we justifie the Protestants Separation from the Roman Church not to have been a Schism and as the Papists say an Apostacy from the true Church They interpret one way and we another And was not the rigid imposition of their interpretations as infallible one of those good reasons for which we departed from them But when we read these Scriptures They shall kill you and think they do God service and By zeal I persecuted the Church and They have a zeal but not according to knowledge we may perceive that hot zeal may be accompanied with gross ignorance and great cruelty Some that mean well perhaps may do shrowd mischief and through impotence of Spirit Inconsiderateness ill Nature narrowness of Soul want of Experience and converse with wise Men c. may throw fire-brands into the House of God. It is a strange device of pleasing God to sacrifice his Friends to him when as he desireth not the death of his Enemies But those which kill them say O but they are in errour Really it may be so for it is a very hard matter for such fallible creatures as we are not to erre in some things c. But those are unmerciful guides which kill plain-hearted Passengers because they have missed the way when as it is likely that they poor men could not help it I but they will not go into the way when they are bidden Well but will they do it when you have killed them If they were out of the way you have made them for ever coming into it again Since the wanderer did not hearken to you it may be that he knew nothing to the contrary but that you were as ignorant of the way as himself No you had a Book of it wherein it was fairly mapp'd forth That is the Bible and he had it too But you understand it better then he did I cannot tell that However are you infallible also If you be not you may be out of the way your self and if it should chance to prove so you would be loath to be cudgell'd into it again If you will glorify God do as he doth What is that He declares his will teacheth us his Truth engageth us with a thousand mercies to do our duty and notwithstanding we continue our disobedience he awaits our repentance with a God-like patience Wilt thou go and do likewise No because they receive not Jesus Christ I will call for fire from Heaven upon them Poor man thou art of a hot spirit and wouldest thou have it increased with flames from above that fire enlightens warms and so melts but doth not burn and fry men for their Salvation Take heed what thou dost to others c. The common style in so many mens Writings of Religionary Controversie is not more vexatious then that I have now entertain'd you with of this learned Writer is charming And indeed as turbid as this interval of time is while Moral offices are calling upon us in our several Stations by all due means to withstand Papal Usurpations and which men of sense generally mean by Popery yet as to the Tenets of Transubstantiation and Purgatory and others of that Nature however so much disgusted by the bulk of the Nation such bulky and voluminous Controversial writing of them as was long ago in use is nauseous to the age and the time spent in reading Matters Pro and Con writ of such Subjects would now be judged as the diverting Men from regular action in opposing any Papal Usurpations Who is at all concerned about extension or divisibility being the formalis ratio of quantity or at there being demonstration on either side that hoth the one and the other is so But 't is one man's extending his Confines on those of another man's Estate or his dividing a quota of it from him that naturally makes Controversie so hot and loud When a man by pretending to illuminate another about the next World stands in his light in this and when a handful of men would grasp all the Dignities of this World because of their expectance of monopolizing those of the next and which indeed should rather allay their Ambition in this according to that Saying Si tam certa manet gloria quid properas here the hinge of the Controversie turns so angrily between so many Protestants and so many Papists tho yet I must here acknowledge that as I know Protestants enow who neither repine at God's or his Vice-gerent's choice of their Instruments so I do Papists whose Moderation is known to all men and who are far from affecting any excessive over-balance of Power in the Services of their Prince And were I for my Life to give our Roman-Catholick fellow-Subjects the best advice I could for their own Preservation it should be their using all means possible to convince the world that they affected nothing of such a Paramount Power and aimed at no such thing Aufer ut uterque securius dormiat was said by the Stoick to him that was taking away his Riches in the Night I am sure I shall never repine at it if ever there should be a due or legal relaxation of any Penalties that may seem sanguinary in making their Purses bleed but shall be content with its being out of the Power of such among them who affect a growth of their interests under the Pope as a fifth Monarch to render others of them liable to Envy who only endeavour their growing in Grace under the Pope as their chief Spiritual Pastor And tho perhaps to advise any hot-Spurs among them to part with Power may seem durus sermo as much as cutting off a Right hand that has long offended themselves and others yet if it shall appear that by that means they will secure all the Hands and Hearts of Protestants thereby for their defence they will gain more then Cent per Cent in the Exchange as those who in our Saviour's time forsook Houses and Lands for him did according to his promise gain a Thousand Fold by it in this life by the Houses and Lands of all other Christians then being at their service It is chiefly by the abâ—enunciation the study'd and labour'd declining of Power that the Iews almost in all Countreys Christian and Pagan are welcom Guests tho yet by their frugal living they Generally under-sel the Natives every where Mankind hath such a sharp regret against Plotting the Ruine of any company of men who are harmless and useful to the World and in whom nothing but a Tame Humble quiet innocence appears that on the conâ—rary they study to be their Protectors to be their Guards their Watchmen and men thinking God to be like themselves they think such people are Heavens care too Therefore in the 88 th Advertisement of Boccalin's Ragguagli the Sheep sending their Embassadours to Apollo desiring that they may be allowed to have sharp Teeth and long horns and not seem abandon'd by that Divine Charity that hath given offensive as well as
that have been since augmented Yet however I doubt not but that if it had been Gods will further to have lengthen'd the last reign the Course of Nature would then have operated as I have mention'd And if it shall appear that those natural Considerations I have urged shall have the success of such further Parliamentary Supplies to His gracious Majesty as may tend to the further greatning of his Character and that of the Kingdom I shall account my claim the more equitable to have the pardon of my fellow Subjects of what Religionary Sect soever for any thing in this Discourse that may disgust them And as an eminent Protestant Divine hath in a Printed Sermon thus said viz. that man is not worthy to breathe in so good a Land as England is who would not willingly lay down his life to cure the present divisions and distractions that are among us I shall say that any Subject deserves not to live here under the Indulgence of so good a Prince who for the helping him to money by all due means for the defence of this good Land would not wish himself as well as his Bigottry a Sacrifice and who would not as to any Extravagant dash of a Pen lighting on his Party and bringing Money to his Prince cry foelix peccatum rather then such Divisions and Distractions and Diffidences of the Government and stifling of Publick Supplies should still live as were formerly known in some Conjunctures and when the Art of Demagogues appear'd so spightful in endeavours to frustrate the Meetings of Parliaments But our Prince having freed all his dissenting Subjects from their uneasiness under Pecuniary Mulcts for Religion and the Members of the Church of England from the uneasiness of imposing such Soul-Money will I doubt not when he shall please to Call a Parliament find from them such necessary Supplies for the support of the Body of the Kingdom as may ease him under the weight of his great Desires for it and that it will then appear to all as absurd to Crown such a Head with Thorns as hath taken the Thorn out of every man's foot in England and that his pass'd Sufferings for his Conscience and others of his Communion having too suffer'd for his Conscience bespeaking us in those words of the Apostle Fulfil ye my joy that both his and theirs will be then Consummated and as the Ioy of those of the Church of England and of all nominal Churches in England hath been fulfill'd by him and that as Luther was pleas'd in a Christian-like transport of good Nature to Profess in his Epistle to Jeselius a Iew Me propter Unum Judaeum Crucifixum omnibus favere Judaeis we shall for the sake of one of the Roman-Catholick Communion who hath formerly suffer'd so much for his Conscience and since done so much for the freedom of ours shew all those of that Communion our favour to such a proportion as may compleat his and their Ioy. My Lord I am here obliged to acknowledge that tho while the several Parts of the following Work were written in the times the Government charged both Papists and Anti-Papists with Disloyalty and Plots I express'd my sense of the Non-advisableness to have the Penal Laws against them repeal'd pending such Charge and Plots I desire the Reader to look on me as very far from insisting on any thing of that nature in this Happy State of England now that the Corner Stone and that some of the Builders rejected hath thus successfully united the sides of the Fabrick of the Government in Loyalty My Lord It is near a year since I writ my Thoughts at large concerning the Subject of the Repealing those Laws and they are in the Fourth Part of my Work about The Dispensative Power of which the two first Parts conclude this Volume ready for the Press and reserving my poor Iudgment in this great Point till the Publication of the whole I think I shall then set forth my Opinion as founded on Medium's that have not appear'd in Print from other Writers and which I believe will not only not give offence to any Member of the Church of England but be of general use in allaying the ferment the Question hath occasion'd And if as they who were long fellow-Passengers in a Ship among violent Tempests and Hirricanes do usually from their being Participants together in the danger and horror take occasion to raise a friendly esteem and well-wishes for each other such of the Loyal whose belief I referr'd to as imbarqued with mine in that of the Plot during the late Stormy Conjuncture shall be the more favourable to what I write I shall be glad both for their sakes as well as mine but do further judge that what I have so largely in the following Discourse asserted and by Reasons taken from Nature concerning the Moral impossibility of the belief of the Tenets of the Church of Rome gaining ground here considerably on the belief of the Doctrine of the Church of England will tend to secure any one from fears of our losing our Religion by any loss of the Test that may happen a thing that none I think will fear who are of the Iudgment of the House of Commons in their Address to the late King on the 29 th of November 1680. that I have referr'd to in my Fourth Part and where they say that POPERY hath rather gain'd then lost Ground since the TEST ACT and make that Act to have had little effect I have in the following Discourse referr'd to that Act as represented to have had its rice in the year 1673. from the alledged petulant Insolence of Papists in that Conjuncture and I took notice of a learned Lord since deceas'd as vouching somewhat in Print of such temper among some of them And a Proclamation that year charging the Papists therewith I was implicitly guided thereby to take the thing for granted and as to the which considering since the publick Passages in that Conjuncture I have otherwise judged But as I think no loyal Roman-Catholick should in that Conjuncture have suffer'd any Prejudice for any ill Behaviour of any other of that Communion then much less ought any such thing be now and when there appears so noble and general a spirit of Emulation among all men of sense in the Diffusive Body of the People about who shall make the Head and all Members of that Body most easie and for the doing which we may well hope that the People representative and the other Estates of the Realm will come with all due Preparation of Mind when it shall please His Gracious Majesty to assemble them My Lord I have nothing further to add but my begging your Lordship's Pardon for this trouble and my owning the many Obligations I am under to be My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Earl of Anglesy having shewed me an Affidavit and Information against him delivered at the Barr
fewer according to the Rule of the Observator on those Bills That the more sickly the year is it is the less fertile of Births All who have been in the least conversant with those Observations of his know that the Births in ordinary years are equal to the Burials or rather more and I have observed the same from the Paris Bills where the Christenings do generally much exceed the Burials and as particularly appeared by the Total of the Burials in the year 1683 being 17764 and the Total of the Christenings being 19717 but by the Christenings among us registred and reckoned in our Bills we know thence when the disposition of the People to baptize their Children in the way of the Church began to encrease and Dissentership consequently to decrease and accordingly the ground gained by the Church of England and lost by Dissentership within the Compass of those Bills after the year 81 hath been by me sufficiently proved Quod erat demonstrandum I have in this Discourse given somewhat like a little Historical Account of the Numbers of the Papists since the Reformation to our late Conjuâ—ctures and have with honour mentioned the Vigilance of his Majesty's late Minister the Earl of Danby in directing a Survey of the Numbers of the People of several Religionary Perswasions in the Province of Canterbury and which was returned in the year 76 and whereby the Comparative Paucity of the number of Papists there is apparent as it is by themselves agreed on so to be as I have cited out of the Compendium But tho the Copy of that Survey is in the hands of so many Persons I would not have mentioned any thing thereof as to the Number of the Papists but that Dr. Glanvill had first published the same and whose Book I have referred to for the same Nor shall I therefore give any particular account of the numbers of the Non-Conformists resulting from the same But tho I think that the Number of the Non-Conformists was not returned perhaps in that Survey so justly and near the matter as was that of the Papists yet I am fully of opinion that if the number of Non-Conformists were thrice as great as that returned which I believe no man will reckon it to be their proportion with that of the Total of this great Populous Nation would be very inconsiderable But as to all the Writers or Discoursers of their proportion to that Total that I have conversed with and who have rendered the Quota of the Dissenters so vast with much positiveness I am able to say That I have easily perswaded them to desist from any positive magisterial determination therein by shewing them that their measures of the Total of the People of England have been but conjectural and depending perhaps on some Calculations too fine and subtle or others too course and gross and that no man can be a competent Judge of this Total who hath not seen the Returns on the Bishops Survey and likewise the Returns on the late Pole-Bills and of which latter under the Patronage of a powerful Minister of the Kings I obtained Copies and have thence in the following Discourse shewed the Total of the People of England and Wales to be probably much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it and some whereof made the Total to be 5 others 6 others 7 Millions I thought the doing of this an acceptable service to my Prince and Country and the rather for that several Authors among the Magna nomina have published it in Print that the People of England and Wales are but 2 Millions and which number if they did not exceed we might allow our Dissenters a considerable proportion therein tho yet nothing near so great even as to such a Total as some would have it But the Ebb of their Numbers is at this time so apparent if we respect the State of them in the whole Kingdom that their Out-cry of Implevimus omnia and The Nation and its Trade cannot subsist without us is very ridiculous and they are not in my opinion their friends who writing for them do so customarily magnify their Numbers and as if they were half the People of England as some have done and I believe the Gentleman whom I have cited for saying in a late Parliament that he observed That in the Choice of Knights of the Shire for the County he lived in that they could not bring one in twenty to the Field would if he had been at Elections in some other Counties have found they could not there bring in so great a number And tho the Puritans of old were very numerous in the House of Commons and our Dissenters in the King 's long Parliament made so great a Figure as to be able by their weight to crush the Declaration for Indulgence yet in the succeeding Houses of Commons the Dissenters were far from valuing themselves an their weight or numbers but of the Dissenters in that Loyal Long Parliament I believe there were not any who wished for the Yoke of Presbytery or thought its Platform practicable in this Realm I have in this Discourse mentioned one thing that made the most Eminent Presbyterian Divines after 41 think their bringing of the Yoke of Presbytery upon the English Necks practicable and that is their accounting according to the Pacta conventa between Them and the Parliament they should have the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands settled on their Church whereby their Discipline how defective soever in weight as to Principles of Divinity and Humanity would have made it self â—ormidable by its Balance of Land and 't is probable that in Scotland the Livings of the inferiour Clergy weighing more in value than the Estates or Livelihoods of the ordinary inferiour Layety hath supported that Clergy there in their pretences to expect somewhat of Power and which they yet enjoy in the Figure of the Church Government there Established under Bishops and altho King Iames in his planting so many Benefices throughout that Kingdom worth 30 l. per Annum with a House and some Glebe Land belonging to them never intended any advantage to Presbytery thereby he yet occasioned some by making so many Divines there more considerable in wealth but our Presbyterian Divines here having been so fatally disappointed about the Bishops Lands promised them all ingenious men must necessarily thereby be made apprehensive that they are never to hope to bring the terror of that Church Government upon us by that means It is moreover observable that most of the Race of our old Presbyterian and Independant Divines having been extinct some few of whom were Learned Men and gave some Ornament to their Tenets by their Learning scarce any new ones and who appeared not in the Church before the King's Restoration have since by the publication of any Theological or DevotionalWritings propp'd up the Credit of their Party and that of the Ecclesiasticks of those perswasions none have published any thing valuable against
