Lord Abbot Mountague's affection or disaffection to that matter nay were even his positive perswasion to the contrary known of certain as it was never for any thing I could here and I have listened after it sufficiently carefully enough yet his Lordships even such demeanour could be no rational pretence for them his forraign dependency his special priviledge by serving the Queen Mother in so great a capacity as he is known to serve Her exempting him from a rule concerning others that had no such arguments to excuse them To say nothing here of his being an English man and Priest of that Clergie who were not so neerly concern'd not to be backward as the Irish Clergie were and who nevertheless did then for the generality of them most heartily desire as they do at this present His Majestie were pleased to favour them so much albeit not lying under those great suspicions the Irish Clergie do at least not having in our dayes given such cause as to demand their subscriptions to such an Instrument and be content therewith in lieu of those other demonstrations the laws they lye under expect from them IX However such as made it their interest to oppose any further subscription made use of these and many other such pittiful and too too weak pretences to excuse their nonconcurrence when they saw no further probability in those no less weak pretences of Theological arguments borrowed from Suarez Bellarmine and others of their way that writ on the Subject of the Popes ill-grounded pretences to and over the Scepters and Royal Diadems or temporal authority of Kings and in particular of the Kings of England But indeed the true causes of their backwardness and reluctancy and which even themselves almost all generally upon occasion acknowledg'd were 1. That most of their leading men and such as not onely were in office over others but very many also that bore no such offices at all as then were pretendents and candidats either abroad at Rome for titulary Archbishopricks Bishopricks Vicar-generalships Deanries Parishes Provincialships Commissaryships c. or at home amongst their own Brethren for votes to be chosen presented or preferred to such offices either amongst the secular or regu-Clergie as they aspired unto albeit as poor and inconsiderable amongst the Clergie as little Cures in Parishes without other advantage than the bare benevolence of the laye people and even as poor and inconsiderable as a Guardianship Priorship or some such other now very vain title in Ireland amongst the Regulars For because at Rome and for what depended of that Court immediately they perswaded themselves that to subscribe would be a perpetual obstruction to all their hopes as the case stands in Ireland the King being of a different communion and even at home also they could expect no more favour from their own Brethren or their own actual superiours Bishops Vicars-general Provincials c. that were adverse to the Remonstrance as most of them certainly were even such as both in their judgements for point of conscience and in their natural inclinations also to the English Crown and interests of it in Ireland were truly in their Soules for the Remonstrance would not by any means be induced to declare themselves publickly such either in word or writing 2. That such as in the late Warrs had engaged themselves against both Peaces or either of them and against the foregoing Cessation and consequently for the Censures of the Nuncio apprehended it for want of Christian humility or a true sense of piety as the worst of evils
to concurr unto and obey Hereupon presently without further debate for none at all scrâ—â—◠〈◊〉 the catholickness or lawfulness such scruples having been sufficiently 〈◊〉 before clear'd amongst all persons of reason and conscience as many as were at that meeting and had not subscribed at London put their hands to a clean copy of that which was before signed by the Nobility and Gentry at London and others that could not be present then subscribed in their Chambers Both these and those in all were eight Lords and twenty three Esquires Collonels and Gentlemen The Earl of Clanrickard The Earl of Castle haven The Lord of Gormanstown The Lord of Slane The Lord of Athenry The Lord of Brittas The Lord of Galmâ—y Henry Barnawel now Lord of Kingsland Sir Andrew Aylmer Sir Thomas Esmond Sir Richard Barnawel Philip fitz Gerrald Nicholas Darcy Francis Barnawal Sir Henry O Neale Nicholas White George Barnawal Richard Beling W. Talbot Iohn Walsh Michael Dormer Iohn Bellew of Wellistown Patrick Netervil Robert Netervil Charles White Coll. Walter Butler Coll. Thomas Bagnel Gerrald fitz Symons Robert Devoreux Coll. Iames Walsh Edmond Walsh Gerrald Fennel And being joyned to the London Subscribers of the Irish Nobility and Gentry they make in aâ— one hundred and twenty one whereof one and twenty Earls Viscounts and Barons XLIV But these Noblemen not thinking they had by their own only subscriptions done enough in this matter unles they had invited the rest of the Peers and Gentry of their communion where-ever in the Countrey abroad throughout Ireland to the like loyal concurrence framed the ensuing Letter and signed two and thirty copies of it one for every County in the Kingdom to get all the hands of the rest of the Catholick Noblemen and Gentlemen where-ever to the said Remonstrance Sirs THe desires we have to serve our King Countrey and Religion in all just ways gives you the trouble of this Letter Which is to let you know That after serious deliberation finding our selves and together with us all others of the Roman Catholick Nobility and Gentry of this Kingdom as well as the Clergy of it obliged by all the rules of Reason and tyes of Conscience in the present conjuncture especially to concurr even by subscription to the late Remonstrance and Protestation presented Last Summer to his Majesty by such of our Irish Roman Catholick Noblemen and Gentlemen as were then at London and subscribed it there and received so graciously by Him We have therefore this last week given a beginning here at Dublin to that concurrence by our own manual Subscriptions also to the same Remonstrance prefixing to it a Petition to His Grace the Duke of Ormonde Lord Lieutenant for â—iâ—veighâ—ng our said Concurrence and representing it to His Majesty That reflecting on the unsignificancy of a few hands or subscriptions for attaining those great and good ends â—e drive at by this loyal and Religious Declaration we thought it concerned as further to invite by special Letters all the rest of the Nobility and Gentry of our Communion in the several Provinces and Counties of this Kingdom to the like Subscriptions to be transmitted to us hither without delay Whereunto we have found our selves the rather bound that we certainly know it is expected from us all by his Majesty and by the Lord Lieutenant and that his Grace doth wonder why the example of the first Subscribers at London hath not been here at home more readily and frequently followed hitherto by the rest who are no less concerned And that we know moreover that by the neglect or delay this twelve months past of a more general Concurrence to a duty so expedient and necessary we have let pass already fair opportunities to reap very many advantages by it That we hope the same prudential Christian Catholick and obvious reasons which perswaded us and such others as before us did give the first example from London will prevail with you no less Being they import as much as the clearing of our holy Religion from the scandal of the most unholy tenets or positions that can be taught written or practised the assuring his Majesty evermore of our loyal thoughts hearts and hands for Him in all contingencies whatsoever and the opening a door to our own liberty and ease hereafter from the rigorous laws and penalties under which our selves and our Predecessors before us in this Kingdom of Ireland as other our fellow Subjects of the Roman Communion in England and Scotland have sadly groaned these last hundred years That as we believe you will not think we would for even these very same ends how great and good soever nor for any other imaginable swerve in the least title from the true pure unfeigned profession of the Roman Catholick Faith nor from the reverence or obedience due unto his Holiness the Bishop of Rome or the Catholick Church in general so we believe also you will rest satisfied with the plain evidence of the very words genuine sense total contexture and final scope of this Protestation and of every entire clause thereof that nothing therein no part nor the whole of it denies 〈◊〉 indeed at all reflects on the spiritual jurisdiction authority or power of either Pope or Church or any power whatsoever which we you or any other Catholicks in the world are bound by any law divine or humane or by the maximes of our known and common Faith or by the condition of our Communion to assert own or acknowledge the whole tenour of it asserting only the supream temporal power in the Prince to be independent from any but God alone and the subjection and allegiance or the fidelity and obedience either active or passive due to Him in temporal affairs to be indispensable by any power on earth either temporal or spiritual That finally we do upon consideration of all the premisses and what else your own reasons may deduce thence and give further as additional arguments very earnestly desire and pray your unanimous cheerfull and speedy subscriptions to the said Remonstrance and Protestation which we have sent along with this Letter and by the hands of whom we have likewise prayed to call such of you together as he may conveniently or go about to your several dwellings for that end And if any chance to refuse the signing of it which we hope none will to bring us a true list and exact account of such together with the signatures of the rest that the multitude may not lye under prejudices for the failing of some Which being all we have to trouble you with at present commending you to God we bid you heartily farewell Dublin this 4th of March 1662. Your very loving friends and humble Servants Castlehaven Audley Clancartie Carlingford Mountgaret Bryttas Clanrickarde Fingall Tirconnell Galmoye Slane XLV And questionless if these copies had been sent then as was design'd there had been all the hands of the Nobility and Gentry in the Kingdome to the Remonstrance before
not to summon Clerks to their tribunals and judge their causes whensoever such causes were meerly temporal and not properly or strictly spiritual or of a purely spiritual nature And I affirm also that before Iustinians Empire which was from the year of Christ 527. wherein it was begun to the year 565. wherein he dyed no Council nor canon of Council did ever as much as declare or even as much as only suppose that Clerks were by any other authority or by that I mean'd of the very Emperours themselves exempted generally from lay tribunals not even I mean still from those of inferiour Judges And O God of Truth how can any knowing Divine any conscientious Historian Canonist or Civilian be so preoccupated as not to acknowledge or so blind as not to see it cannot be any way probable that the Fathers of those primitive and purer ages should attribute any such power to themselves as by their own proper authority to exempt others or even themselves from that subjection to which as well themselves as all other Clerks were antecedently bound by the positive law of God himself as not only St. Augustine teaches in his exposition of the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul to the Romans but all other Fathers generally who treat of this subject or expound that chapter But to clear this matter throughly we must observe Those ancient Fathers with whom Ecclesiastical Discipline whereof now there is so great neglect did sincerely and severely nourish used their utmost endeavours that Ecclesiasticks should not onely by their doctrine instruct the people but also by their probity of manners and innocency of carriage in all things And therefore admonish'd all Clerks nay enjoyned them in their own conciliary Canons and sometimes also under heavy Ecclesiastical Sanctions or Censures That none of them should presume to convene or charge an other Clerk in any cause either criminal or civil before a secular judge but either by the intervention of friends should compose all their own differences or certainly if they would not or could not do so that they should at least suffer all to be determined by Episcopal Iudgment acquiescing therein And both advised and ordained so in imitation of St. Paul himself and for the very self-same reason or certainly not unlike to it this great Apostle had when writing to the Corinthians 1. Cor. 6. and forbidding them to sue one an other before heathen Iudges he gave therein a rule to all Christians generally for that time as well Laicks as Clerks Which reason appropriated to our present purpose of Clerks onely is That if or when it should happen that Clerks should fall out of human frailty into such imperfections or sins as other men are subject to and yet are scandalized at mightily when committed by Clergie-men they might be with farre more secrecy and much less scandal corrected by their own proper Bishops and other Ecclesiastical Superiours and consequently that such deviations of Clergiemen should not come to the knowledge of the vulgar which commonly judges of the doctrine by the life or conversation of the Doctors and is apt enough upon such occasions to laugh and scorn the persons themselves and not seldome too their very sacred function it self Besides that Clergiemen who by their calling should be in a very special manner above others careful to cherish peace and concord and be themselves by word and deed paterns of charity and patience to others should not by their own example or by their own sueing of others or of one an other in the secular and publick Courts rather shew the way to contention and strife then lead to christian peace and patience Whereby as it may be easily understood the Fathers did not by such admonitions or by such decrees lessen or intend to lessen as indeed they could not if any of them would and certainly none of them have willed so to lessen the proper civil power of the secular Iudges to heare and determine the temporal either civil or criminal causes of Clerks when brought to their tribunals and brought so either by the free access of the Clerks themselves or by their constrained or commanded appearance when called or summoned by the same Iudges For to have done so or intended so would have been to take from Princes and Magistrats that right and authority which the law of Christ doth not permit any admonitions or any decrees of the Fathers not even in or by their most solemn Councils whatsoever to take from the said Princes or Magistrats The Fathers therefore by such decrees did partly forbid that Clerks should not sue one an other and partly too that neither should they sue a meer layman before a secular Iudg. For this also of not sueing laymen some Canons have And the Fathers by those decrees ordained Episcopal punishments against all Clerks that would not observe those decrees And this is all that may be gathered out of any or all the Canons of Councils alleadged by our adversaries Now who sees not that all this might be justly and lawfully ordained by the spiritual Fathers of the Church by their Ecclesiastical Councils and Canons without any the least diminution of the former civil power of the lay Iudges over Clerks For so a good natural Father in the civil commonwealth that hath many children may command them all and also forbid them under a private domestick punishment nay even under that of disinheriting them that they contend not or sue one an other before a publick Judg about any quarrel amongst themselves but leave all such differences to himself their Father or to the private domestick judgment of their other Bretheren And may command this without any prejudice at all to the publick authority of the publick or legal Judges And therefore so too may the spiritual Fathers of the Church command those who are in a special manner and by a special tye and calling their spiritual children such as all Clerks are and may command them too under such punishments or penalties as are proper to their said spiritual Fatherhood not to the one an other or even any at all before a secular Judg. And yet by no means thereby lessen or intend to lessen the power of such Judges over Clerks or their causes whensoever convened or brought either by election or coaction before them but onely to abridgâ— the Clerks themselves of their former liberty of going so freely unto them as they used to do Which any rational person may easily judg not to be an Exemption of Clerks from secular Judges but a provident course to keep them in better order and as well as may be to avoid scandal And that my bare assertion may not be given for this my interpretation I thought it worth my labour to set down here and at length distinctly those very Decrees of Councils which Bellarmine l. 1. de Cleric c. 28. Prop. 3. pleads against us though he gives there some few words onely of some of them and
would be not to exempt them but in effect to make them to be no members at all As for that reason of diversity which Bellarmine hath given As it is unnecessary that all the Citizens pay tribute or that all bear arms to defend the Republick who sees not also that it argues no diversity no difference at all in the simile For in the natural body it is not necessary that all the members walke that all see that all hear c. But it is sufficient both in the natural body and in the civil that every member so attend perform that duty unto which it is ordained or applyed that all in common do still in the same body and under the same head what they are enjoyned or destined to Let Bellarmine therefore let his disciples abstain hereafter from such absurd Paradoxes What man of found reason hath ever yet in his own soul inwardly perswaded himself that a King may not de jure King it over that is govern by direction and coercion those of whom he is King nor a head the members of its own body But our Cardinal denye here that from the contrary position and practice any perturbations of the common-wealth should arise because that albeit the King may not coerce transgressing Clerks yet the Bishops may and will To this because I have said enough already I onely saâ— now that to assent this power of coercion of Clerks to Bishops for lay crimes or those committed in meer temporal or civil matters and deny it to King were nothing els in effect but to rayse Bishops from their Office Ministry Episcopal to the power and Dignity Royal of Kings and then consequently to make but meer Ciphers of the Kings themselves For I demand of Bellarmine or of his Schollars why were Kings instituted or to what end their power if it was not to govern the Republick to provide for the peace and safety of all the people of what condition or profession soever Lay or Ecclesiastick and to provide for the security and tranquility of all by punishing and rewarding indifferently according to the respective merits or demerits of every individual But our Cardinal snatches away from Kings this proper function of Kings and gives it to Bishops whereas it is notwithstanding certain that neither can the common-wealth be quiet if Clerks do violate the laws resign themselves over to sedition and yet may not be de jure therefore punished curbed or any way restrained by Kings For who sees not consequently that neither de jure can the King contain his Provinces in peace nor compel his people to live together within the bounds of honesty equity or justice And who sees not consequently also but that the very politick peace nay the very politick being of the common-wealth must depend of the will of the Bishops to whom onely the light of governing of licencing or restraining Clerks our good Cardinal will have to belong that by the severity of their Episcopal censures or other judgments they may as they will coerce the nocent and thereby and in so much pacifie the troubles of the Republick or as they please too permit all wickedness and all the most enormours horrid crimes of Sedition and Rebellion to extinguish quite the face and being of a Republick How farre more piously Christianly and rationally too had Bellarmine taught and writt that by the favour and priviledg given by Kings the Clergie are not subject to any other Judicatory but to one composed of Ecclesiastical judges yet so that as well those very Judges as the criminal Clerks be subject still to and not exempt from the supream Royal power of the King who gave subordinate power to those very Ecclesiastical Judicatories in temporal things nay and in spiritual too for what belongs to corporal or civil coercion and who as the supream temporal Prince may command prohibit and provide that no person of what condition or profession soever breake the peace of his Kingdom and who also may when there is just cause take cognizance of and judg as well what ever delinquent Clerks as the very Ecclesiastical judges of those Clerks To that of Hermannus the Colen Archbishop I will say that Bellarmine writes so of this matter as he may be refuted with that jeer wherewith a certain Boor pleasantly checked a great Bishop as he rode by with a splendid pompous train The story is that a country clown having first admired and said this pomp was very unlike that of the Apostles to whom Bishops did succeed and some of the Bishops train answering that this Bishop was not only a successor of the Apostles but also Heir to a rich Lordship and that moreover he was a Duke and a Prince too the clown replied but if God sayes he condemn the Duke and Prince to eternal fire what will become of the Bishop Even so doth Bellarmine write as that servant spoke that this Hermannus whom Charles the V. summon'd to appear was not only an Archbishop but a Prince also of the Empire And even so do I say and replye with the country swain when the Emperour judged this Prince of the Empire did he not I pray judge the Archbishop too But you will say that though indeed he judged the Archbishop yet not as an Archbishop but as a Prince of the Empire Let it be so For neither do I nor other Catholick Opposers of Bellarmine in this matter intend or mean or at least urge or press now that Clerks as Clerks are subject to the coercion or direction of Kings but as men but as Citizens and politick parts of the body Politick which kind of authority as Bellarmine confesses Charles the V. both acknowledg'd in and vindicated to the Emperour Of whose piety what Bellarmine adds is to no purpose For it is not denyed that it becomes good Princes to leave that is to commit the causes of Clerks how great and weighty or criminal soever to Ecclesiastical Judges if it stand with the safety or good hic nunc of the Commonwealth that such causes be discussed before such Judges And yet I must tell the Defenders of Bellarmine that if they please to consult the Continuator of Baronius the most reverend and most Catholick Bishop Henricus Spondenus ad an Christi 1545. they will find that upon complaint of the Catholick Clergy and University also of Colen to as well the Emperour Charles the V. as the Pope Pavl the III. against the said Archbishop as by the advice of Bueer introducing Heresie and licenceing the Preachers of it in that City and Diocess and that at their instance petitioning for help redress in that matter against the said Hermannus it was that the said Emperour Charles the V. did in the Diet of Wormes the said year and about the end of Iune by his Letters or Warrant signed and sealed summon the said Archbishop to appear before him within thirty dayes either by himself in his own proper person or by