Opiners as light it self can be with heat is a sufficient Guarranty to all Protestant â—eâ—usants of their finding from our Church all the favour I will not say that they have deserved from it but all that they will or can and I believe the Charity of our Church-men is so great for them as almost to tempt them to wish That there were some dignus vindice nodus in the Religionary part of Dissenters Principles that might give our Câ—ergy a signal occasion to display the before mentioned Characteristical mark of Christianity in loving the Persons of Men dissenting from them in any matters of moment They have experimented this temper of our Divines in Dr. Stillingfleet's Book of the Vnreasonableness of the Separation after so many of their Waspish Pamphlets had attacqued his Excellent Sermon of the mischief of separation and the soft insinuations of reason in which having produced from them so much unmanly passion may serve as an indication that the present Dissenteâ—ship is languishing under its old Age when the gentlest weight and even when the Grass-hopper is a burden to it They have seen this happy temper appearing in some of our most Celebrated Divines not being exasperated against the persons of one another tho owning Sentiments different from our Articles and Homilies And indeed 't is natural to any man of a great Genius and of such illustrious Abilities that all the several Religionary Parties thinks of with the wish of Vtinam noster esset in some Notions peculiar to himself to soar above the common â—light of the ordinary Observers of their Rules and Prescriptions and not to be fled out of the hearts of those of their Sect when some times he towres out of their sight and above the reach of their understandings I have in the Learned Theological Writings of Mr. Baxter concerning Iustifications contemplated his great parts and abilities and have likewise observed the great Learning of Doctor Tully appearing in his Iustificatio Paulina and where he saith That in the point of Iustification the Controversy is not de muris sed de Palladio Christiano and have moreover read Dr. Tully's printed Letter to Mr. Baxter wherein he chargeth him whether justly or no I enquire not for seeming to place most if not all the differences that are in the point of Iustification between us and the Church of Rome among Logomachies p 16th and useth to him these words in p. 17. But seeing you are so busie in turning our greatest Controversies with the Papists into a Childish Contest of words and in p. 21. he desires him That he would consider the great affinity his Tenet of Justification hath contracted with the Roman and in the same Page desires him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see only the very small odds between his justification and the Council of Trent ' s. That great Adorner of the Church of England both with his Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond thought it not so acceptable service to the World to fill it with more Volumes against the Idolatry of the Church of Rome as to diminish it by distinction and when in his Tract of Idolatry § 64. p. 41. he makes the worshipping of the Host to be only material Idolatry tho he knew as well as any the Articles of our Church and that without the formale peccati as well as the materiale there can be no sin of Commission and that in all things forma dat esse Our Famous Dr. Ieremy Taylor likewise in his liberty of Prophesying p. 258 doth free the Papists from Formal Idolatry Thus likewise tho our Homilies and our Iewel Raynold Whitaker Vsher c. and the Translators of our Bible into English in King Iames's time did place the Name of Anti-Christ and the Man of Sin on the Bishop of Rome yet Dr. Hammond as well as others of our Church have publickly avowed their Sentiments of the Popes not being so I have not mentioned this as if I thought that any of our excellent Divines of the Church of England would ever occasion the least umbrage of jealousie in any Future Conjuncture about any design of uniting our Church to Rome or Rome's to ours the common Rule in Politicks of minor pars unita majori censetur facta illius appendix and which is exemplified by the Church of Rome not having been united to all the Aâ—iatick African Graecian Russian and Protestant Churches as containing three times more Christian Souls than doth the Church of Rome with all its Dependents and Adherents and the ineffectual Project of some well meaning Divines in a former Conjuncture here will I believe effectually avert all future jealousies of any thing of that Nature or the danger of any in the Vessel by trying to pull the Rock to it bringing it super hanc Petram From various grounds of natural reason I may venture to predict that the best Evangelical Church and the best Clergy the World can shew will direct their measures suitably to those Words of the great Evangelical Prophet Isaiah Their strength is to â—it still and without any faith to remove the seven Hills or Mountains of Rome hither or on their sullen Contumacy resolving like Mahomet to go to the Mountains Among the various Considerations urged in this Discourse to fortifie the minds of the Loyal timid against their unaccountable fears of Heterodoxy in any Prince as to the Religion by Law Established rendring him a meer natural Agent or one without freedom of will as to the point of freedom of their Consciences and depriving him of the Brains as well as Bowels of a Man and against impressions of trouble from what so many Writers have insinuated namely that a Roman Catholick Prince must by virtue of the Authority of the Lateran Council exterminate his Heretical Subjects I have in p. 283 mentioned that the Munster Peace hath in Germany cured the timid Lutheran and Calvinist Subjects of any fears and jealousies as of their Religion and Property upon any Prince by the Lineal Course of Descent coming to be their Ruler who may profess any Religionary Sentiments different from theirs And because the factum of that Peace hath not by any Writers since our late fermentation that I know of been insisted on for the illumination of Peoples understandings in the firm Provision made there for mens being secure in their Religion by Law Established whatever the Religion of their lawful Princes may be I shall here give some Cursory Account of the great Fact of that Peace and wherein some Popish Princes made so great a Figure and who sufficiently understood how far the Later an Council obliged them that may not only shew it a kind of Pedantry to imagine that Roman Catholick Princes are still by their Religion bound after all the Revolutions of time and its incursions made on their former measures as to Heterodox Religion and Religionaries to use the same Methods as formerly and to move in the same
by them without paying the expected Civility and the Shot from which is not valued by Capital Ships that pass by them with a strong Gale of Wind and which perhaps think it not tanti to fire again upon the Fort nor doth that perhaps throw away more shot on them And thus stood this Munster Peace wrought as it were by the consent of the Crowned Heads and States of Christendom and thus it stands and any who will look into the Empire will find those Pacta conventa as to the part of the Emperor and Princes of the Empire outbraving the chances of time to this year how much soever the Emperor may be supposed to have been steer'd by Iesuites Councils and likely still so to do whereby the various Rights and Religions of Princes and their Subjects have been secured and whereby we may see how unstudied those men are in the great Book of the World who think that Popish Princes will not go on in the Course of their Politicks tho the Pope should seem in earnest or in jest to stop them and that they cannot tacitly reject the Papal Declarations of Nullity and yet continue Civil to the Pope and his Church The firm continuance of the Munster Peace to the year 1680 is mentioned by the Author of an ingenious Book called The Interest of Princes and States that year published and which goeth under the name of Mr. Bethel and where 't is moreover observed in p. 155. That among the Lutheran Princes the Prince of Hannover was lately turned Papist and likewise one of the House of the Landgrave of Hessen Darmestat and another of Mecklenburg lately turned Papist but their Countries do all continue Lutherans and among the Calvinist Princes he mentions the Elector of Brandenburg but saith his Dominions are most Lutherans and where in p. 156. 't is his Observation that of four Popish Princes of the Empire all their Countries are Lutherans and saith the Princes in this Country meaning Germany have no great influence on their Subjects in point of Religion and saith That in several Countries belonging to Popish Bishops and Abbots many Lutherans and some Calvinists have not only a Right but do also actually enjoy the publick exercise of their several Religions without disturbance and much more without Persecution and further instanceth in other places in Germany where the Proprietors are mixt of several Princes Earls Free Cities and Romish Ecclesiasticks which causeth in each of them the like Variety in Religion and some there being Lutherans and Papists and others being Calvinists Lutherans and Papists And thus we see instead of the Popes having nulled the Munster Peace cum effectu the Nulla fides servanda cum haereticis hath been nulled in Germany by Popish Princes and which if they had not done Luthers aforesaid nulli estis had been their doom and the Empire it self had scarce been more than a substantial Nullity as I may say alluding to what Vantius in his Book De Nullitatibus makes such In plain terms the Germans had not else been now a Nation nor would the Emperor again have been saluted by the Grand Signior as I have in some of the Comminatory Letters from the Port observed him called viz. Lord of few Regions and this any one I think will grant who shall consider that all the relaxation he hath had either of intestine troubles or Foreign between the years 1648 and 1680 hath made his Circumstances as to Power and Riches appear but just proportionable for holding his own with the help of his Neighbours against the Turk I have observed great right done to the Emperors Politicks in that Peace by a printed Panegyrical Oration made by Henricus Schmid a Famous Professor of Divinity in Tubing for the Celebration of the Munster Peace and wherein he saith That the Emperor preserved thereby at least the lives of eleven times a hundred and ninety two thousand Myriades of men that is of 21 thousand 1 hundred and 20 millions of men and whereupon the Panegyrist pronounceth That the World was blest by a new AEra from that Peace and some of the Expressions in that Oration for that purpose being very memorable I shall here set down viz. Ferdinande Caesar Auguste pie faelix triumphator salve Faelicior Iulio Caâ—sare qui gloriabundus fatebatur undecies centena nonaginta duo millia hominum praeliis à se occisa atque ita ut non veniat in hanc rationem stragem Civilium bellorum Tua Imperator quâ major esse non potest gloria claritudo erit totidem Myriadas aut plures non mactasse sed servasse Macte animo isto tuo imperator c. Tuis auspiciis novum Calendarium Iuliano longe melius ac emendatius orbi Christiano exhibetur quod pacis aera insignitur c. The Panegyrical Orator did in his Calculation of the Lives saved by the Emperor use more than Poetical Licence as any one will probably think who shall read what Sir W. P. in a printed Discourse hath mention'd of Critical Persons having judged that there are but 320 Millions of Souls now in the World and according to some ingenious mens Calculations I have seen in print concerning how much at a Medium each head may be supposed to add to the Riches of a State per year and thence making each to be therefore valuable at 80 l. Sterling the Panegyrick may be said to have made the Emperor preserve for the World by that Peace 1 Hundred 68 Thousand 9 Hundred and 60 Millions of Pounds Sterling But leaving so exorbitant a Sum for the disposition and Assets of Dego's Will and raillery apart accounting the lives of the hundreds of thousands slain in Germany on the Score of the Excommunication of Princes and Emperors as I have in p. 68 mentioned out of Erastus and suitably enough to Historical truth to have been valuable to the Empire at but half of 80 l. each it may well be supposed that it was a very vast Treasure that Germany hath lost by its Wars and preserved by its said Peace Yet is there one way assignable from which it may be deduced that the value of what the Emperor preserved was as much really too short as from the Panegyrists account it appeared extravagant and that is this viz. The Emperor by that Peace having kept so many from afterward destroying their own Souls by destroying others Bodies may be truly said to have preserved what was invaluable we know who having judged it that there is no proportion between the wealth of the whole World and one Soul. And now having by the deduction of the great Fact proved the Practicableness of the happy continuance of the luscious blessings of Peace and Unity of affections among Princes and their Subjects of different Religions I shall here in the Close of the Consideration of the same entertain the Reader with this last pleasant agreeable Scene of it which Scene will represent to him the fair Church