his lawful Procurator to answer such crimes as were objected to him by the said Clergy and Academy and in the mean time to innovate nothing but to restore all things were innovated into their former state And therefore that they will find in Spondanus that this Emperour summon'd this Archbishop even as an Archbishop and consequently did not only summon and proceed against him as a Prince of the Empire but as a very Archiepiscopal Clerk and even too in a meer cause of Religion For this last particular also of the being of the cause for which the Emperour summon'd him a cause of Religion and Faith the same Spondanus hath expresly in the same place where he tells us that it was therefore the Pope Paul the III. who then sate in the See Apostolick thought fit by his own Letters of the 18. of Iuly immediatly following in the same year to summon to Rome the same Hermannus giving him sixty dayes for appearance before himself to wit least otherwise his Holiness might be thought to let go his own challenge of peculiar right in the See Apostolick only to proceed against so great a Clerk especially being the cause was properly Clerical and properly too a cause of Faith and reformation of the Church in religious tenets and rites and least consequently he might seem wholly to quit the quarrel of external coercion of either Clerks or Laicks where the crime was Heresie and by his own want or neglect of proceeding by his own proper Apostolical Authority against Herman whereas the Emperour had begun and proceeded already upon account or by virtue also of his own pure or sole imperial civil and lay power might be esteemed to acknowledge in lay Princes that supream external coercive right of even all sorts of very Clerks and even too of such in the very meerest and purest causes of Faith and Religion The testimony of Spondanus to this purpose is in these words Quod ut Pontifex audivit he means the summons sent by Charles from the Dyet of Worms for the Archbishop parum prohare visus quod Cesar in causa Fidei reformationis Ecclesiarum Iudicis authoritatem sibi sumeret die decima octava Iulii eundem Coloniensem ad sexagesimum diem citavit ut per seipsum vel per legittimum procuratorem coram ipso Romae se sisteret To that also which Bellarmine hath of crimina privilegiata and for as much as he sayes that in France those are call'd priviledg'd crimes whereof that Clerks may be accused before a lay Judge in the secular Court the Pope hath indulged I say it is farr otherwise And that Bellarmine could not shew nor any other can for him any Sanction or Law nay or any other authentick writing wherein it is recorded to posterity that such a priviledge was given by the Pope to Kings or Republicks Though I confess many Popes have been free enough of granting priviledges where they had no right to grant any and where only the ignorance or injustice of pretenders gave them some kind of bad excuse for attempting to give any and would willingly have all both Princes and people to desire of them priviledges for all they could themselves do before of themselves nay and were often bound to do without any priviledge Whence also it may be sufficiently evicted that it is no way probable this ordinary jurisdiction supream of Kings over Clerks was granted to them by the Pope but on the contrary certain that whereas anciently the very most Christian Kings and Emperours made use of all their both directive and coercive power to govern Clerks in all civil matters whatsoever nay and in spiritual matters too for what I mean concerns the external regiment of the Church by external direction of laws and by external coercion too of the material sword and to govern them also either immediatly by themselves or mediatly by their subordinat lay Judges and whereas the civil laws wherein and whereby afterwards the same Emperors and Kings exempted Clerks in many causes or most or if you please to say or think so in all whatsoever from the ordinary subordinate lay Judges have not a word of any exemption from the Prince himself the supream civil Judge of all both lay and Ecclesiastical Judge of his own Kingdom in the external coactive regiment therefore it must be concludent it was only from and by the free will of the Princes themselves that ordinary jurisdiction supream temporal or civil over Clerks was reserved still to themselves who remitted or bestowed away of their own right all whatever they pleased as they did that in the present case of deputing lay men for the ordinary subordinat Judges of those causes of Clerks which are not common but priviledged and retained also what they would Of all which the late and most learned Milletus may be read who in that choice and elegant Tract of his which he inscribed de delicto communi casis privilegiato shews very learnedly and clearly 1. That all such priviledges of Clergiemen had their whole and sole origen from Kings 2. And therefore that such crimes as Clerks are accused of and judged in foro civili in the ordinary civil or lay Courts are properly to be called delicta communia because to be tryed by the common law and before the common or lay Magistrate and those only which are remitted to the Bishop are by a contrary reason to be tearmed privilegiata to wit because it is by a priviledge granted by Kings or indulged by them to Bishops that bishops may take cognizance of and judge them As for Clarus and Ausrerius whom Bellarmine alledges for that his own sense of what is a priviledged crime of Clerks or for any other Canonists soever I regard not much what they say or not say in this matter Because they all commonly and without any ground not only bereave Princes of this supream right of either coeâ—cing or directing Clerks but also teach that all kind of meer temporal Principality flows and depends from the Papacy As that Legat did who in a Diet of the German Princes had the confidence to ask or querie thus A quo habet Imperator Imperium nisi habet a Domine Papa For so Radevicus hath related this Legats folly And so having throughly destroyed all the replies of Bellarmine to the grounds or any part of the grounds of my second grand argument and of the proof of it which second argument and proof of its Minor I derived partly from and built upon his own principles of Clergiemens being Cittizens and parts of the politick commonwealth I am now come to My third argument of pure natural reason which shall end this present Section Though I withal confess the grounds of this third argument are already given in my illustration of the former second But however for the clearer methods sake because too the medium is somewhat different from that in the form of my foregoing second I would give
this following now as a distinct one and as in order my third And I frame it thus Whatever natural civil or politick supream right and authority of civil direction and civil coercion of all and every person or persons whatsoever of the politick Commonwealth as such may be necessary for the preservation of the being and peace of the whole is by the law of nature it self to be attributed to and asserted or allowed in the same Commonwealth as such and consequently in the supream politick Head of it as such whether this Head be one single person by nature or an aggregation of many persons together by policy But the natural civil or politick supream right and authority of civil direction and civil coercion of all Clergiemen whatsoever living under or in any politick Commonwealth as such is necessary for the preservation of the being and peace of the whole Ergo the natural civil or politick supream right and authority of civil direction and civil coercion of all Clergiemen whatsoever living under or in any politick Commonwealth as such is by the law of nature it self to be attributed to and asserted or allowed in the same Commonwealth and consequently in the supream politick Head of it whether this head be one single person by nature or an aggregation of many persons together by policy The Major besides that it is proved already by and in the prosecution of my former argument where I alledged that maxime or principle allowed by all men and which in reason must be so allowed by all men viz. That every well or rightly establish'd civil Commonwealth must by the law of nature have in it self as such and consequently in its politick Head as such too that natural or civil authority over all the parts and members which may sufficiently enable the whole to attain the proper natural and civil ends of the whole and of all such parts as parts both joyntly and severally these ends being the civil peace quiet justice and comfortable secure living of all together I say the Major besides its being already proved so is further proved by this other maxime which even Suarez himself l. 3. de Primatu sum Pontif. c. 1. n. 4. allows and alledgeth for certain and for evident in natural reason Quod humana natura non possit esse destituta remediis ad suam conservationem necessariis That humane nature cannot be destitute of sufficient right and authority to do those things which are necessary for its own preservation in a peaceable and just way of living Now it is clear enough that the civil direction and civil coercion of all persons whatsoever living within the Dominions of the Commonwealth while they live there is necessary for its preservation And the Major is further also proved by a third maxime or principle which Morl. hath in Empor jur 1. p. tit 2. de legibus num 20. vers .. Quia cum regnum To wit this Cui regnum conceditur necessario omnia censentur concessa sine quibus regnum gubernari non potest To whom a Kingdom is given all things that is to say all right and authority which are necessary for the well governing of it are supposed to be given And yet who sees not this principle could not be true if that Major also were not true For whatever is necessary for the preservation of the being and peace of the Commonwealth is also necessary for the wel-governing of it As for the Minor I have abundantly proved it also before in the prosecution of my second argument And of the conclusion to follow the premisses necessarily there is no man will doubt It remains therefore that for an appendix of these arguments grounded on pure natural reason for the subjection of Clergiemen to or which is the same thing against their exemption from the supream civil coercive power in temporal causes to conclude this Section I shew by natural reason also that the very temporal Princes themselves how otherwise supream soever could not cannot by any law right authority or power given them by God or Man exempt from themselves that is from their own supream civil and even coercive power the Clergiemen of their own Dominions whiles I mean such Clergiemen remain of or in their Dominions and acknowledge themselves or indeed be inferiours and subjects to the same Princes or otherwise that these Princes be either acknowledged by them or otherwise truly and legally be their natural or proper legal Princes But for as much as Bellarmine hath in the often quoted 35. chap. l. contra Barclaium as being mightily startled by this position roused himself again and laid about him no less mightily to ruine it then he had to ruine that other which denied the Pope himself any such power of exempting Clerks from the same temporal Princes I will to avoid here some labour of repetition first give our learned Cardinals arguments against it and then consequently my own proofs for it in the solution of those arguments Ad quintam propofitionem sayes he quae erat non potuisse Principes supremos eximere Clericos a sua Regia potestate respondemus id manifestè falsum esse Nam etiamsi non possit summus Princeps c. To the fift proposition sayes Bellarmine which was that supream Princes could not exempt Clerks from their own Royal power I answer that it is manifestly false For albeit the supream Prince may not exempt all that live in his Kingdom from his own power unless he resign his Principality yet he may exempt some part of his people from some part of his power or even from all parts of his power and at the same time be both truly said and remain still a Prince For it is proper to a supream Prince to exact tribute from the people subject to him as the Apostle teaches Rom. 13. For it is therefore sayes he you pay tributes for they are the Ministers of God serving unto this purpose And yet the King may free such as he please from tributs For it is said 1. of Kings or of Samuel cap. 17. whoever shall kill the Philisthine the King shall enrich him with great riches and shall make his Father's house free from tributes in Israel Even so if some great King do free some one Citty amidst his Kingdom or bestow it absolutely on some body it will not be therefore consequent that he may not be said to be King of his whole Kingdom especially if he still protect and defend that Citty and that the Cittizens thereof do freely observe the laws of his Kingdom So therefore too might Kings exempt from their own Royal power the Clerks living in their Kingdom and yet be said to be and truly be kings not onely of Laicks but also of Clerks who freely observe their politick laws and who being Actors referre or deferre the causes they have with Laicks to their Royal tribunals and acquiesce to their judgment or sentence in such causes And because
of the didrachma and for his own very person Matth. 17.27 But this Boniface exalting himself in so much that is in temporal power above earthly Princes and States farre more then nay quite contrary to that which our Lord and Saviour Christ is read to have done himself in mortal flesh at any time or by any Instance had the confidence to attempt the bereaving even the very highest supream temporal Princes of those rights and of those duties which by the very law of God himself were theirs and were to be paid unto them unless peradventure themselves had voluntarily devested themselves of such rights or freely remitted such duties in this or that contingency I have before Section LXI though upon an others occasion and to other purpose quoted the Canon which is in cap. Clericiâ— de Immun Ecclesiaâ— in 6. wherein and whereby Boniface made this bold attempt as particularly or specifically excommunicating and by an excommunication too reserved for absolution to the Pope himself nisi in articulo mortis all Officials Rectors Captains Magistrats Barons Counts Dukes Princes and even all Kings and Emperours and generally all others of whatever praeeminency condition or estate who should upon any kind of occasion title or pretext whatsoever impose any tallies taxes collections or any tenths twentieths or hundreths upon any Church persons Churchlands or Church-revenues or who should exact or even receave any such without special licence of the Apostolick See and moreover excommunicating all orders and degrees of the very Churchmen themselves who should as much as promise to pay or consent to the payment of any such impositions or even promise or consent to pay or give any kind of money or quantity or portion of money to such Princes States Lords Officials c under any other title as that of a charitable subsidy or help-money or that of loane-money or that also of gift-money without the authority or licence of the said Apostolick See But this too excessive boldness of Boniface was both acknowledg'd and corrected by Clement the V. and by the General Council of Vienna In which Council the said Clement presiding that canon of Boniface with all the several branches or declarations of it was totally expung'd and abolished as appears by Clementina Quoniam de Immun Ecclesiaâ— But whether that Decree of Boniface was principally made by him in hatred of Phillip King of France as whom Boniface could not or would suffer to bestow the Ecclesiastical benefices of France at his own pleasure on such as he would and impose also or receave from the Churchmen or Church-revenues of France such moneyes as he wanted for the carrying on of his warr in Flanders whether so or no I say it matters not For he made it and made it generally even for all Kings Emperours c. Indeed the Gloss in Extravag Quod olim de Immunit Ecclesiarum sayes it was for the former cause he made that constitution as also that out of it orta fuerunt multa scandala Vnde Clemens Papa in Clement Quoniam de Immunit Ecclesiar voluit quod antiqna Iura servarentur non alla Constitutio But we know out of Ecclesiastical History the first original and whole procedure and by what degrees Boniface came at last to that extravagancy as to write also to that very Phillip that he held them all for Hereticks who did not acknowledg the Papal supremacy in the Kingdome of France and in all temporals as well as in spirituals Which great exorbitancy as well of the said canon as of all the precedent concountant and subsequent proceedings of Boniface occasion'd so much trouble to the vniversal Church as we know the translation of the Papacy it self to France and the frequent long scandalous and pernicious schysmes betwixt Anti popes which enâ—â—ed thereupon amounted unto For so it naturally and commonly happens that while the spiritual Prelats of the Church do according to the doctrine and practise of the ancient Church with all Christian humility obey the temporal Princes in temporal matters the Church it self and these Prelats in her enjoy Halcyon dayes peace and rest and tranquillity as that when and as often as the same Prelats replenish'd with the spirit of this world lift up their horns against Princes pushing at their temporals there is nothing to be seen but scandal and trouble and woe and calamity both in Church and State And so I have ended my comparison 'twixt the more ancient holy Popes and some of their later successors in the matter of subjection and obedience as due or not due from all Clergiemen and consequently from the very Popes themselves in temporal things to supream lay Princes I mean forasmuch as can appear out of the law of God and I mean too where Church-men themselves are not by humane right the supream temporal Princes And consequently do not mean at all by this or any other dispute or passage in this whole book to assert the subjection of Popes as they are at present though not at best but by humane right onely supposed by some or perhaps most writers to be absolute in their own temporal Patrimony and Principality that I mean of some Citties and territories of Italy and to be wholly exempt even in all kind of temporals from the Imperial power As neither do I on the other side mean to assert their such exemption or any in all kind of cases and temporals from the Emperour but abstract wholly from both the one and the other as not concerning my purpose Which purpose as I have often declared is onely and solely to oppose the exemption of all or any Churchmen in the world even of the very Pope himself from lay temporal Princes in temporal matters upon any such account as that of Sacerdotal Episcopal Papal or even Apostolical Order and my particular purpose in this present Section being to prove their subjection to lay Princes by the examples or practise of as well Popes as other Bishops nay and of most Christian Princes too in the more ancient and more holy Ages of the Church Now who sees not it is very wide from this purpose to dispute whether any Churchman any Bishop Arch-bishop Patriarch or Pope hath upon some other account been at any time or be at present exempt from all earthly powers of other Princes that is whether upon account of meer humane right given them by the Emperours or people as that acquired by donation prescription submission a just or lawfull conquest or by sale and emption c Or to dispute whether the investiture or election of the German Emperours to the title and rights of the Empire of Rome and King of the Romans or whether also the entry of their Embassadours to Rome with a naked sword in their hands or carried before them which the Embassadours of other Princes have not nor do challenge whether I say these very ceremonies be sufficient or no to hinder the Pope to be absolutely or independently
Reason which should govern or direct their particular Actions as well in order to themselves as to others and should foresee what might be objected False against Truth because so manifestly against both the Divine revealed Truths of Christian Religion and against those evidences also of natural Reason given by me before against the fourth ground of the same Louain Divines Injurious against Justice because against the most considerable right can be of all Princes States and People and even of the Clergy too if considered aright And in the highest degree may be Scandalous against Charity because in the highest degree may be harming the name and same of their Christian Catholick Neighbours and of so vast a multitude of them and because also not only of endangering in the highest degree inasmuch as in them lay even the very Temporal safety of so great a number of all the poor Catholicks in the British Monarchy and the peace of the King of Englands Dominions but further yet of raising against and casting and continuing on the Roman Religion it self in general or wheresoever professed the greatest hatred and blackness and hideousness and horrour may be and because too consequently of continuing still the chief cause of the grand Schism in Europe by keeping still that Block of stumbling and Rock of Scandal in the way of all Sects whatsoever which above any other hinders them from thinking of a Return to their Mother Church whereby to save their Souls in the Unity and Truth of the Catholick Church Than which I am sure nothing can be either more highly or more properly and strictly scandalous As for the Minor of the Syllogism being the last part of it which sayes that the second or short Censure of Louain judges our Remonstrance to be unlawful