built at Fredericsburg by the present Prince Elector one of the fairest Churches in Germany and which was by him in our great year of fears and jealouâ—ies and fatal discords namely 1680 finished and dedicated to Holy Concord and Vnion perhaps in Contra-distinction to the Term of Holy Church and its Dedication and Consecration was with great Devotion solemnized and not without the choicest Vocal and Instrumental Musick that could be thought proper to be used then and with which the Offices of the Ceremony began and the Musick being over there was an inaugural Oration there made in the honour of Holy Concord and of the Dedication of the Church to it And after that the Prince Elector who is a Calvinist engaged Doctor Fabritius Principal Divine to his Electoral Highness to preach there and in the Afternoon of that day another Sermon was there Preach'd by a Lutâ—â—ran Divine and in the Evening another Sermon was there made by a Roman-Catholick Divine and they all made pious and learned Sermons in order to the propagating of Holy Concord applauding therein the Electors design and with a most devout attention all those three Divines were present at each others Sermons Nor was any of his Popish Subjects then afraid that he would infringe the rights of the exercise of their Religion because the Papal Interest had been so active in bereaving his Family of the Bohemian Crown as well as of its ancient Rights many of which are forever abdicated from it by the Munster Peace Thus on this Rock of the Munster Peace was the Holy Concord of holy Church-men discordant in opinions founded abroad by a Prince allied to the Crown of England and whereby the opposite Religionary Opinors quitted their Antipathys against each other and the Lion made under his Government to lie down with the Lamb at the same time that we groaned under a judgment more opprobrious than that threatned to the Iews in Leviticus namely The sending of wild Beasts among them I mean that of our Populace being frightened and worried with Chymaeras and with Chymeric Ideas of all Popish Princes being bound to have the Council of Lateran by heart and to observe it semper ad semper and without the Latitude of Prudence which the very Definition of Moral Verâ—ue makes Essential to it as I may say with allusion to Aristotle's sicut vir prudens eam definiret and to lose themselves in catching of Tartars and to have forgot the Saying of Solomon That in the multitude of the People is the King's honour and the want of people is the destruction of the Prince and with the Idea of a Heterodox Prince swearing to maintain the Laws and yet breaking them and with another Idea as horrid and monstrous namely that men might observe their Oaths acknowledging Allegiance to Kings and their Heirs and Successors and yet exclude their Heirs and Successors from the Throne by a Law. It was an Observation worthy of the Doctor of the Gentiles and which he inculcated to the Corinthians namely that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the fashion of this World passeth away I have in this Discourse mentioned that in the year 1212 the Lateran Council brought in Transubstantiation as an Article of Faith and decreed Princes were to be compelled to exterminate Hereticks but the World hath been often Transubstantiated since that time and its substance that the Apostle calls its fashion hath been ever in transitu and the fashion of that Lateran Council is so far passed away that Protestant Writers are somewhat put to it to prove it to have been a General one There was a scurvy fashion long since in the World abroad and that was the fashion of mens sowing a piece of red Cloth on their Garments when the Monks had Preached them into Crusados for the Exterminium haereticorum and by Virtue of one of which Crusado's Bellarmine boasts that 100,000 of the Albingenses were slain but that fashion hath been long left off in the World and the World been since no more outraged by it than by the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross nor so much as our English World hath been by some who have troubled it about the sign of the Cross. It was a saying of the old Greek Philosophers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Papal World is as to many of its Politicks quite another thing from what it was Azorius in his Instit. Moral observed in his time That it falls out often that that which was not the common opinion a few years ago now is Some of our timid Protestants who do not know the Papal Lutheran and Calvinian World because they see it not in the Antique fashion they heard it was dressed in 30 or 40 or 50 years ago seem to have been asleep since the Munster Treaty and to have dreamed that such fashion would never alter and are like Epeminides that the old Fables mention to have fetched a sleep of fifty years and who found himself lost in the World at his wakening wanting the sight of the old fashion to shew him where he was I have therefore a great Compassion for those Protestants who take the measures of their Religion and Politicks in a manner only out of the Revelation and who think that almost all the Predictions of that Book were made only for England and that England was made to be governed only by their fancies and their fancies to be given up only to fears of all ill fashions of things and principles in the World being unalterable tho there be scarce a Chapter in that Sacred Book but what refers to Changes and Revolutions and to moving the unwieldy bulk of Empires by unexpected and irresistable Turns of Fate The old Fashion of the Popish Writers asserting the Right of the Bishop of Rome to take away Hereticks lives by virtue of that Branch of the Iudicial Law of the Iews Deuteronomy 17th hath been long exterminated by them The words of the Text are thus agreeable to the old Latin Translation And he that out of Pride shall refuse to obey the Commandment of that Priest which shall at that time Minister before the Lord thy God that man shall by the Sentence of the Iudge be put to death and the Calvinistick Fashion of founding the practice of Hereticidium on the Authority of the Iudicial Law is passed away I have in this Discourse represented the Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Canon Law founded on Deuteronomy the 13th to be chargeable on our late Presbyterians and that justly on the account of their having declared the Iudicial Law obligatory to us and have shewed what Calvin's Principle and Practice was pursuant to that Law. The Learned Klockius a Lutheran Lawyer in his large Volume de Aerario l. 2. c. 86. n. 10. endeavours to acquit the Divines of his Religionary perswasion from the Tenet of Hereticide and saith Nostri vero Theologi ut capitali paenâ haereticos contrà quam plerique Calvinianorum cum
Pontificiis censent affici nolunt ita nec bonorum confiscationem meo judicio concederent and Pellerus in his Notes on Klockius refers to Thuanus about Servetus his Case and saith of him Igitur comprehensus cum sententiam mutare nollet re prius ex Iohannis Calvini consilio cum Bernatibus Tigurinis Basileensibus Schafusianis Ministris communicatâ tandem ad mortem damnatus est Ejus doctrinam posteà Calvinus quòd ei ex illius invidia conflaretur proposuit publicato libro confutavit quo in haereticos etiam gladio à magistratu animadvertendum esse contendit But Beza who was a Calvinist and in the first Tome of his Works p. 85. asserts the lawfulness of punishing Hereticks with death cites not only Bullinger who was a Calvinist but Melanchton who was a Lutheran for the same opinion and Zanchius Operum Tome 4. Lib. 1. in tertium praeceptum expresly owns that opinion The fashion of the Iudicial Law of the Iews in that point was certainly most proper for the Body of their Polity as being thereunto adapted by the great Legislator but to say that all States and Polities are bound to observe it because God prescribed it to the Iews is as senseless as to say that all men are bound to go cloathed in Beasts Skins because God did Apparel Adam and Eve in that fashion I have in this Discourse thought it of some use to the publick to have mens understandings disabused as to the obligatory power of the Iudicial Law because mens erring therein hath very much encreased the fermentations in his Majesties Realms in several Conjunctures It is not unknown that Deuteronomy the 13th and the 6th was urged to Queen Elizabeth as an Argument for putting the Queen of Scots to death Our Kingdom hath likewise found by experience That the Fifth Monarchy men have not fired more Guns against us out of the Revelation than the Scotch Presbyterians have out of the Iudicial Law. An Excellent Discourse called Fair warning to take heed of the Scotish Discipline printed in the year 1649 and writ I think by Arch-Bishop Bramhall asserts in Chap. 6. That it robs the Magistrate of his dispensative Power and saith there Our Disciplinarians have restrained it in all such Crimes as are made Capital by the Iudicial Law as in the Case of Blood Adultery Blasphemy in which Cases they say the Offender ought to suffer death as God hath commanded And if the life be spared as it ought not to be to the Offenders c. And the Magistrate ought to prefer Gods strict Commandment before his own corrupt Iudgment especially in punishing these Crimes which he commandeth to be punished with death The Books of the Scotch Discipline are there particularly cited by the Author I have been expressly cautious in the following Discourse to exempt the Reformed Churches abroad from the Odium of those Principles of the formâ—er Scotch and English Presbyterians that I have impugned as Disloyal and Seditious and was a Concurrer with many loyal Persons after part of it was written in thinking that time had untaught those Principles to most of our present Non-Conformists and notwithstanding the many Seditious and Libellous Pamphlets published by some of them against the Government both of Church and State yet such was the continuance of the Candor of the Kings Ministers to them as that some at the Tryal of a poor seditious Nominal Protestant at Oxford occasionally declared before that wretch We know of no Presbyterian Plot. But as a Popish Ambassador sent to Queen Elizabeth began his Audience Speech wherein he was to complain of the Turks having unprovoked broke their League with his Master Erupit tandem Ottomannorum Virus it happened that about the time of the finishing of this Discourse the poyson of some pretended Protestants former Seditious Principles broke out again in a horrid Conspiracy before mentioned and which was confessed by several of the Conspirators at their Executions and another of whom owned the Doctrine of Resistance Our blessed Saviour cautioning the Christian World in the words of Beware of false Prophets saith You shall know them by their Fruits And our famous Whitaker hath in his Controversies well resolved us that these Fruits whereby false Prophets are to be distinguished from true are rather their Principles Interpretations and Doctrines than their Lives it being generally observed that the Founders of Sects are exemplary for the austerity of their lives and for coming in Sheeps clothing as our Saviours words are What the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames his Reign were I have shewn in this Discourse with a Remark on the Political Consideration that after the aera of the Gun-powder Treason induced them to give a Scheme thereof voluntarily to the Government and namely that they might thereby avoid the receiving a Test from it and no doubt it was obvious to them that while their Principles were hid and concealed from the State the warding off of Faux his Dark Lanthorn would not have left the Government secure till it had likewise got the Non-Conformistâ— dark Lanthorn from them I mean by the publication of their Tenets Of their Principles shortly after 41 the Scotch Covenant was a sufficient Scheme And tho the Tenets of Presbyterians and Independents relating to their Forms of Church Government are enought known as is likewise the degree of their Complicating Principles of Sedition with the same between the years 1641 and 1660 yet from that last year to this present one they have not by the publication of any Confession of Faith or Scheme of their Tenets satisfied the Government that all their Principles are consistent with the Civil Polity thereof and that they have renounced those former Tenets of theirs that once destroyed it and particularly that intolerably seditious one viz. That if the Magistrate will not reform the World they may But because several of their Ecclesiasticks have not renounced the Irreligionary part of their former Principles and which were so destructive to the Sacred Persons of Princes and their State and Government and of all Humane Society the Vniversity of Oxford in their Convocation Iuly 21st Anno 1683. did to their great honour pass their Iudgment and Decree against certain particular Books of Non-Conformists and Iesuites and others wherein those Tenets and Principles were owned and the very shewing of those Tenets to the World by such learned and loyal hands hath been I believe useful in making many of the Loyal Lay Non-Conformists withdraw from others of them they thought therewith infected a thing that might well be supposed naturally to happen when those of them to whom the term of Sober Party was most due observed that the publication of the Dissenters Sayings and of the Censure of their Tenets had not occasioned their Leaders to publish other Dissenters Sayings or Tenets that impugned Disloyalty and Sedition and promoted obedience to Government and what several Writers of the Church of Rome have been
formerly observed to do upon the Worlds minding how much the Principles of the Iesuites had shook the Thrones of Kings and as particularly Father Caron in his Remonstrantia Hybernorum hath done and there citing 250 Popish Authors who deny the Pope's Power to depose Kings And no doubt but Dissenters late Omissions in this kind and Commissions in another will awaken the Magistracy to require from all Protestant Recusants such an exact Inventory of their Tenets as hath not yet been given it and the rather for that it is not by any Dissenters denied that the Sovereign is so far Custos utriusque tabulae as to be allowed to require all Religionary Parties to give him an account of their Principles and to live according to the Rule of them Thus in the Dutch States the Magistrates of every place where any Sect of the Heterodox is tolerated are religiously careful first to inform themselves exactly of all their Tenets and Principles and to see that they hold no opinion prejudicial to the Constitutions of their Government and none doubts but that the entire Body of the Tenets or Principles of the Dissenters to the Gallican Church is as conspicuous to that Church and State and indeed to the World as can be desired the present agreement of which with the Measures of Loyalty I have shewn in this Discourse Who hath there read the Hugonots Sayings published with any stain to their Loyalty or hath seen any of their Tenets branded for Sedition by an Vniversity or College in France But our Protestant Recusants having had here the liberty by Act of Parliament to enjoy their peculiar ways of Religious Worship in their own Families with the toleration of four others of the same perswasion to be present before all their Principles and Tenets have been notified to the Government is an instance of greater Indulgence shewn by the Government here to such Heterodox than I believe can be parallel'd in any Country whatsoever All dangers are naturally multiplied in the dark and it is a diminution of our dread of the very Iesuites Principles that they are generally known but if the Body of their Principles were as much unknown as are those of Protestant Recusants yet would the publick be more immediately concerned in having first an accurate account of those of the latter as being more numerous It may be well thought a Bankrupt Church whose Principles are latitant and any mens begging from the Magistrate Indulgence to a Principle of Sedition would be as shameful as the Insolence of a Beggar not only begging twenty Pound as our Comaedian said but begging a Leg or an Arm and not like a mans asking me who stands in my way as I am travelling on the Road that I would not ride over him but that he may mount into the Saddle whose Principles direct him to ride over me It was well observed by Lipsius in his Notes in Seneca That Naturae quodam Instinctu ea maleficia coercent homines puniunt quae societatem convellunt But as to any Out-rages from any Religionaries which are either prejudicial to the Bodies of particular Persons or even Convulsive of the Bodies of States and Kingdoms and to which the Actors might be inclined by their particular heats and not the general light of their avowed Principles I account that Complaints against such will soon evaporate into Air or be buried in Earth and with some allusion to the words of Let the dead bury the dead I may say let Plots bury Plots and Shams Shams and let any Seditious Protestants and Seditious Papists on the Compensation of their Crimes forbear troubling others by calling one another Criminals and the Figure of the Body of their Parties can no more be altered by the unevenness and exorbitance of the actings of particular Persons than is the rotundity of the Earth by the ruggedness of Rocks or protuberance of Mountains And that where one Papist goeth out of the World at the back door of Justice for the Treason of Clipping and Coyning twenty of the more numerous body of the Protestants do so is not to be wondered at but the id ipsum to be regarded in any reflections made on a Religion by occasion of its Criminals is its Principles and if it could be proved that any Caetus of men were allowed by the Church of England to assert the lawfulness of that Treason as both Papists and Presbyterians have the lawfulness of the Doctrine of Resistance that indeed would have the weight of a just Reflection on our CHVRCH Tho several dissolute and nominal Protestants may possibly have invented and forged as many Shams and Calumnious Accusations against other Protestants and Papists as if they had believed the Practice of Calumny to be lawful yet hath any of them published in Print the Tenet of the lawfulness of it or its being a poor Peccadillo Who knoweth not that some particular Divines of the Church of England by the turbulence of their several dispositions have enflamed differences and divisions in our Church and State But who can charge them from doing this by Communication of Councils with their Superiors and by instruction from them Were any of them charged by Proclamations for doing any thing of that nature as some Popish Recusants were by his Majesty 's of Ian. 16. 1673. for chiefly occasioning the intestine divisions among us and by his Majesty's Proclamation of December 2d 1680. for fomenting of differences among his Loyal Protestant Subjects But yet this Fact tho thus by the Government charged on some ill men of that Religionary perswasion would not have moved me to reflect with the leaâ—t heat on the Order of Iesuites in this Discourse by whom so many of our Roman Catholicks are conducted but for their own Proclamations of their Principles in their Books and particularly as to the point of Calumny the only Engine by which Divisions could be wrought among Protestants and but for their setting up that Doctrine heretofore without leave from the Pope's Canon Law and backing it with another to fright any Fools or Knaves from disparaging or even calumniating them and for their making use and application of these Doctrines since the Pope had damned them by a Proclamation I mean his Edict of March 79 and but for Father Parsons having so scandalously exposed the narrowness of his Soul and the poor Ideas he had of Humane Nature and even of the Character of a Gentleman by saying what I have in p. 61. cited out of his Book of The Succession viz. That many Iealousies Accusations and Calumniations must needs â—â—ght on the Party that is of different Religion from the State and Prince under whom he lives As there is very little in this Discourse that reflects on any Principles of the Romanists that may be called Religionary so neither have I troubled my self to attacque the Tenets of the Society of the Iesuites and of other Casuists condemned by this Pope that do not hominum societatem
well come under the account of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to those Opiners hath for the honour of the Church of England's Principles in his 8th Lecture and there de lege paenali well taught us in what Cases Penal Laws oblige in Conscience and shewed that they may so bind where the Legislator did intend to oblige the Subject Ad culpam etiam non solum ad paenam and in that Case saith he Certum est eos teneri ad observandum id quod lege praecipitur nec satisfacere officio si parati sint poenam lege constitutam subire and where he further saith That the mind and intention of the Legislator is chiefly seen in the Proeme of his Law in quo saith he there ut acceptior sit populo lex solet Legislator Consilii sui de eà lege ferendâ causas rationes expoâ—eâ—e quà m sit lex iusta quam fuerit tollendis incommodis abusibus necessaria quà m futura sit Reip. utilis There is a particular Principle of moment worthy of the Magistrates Survey that relates to the Gathered Churches and that is a Principle made a necessary ingredient in the Constitution of of those Churches by a Divine of the same Authority among them as Bishop Saâ—â—erson is in the Church of England and whom I occasionally beforementioned and that is Mr. Iohn Cotton B. D. who in a Pamphlet of his printed at London in the year 1642 Entâ—tuled The true Constitution of a particular visible Church proved by Scripture wherein is briefly demonstrated by Questions and Answers what Officers Worship and Government Christ hath ordained in his Church and in the Title-page whereof is this place of Scripture viz. Jer. 50. 5. They shall ask the way to Sion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual COVENANT that shall not be forgotten in p. 1st makes his first Question what is a Church And the Answer is The Church is a mystical Body whereof Christ is the head the Members and Saints called out of the World and united together in one Congregation by an holy COVENANT to Worship the Lord and to Edifie one another in all his holy Ordinances And in another Book of his printed at London in the year 1645 called The way of the Churches of Christ in New England his third Proposition is this viz. For the joyning of faithful Christians into the Fellowship and Estate of a Church we find not in Scripture that God hath done it any other way than by entring of them all together as one man into an holy COVENANT with himself to take the Lord as the head of the Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People which implies their submitting of themselves to him and one to another in his fear and their walking in professed subjection to all his Ordinances their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness unto Mutual Edification He there partly props up the Obligation of this Church Covenant on the Iewish Oeconomy mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy and other places of the Old Testament The reasonableness of Subjects not entring into Religionary Covenants without the Consent of the Pater patriae may be inferred from the old Testament where in Numbers c. 30 the Parent hath a power given for the controuling of the Childrens Vows not enter'd into by his consent but since these Principles of a new Church Covenant may seem to introduce a new Ecclesiastical Law without the King's privity and consent a thing that if our very Convocation should presume to do would bring them within a Praemunire and since the whole power of reforming and ordering of all matters Ecclesiastical is by the Laws in express words annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and particularly by the 1st of Elizabeth and since that it hath been said that even without an Act of Parliament a new Oath or Covenant cannot be introduced among the King's Subjects and moreover since all the famous Religionary Confessions of the Protestant Churches abroad assert nothing of any such Church Covenant and since Covenants and Associations have lately heard so ill in the Kingdom I think the nature and terms of this Independent Covenant ought to be laid as plain before the Eye of the Government as was the Scotch Presbyterian one Those words of Mr. Cotton of the entring them all together as one man into an holy Covenant carry some thing like the same sound of one and all and tho their thus entring into it to take the Lord as the head of his Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People may be a plausible beginning of this new Church Covenant in nomine Domini yet the following words of submitting themselves to him and to one another in his fear and their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness are words that I think the Magistracy ought to watch and to see that Dissenters have a very sound form of words prescribed to them in this Case if it shall think fit to have the same continued I have found the Assertion of a Church Covenant as Essential to the Form of a true Independent Church in many other of their Books and do suppose that this Covenant being laid as Corner-stone in the building of their Churches by Divine Right it must last as long as Independency it self and of its lasting still I met with an Indication from a Loyal and Learned Official of the Court-Christian who told me that tho several of the Dissenters called Presbyterians have been easily perswaded to repair to the Divines of the Church of England that they were admonished to confer with and had upon Conference with them come to Church and took the Sacrament yet he thought that some of another Class of Dissenters were possessed with a Spirit of incurable Contumacy by reason of their Principles having tied them together to one another by a Covenant And if it shall therefore appear to the Magistrates that they are thus Conference-proof and as I may say Reason-proof by vertue of their Covenant it will then be found that no one Mâ—mber of a gathered Church can turn to ours without the whole Hyena-like turning and perhaps some of the Lords the Bishops may think it hereupon proper humbly to advise his Majesty to null by a Declaration the Obligation of this Covenant as his Royal Father did that of the Presbyterian Covenant In the mean time the Consideration of the Principles of Independecy thus seeming to have cramp'd the Consciences of its followers with a Covenant that is at least unnecessary and must naturally be a troublesom imposition to men of thought and generous Education who love to perform Moral Offices without entring into Covenant or giving Bond so to do may serve to
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any Intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the municipal Laws of their Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
same thing almost the same words used in a Prophecy of the times of the Gospel Zech. 13. 3. He saith indeed that by those words in Deut. the meaning is not that his Father or Mother should presently run a Knife into him but that they should be the means to bring him to condign punishment even the taking away his life Calvin likewise in giving his sense of that place of Zechary foresaw the Odium of having any killed without going to the Iudge and there saith Multò hoc durius est propriis manibus filium interficere quam si ad Iudicem deferrent But here Mr. Burroughs and Calvin have Categorically enough asserted what the Iudges duty is in the Case and I have said what Calvin effected by going to the Iudge about Servetus Gundissalvus doth not determine the lawfulness of burning an Heretical City without going to the Iudge and the lawfulness of Protestant Princes judging the Persons or Cities of Idolaters to be destroyed by the pretended Obligation of the Mosaic Law is chargeable on the Anti Papists I have mentioned and I believe there are few of our Presbyterian or Independent Enthusiasts but who think it as lawful to burn Rome as to roast an Egg. But the Church of England abhorreth this flammeum sulphureum evangelium and Dr. Hicks in the Preface to his Iovian taking notice of the Reasons which the Papists urge for putting Heretick and the scotising Presbyterians for putting Popish Princes to death saith thereupon I desire Mr. J. to tell me Whether he thinks in his Conscience the Bishops of the Church of England could argue so falsly upon the Principles of the Iewish Theocracy to the like proceedings in Christian States And saith if this way of arguing be true then the Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth was bound to burn many Popish Towns in her Kingdom and smite the Inhabitants with the Sword c. I have therefore thought it Essential to the advancement and preservation of Loyalty to endeavour to have the Papal and Presbyterian Error as to the Iewish Laws exterminated And the setling of this point is the more important to the Measures of Loyalty because the same Chapter in Deuteronomy viz. the 13 th that hath been the Popes Palladium for his power of firing Heretical Cities hath likewise been made use of by our deluded Excluders as theirs to recur to in a practice so scandalous to Loyalty and to the Protestant Religion and which hath too much appeared in the many Factious Pamphlets for the Exclusion and as I hinted that that Chapter of Deuteronomy was impiously applied in a former Conjuncture for putting the Queen of Scots to death so the pretended lawfulness of the Exclusion by arguing from the greater to the less was by the deluded generally inferred from that Chapter and the place I just now referred too in the Preface of Iovian mentions Mr. I's arguing from Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother c. in citing of which saith the Dr. it is evident on whom our Author did reflect The very exposing the absurdity of the Papal power of destroying Heretical Persons and Cities on the account of the Mosaic Law will I believe as by Consent of the sober of all Parties much help to exterminate the aforesaid Error which hath cost the Papacy so dear and naturally tempted so many Calvinists to own the same Error partly by way of retaliation and not altogether through defect of Judgment and I doubt not but if the Papacy were now to begin to claim the allowance of exercising the Jurisdiction over all Christians in the World as the High Priest did over all proselyted to the Iewish Religion and as appears by not only the Inhabitants of Palestine but others of the most remote Countries and particularly by the Aethiopian in the Acts of the Apostles owning subjection to the Iewish Priesthood it would stop at the Conquest of that Oecumenical Power and Tenths of the Levites thereby without demanding the Power to destroy Hereticks Towns and to exterminate the Persons of Hereticks by Crusado's as other dependencies on it But the Papacy hath long ago passed that bloody Rubicon of the Iudicial Law and cannot in Honour or Politicks go back nor will any Pope expressly renounce the Power of compelling Princes to exterminate their Heretical Subjects tho yet the Fashion of the exercise of this Power be thus as I have shewed tacitly passed away and as a thing necessarily impracticable in the more populous World. And no Iesuited Papist dares disclaim this Power in the Pope's behalf or impugn the same however it was a thing that the Pope could not but foreâ—ee that his quashing the Iesuites Power to kill men by retail would render the Iesuites averse from writing for his Power to kill Hereticks by whole-sale and by Crusado's or for the power to fire Heretical Cities if there were occasion to have any such power asserted in behalf of the Papacy as I believe there neither is nor ever will be But partly according to my Conjecture of the Result of the Fermentation about the Regale in France I suppose that tho the Papacy will no more be brought to disclaim its pretended Monarchy over other parts of the World in ordine ad spiritualia than the Dukes of Savoy will the Title of their being Kings of Cyprus yet it will be neither able or studious to prosecute its Claim of such power by disordering the World as formerly All the personal Vertue and Probity of any Popes will never incline them to pronounce against their Iurisdiction however they may thereby and by want of strength to execute it be kept from the old injurious ampliating it and on this slippery Precipice the Papacy still remains and from whence through the natural Jealousie of Crown'd Heads and States in the point of Power it will probably fall down to its tame principium unitatis and its Patriarchal Figure and in time to nothing But by many of the Anti-papal Sects and such as call themselves The only true Protestants still owning the Obligation of the Iewish forinsec Laws a Necessity is by God and Nature put on the Protestants of the Church of England to Combat such pretended Obligations by dint of Reason and thereby to support the Rights of their Princes without Condition and Reserve and which no Jesuited Papists or Protestants either can or will do Nor is it safe for other Papists to own Principles that touch the Pope's imaginary Monarchal Power For Power how fantastick soever would seem a serious thing and will endure no raillery and the honest Father Caron whom I have mentioned as citing 250 Popish Authors who denied the Pope's Power to depose Princes doth tell us that the Pope's Nuntio and 4 Popes condemned his Doctrine and the Inquisitors damned his Book and his Superiours his Soul I mean they very fairly excommunicated him for it There is another thing that may render the knowledge of this Papal Tenet worthy
part of its Patrimony Queen Elizabeth alienated to secure the Protestant Religion ib. The fears of Popery further Censured p. 198. Ridly and Latimer Prophesied at the Stake that Protestancy would never be extinguished in England p. 198. Roger Holland prophesied at the Stake at Smithfield that he should be the last that should there suffer Martyrdom ib. Observations on the Natural Prophesying of dying men and its effects p. 199. The Vanity of Mens troubling the World by Suppositions ib. and p. 200. 'T is a degree of madness to trouble it by putting wanton impossible cases p. 200. The Author without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only by the light of reason presageth that the excessive fear of Popery as weâ—l as its danger will here be exterminated ib. The justice of the Claim of King Charles the first to the Title of Martyr asserted p. 201 202 203. The Author judgeth that some vile Nominal Protestants by the publication of many Seditious Pamphlets have given the Government a just Alarm of their designs against it p. 203. Of Papists and Protestants being Antagonists in Shamms p. 204. Mr. Nye cited for representing the Dissenters acted by the Jesuites in thinking it unlawful to hear the Sermons of the Divines of the Church of England p. 204. False Witnesses among the Jews allowed against false Prophets p. 205. The Earl of Anglesy's Courage and Iustice asserted in the professing in the House of Lords his disbelief of such an Irish Plot as was sworn by the Witnesses tho the belief of the reallity of such a Plot had obtained the Vote of every one else in both Houses ib. Above 2000 Irish Papists in the Barony of Enishoan demean'd themselves civilly to the English during the whole Course of the Rebellion ib. Several eminent ingenious Papists in England and Foreign parts celebrated for their avowed Candour to Protestants p. 206 207 208 c. D' Ossat's acquainting the Pope That if his Holyness were King of France he would show the same kindness to the Huguenots that Harry the 4th did p. 208. Cromwel being necessitated to keep the Interest of the Kingdom divided was likewise necessitated to keep up all Religions according to the Politicks of Julian p. 211. Of the Papists calling King James Julian ib. The Author inveigheth against the Calumny of any Protestants who call any one Apostate for the alteration of his Iudgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants ib. The Author's Reason why 't is foolish to fear that any Rightful Prince of the Roman Catholick perswasion that can come here will follow the Politicks of Julian ib. 