detestable sacrilegious c. is so manifest that it cannot be disputed since you read it so in that very Censure it self the former part only which sayes also and where it sayes That our Remonstrance contains only in effect word and sense an Acknowledgment only of a meer Supreme Temporal power in the Supreme Politick Magistrate and a promise of Obedience and Fidelity in meer Temporal things to the same Power and Magistrate remains to be made here no less manifest and to be made so manifest by analysing resolving and taking in pieces the whole frame of the Act of Recognition and all the Appendages of it whereof the dispute is or may be whether it contains any things besides such Temporal power in the Magistrate and such Obedience and Faith in Temporal things in the Subjects or by considering every clause of it one after another apart and the relations of one to another and to the whole and of the whole to each For there can be no other way to demonstrate this former part of the Minor And this is an easie way ad oculum and will save the Reader some labour of turning to the 7 8 and 9 pages where the whole Remonstrance is wherein that Act of Recognition and those other Appendages of it are inserted Yet before I come to an issue on this point the Reader is to be Advertised First That in that publick Instrument which hath these six or seven years past occasioned so many Differences or Disputes or rather renewed them having for Title The humble Remonstrance Acknowledgment Protestation and Petition of the Roman Catholick Clergy of Ireland it which in this distinction of words and proper strict sense of them as distinct is and ought to be understood by the word Remonstrance as in this Title so distinguish'd is not that which is at all controverted For that which is so understood is only the Representation of their then present sad and deplorable condition or of such grievances persecution suspition calumnies and odium under which for their Religion they lay then amongst their Protestant Fellow Subjects in Ireland Secondly That that which is and ought to be understood by the word Acknowledgment properly and strickly taken as in this Title signifying somewhat distinct from the meaning of the former word Remonstrance is no other than that which in the same Title is imported also by the word Protestation with this only difference That the whole Act of Recognition with all its Clauses and Appendages may be and is properly and truly an acknowledgment and confession both of the Supreme civil or Temporal power and of that obedience as above And that the very same whole Act of Recognition or Acknowledgment is in the Title called a Protestation partly because the Remonstrants or Subscribers do about the end of the same Act of Recognition formally or in formal express words Protest against all Doctrine and Authority to the contrary of that which they acknowledge confess c. in that very Act of Recognition and partly too because that having done in the former part of that publick Instrument with the Representation of their Grievances in general then and immediately before they begin their said Recognition they speak thus We know what odium all the Catholick Clergy lies under by reason of the Calumnies with which our Tenents in Religion and our dependance upon the Popes Authority are aspersed and we humbly beg Your Majesties pardon to vindicate both by the ensuing Protestation which we make in the sight of Heaven and in the presence of Your Majesty sincerely and truly without equivocation or mental reservation and partly also because by the word Protestation any publick Testimony whether it be by an Oath or not may be truly and properly understood And therefore I confess ingenuously that within the whole Act of Recognition separately taken from the rest of that Instrument there is no Protestation at all understanding by the word Protestation that kind of Testimony which is by oath For indeed there is no oath at all either formal or virtual in the whole Act so taken separately or in any Clause or Appendage of it so taken And yet I confess too that is or may well be understood to be either a formal or at least a virtual oath which is in the passage immediately antecedent or going before that Act. But this oath imports no more then that the Remonstrants or Subscribers do so antecedently swear or protest in the sight of Heaven that they do sincerely and truly without equivocation or mental reservation acknowledge confess disclaim renounce declare promise profess protest hold abhor and detest whatever they acknowledge confess c. in their following Declaration or said Act of Recognition And therefore by no meâ—â— imports that they swear their Acknowledgment Confession Renunciation c. are made conformably to the objective truth of Things or Laws in themselves For Example They swear not nor protest at all in the sight of Heaven That our Sovereign King Charles the Second is Lawful and Rightful King Supreme Lord c. or I mean that He is so according to the verity of Things and Laws in themselves but only that they
Supremacy of the Pope whatever this be which the Catholick Church allows him For a pure Supreme Temporal in one and a pure Supreme Spiritual in another and over the same persons and causes are very truly certainly and evidently consistent The second Period or Clause being this And therefore we acknowledge and confess our selves to be obliged under pain of Sin to obey Your Majesty in all Civil and Temporal Affairs as much as any other of Your Majesties Subjects and as the Laws and Rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at our hands and consequently being only and wholly of the obedience due by Catholick Subjects to Hâ—s Majesty and being it doth in formal express words determine this obedience to all Civil and Temporal Affairs as you see it doth there can be therefore no dispute of this Period The third Period also containing only in effect an acknowledgment of their resolution to acknowledge evermore and perform their Loyalty and true Allegiance to the King notwithstanding any contradiction by or from the Pope or by or from any other deriving power from the Pope or See of Rome for the words are these And that notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope or See of Rome or any sentence or declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by the Pope his Predecessors or Successors or by any Authority Spiritual or Temporal proceeding or derived from him or his See against Your Majesty or Royal Authority we will still acknowledge and perform to the uttermost of our Abilities our faithful Loyalty and true Allegiance to Your Majesty I say that being the third Period hath no other words or matter it 's very evident that the whole entire Subject of it is nought else but obedience in Temporals because the Loyalty and true Allegiance of Catholicks to their at least Protestant Prince can be no other but obedience and fidelity towards Him in all Temporal matters and because that by these words Our Loyalty and true Allegiance to Your Majesty neither His Majesty Himself nor other Protestant nor any indifferent and judicious Catholick ever yet understood nor indeed ought to understand any other Loyalty or Allegiance but that which is in meer Temporals Nor can it be said upon any rational ground that because the Remonstrants do here acknowledge That notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope c. or any sentence c. or by any Authority Spiritual or Temporal c. it must follow That they either deny the true spiritual Authority of the Pope over any Christians or any part of the world or even his Temporal within his own temporal Territories or within those Territories I mean which are His uncontroverredly even also as to the temporal Government or that they are resolved or that they promise or declare that they will disobey or oppose any just sentence or declaration of his obliging themselves or any other Nothing less then either doth follow by any kind of consequence whereas indeed no more but that they are persuaded that the Pope hath neither any true Spiritual nor any true Temporal power from God or man to devest the King of his Temporals or to hinder them from being His loyal liege men in such Temporals and that if he pronounced any sentence or gave any command to the contrary though it were even by Excommunication such sentence and such command and even such Excommunication would be as to all effects and purposes null and void because against the Laws of God and man and nature and not proceeding from any true power he had from God or from the Church of God but only from a vain and false presumption of power or authority in the case and a clave errante from a Key errant or which is the same in effect at most and at best from such an abuse of his authority as invalidates and annulls his sentence in all respects whatsoever They do not therefore at all hereby or in this Clause as neither in any other not even as much as virtually or consequentially in any manner soever deny or oppose his true and pure spiritual power of judging or binding or that which truly and really is in him to judge and bind spiritually or in a spiritual manner both King and Subjects or to pronounce even Excommunication against either themselves or the King if or when there shall happen any just cause thereof But they only deny 1. That he hath no kind of Temporal power acquired either by divine or humane Right that reaches to the King or his Crown People or Dominions 2. That the spiritual power which he truly and really hath either from God immediately or from the Church and which the same Catholick Church acknowledges to be so in him or which the Subscribers admit to be in him can have no such effect by Excommunication or other sentence or means as is the bereaving the King of his Temporals or as is the hindering the Subjects to obey or making it lawful for them in point of Conscience and Religion not to perform to the uttermost of their Abilities their faithful Loyalty and true Allegiance to His Majesty And that this third Period or Clause or words or meaning of them import no more but this or that such Clause or Subscribers of it cannot be rationally said to deny or declare against any true power of the Pope or any true or just or legal or even as much as only valid sentence of his I shew evidently thus by two several examples of the like expression used in another matter For without denying or opposing the Popes true power or any true just or valid or binding sentence of his his Sons may declare that notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope or See of Rome or any sentence or declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by the Pope his Predecessors or Successors or by any Authority Spiritual or Temporal proceeding or derived from him or his See against their natural Father or his Fatherly Authority they will still acknowledge and perform to the uttermost of their Abilities their natural duty and filial obedience to their said Father And without denying or opposing the Kings true power or any true just or even any valid or binding sentence of his the very Subscribers themselves may declare as I for my part do here declare and I am sure all the rest are ready to declare that notwithstanding any power or pretension of the King or of His Crown or Kingdom or any sentence or declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by His Majesty His Predecessors or Successors or by any Authority Spiritual or Temporal proceeding or derived from Him or His Kingdoms against their spiritual Father the Pope or his true Papal Authority they will still acknowledge and perform to the uttermost of their Abilities their Canonical fidelity and all that true obedience they are bound unto by