'T is shewn that any Protestant Vsurper here must act à la Julian ib. The Vsurper Cromwel shewn to be a Fautor of Priests and Jesuites by the Attestations of Mr. Prynn and the Lord Hollis p. 212 213. The danger of Popery that would have ensued Lambert's Vsurpation p. 213 214. How true soever any Vsurpers Religion is he must be false to the Interest of the Kingdom p. 214. Observed that the Kings long Parliament by the Act for the Test did enjoyn the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to be taken ib. Those Oaths lay on the Takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors ib. Mr. Prynn's Book called Concordia discors printed Anno 1659 to prove the Obligation by those Oâ—hs to the King's Heirs and Successors commended ib. The Author mentions the Reasons that induced him to write Casuistically concerning such Obligation and promiseth to send that his Writing to his Lordship ib. The Author judgeth that he ought not to be severe to any Papist before he hath a Moral certainty of such Papists having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Pâ—pery that is unmoral or inhumane ib. The Author observes that few or no Writers of the Church of Rome have lately thought fit by their Pens to assert the Inheritable Right of Princes without respect to any Religionary Tenets they may hold p. 215. The Author thinks that for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Roman Catholick Prince of his Property and Right of Succession when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope employ their Pens for the preservation of such his property and right without respect to to any Religionary Tenets he may hold is like drawing against a naked man ib. D' Ossat affirms That the Pope and the whole Court of Rome hold it lawful to deprive a Prince of any Country to preserve it from Heresie ib. An Animadversion on a late Pamphlet concerning the Succession ib. Reflections on the House of Commons Proceedings in the Exclusion Bill ib. and p. 216. The Author gives an explanatory account of the tempus acceptabile he in p. 25 mentions p. 216. His Majesty's constant contending for the Protestant Faith celebrated and likewise his Iustice in preserving the property of the Succession in the Legal Course by all his Messages to the Parliament p. 217. The unhappy State of that Prince who shall for fear of the Populace do any Act of the Iustice whereof he doubts and much more of the injustice whereof he is fully convinced p. 217. at large The Caution to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia applied to such a Prince viz. Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take away thy Crown ib. at large 'T is not only Popery but Atheism in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion p. 218. King James disavowed the Act of his Son-in Laws accepting the Title of King of Bohemia ib. An Observation that in the Common-Prayer in King Charles the 1 sts time relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runneth for Frederick Prince Palatâ—ine Elector of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife ib. The Author observes that in the Assembly's Directory the Lady Elizabeth is styled Queen of Bohemia p. 219. An Account of the Governments avowed sence in King James's time that any of the Princes of England ought not by becoming Roman Catholick to be prejudiced in their Right of Succession to the Crown ib. The same sense of the Government in the time of King Charles the 1 st ib. The Parliament during the Civil War projected not any prejudice to the right of Succession on the account of any Religionary Tenets p. 220. Mention of somewhat more to confirm the claim of King Charles the 1 st to the Title of Martyr beside his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue ib. An account of the Protestation of the Nonconforming Ministers in the year 1605 relating to the King's Supremacy wherein they assert the Royal Authority inseparably fixt to the true Line whatever Religion any Prince thereof may profess p. 221. The Author peâ—stringeth the Protestant would be 's and new Statists of the Age that would for Religionary Tenets barr any of the
I think that an eximious man impeacht in Parliament and there acquitted will need no Herald to proclaim his worth nor his deserving to be restored in integrum to the Royal Protection and Favour when that his own works have praised him in the gates that is in the Jurisdiction where they were so strictly scann'd My Lord if any could prove your Lordship to be a Papist he need not call that accumulative Treason in you nor need he go about by torturing the Law to make it confess many Felonies to be one Treason many Rapes to be one false coming But Popery in you would be plain down-right palpable and rank Treason by vertue of the Statute of 23 of Elizabeth Ch. 1. which makes it High Treason for any person in the Dominions of the Crown of England to be withdrawn from the Religion then established to the Romish Religion That your Lordship hath been bred a Protestant and been so as it were ex traduce there needs no other evidence then the contents of this Letter and that you have not been withdrawn to the Romish Religion you have declared by the Series of your actings against it that shew your Mind beyond the power of words and 't is by the help of that great Wisdom God has given you that our English World expects that a way may be found how to make it more clearly appear to the eye of the Law when any others have been or are withdrawn to the Romish Religion a thing perhaps at present of somewhat difficult proof For without supposing that the Pope can or will give them dispensations to take all Oaths and Tests that can be devised doth not a reserving some fantastic sense to themselves make nonsense of all Oaths and that one word Equivocation make them proof against all other words Doth not that with them sanctify or at least justify all other words they can use May they not on these terms safely swear there is neither God nor Man nor Hell nor Devil that is meaning not in a Mathematical point or in Vtopia and that they saw not such a Man such a day that is not with the eyes of a Whale And have not the late dying Speeches of some of these Imposters and particularly Father Irelands shewn us that in the points of mental reservation and equivocation they persevere in the impudent owning of that which would unhinge the World and turn humane Society into a dissolute multitude And do we not believe many to be Papists who we know have taken the Oaths and Tests Hath not a Papist some Years since writ of the lawfulness of the taking of the Oath of Supremacy I speak not this my Lord to derogate from the Wisdom of our Ancestors that appointed these discriminations nations and do think that when we have used all the lawful means we can to know who among us are Papists as certainly as we do what is Popery and to keep Papists from hurting us and themselves we ought to acquiesce in the Results of the Providence of God. But what all those means are tho I know not yet I am apt to believe that your Lordships comprehensive knowledg of men and things and of the true interest of the Kingdom hath qualified you to tell your Royal Master and His Houses of Parliament nor do I believe that the difficulty of either finding out such means and making practicable things be practised will blunt but rather whet the edg of your Industry in this case as being of Quintilians mind who Judged that there was Turpitude in despairing of any thing that could be done I think his words are Turpiter desperatur quicquid fieri potest â—Tis certainly the interest of the King and Kingdom that the numbers of the Papists here and especially of those withdrawn from Protestancy to the Church of Rome should be known in the case of which Apostates tho it be impossible without seizing on the Papers and Archives of one certain Priest to see the Original Acts of their Recantation of Protestancy yet is it most certain and on all hands confessedly true that Eminent Overt-Acts of abhorrency of Protestantisme are alwayes required at the admitting one who was of that Religion into the bosome of the Roman Catholic Church which any one will be convinced of who reads the Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Villeroy of the 20 th of Octob. 1603. from Rome where he gives his Opinion against the Queen of England being made Godmother at the Baptism of Madam That Cardinal who had incomparable skill in the Canon Law and the knowledg of all the Customs of the Papal See and who had lived at Rome above 20 Years saith in that Letter I account it my duty to write to you freely that that cannot be done without very great Scandal to good Catholicks nor without the extream displeasure and offence of the Pope You presuppose that the Queen of England is a Catholic but Here we know the contrary tho some believe that she is not of the worser sort of Heretics and that she has some inclination to the Catholic Religion And I will tell you moreover that tho she were in her heart of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion as much as the Pope himself so it is that she having been bred up in Heresie and outwardly persisting in it as she doth she cannot according to the Canons be held for a Catholic in public acts of Religion till she hath first both viva voce and by writing under her hand abjured all Heresie and made profession of the Catholic Faith. Nor was it ever known that in the case of any Protestants Apostacy to the Church of Rome any Pope ever dispensed with those Canons and therefore it may well hence be inferr'd That if evidence just so much as the Law requires as to such Apostacy be given that no superpondium or proof of overt-acts more then necessary ought to be expected for that overt Acts almost impossible to be proved may yet necessarily be presumed but this by the way And therefore now further my Lord if fas est ab hoste doceri be adviseable in the case as strict Circumstances may be required in the conversion of Papists to our Church as are in the withdrawing of any from our Church to theirs Indeed if I were a Member of Parliament and any one there should be so happy as to invent a way and propound it whereby the present Lay-Papists in England might let us have a Moral Certainty that they neither consented to nor concealed the late Plot and likewise that they did really detest all those desperate Popish Principles that are fundamentally destructive to the Safety of the King and Kingdom and that they would harbour no Priests born in the Kings Dominions nor send any of their Children to be bred in Forrain Seminaries and on the contrary that on occasion they would discover to a Magistrate any such Priest or one who sent his Children to such Seminary
the City of London was burnt in the Year 1666 by the Papists designing thereby to introduce Arbitrary Power and Popery into this Kingdom they will not think it strange that they should not be permitted to live in any of our Cities again till they have shew'd how orderly they can live in one of their own And therefore I think we may without breach of Civility or at least violation of justice apply to them some part of the words which I find quoted by Dr. Bramhall Lord Bishop of Derry in his just vindication of the Church of England out of Gers. part 4. Ser. de pace unit Graec. as the farewell Speech to the Bishop of Rome when the Graecian and all other Eastern Churches parted from him whom they acknowledged only as a Patriarch Namely We acknowledg your Power we cannot satisfie your Covetousness live by your selves How it is in the case of the People of Switzerland Papists and Protestants living apart by themselves in several Cantons cannot be unknown to your Lordship Nor that the Protestants and Papists when they there made their League at first joyntly to maintain their Liberties against the House of Austria then agreed upon this also That if any of the Natives living in the Cantons of either side should change their Religion that then they should be permitted respectively to sell their goods and transplant themselves to the Canton whose Religion they embraced But I shall tell your Lordship That of late the Popish Canton Switz did break this agreement and would not suffer some of their Native Inhabitants to partake of this freedom and did confiscate the goods of some Families that changed their Religion and at the instigation of the Fryars and Iesuits they condemned some of them to death and others to the Gallyes which was the cause of a Commotion among them The Gentleman of Ireland who discourst somewhat to me of the Transplantation of the Irish Papists told me it was into the Province of Connaught and think into the In-land parts of that Countrey for to have trusted them to live in Maritine Towns there whereby they might have let in an invading Popish or other Forrainer were to have trusted them with the power of the Keys of the Kingdom And he further told me That the transplantation was managed with much satisfactory tenderness to those Papists and that as to English and Irish it had partly the nature of a bargain that gave content on both sides and secured them against each other after all the mutual exasperations that had passed and when 't was fresh in the memory of both English and Irish that 't was the promiscuous and scatter'd dwelling of the English among the Irish before the Rebellion that tempted the Irish to butcher them and made the English Sheep for the Slaughter and when it was not likewise forgot that in former Wars the partition or distinction of the English Pale did secure the English inhabiting within its district I askt the Gentleman if they were not stinted to a certain number of Priests and care taken that none of them should be Iesuits and that the chief Governour of the Countrey should know their Names and whether any Priests Natives of that Country were allow'd them as to which enquiries he did not fully satisfie me but I supposed that since all Religions have a Priest-hood that somewhat of that kind was allowed them and that since the Order of the Iesuits was invented in the Year 1540. by the Pope as a Poysonous Stumm to put a new fermentation into the Romish Ecclesiastical Rites and Discipline which were almost dead with age and like vina vetustate edentula and quite dispirited with the Thunder of the Doctrine of Luther and the lightning of Learning and Knowledg then flying through the World and that that Order of the Iesuits was as it were a Court erected to begin with execution and to confute gainsayers by cutting their Throats No Iesuits were permitted to officiate among those transplanted Papists and considering that the Priests Natives of Ireland were the known fomenters of that Rebellion that both English and Irish might rather consent to some Secular Priests bred in Holland or France being employed in the New Irish Colony and who had no knowledg of the Intrigues of the several Interests in that Country and would not by kindred or relation to any of the great Families there perhaps be tempted into Factions I have heard from that Gentleman of Mr. Peter Walsh a Fryar in Ireland and of his endeavours in the Art of Cicuration of some of the Romish Clergy Layety who there were Wolfes and that without Sheeps cloathing and reclaiming them to Principles and Practices consistent with civil society and what proficiency his Disciples have made therein I being a stranger to that Kingdom know not but according to that saying bonus est quem Nero odit have the better opinion of him for those endeavours of his having been Crown'd with the Popes Excommunications It was a noble saying I have heard of one of the House of Peers this last Parliament I hate not the persons of any Papists but I am an enemy to Popery In like manner I should be glad that all the Mercy were shewn them that were not Cruelty to the Public but they are to excuse any one that will not forget that when they begun the last outragious Rebellion in Ireland which no words need or can aggravate they enjoy'd there equal Priviledges with the English if not greater the Lawyers were Irish most of the Judges Irish and the Major part of the Parliament Irish and in all disputes between English and Irish the Irish were sure of the Favour and any one would be inexcusable to this Kingdom who forgot that King Iames's unparalel'd kindness to his Popish Subjects in suspending the execution of Penal Laws against them in sparing their purses in remitting the arrears of what they owed Queen Elizabeth for pecuniary penalties nay giving into their hands what money of theirs as his due was in the Exchequer was but the â—rologue to their intended Tragedy on the Fifth of November And what provocations they had to be ill wishers to the Life and Crown of the last King as appeared by the detection forementioned presented to His Majesty by Arch-Bishop Laud and a Charge given against them in Print by the Reverend Dr. Peter Du Moulin which he offer'd to make good and ad quod non fuit responsum let any one Judg who further does look on the Parliaments Addresses in Rushworths Collections And unless some of them had loved ingratitude for ingratitudes sake they would never have enter'd into that Conspiracy against his now Majesty whose Life is the delight of all Mankind but theirs And yet since according to that expression that God is not the God of the Iews only but also of the Gentiles so it being true that the King is King of the Papists as well as Protestants King of