of obligation to reveal any thing or to stand by the Prince in any matter which is or may be against any spiritual Duty incumbent on them or against their Religion or Communion or against either Justice or Charity For certainly to reveal such Treason as is such by all the Laws of God and Man of Nature and Nations is a Temporal Duty and to defend the King's Person Royal Authority and State and Government under which we live and which are acknowledged by our selves to be Legal or not Usurped is no less a Temporal Duty or both I mean are Duties we owe to God and to the King and to the Laws and such Duties as are discharged in meer Temporal things and in a meer Temporal way too Sixth Period And further we profess That all Absolute Princes and Supreme Governors of what Religion soever they be are God's Lieutenants on Earth and that Obedience is due to them according to the Laws of each Commonwealth respectively in all Civil and Temporal Affairs That no other power is acknowledged here to be even in such Absolute Princes and Supreme Governors nor other obedience due to them by Subjects but in Civil and Temporal things there needs no further proof than what you see in the very express Letter of this self-same Period in the latter part or that of Obedience which also and by all consequence determines the former part of Power and consequently and most expresly determines both to Civil and Temporal Affairs As for the Title of Gods Lieutenants on Earth What Catholick can except against it on other ground but that of Ignorance or Malice or both Our great Nicholaus de Lyra of the Franciscan Order that most Famous and most Learned and also most Catholick Interpreter of the whole Scripture hath above 300 Years since in Sapient 6. called Emperors and Kings Vicarios Dei inâ—â—terra And Thomas of Aquin or whosoever under his name set out the work de Regim Princip l. 2. calls them so nay delivers this Maxim or Position of Kings and Princes Regem Principem toto conatu sayes he sollicitudine divino cultus incumbere teneri non solum quia homo sed etiam quia Dominus Rex est Dei vices gerit a quo maxime pendet St. Ambrose also well nigh a Thousand Years before Lyranus and Aquinas writ thus in Epist ad Roman c. 13. Sciant non se esse liberos sed sub potestate degere quae ex Deo est Principi enim suo qui vicem Dei agit sicut Deo subjiciuntur Nay and a Roman Pontiff Anastasius the Second but a few Ages after Ambrose's Ep. vii writ thus to Anastasius then Emperor of Rome Pectus Clementiae vestrae Sacrarium est publicae faelicitatis ut per instantiam vestram quam velut Vicarian Deus praesidere jussit in terris c. Seventh Period being purely Relative either only to the foresaid six or certainly to that and all the other foregoing Periods taking all together for it is in these words And therefore we do here protest against all Doctrine and Authority to the contrary it is plain this Protestation must be Catholick and just if the Declaration maâ—e in that sixth Period and in the other several foregoing be such But I have now sufficiently demonstrated that all and each of these Declarations are such And 't is like no man will be so mad as to gather out of this Protestation in this seventh Period That the Subscribers protest simply absolutely abstractedly or specificatively against the Authority of any whosoever that declares or holds the contrary but only secundum quid or reduplicatively as holding the contrary not at all as holding declaring or commanding other just matters For the words to the contrary and what else goes before and follows after sufficently declare that Protestation to have only such reduplicative sense So that no other matter can be said to be in this Period or this Period to relate to other than to the Supreme Civil power of Princes in pure Temporal affairs and obedience of Subjects to them in the same Temporal affairs though I otherwise do my self and all the Subscribers also do confess passive obedience due to Princes from their Subjects even in all kinds too of pure spiritual affairs But what this passive is as also what active is I have before explicated and the judicious Reader cannot but easily understand what both are without any explication of mine Eighth Period And we do hold it impious and against the Word of God to maintain That any private Subject may kill or murther the Anointed of God his Prince though of a different belief and judgment from his Sure there is no professed Christian but Mariana Sanctarellus or some other few impious Scholars of theirs and those of Calvin's Crue who before lead the way or after followed them will quarrel with the Subscribers on this Period especially when the several determinations of the general Council of Constance relating to this matter are duly considered Nor even those in this more Pagan Philosophers of some Graecian Republick than Christian Divines of an establish'd Monarchy can justly say whatever they otherwise say the Subscribers attribute other or even relate to or suppose here in this Period any other power in the Prince than a pure Supreme Temporal or any other obedience in the Subject but in meer Civil or Temporal affairs For the corporal life or death of the Prince as of every other man is such Nor certainly upon any ground whatsoever can say at all the Subscribers attribute here any kind of spiritual power nay nor even a Temporal power in spiritual causes to Princes or consequently exact here from Subjects an active obedience in spiritual causes For if any did subscribe this other Proposition relating not to Princes but private Subjects We hold it impious and against the Word of God to maintain That any private Subject may kill or murther another private Subject though of a different Religion from his whatever Construction or Exposition this Proposition would or must be subject unto yet no man certainly could averr on any rational ground That the Subscribers of it attributed a spiritual power to every such private Subject whom he so exempts from being lawfully killed or murthered by another private Subject or that obedience were therefore in spiritual things due to him who could not be so murthered Ninth and last Period And we abhor and detest the practice thereof as damnable and wicked Which because it is Relative only to the eighth as the word thereof proves I need say no more than is already said on the said eighth immediately preceding And these Nine Periods which I have so given and considered apart being the onely Periods Clauses or parts of the said Act of Recognition and no other at all being therein nor as much as a word more who sees not but that the said Act considered even separately as to the several Clauses
Magin one of Her Majesties Chaplains coming along with his Lordship and being present all the Discourse but none else besides the said Father Redmund Caron How this Discourse continued three hours from Ten a Clock in the morning to One in the Afternoon How therein after due Salutes the Procurator immediately gave his Lordship a full account of the occasion motives ends and effects too of the Remonstrance continuing his Speech for half an hour or thereabouts and concluding That being it was apparent enough that in the said Remonstrance or Act of Recognition and Petition thereunto annexed there was nothing but what was consonant to Christian Religion and as such maintain'd expresly even in our dayes and at that very present by the Gallican Church and Universities he could not but wonder much his Lordship and Cardinal Francis Barberin should write such Letters as they had to the Nobility Gentry and Clergy of Ireland against that innocent Formulary How the Internuncio answering That his Holiness had condemn'd it the Procurator replied That besides the Non-appearance of any such Papal condemnation it was plain enough his Holiness was misinformed not only concerning the occasion expediency necessity ends and use of that Instrument but the very matter also contained therein even as Paul the V. formerly in Anno 1606. in those of the Oath of Allegiance had been misinformed and consequently abused by Father Parsons the English Jesuite and by Cardinal Bellarmine and those other six or seven Theologues deputed by that Pope to report their sense of the said Oath of Allegiance made by King James by occasion of the Powder-plot Treason How hereupon the Internuncio with some anger rejoin'd shortly Ego informavi I am he that inform'd his Holiness and the Brocurator to him again near as shortly But with your good leave my Lord you have not rightly nor well informed giving withal his convincing Reasons How Father Caron adding to the Procurator's answer and in short desiring the Internuncio to point out the Proposition or Clause one or more in that Formulary against Catholick Faith and finally concluding and asserting the said Formulary to be in all parts and all respects intirely conformable to Christian Doctrine and Catholick Faith the Internuncio had no more to say but Vos ita censetis Sedes autem Apostolica aliter censet yea think so but the See Apostolick otherwise How when both Caron and Walsh had again replied That general Allegations without particular proof of the See Apostolick's sense were to no purpose That the original or at least authentick Copy should be produced That credit in such matters was not to be given not even to the Letters of the very Cardinals as both Civilians and Canonists do teach That the Popes own acknowledg'd private Letters in case there had been such have no binding force no nor even his Briefs or Bulls in the present or other such Controversies That the point of the Popes Infallibility was no matter of Christian or Catholick Faith That the See Apostolick Roman Court and Catholick Church of Christ were three different things finally that together with all now said the reverence and obedience to his Holiness did very well consist how I say this Replication being made the Internuncio looking no more as superciliously or high as he had till then begun to speak to Father Walsh after another manner i. e. moderately and by way rather of Entreaty and Prayer than Command or Empire How this was to desire the said Father Walsh to lay by thenceforward all thoughts of that Remonstrance and think rather of any other medium whereby to obtain His MAJESTIES gracious propension to look mercifully and favourably on the Clergy of Ireland notwithstanding any thing formerly acted by them How when Father Walsh had briefly answer'd That really he knew no means could serve that end without some such Act of Recognition as the Remonstrance was the Internuncio replied He himself then would propose one and how accordingly he did this viz. Sanctissimus Dominus meus c. My most Holy Lord sayes he shall issue a Bull to all the Irish commanding them under pain of Excommunication to be henceforth and continue faithful and obedient to the King How the Procurator saying presently hereunto That indeed my Lord is the medium which if accepted would make His MAJESTY a down-right Vassal to the Pope and a very King of Cards but I hope His MAJESTY