Matthew for the building of theirs But this by the way And now putting the Question who are to be loved best either the Popish Priest and Levite that help'd to wound Ireland formerly when it fell among Thieves and Rebels or those compassionate Samaritans who put it on their own Beast and poured Oyl into its Wounds and took care of it till it was restored to its true Owner I suppose a Protestant will say the latter and will account that no fire should be called to fall on the heads of such hospitable Samaritans and that others should be spared who instead of powring Oyl into our Wounds did it into our flames when they burnt our Citie Your Lordship hath shewn your self a compassionate Samaritan to Two Kingdoms to which your healiâ—g principles and practices have been beneficial and in this you have out done him in the Parable who did not stay to see the effects of the gentle Medicaments of Oyl and Wine he bestowed on his Patient's Wounds but your Lordships long attendance on the affairs of the Public brought you to see the Languishing Kingdom revived and to have at once both its Head and Senses restored when Providence made our Sovereign to be his repenting Peoples choice But my Lord these Kingdoms have not yet done with your Skill and may have Wounds that require your Wine and Oyl the Lyons Heart and Ladies Hand I mean such Tenderness and such Courage and so great Judgment as you have formerly shewn A Raging Acute Disease that hath been long not only besieging but storming a mans vital parts and with extream difficulty at the long run repell'd by Nature doth yet commonly leave such dregs in his spirits that depress and enfeeble them in the remainder of Life and a man come to himself after a long madness labours still under a dejection of his spirits both by grief and shame thinking of the arrear that he is in to God the World and himself by his former madness and this is the present state of England after its former state of distraction and men with shame now look on their former Physitians and some are apt with that Merry Mad-man in the Poet to be angry with those that took pains about their being cured 'T is true indeed the Kings Restoration cured us of our Civil Wars yet may a man be cured of his Wounds and afterward dye of the Feaver his Wound put him into and our condition is such that 't is some degree of Heavens Mercy to us that our Feaver is continuing for no man can dye in a Feaver as no man can dye without one And our spirits are so sunk under the weight of the Disease we have long languisht under that our Stomach cannot endure any Cordials or especially the same long certainly that strong Physic that would at first have cured us would now kill us Yet now in this conjuncture several of our Political Physitians seem by their retirement to have given us over as if they were of Hippocrates his mind who said that a Physitian should not discredit his generous Medicaments by employing them on a desperate Patient Methinks 't is pity that any of our Pilots should quit the Helm in a Storm and that they should not as Cicero's expression is Sententiam tanquam aliquod navigium ex Reip. tempestate moderari Those words in Prov. 1. A man of understanding shall attain to wise Councels some read Vir saepiens gubernacula possidebit I presume not to Censure any man but I hope that no cross Winds will ever make your Lordship leave the Helm but rather invite the continuance of your Skill in beating and tiding it out as the Sea phrase is and in not overshooting the Port. Your pacific Genius and great Wisdom have in several angry conjunctures produced an unexpected calm by your offering unexpected Expedients a Talent that is indeed very rare and conducive to the quiet of the World as leading Potent Parties from their declared Opinions without the shame of a seeming retreat It happens still in Navigation that what makes the Passenger merriest makes the Steers-man most thoughtful Namely the sight of Land And therefore tho I and others who make no figures in the government of the Kingdom seem to be glad at our sight of land that is the extermination of Popery from England after we have been so long nauseated and Sea-sick with it yet 't is now our occasion for the skill of such a Pilot as your Lordship is greatest when we are endanger'd by some Protestants of narrow Spirits and Principles as by Shelfes or brevia syrtes shallow waters and by little Rocks or breaker's just covered with water and which are only to be discovered by the swelling roughness of the water they occasion It has pleased Divine providence to cast your Lordships whole life of Action into difficult times such as are called in the New Testament 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and translated perilous times And such as Cicero calls Maxima Reipublicae tempora and difficillima Reip tempora Your life hath been a continual contestation with principles pernicious to man-kind and you have been under your Prince a Nutritius pater for the most part to men who have like froward and unquiet Children been crying for each others properly in things civil and in Religion and have thought themselves persecuted when they could not persecute others Nor have you been too much a Latitudinarian as to Church discipline Nor of too narrow a Spirit or principles as to any Protestant Dissenters And I think Envy never charged you for giving any advice that tended to the injuring the ballance of Christendom or the power of England in setling it or the persuading us to love some of our Neighbours better then our selves You who are so far from offending any weak brother That you are ready with the Apostle rather to abstain from eating flesh while the World stands and therefore will much less kill or devour him and lest of all will you offend a weak Brother-Protestant Country or help any else to devour it and will not injure any of those Countreys that you visited abroad when the world and you saw one another by projecting their Mischief And therefore as I find in the Prolegomena of Grotius de jure belli pacis that Themistius speaking to Valens the Roman Emperor he told him that Kings if they would be guided by the Rule of true wisdom they must non unius sibi creditae Gentis habere rationem sed totius humani generis esse non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tantum aut 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it may be justly said that the Counsellors of Kings should alwaies advise them not to take care only of the concern of their own people but of the happiness and quiet of all man-kind and not only to be lovers of the Macedonians or lovers of the Romans but to be lovers of Men. I never
of which there is rarely any detection made but by participants in the Crime one who would be repell'd from being a Witness is welcome as an accuser and the barking of a dog is allowed to alarm us of thiefs and as we say against Pirates omnis homo miles est much more may every man be an accuser against Traitors Thus I have heard that in the case of heresie in the which as I said before the Canon Law orders the same proceedings and rules as in Treason a Lay-man is allowed to be a competent accuser of a Clergy man And as by all Laws any man is allow'd to be an accuser who prosecutes an injury done to himself or his Kindred so I am told that by the Canonists Haereticum accusans dicitur suam suorumque injuriam prosequi and in that case a notorious enemy is allowed to be an accuser for that a heretick is said to strike at the Foundation of all Lawes divine and humane Nay according to the Canonists the Pope who cannot be accused of any crime but heresie may be accused of that and even by a heretick and that with good reason according to their hypothesis for that the Pope being a Bankrupt in the Faith by heresie attempts to break all the innumerable Priests Monks Friers Nunnes c. that get their bread by that Religion No wonder therefore that the Canonists agree that heresie is to be cut off in the beginning and they cite out of Timothy that it doth eat as a Cancer and the eating of heresie even in the breast of a Pope must needs be troublesom to the whole body of Clerical and Monastical Papacy as a Cancer or Wolfe that would eat up all their bread and therefore in the single case of heresie the Pope himself according to his own law may be convicted by two Witnesses and be thereupon deposed But tho it may be supposed that as the Civil and Canon Laws do leave the credibility of witnesses very much to the Judges so our common Law does to Juries and that in many actrocious Criminal causes every man is not allowed to be an accuser of an illustrious person and that we ought to be very tender and reserved in the taking up an ill report against the meanest of any of our Neighbours of mankind yet it s otherwise as I said before in the case of Treason which is like a pestilence walking in the dark and seldom known before t is incurable and before 't is ploughing up the whole Land of a Country into graves We are not to quarrel with the birds of the Air who tell who in his Bed-Chamber curses the King because they are not Eagles We are to be glad of the happy Augury and to thank God and them for their saving the Imperial Eagle and to be well pleased with either Tame or Wild-geese that save our Capital If any Fleet comes to invade us we are not to be very nice in diffecting the Morals or outward estate of him who fired the Beacon Your Lordship hath heard how Owen o Conally an obscure person as Sir. Iohn Temple styles him in his History of the Irish Rebellion came to the Lord Iustice Parsons about nine of the Clock at Night before the intended seising of Dublin Castle that was to be on the following day and discovered the detestable Conspiracy to him with the names of the chief Conspirators when the disguise of wine had made him seem hardly intelligible or credible And when it falls out that a Country is faved by wholesale through a detection of Conspiracies presented by persons who cheated their Country-men formerly by retail that is by persons who had been vile and infamous it ought to be accounted as an instance of the divine benignity to some of the most wretched and sinful Members of Mankind who have been long industrious in tearing out of their hearts what reliques they could there find of the divine image and who had long acted only Devils parts on the Stage of the world in punishing and being punished then to invite them to an opportunity of changing the Name of Malefactors into that of being blessings to the World and not only of being their Countries benefactors but as it were founders and to gain good Consciences and good names and what rarely happens to others to have an after-game allowed them to play for Reputation and to have it said of such an one on the occasion of the shame of his past life stimulating him to bring both glory and safety to his Country si non errasset fecerat ille minus By the account that I had sent to me from London of Matters in some affidavits relating to your being called Papist your Lordship hath the greatest advantage that any man can desire who has any things sworn against him by persons how credible soever namely the incredibility of the things themselves For can it be thought that your Lordship would out of your own Mouth judge your self a Traitor that is one reconciled to the Church of Rome and forfeit your Life and Estate and attaint your blood in the presence of a young man you had never seen before and is it likely that the Irish Papists who as Sir Iohn Temple observes in his said history have such a kind of dull and deep reservedness as makes them with much silence and secresie to carry on their business and whereby the design of the last Rebellion which was so generally at the same time and at so many several places to be acted and therefore necessarily known to so many several persons was without any Noise brought to such maturity as to arrive at the very point of Execution without any notice or intimation given to any two of that huge Multitude of persons who were generally designed as most of them did to perish in it And the Irish Papists having been then as he saith tongue-tyed by an oath of Secresie I say is it likely that they now designing Mischief if they did hope by your Lordships help to promote it that they would trumpet forth your Lordships name in their publick Masses and use such speaking trumpets about your name and their enterprise as should be heard all over Ireland and England And who can believe it to have the shadow of Veri-similitude that your Lordship should give Commission to any to offer one of the Kings witnesses and particularly Mr. Dugdale your house as an Asylum to retreat to after they had for the turpitude of lucre retreated from their Principles their Consciences their Oathes I never see any man sworn as a Witness in a cause but I think of the saying of St. Austin upon those words of St. Iames Above all things my Brethren swear not Namely Falsa Iuratio exitiosa est vera Iuratio periculosa est Nulla Iuratio secura est and I have as it were a little cold shivering on me while I see a man about what he knoweth of the property of a tenement
great vehâ—menâ—â— and Master-like in the Councel about two hours proving that the Power of Iurisdiction was given wholly to the Pope and that none in the Church besides â—ath any spark of it but from him and that while Christ liv'd in the flesh he govern'd the World with an absolute Monarchical Government and being to depart out of the World he left the same form appointing his Vicar St. Peter and his Successors to administer it as he had done giving him full and total Power and Iurisdiction and subjecting the Church to him as before to himself That in Councels be they never so frequent if the Pope be present he only doth decree neither doth the Councel any thing but approve and therefore it has been always said Sacro approbante Concilio yea even in Resolutions of the greatest weight as was the Deposition of the Emperor Frederic the Second in the General Councel of Lions Innocent the Fourth a most wise Pope refus'd the approbation of that Synod thaâ— none might think it to be necessary and thought it sufficient to say prâ—sente Concilio How comes the Case now alter'd when we behold the Iesuites now crucifying the Decree of their King the Pope after all their former Hâ—â—anna's to him while he was mounted on the World as his Ass and after all their deaâ—â—ing of the World with Blessing him in nomine Domini and see them now putting but a reed of Infallibility in his hand and see his Scepter in theirs and see their fourth Vow to the Pope annull'd and what performance then can Hereticks expect from any Promises they make to them and might not the Iesuits wiâ—â— the salvo of a Protestation against the Inquisition or with a thousand Expedients if they had pleas'd allow'd Receipts from the Inquisition to rid the World of a Pestilence as frankly as Protestants use the Jesuits Powder against Agues and without intending more Honour to that Court than the Sacred Writ did to the Devil in recording for our instruction several things by him spoken And have not we a candid account of this Arcaâ—um in a very Ingenious Discourse lately Translated into English and call'd The Policy of the Clergy of France to destroy the Protestants of that Kingdom and writ in the way of a Dialogue between a Parisian and Provincial where p. 67 and 68. Le Cheise and the Iesuits Party are said to have effected the suppression of the said Decree in France upon pretence that it issued from the Tribunal of the Inquisition and that in the Draught of an Order of a Parliament in France for the suppressing the Publication of this Decree these words were put viz. Tho that these Propositions are justly Condemned and that Father Le Cheise caus'd these words to be raâ—ed out and has put in their stead That even the good things which come to us from the Tribunal of the Inquisition ought not to be receiv'd But if upon occasion of what was discours'd by that Author it be further said that the setting up of those unmoral Casuistical Tenets in France was the erecting a Pillar of ignominy against God I will ask if one who is revera an incompetent Iudge shall go to demolish any such Pillar set up against my Father and I have already own'd that that Iudge doth infallibly know the bounds of his Iurisdiction and have obliged my self to him by the foremention'd fourth Vow that what thing soever he shall Command that belongs to the profit of Souls and the Propagation of the Faith I will without any tergiversation or excuse execute as far as I am able for this is the Jesuits fourth Vow to the Pope shall I then be active in the hindring a Decree of this Nature given by this Judge from being executed at the same time I Protest against it shall I make no Protestation for the honour of my Father And do you think in this Inquisitive Age the Cheat of an Inquisition will elsewhere pass long since that Court that is used by ordinary Inquisitors for the torturing the Bodies of Christians and mutilation of the Image of God cannot be allow'd to shew severity to the body of Sin to the Image of the Devil in depraved Minds and that while your unerring Iudge of Law and Fact is in Person there praesiding Are not you that surpreâ—â— the Dictates of your own Vniversal Pastor such unreasonable Men as we may well pray to be delivered from All our Jesuited Papists must still expect Expostulations of this Nature Their Head was before at Rome and their Brains too but if they now make a Schism from the Pope himself they will come under the Denomination of Acephali the Name of some ancient Heretics that is the People without a Head unless they will own the Hydra of the Jesuits for their Head which it seems the Hercules of Rome could not subdue I believe many of them will consider what sure footing they have where they are while they see their Moses flying from his own Staff when made a Serpent I mean his Order of Jesuits and see the Collusive or Sham-Serpents of the Jesuits devour those of their Moses and Juglers by Deceptio Visus and lying to impose on the eyes of the World against the sence and reason of Mankind and even of the Pope himself and 't will be very ridiculous for them who have been cheated out of their own Religion to think that some who are the Jesuits Bubbles can cheat us of ours and that while they are grown Seekers they should make us loose our Church and that when the Spiritual Monarchy of the Pope is in a manner Run Down by the Republic or Society of the Iesuits they should think to cheat us of our King and Church and that our Religion can be run down by such Spiritual Outlaws and Rebels against the Pope himself and such as perhaps the Pope may in time be induced to oblige the World by suppressing after their Injuring all Morallity and the most vital parts of Christian Religion and the great avow'd use of his Power in the whole Christian Common-wealth by their Suppression of his said Decree I hope while the Fan is in his hand he will throughly purge his floor and esteem the Disposals of rich Benefices in France to be poor Regalia sancti Petri for him to vindicate in Comparison of the lives of the Souls of his Flock that he and all ingenuous Knowing Mankind Know must be destroy'd by such Casuistical Principles and without his doing which he cannot in the least deserve the Title of his Holiness For the determining the truth about such Principles he need not say as one of his Predecessors did about the Iansenian Speculations that he had no skill in Divinity A very little skill in Natural Divinity and such as may be had by the Reading a few Lines in Tully's Offices would accomplish any one with what would demonstrate the things allowed by the Casuists to be unworthy both of the Divine and