hath some better and surer means to rely on for keeping that Kingdom in peace than any kind of Bull or other even Letters Patent from his Holiness the Internuncio presently again Then sayes he I propose this other medium viz. Sanctissimus Dominus meus c. My most Holy Lord shall grant and create as many Bishops and Archbishops for Ireland as His Majesty and His Vice-Roy or Lieutenant in Ireland the Duke of Ormond will desire and those very persons they shall fix upon and moreover shall empower those persons so created Prelates to dismiss and send away out of Ireland all Clergymen whatsoever whom they shall find to be disloyal to the King How moreover the said Procurator to this also replied That although it was much more specious than the former yet considering His MAJESTIES Religion and the Laws now as yet in force and other Affairs too it seem'd impracticable for the present That were His MAJESTY even of the Roman communion nay and being what He is there was nothing offered by this medium but what was and is His own by ancient Right I mean the naming of all Prelates and suffering no other such but of His own Nomination And for banishing Disturbers away That sure He could Himself do that without the help of either Pope or inferiour Bishops whenever he should find such Proscriptions necessary And further That if He could not at least by the Authority of His own Laws or must or would admit of the Popes Authority therein as necessary then surely he must also or would in so much and that an essential point of Temporal Sovereignty acknowledge His own dependance from a Forreign power which questionless He neither would nor could Therefore considering all this besides the strict Oath of Allegiance and Obedience which even such Archbishops and Bishops must before their Consecration take to the Pope and not they alone but all sorts of beneficed persons according to the present practice and Rules of the Roman Church or prescript of their Pontificals and other Canons and must take also even expresly against all those they call or esteem Hereticks the last proposed medium could be no medium at all not as much as any kind of way probable if the Remonstrance and all such other Recognitions were by the self-same Prelates and all other inferiour Irish Clergymen laid by Especially considering that the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance both Enacted by the municipal Laws here had been long since by the Popes and Court of Rome and by all their fast Friends or maintainers of
in all such for any material thing to the Remonstrants and on the other side were sure of all even extraordinary favours advantages preferments offices titles mitres from their own Church and from the Court of Rome abroad while the Remonstrants were sure of nothing from either but slight from the one and extreme persecution from the other And these five last years from 1667 to the end of the present year 1672. have given sufficient Arguments of both the one and the other During which time those poor Remonstrants had nothing to ballance all their Sufferings but the bare satisfaction of Conscience to be slighted so by their Friends and persecuted so by their Enemies for professing and performing their duty to the King according to the Laws of God And yet I must here advertise the Reader That the Procurator when he yielded to the Indiction of such a General or National Congregation had moreover considered how of that same very number of 69 Remonstrants so small comparatively taken some had fallen off immediately after their signing in the year 1662. at the very first intimation of displeasure from the Bruxel Internuncio de Vecchiis and their general Superiours beyond Seas yea not staying for either the Letters of Cardinal Barberin that same year from Rome or the Louain Censure against our Formulary others and some of those too being of the most learned of the Subscribers had been lately dead and the chiefest of all for authority the onely Bishop who had so heartily in their presence and for their encouragement sign'd the very original Instrument and stood to it constantly even to his last breath Others were content only to have sign'd it like so many Nicodemus's de nocte not acknowledging amongst the opposers what they had done Many who albeit they were not so cowardly yet were content with having done their own duty in that respect onely without giving themselves any further trouble to reason with any of the Factious for bringing them either to conformity or take them off their fierce and factious opposition Some who albeit they had sufficient judgment to guide themselves or their own personal duty in order to themselves alone yet had not those abilities requisite either to persuade or satisfie others And finally how there was not wanting amongst them a false and treacherous and troublesom nay and impudent Brother who after heading first the dissenters in London thrust yea forc'd himself upon them of purpose if thereby he attain'd not his own ambitious ends to sowe all the division he could and discover all might do them prejudice and betray them too whereinsoever he might and then when he saw them advancing most and their Adversaries yielding for a Sum of money to offer his service to the same adverse party and assure them that through the favour of both the Queens and some other powerful Courtiers he would procure the Kings Letters and Commands in their behalf to stop the progress of the Remonstrants and finally when he found it seasonable i. e. when they had no longer support from the Court of England but should rather happen to be there discountenanced upon assurance of a greater reward and Episcopal preferment from the Court of Rome to declare himself over-board for those For so it was at least to the Procurator but too well known of the honest man from the beginning and so it did to others also both manifestly and manifestly soon after appear c. All these circumstances all this weakness of his own side or party the Procurator considered when he yielded to the calling as before of the National Congregation as he likewise considered not only that the Superiours of the Clergy Secular and Regular being almost all Nuntiotists and Anti-Remonstrants would very scarce any of them choose other Divines to sit with them in the said Congregation than such as were and would continue to be of their own way but also what was consequential That the whole stress of convincing persuading or working this Congregation to any reason at all though for their own sole good must have lain upon himself and peradventure besides on a very few others of the foresaid small number of 69. And yet for the Reasons given before in the beginning of this Section he judg'd it both expedient and necessary to try the issue of even such a National Congregation as the publick affairs then stood in the years 1665. and 1666. II. BUT if any demand how it came to pass That in the year 1648. there was so great and numerous a party of the Roman-Catholick Clergymen of Ireland who together with Father Peter Walsh appeared so really zealously constantly and successfully too for the King against the Nuncio's Censures of Excommunication and Interdict that they quite worsted the other side and prevail'd even for and to the actual reduction of the Confederates to an absolute submission to the King and His Lieutenant in that Kingdom and yet now since His Majesties happy Restauration Sixty nine onely of a great body of 2000 Clergymen at home in Ireland should be found to appear professing so their Allegiance to His Majesty and yet also those very few so professing to be therefore and onely therefore by their Adversaries without any fear or shame opposed yea to their power persecuted To these Queries and for the satisfaction of such Readers who having not been much conversant hitherto in those Irish affairs desire nevertheless now or perhaps the rather now to be informed how these things came to pass I answer as followeth here and as briefly as I can 1. And first as to the former Querie That indeed the party of Ecclesiasticks who in the year 1648. and cause of the Royal Interest appeared against the Nuntiotists and Owen-Roists were more even in number than all those of the Irish Clergy surviving or in being either when His Majesty was restored in the year 1660 or at any time after till 1666. 2. That besides eleven or twelve Bishops and two Archbishops and all the Secular Clergy governed by those Prelates respectively except a very few dissenters who yet dared not gainsay publickly and besides the two Provincials and whole two Orders of the Jesuites and Excalceat Carmelites except also as far as I can remember some two persons onely of the Jesuites and one onely too of the Carmelites who was my own Cousin-German and besides moreover two whole Convents and some others also in other Convents of the Augustinians lastly besides five or six but the very ablest men of the whole Dominican Order then in that Kingdom there were at least 500 of the sole Franciscan Order and were at least 30 whole Convents of it that is about the one moyety of the whole very number too of this Order as it was then flourishing above all others in Ireland actual Diffinitors Guardians Readers of Divinity Preachers Confessors Priests Clerks Lay-Brethren and amongst them several of those who had before been Ministers Provincial and many
ignorance to assert nay and endeavour also even before his own face to maintain That because the King was out of the Roman-Catholick Church it was not lawful to pray for him at all or at least not publickly on any other day in the year than good Friday nor then in particular for him but in general only i. e. forasmuch as he was comprehended amongst the great generality of Infidels or of Jews Mahumetans Pagans and Hereticks for whom altogether the Church prayed on good Friday as being the Aniversary of that day whereon our Saviour dyed for all the Children of Adam in general nor yet then or so to pray for him without some further qualification and restriction of what we should beg of God or wish from Heaven to him i. e. to pray only for what concern'd the Spiritual welfare of his Soul and therefore only to pray for his Conversion to the Roman-Catholick Church but not for his Temporal prosperity in this world until he be a true Member of the only true Church 2. That although his own endeavours partly and partly those not only of the rest of the former Remonstrants but of other good men who albeit they had through fear of the Roman Court and other Ecclesiastical Superiours not subscribed the Formulary or Remonstrance of the year 1661 yet in their Souls and where they durst both in word and deed too approve it had prevailed in most parts of the Kingdom against this wicked Heresie of not praying as they ought for the Supream Temporal Powers he knew notwithstanding too too well that all opposers were not yet perswaded to decry this errour down or to practice against it 3. That notwithstanding the ignorance or malice of such disaffected Church-men the Holy Scriptures to speak nothing at all of Natural Reason in the case or I mean of that reason which directs us to wish well to all men and love our Neighbours as our selves were plain enough both for Praying and Sacrificeing too even for Idolatruos and Heathen yea persecuting Heathen Princes and not only for their Spiritual welfare but their Temporal as Baruch 1.11 and 2 