and that the Emperor should be more afraid of the Itch of his remote Subjects then of the plague of his nearer Foes and that the Jesuits disliking the Itch after new Doctrines in the Hungarians should be reputed good advising Doctors who counsel him to pass the time in scratching and lancing with his nails his own members when many Thousands of armed men are designing against his Life and Crown and when his Empire is brought to such a state that as 't was said of the Roman Empire when devolv'd on Germany that one might quaerere Imperium in Imperio that the danger now hangs over it of the German Empire being there sought too and all by the true Real Imperium in Imperio of the Jesuits there And indeed the biceps aquila which is the Insigne or Arms of the Empire might be properly of late referr'd to the divisum Imperium the Emperor had with the Jesuits whom to every abecedarian in Politics 't is known to be more his interest during the present grandeur of France to dismiss from his Councels than ever 't was the Venetians to deal so with the Ecclesiastics My Lord I should not have thought it good manners to have been so copious in the exercise of your Lordships Patience with the particularities of the unmoral or unmannerly doctrine of the Casuists as to the Point of Calumny but that I thought some Oyl of these Scorpions that you have not the leisure to extract out of their dead Authors might be useful to you in the repelling the venom of their stings sooner then you are aware And indeed as 't is observed that the Last bitings of some dying animals are most fierce so is it likely to be with their last efforts namely those of their Calumnies against Protestants which I believe will likewise be their derniers Resort and 't is therefore your Lordships and every Protestants Concern who is a Lover of Justice to know that you wrong'd any Jesuited Papists if in Capital Causes you did believe them not to practice in that case the Principle they profess namely the making Calumny venial a thing so expressly own'd in the 15 th Letter of the Les Provinciales that they were Call'd by some of the Sorbon on that account Quintadecimani in allusion to the Quartadeciman Heretics of old 'T is said in that 15 th Letter That this is so notorious a Doctrine of their Schools that they maintained it not only in their books but also in their public Theses which certainly is the height of Confidence as among others in their Theses of Louvain of the Year 1645. in these termes It is only a venial Sin to Calumniate and impose false Crimes to ruine their Credit who speak ill of us quidni non nisi veniale sit detrahentis authoritatem tibi noxiam falso crimine elidere and this doctrine is so much in vogue among you that you treat him as an Ignorant and Temerarius person who presumes any way to oppose it and presently after t is related how Father Dicastellus said that to prove that t was no Mortal Sin to use Calumny though grounded on absolute falsities against a Calumniator he had brought a Cloud of their Fathers to witness it and whole Vniversities Consisting of them all whom he had Consulted and among others the Reverend Father John Gans Confessor to the EMPEROR all the public and ordinary Professors of the Vniversity of Vienna consisting wholly of Iesuits and that he had likewise on his side Father Pennalossa a Iesuit Preacher to the Emperor c. But the aforesaid probable opinion of Calumny will never be received in this Age of Demonstration and since the old Roman Laws enjoyn a Iuramentum Calumniae an Oath of Calumny as was before remark'd whereby every litigant was to invocate God as Witness and Revenger about his not using any false proof Knowingly the Christian World in this Knowing Age will Know those who make the use of false proofs knowingly to be a Venial Sin and it must certainly appear ridiculous to Iudges and Iurors to give the least respect to such gamesters Oaths who trumpet forth that Principle that 't is a Venial Sin to use false Dice of the Law to make true ones of Protestants Bones My Lord I am not so unjust and uncharitable as to cast a brand on the Body of the Papists as not being capable of the Dignity of Witnesses I doubt not but there are in the external Communion of the Church of Rome very many Thousands who by Divine Grace are kept from Communicating with that Church in many of its Principles and Practices and that invincible ignorance may render many of them excusable and that the great mortifications and austerities and zealous devotions not only among many persons of their Religious Orders but of the Common people shewing them heroically Vertuous do entitle them to have their testimony in any matters of fact received with honour equal with that of the best Protestants And as to many of our Papists in England it must be with Justice acknowledged that their having descended from antient Families and having had ingenuous Education and plentiful Fortunes and their having seen the World abroad where they have observed many of the Principle of the Jesuits as much detested by Papists as they can be by Protestants and their generous inclinations to serve Vertue and Morality may well secure us from fears of their being imposed on by Iesuits to use little or great unholy Shammes and Calumnies for the good of holy Church a sort of Penance that must needs seem odious in Nature to well-bred Gentlemen and Men of Estates not tempted like little hungry Greeks to leap up to Heaven or down to Hell for bread under the which mean classe of Mankind according to my intelligence those Papists have generally fallne who have been famous for Shamming and Subornation as to the late Plot. 'T is therefore no wonder that Papists in the Low-Countries are not tempted to use any Shammes to promote their Religion it being necessity that compels men to turpitude and the very Alms-men there not being ad incitas redacti And against some of our English Papists being allowed to be dignitaries as to faith of testimony whom I have before described I shall never except But for any English Papist who is a believer of the Tenets of the Iesuits and some other Casuists to Expect to be believ'd against any that honors not their Society which none that upholds humane Society and would not have Mankind trick'd out of the Light and Law of Nature can do is to render a man irreverent to himself and his Maker and to shew his want of a Curator by the prodigallity of his Faith especially when he shall call to mind how Del Rio the famous Iesuit affirm'd that the Dominicans ought not to be allowed as witnesses against the Iesuites a charge that Guymenius p. 127 128. in vain Contends to evade But this their dernier
the causing each of them to be with the darts of Calumny and obloquy forever stuck round like the figure of the man in the Almanac but how foolish Father Parsons was to write this when the Protestants had the Ball at their foot and when he could not be sure that the Papists would ever arrive at the state to have it alwayes at theirs let any one Judge He had before used that rhetorical expression that so the Ship be well and happily guided I esteem it not much important of what Race or Nation the Pilot be but he was extremely impolitic by so early and public an alarm to notify it to many who thought that embarqued in the Civil Government of a Prince of any Religion they might be safely transported from this World to the Next that Popish Masters of the Ship have determin'd before-hand to throw all heterodox Passengers overboard and their own Oaths and engagements to them likewise But what ever person takes a promissory Oath with an intent of not keeping it may well be Concluded as actually guilty of perjury in the Court of Heaven as he who knowingly takes a false assertory Oath They have both equally presumed to try by solemn lying to weather the fear of Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence and both their assertory and promissory Oaths are of equal weight in the ballance of humane judgment And because I think the Argument will hold from the falsity of their Oaths promissory in this their dernier Resort aforesaid to the obtaining the Worlds Sentence against the truth of their Oaths assertory I shall entertain your Lordship with an instance of one of the Church of Rome of whom it may be said that a Greater than Father Parsons is here to vindicate the making of Oaths promissory with an intent of breaking them and 't is Pope Clement the 8 th of whom Danaeus saith in his Chronology of Popes that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ' O Politician as I may say of whom D'Ossat in his Third Book Letter 81 viz. to Villeroy in the Year 1597 speaking there how he had discover'd the Popes Inclinations that the King of France should break with England and that he told his Holiness that the King 's making a particular profession to keep his word would not suffer him to break that Alliance that had been so lately renew'd and sworn saith that the Pope thereupon reply'd That that Oath was made to a heretic and that his Majesty had made another Oath to God and the Pope And further mentions what the Pope had told him at other times and in the precedent audience That Kings and Soverain Princes did permit to themselves all things that turn'd to their profit and that none blamed them for it or took it ill from them and alledged to that purpose a Saying of Francisco Maria Duke of Urbin who was wont to say That if a plain Gentleman broke his word he would be dishonour'd by it but that Soveraign Princes for Reason of State without any great blame might make Treaties and break them and Mentir trahir toutes telles autres choses i. e. Ly and betray and do all things of that nature whereupon saith D'Ossat I had but too much to reply to that but I did not think it my duty there to stay my self in a place so slippery But toward the close of the Letter he adds By what is abovesaid you see tho the Pope has no disrespect for the King of France nor any love for the King of Spain yet the hatred that he has for Heretics transports him so far that he lets fall from his Mouth tho under the Name of another some pernicious Maximes unworthy of an honest man and that the Pope accounts all ways good for his Majesty to break with his Allyes because they are not Catholics altho those ways are infamous I am so far a Concurrer with that Pope as to think that according to the Law of Nature and Nations the Oath and Promise to the first of any Prince's Allies is most obligatory and therefore the Pope doth very honestly notify his opinion that Harry the 4 th intended not to keep any promissory Oath Contrary to that made to God and himself But the Pope mistakes the factum of that Great Prince's Oaths and 't is for the honour of the Roman Catholic Religion that it has left to Posterity so great an instance of a Protestant Prince turn'd a Papist and Continuing kind to the persons of Protestants But they owed no thanks to the Pope or Iesuites for his making or keeping Promises and Alliances with Protestants The Bohemian History tells us how Ferdinand about the Year 1617 before he was possest of that Crown did by Oath bind himself that Matthew being alive he would not meddle with any of the affairs of Bohemia much less with Religion but immediately after his Coronation he going into Moravia to receive homage the Iesuites erected at Olumacium a Triumphal Arch and painted on it among the Arms of Austria the Lion of Bohemia tyed to it with a Chain and the Eagle of Moravia with a sleeping Hare lying with open Eyes and this Emblem writ under it I have practiced But the Year following a new erected Academy of Iesuites spoke out in Print that tho Ferdinand at his Coronation took an Oath to the Heretics yet first he left it in the Vestry of the Church that he would not suffer Heretics to prejudice the Rights of holy Church But I believe I may without offending any Candid Papists say of that Pope that when he discours'd as that Letter mentions the glory of his Infallibility shined not out of his Mouth as Porphry said that Plotinus his Soul did when he spake The Story is trite concerning a Popes Excommunicating a Bishop of his Church for owning that there were Antipodes but there is a sort of greater Excommunication that any Jesuited Papists are to expect that are the Antipodes to ingenuous Mankind and who make Assertory or Promissory lying to be venial or lawful and that is thus to be excluded from the Communio fidelium tho without the Ceremony of lighting Torches and extinguishing them namely by Gentlemens forbearing to keep them Company and esteeming them worse than Publicans or Heathens and accounting it neither safe nor honorable to Correspond with the Enemies of Mankind and this is the Sentence namely that of a kind of Civil Excommunication or seclusion from ingenuous mens Conversation that they are likely to obtain in England after all their charge and pains in their dernier Resort and the having seen the birth of their Plott confounded and the after-birth of it namely its Shams thrown away Since No injury wounds so much as a Contempt and since they by trampling on our Understandings with More pride than ever Bajazet walk'd over the dead heads of Christians affect to try to bring us implicitly to believe their Shammes they are to thank themselves for our not
then in the world had put a period to the night of ignorance in which the Beasts of Prey had domineer'd and to their Monastic denns themselves The enlighten'd part of mankind was weary of growing pale among papers and sometimes red hot with arguing about terms of art and all those barbarous too that had formerly hid the God of nature and would no longer account implicit faith the only justifying one and could not more esteem the imposing of such a blind faith commendable that was made previous to mens quest after pabulum for their Souls then that practice of the boy of Athens who did put out the eyes of birds and then expose them to fly abroad for food The Learning then introduced into the world shew'd that the hierarchical grandeur of the Roman Church was not extant formerly in the learned times when the old Roman Empire flourish'd but was contrived in the times of ignorance between the Bishops of Rome and the Leaders or Princes of the Barbarians and that it had its beginning from the Inundations of the Northern people so that with Mr. Colemans leave by the way Popery may be call'd too a pestilent Northern heresy and that to the end that those Barbarians might not find out the original of the papal power and see how narrow the stream of it was at its fountain when every Bishop was call'd Papa as every woman is now with us call'd Madam and Lady that the Pope by affronting the Emperors power effected a strangeness between the Greeks and Latines by means whereof the Barbarians being brought up in prejudice against the Graecians neglected their Language to the decay whereof in the world not only the decay of the purity of the Latine Tongue may be imputed but also of History Geography Geometry skill in antiquity and even the worlds not knowingly then conversing with the Latine Fathers It was in an age of non-sense when a Canonist venturing to be a Critic told the world concerning the Greek word Allegoria istud vocabulum fit ex duobus vocabulis ab allo quod est alienum goro sensus and when an old Schoolman Thomas de Argentina thus gave the derivation of latria istud vocabulum fit ex duobus vocabulis à La quod est laus tria quod est trinitas quia latria est laus trinitatis But the very understanding of two ordinary Greek words namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal priviledges in ecclesiastical matters to the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople allow'd by a General Councel that were obvious to every enquirer into history did quite blow up all pretences of the Popes supremacy and one versicle in that long unknown Greek Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. Luke 24. 