Timoth 2.1 at least joyned together manifestly prove For certainly the Princes and Kings for whom Paul desires Timothy and all other Christians to pray for Heathens and Nero amongst them was the very first Persecuting Roman Emperour And no less certainly both Nabuchodonozor and Baltassar in the Prophet Baruch were Heathen Princes and the former He that sacrilegiously robâ—d the Holy Temple nay utterly in his time subverted the Kingdom of the chosen People of God and carried the miserable remainders of them Captive to Babilon 4. That no Church-canon or Custom or Rubrick or Reason or Doctrine or Practice hath any power to prescribe against the Laws of God or their eternal reason declared in both the New and Old Testaments 5. And Lastly That nothing could more justly render us to all Protestants both suspected of disloyalty and odious for immorality than such our scandalous either opposing or omitting so known a duty Secondly for the later or second part of that same first of those Three Heads he let them know likewise That although not even the Subscribers of the very former Remonstrance or of that of the year 1661 may be thought to be obliged by the only precise contents of that Formulary To acknowledg either the Kings Authority in commanding any meer spiritual duties or the Peoples obligation in point of Conscience to obey the King in such commands yet no man of knowledge will thence conclude that the intention or design of that Formulary or Subscription of it was either formally or virtually i. e. tacitly and consequently to deny all such Authority in the King or all such obligation of conscience on either Lay people or Clergy but only in plain and express terms to acknowledge the Kings other kind of independent Authority viz That in Temporals and for commanding in all Temporals universally according to the Laws of the Land of the misbelief or denyal and rejection of which even Vniversal and Independent Authority in Temporals it behooved the Subscribers to clear themselves or at least those in general in whose behalf they Subscribed and Remonstrated That such concern and such intention or design is very far from any consequution or sequel implying their denyal of the Kings Authority for commanding some Spirituals even truly such nay or of his Authority for commanding Vniversally all Spirituals whether not purely or purely such to be duly perform'd by all Subjects both Lay and Ecclesiastical respectively as they are in their several capacities by the Laws of God and man directed enabled and obliged to perform and discharge them and therefore also very far from any conseqution implying their denial either of Peoples or Clergys obligation in point of conscience to obey the King whensoever He commands a due and holy observance or performance and discharge of such Spiritual works which neither of their own nature nor by any icrcumstances or ends prescribed by Him are vitiated or against the Laws of God but are in every such respect acts of true Religion Piety and Holiness For who sees not That a general affirmation of one sort of Authority in Kings and of a correspondent tye of obedience thereunto in Subjects must not infer a general renunciation or denyal of another kind of Authority in the one and tye on the other when these latter can not be truly said to be inconsistent with those other That both the Examples even of the most religious holy Kings either amongst the Jews and Israelites in the Old Testament or amongst Christians under the dispensation of the New yea in the more early times thereof and the Doctrin of the Fathers and natural reason too in the case manifestly prove this Authority in all Kings for commanding even such spiritual duties and consequently this obligation of and tye of Conscience on all Subjects of whatever Religion true or false the same or different from that professed by their Kings to obey them even in all such their commands whither given by Law or by Proclamation or other temporary Precept That to this purpose the Books of Paralipomenon do furnish us plentifully with the examples of David (a) 1 Parlip cap. 23 cap. 28. 2 Paralip 8 Ezechias (b) 2 Paralip 29. and Josias (c) Ibid. 35. to say nothing now of Joas adhuc dum bonum (d) Ibid 24. faceret coram domino nothing of Salomon (e) 3. Reg. 2. Vide etiam 4. Reg. 18 23. cap. 2 Paralip 19 34 35. cap. Et Mac. 4.59 Ester 9.26 Dan. 3 19. â—on 3.7 c. and the Civil Laws of the Christian Emperours of Rome the Books of the Code Pandects and Authenticks furnish us no less plentifully with examples of Constantine the Great Theodosius both the older and younger Honorius Martianus Justinian Heracliuus Leo and many more amongst whom Carolus Magnus and
and criminal nature Fourthly That in the Month of September last there was published and declared in the Town of Galway a false scandalous and trayterous Excommunication and Declaration against any that should obey or adhere unto His Majesties Government and Authority in Us who are onely therewith trusted as Lord Lieutenant of this His Majesties Kingdom and another Power and Government without and against His Majesties said Government set up and practised and that the Mayor and Aldermen with a multitude of others of the said Corporation were present countenancing and abetting the said trayterous Excommunication and Declaration and do yet countenance and abett the same by entertaining relieving and cherishing the contrivers and publishers thereof Which by the Laws in force in this Land is High Treason Fifthly That in the said Month of September last or in the Month of October the Captain of the Guards of that Town commonly called the Captain of the young Men did make search for Us in the said Town as after a Criminal person or Fugitive thereby endeavouring to bring scorn and contempt upon Us and His Majesties Authority placed in Us. Lastly There were divers Sums of Money put aboard the Ship called the Seven Stars to be Transported out of the Kingdom without Licence there were Fells and divers other Commodities put aboard un-entred in the Custom-house for which Goods no Custom was paid to His Majesty Which were sufficient grounds to cause the said Ship and Goods to be seized on the Goods belonging to Merchants of Lymerick and Galway as was acknowledged in Letters from the Mayors of both Corporations desiring restitution Eleventh Reason The vast Sums of money and the stock of the people consumed more being spent to lose the Kingdom than the Enemy bestowed to conquer us not accompted for though often demanded doth disanimate the people to come again under His Government Answer For as much of this as concerns Us VVe have answered in Our Answer to the Declaration of the Bishops and shall onely add That VVe are neither by the Articles of Peace to accompt for Monies spent nor to bring any Receiver to accompt but that power is in the Commissioners by the 28th Article of the Peace Here again they take upon them to declare the sense of the People without Authority from them Twelfth Reason The event of War being uncertain if the Nation should be reduced to the condition of agreeing with the Enemy His Excellency were not a fit man to agree for the exercise of our Religion Churches Altars or any thing concerning the same Answer VVe acknowledge Our Self no fit person in any event of War to agree with the Enemy for the People committed by His Majesty to Our Government without Licence from His Majesty Conclusion The best way offered unto us in this pressing exigent for the union of the Nation and keeping them from agreeing with the Enemy is That the Marquess of Clanricard in whom according to the sense of the Congregation at Jamestown we desired the Kings Authority should be left before the coming of the King's Declaration may govern the Nation with the consent of all Parties and the King's Authority from the Lord Lieutenant which he conceives is in him until an Assembly and to that end that a free and lawful Assembly be made to sit to judge upon the Peoples preservation and to decree and order what shall be best and safest for the defence of the Nation touching the King's Authority to be kept over them the Peace to be asserted and made good or to renew the Association or any thing else they shall find best and most expedient To this we willingly submit For we never intended to hinder Assemblies or to give Law to the People All we endeavoured was to defend the Altars and Souls entrusted to us As we are of opinion the Souldier will follow the Marquess of Clanricard and the People obey him so will we contribute our best endeavours to this effect We further give assurance hereby That if a free and lawful Assembly upon due consideration of their own state and condition shall find it the best way for their safety and preservation to make agreement with the Enemy as we intend never by the Grace of God to grant away from us by an affirmative assent our Churches and Altars if forced from us we are blameless so will we not hinder the People from compounding with the Enemy for the safety of their Lives and Estates when no way of offence is appearing though upon such Agreement we see that we alone shall probably be the losers of Sees Estates Churches Altars Immunities and Liberties But in such Contracts with the Enemy if any shall happen which God avert we shall pray and conjure the Catholicks of Ireland that That of the Maccabees may be recorded of them to future Ages Erat enim pro uxoribus filiis itemque pro fratribus cognatis minor sollicitudo maximus vero primus pro sanctitate timor erat Templi This is the Answer delivered unto Us * * Understand the six Commissioners that undersign this Attestation the 5th of this instant November by the Bishops of Killalla Fearnes Kilmacduogh Clonfert Kilfenora and Dromore after several Conferences upon the Proposals made unto them at Galway the 7th of November 1650. SIGNED Gerald Fennell Rich Bellings Geffr Browne Lucas Dillon Rich Barnewall Rich Everard Answer Touching the wayes advised by them for preservation of the Nation it is also referred by Us unto the consideration of the Assembly We being disabled by the practises before set down to act any thing towards it in the way of opposition to the Enemy But where they say they never intended to hinder Assemblies or give Law to the People it is plain that they declared the People were not longer to obey Our orders who only even by the Articles of Peace had power to call an Assembly And if to give and take away Governours at their pleasure from the People as these men have done be not to give Law to them it is yet the highest Prerogative exercised by the Kings and States of the world And if they can no otherwise than by assuming this power endeavour to defend the Altars and Souls trusted to them the world hath long wanted the example given by them and the Apostles and primitive Bishops and Fathers of the Church have been wanting in example and precept The necessity inforcing this Declaration from Us and the reason why We have made it thus long and particular We have before given you And now that We are come to a Conclusion We desire that when you find We are any thing sharper in Our expressions than sutes with the Respects you have to these Prelates and other Clergymen you would then likewise consider the provocation they have given Us. And that as to compass their ends they have not forborn falsely to charge Us with the highest Crimes imaginable and with the greatest