47. which shews that the teaching of Repentance and remission of sins in the name of Christ by his own order began at Ierusalem did surprize thinking men with amazement when they heard a Pope and General Councel calling Rome the Mother and Mistress of all the Churches and anathematising all who think otherwise and saying further extra hanc fidem nemo potest esse salvus for this the Trent Councel did Thus then the abolition of the papal power here brought the world at the first step out of a blind Chaos into a Paradise of Knowledge and help'd Christians to demonstrate to themselves and to Jews and Pagans the truth of the Christian Religion for the certainty of the doctrine of which during that time of papal darkness the world had only the assertion of the present age that call'd it self the tradition of the Church but by the introduction of the Greek Tongue and other learning Christians had the sense of the Greek and Latine Fathers and those historical Records that brought down to them the certainty of the Miracles that were wrought in the founding of Christianity from the Primitive Christians who saw them 'T was the restoration of learning in general help'd them to say with Tertullian fidem colimus rationalem and with St. Paul I know whom I have believed and without the introducing of humane learning the Protestant Religion could no more have been advanced to its height in the world then men can be perfected in Astronomy without the knowledge of Arithmetic Luther came into the field arm'd with the Knowledg both of the Greek and Hebrew Tongues when he was to contest with the Errors of the Papacy and he having for his Antagonist Cardinal Cajetan who was the Legate in Germany and an eminent School Divine and who made a home thrust at Luther out of the Scripture according to the Vulgar Latine translation Luther told him in plain terms That that translation was false and dissonant to the original and hereupon the Cardinal thô he and the Papacy too had one foot in the grave Cato â—like fell eagerly on the studying of Greek that he might be able so confute Luther and his followers out of the Scriptures and was put to it to make his weapon when he was in the field And can any one think now that in this present state of England when we see so many that are Critical Masters of Experimental Philosophy and who by means of the great useful pains formerly taken by Erasmus Sir Thomas Moore and others in restoring Philological Learning have now entire leisure to devote their Studies to the substantial Knowledge of things and whose Motto is Nullius in verba and who know that if they would have every one trust them they must take nothing on trust from any one and who know that since truth doth always sail in sight of error they must all the way go sounding by experiment I say can any one think that it was less easie for the Sun to go back Ten degrees on Ahaz his Dial then 't is to make this Age run back to implicit faith and ignorance and barbarisme And is it to be thought that men who weigh Silver in Scales will not weigh Gold I mean not examine notions of Religion with care when they are so cautious in others Can we think that men who will not part with those Notions that salve the phaenomena will quit those that save their Souls and especially considering the proverbial addiction of the English genius to Religion and considering too that men by long use and Custom have been habituated to the profession of a rational Religion and that it can plead here a hundred years prescription It is certainly more easie to unteach men the use of the Sea-Compass in Navigation then the use of Reason in Religion and the inclination of the Needle to the North is not likely to be more durable then the tendency of mens affection in England to the Northern heresy so call'd and it is more easie to teach all Mankind the use of Letters then to unteach it to any one man and when the temper of an inquisitive Age is like a Trade-wind carrying men toward Knowledge and toward a rational Divinity they may
business of England and in case of a Prohibition to any mans little Court of Conscience in that cause he will certainly give himself a consultation The very humour of the English Nation long hath and still doth run against what they think but like Popery or makes for it and that with such a rapid current of Antipathy as is never likely to be stem'd and nothing is more out of fashion then a kind of Sir-positive or Dictatorian humour in common discourse much less then will a dogmatical Popes infallibility ever be digested here while he makes himself a St. Positive The gentile humour of the Age here that abhorrs hard words as loathsom pedantry will never be reconcil'd to one certain long hard word in Popery namely Transubstantiation nor to another namely Incineration or burning men for not understanding the former word according to the style of the Historian Imperator aegrè tulit incinerationem Johannis Husse and people will account their Protestant Bibles more agreeable to them then the English one published by the Colledge of Doway where the Translator studied for hard words in the room of plain ones as for the Passeover phase for foreskin praepuce for unleaven'd bread azyms for high places excelses and other such words we have in the English Rhemish Testament viz. exinanite parasceue didragmes neophyt spiritualness of wickedness in the Celestials In our Busy English world while men are most yary after profit and pleasure and the study of things if very few or none can be brought to learn the universal real character and which would tend to the propagating Real Knowledge among the Nations of the World accordingâ—y as the excellent propounder of it in Print with great modesty saith in his Epistle dedicatory that he had slender expectation if its coming into common use our Ingeniosi or Witts which all men pretend to be now as they did in the Late times to be Saints tho yet as few are Witts now as were Saints then will not care for troubling their brains with the studying of the Religion whose pretended universality appears but a kind of universal character and not real and tending to obscure the knowledge of things in the World. If they should see here a Religion that was full of pageantry and seem'd to be wholly theatrical they would think it was as much their birthright to censure it as 't is to be eternal talking Critics in the Pit to damn Playes and would think two Supremes in a Kingdome to be of the low nature of two Kings of Branford and rather then part with their money and stake down their Souls for seing such a Moral Representation of an absolute spiritual and absolute temporal power on the stage of the Kingdom they would be too apt with Mr. Hobs to thrust the whole Nation of Spiritual Beings out of the world I mean rather then they would be to their faces cheated and harras'd by a spiritual power and our people inspir'd with witt as well as those with the zealous spirit of Religion would cry out conclusum est contra Manichaeos I and against the Schoolmen too I mean our Romanist Manichaei who make two summa Principia in every State. In this age where the lower or Sixth rate Witts do so over-value themselves on turning every thing into ridicule the Mass would have here a Reception according to what the gloss in the Canon Law observes that when a place had layen long under an interdict the people laughed at the Priests when they came to say Mass again Nor would any Papal interdiction unless it could interdict us from the use of Fire and Water be of any moment The World would now laugh at any Prize that should be play'd between the Two Swords the very glossator on the Clementines saying occasionly that resipiscente mundo the World being grown wiser there must be no longer striving for both Swords And any one that would obtrude on us gross exploded errors in Church or State will appear as ridiculous as St. Henry the Dane who as the Martyrology mentions when worms craul'd out of a corrupted Vlcer in his Knee put them in again My Lord I will further offer it to your Lordships consideration That if it be found so hard to keep up the external polity of the Church of England thô in it self so rational and so meriting the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the Twenty years discontinuance of it insomuch that Dr. Glanvile in the first page of his Book call'd the Zealous and impartial Protestant hath these words the first occasion of our further danger that I shall mention is the present diminution not to say extinction of Reverence to the authority of the Church of England c. and he p. 4. writes largely to that Effect what quarter can Popery expect here from an Age of sense and reason when it should break in upon both after the forementioned Hundred years discontinuance According to the foresaid Argument of the Bees for the Popes spiritual Monarchy we see it improbable for him ever to bring us to a Rendevouz in his Church again for the sad experience we have had of the Sects here that left the Hive of the Church of England not gathering together into any one new Hive but dividing into several swarms and hives and never returning to the old may shew the Hive of holy Church how little of our Company 't is to expect Having said all this about the mists of Popery being to contend with knowledge in its meridian I think I shall comply with the measures taken by our Philosophers in this Critical Age in founding their observations upon Experiments if I further add that the former Experiments England hath had of Poperies being pernicious to its external Polity and Grandeur will perpetuate and heighten the fermentation in the minds of our angry people against it All our Monkish Historians do attest the experience our Kings had in being bereav'd of great Sums of Money while they enrich'd the Pope here by giving him the Office to keep the Theological Thistle which he Rail'd in with so many censures and distinctions and non obstantes that our Kings could not pass to their Palaces but by his leave and on his terms An English King then was but the Popes Primier Ministre and yet paid great wages too for the being a Servant to the Servus Servorum King Iohn used to say That all his affairs in the World were unprosperous and went cross and untowardly after he had once subjected himself and his Kingdom to the Church of Rome His words were Postquam me mea Regna Romanae subjecâ— Ecclesiae nulla mihi prospera omnia contraria advenerunt And 't is obvious to consider on the other hand what a great figure Henry the Eighth made in the World after he had manumitted himself and his Kingdoms from the Papal Usurpation And how he held the Balance of the World in his hand and trod on
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
the Earth and scandals to Heaven I mean all Religion-Traders whether Popish or Fanatical those vilest of Nominales who cheat in nomine Domini and such likewise who disquiet States by assuming the Trade of World-menders and everlasting Propounders that are like busie Insects flying in the Eys of Mankind and whom Sir E. Coke in the 85. Ch. of his Institutes which is entituled against Monopolists Propounders and Projectors deservedly brands and Atheists that would reform a Church Bankrupts in their particular Trades that would advance Trade in general Defiers of Justice who would amend the Law and wasting that time as Censors of the Manners of Kings for not paying their Debts which they should employ in acquiring Assets to pay their own In fine Undertakers to Cure Church and State as Confident as the Quack who said in his Bills He Cureth all Diseases both cureable and incureable All these sorts of men whose Trade is talking and whose talk is cheat will only come to be Bankrupt by being heaved out of all places by the Generations of Useful Traders multiplying there Nature that has been long laying its Siege to such Idlers in places of resort will then at last carry on its works so far as to leave them no Earth to play their Engines upon and such unprofitable people will be as naturally extruded out of our Towns as are Women and Children out of Places besieged nor can all the humming of their Propositions procure them more continuance in such places of business then the noyse of Drones entitle them to a residence in the Hive and it will as little quit Cost to have them planted in our Cities as for a Gardiner that pays a high Rent to have beds for weeds Of the Improvement of great quantities of Land by Gardening the Ilands of Iersey and Guernsey are examples and we have a Pleasant and Profitable Prospect of such Improvement near our Metropolis and other Great Cities and I doubt not but England may flourish so as to become the Garden of the World and do as little doubt of any Course of time bringing the Pope again to say as Matthew Paris tells us he did Verè hortus Noster deliciarum est Anglia as I do of that honest Monk's sleeping till the Resurrection or Mr. Coleman's having any more Dreams of a Paradise in the Gardens of Wooburn 'T is hard for a Visionaire not to fancy any thing possible but he who shall pronounce that England can from its present improvement and populousness be driven back ad primordia rerum and that the many cultivated understandings in it and who have reduced Knowledge ad firmam by calculation can be reduced to the Calculation only of Beads and be imposed on like the Indians to part with their Gold for Beads and that half the Land of England now inhabited by three Millions of People as all estimates make to be the least that half of it contains will be delivered up to 50000 Regulars and to persons that the Laws in being allow not so much as a Foot of Earth for Graves and that it is not of equal detriment to a Country to have half the Land made unprofitable and become Bog or the like as to be long in perpetuity to unprofitable people and that such as make property their God which they who over value the things of this Life do and are the Majority of any Country will idlely sacrifice it to those real Impropriators who make but a Property as I may say of God I mean those hypocritical Idlers who only by a Religion-Craft without any service useful to Mankind claim a great Quota of the Profits of others labours and that when we are going on so fast toward the exactest culture by Gardening which excludes all Weeds the old inimicus homo shall find six Millions asleep to give him an opportunity to sow Tares and to ask half the Land for his pains I say he who shall pronounce as aforesaid is one that looks but at few things and so de facili shoots his Bolt and is one that we may think to be a fool without being in danger of Hell Fire and Holy Churches great work of the Conversion of three Kingdoms to the end that it may Convert half the Land again to its use is likely to prove as fruitless as the Christian endeavours to recover the Holy Land. There is such a strong Rampart of living Earth against the assaults of Popery in this kind I mean the Number of our Protestants and particularly of those employ'd in Tilling the Land that Popery cannot dissolve and let it pipe never so plausibly we shall be like the deaf Adder stopping our Ears by laying them against the Earth we are possest of My Lord They who have observed the Intervals of your pleasure when you have had some breathing times for retirement from the fatigue of Affairs of State know that the contriving the improvement of your Ground by Tillage and Planting and Gardening hath been at once your care and your delight And I believe Cicero's Cato Major doth not describe the pleasure of old Age in the improvement of the Earth with greater hight then your Lordship is able to do and your example in this thing may Crown both that of Tully and the Aged Hero's by him there commemorated for delighting in Husbandry and indeed it may be supposed but natural for old Age being so near the Earth its Center to move with a quicker sort of delight toward it and especially among Christians to whom the dull Earth Aided by the acuteness of St. Paul I referr to his similitude of the Corn is so kind and greateful for their culture of it as to Court them with an Embleme of their Resurrection and to teach them a surer way then Galilaeus had found out to Transplant the Earth into Heaven But now methinks to one that has so curious and perfect a Sence of this solid and manly pleasure that the Culture of the Earth affords as your Lordship the very Idea of England's Degeneracy from its thriving State of Agriculture to poor solitary pasture how unpracticable soever the thing is must necessarily carry some horrour with it to be imagined and the very telling it to you that some vain Popish Projectors would rob us not only of the Culture of Learning but even of that of the very Earth must give your thoughts a Nausea instead of such a Noble Extacy as fill'd the whole Soul of Erasmus who in his old Age in a Letter to Budaeus speaking of Sir Thomas More 's and other mens Works that did then begin to beautifie the World with Learning cryes out Deum immortalem quod seculum video brevi futurum Vtinam contingat rejuvenescere And as I am sure you would not desire to Renew your Youth like the Eagle only to live in an Age of buzzards so you know too much of the course of nature to wish your Life a day shorter for fear of the
longevity of Popery if ever it should call it self here the State-Religion for it can naturally be but a short dull Parenthesis of time in an Age of Sense and the Eye of Reason can see through the duration of it as well as through its absurdities and it can naturally be but like an angry Cloud that with the Eye of Sense we shall see both dropping and rowling away over our heads and shall behold the Sun playing with its Beams around the Heavens near it at the same time and nothing can be easier to you then to dye in the Faith that Popery cannot live long in England and to know that you are not to be compared to an Infidel though you should have provided for your surviving Family nothing but Abby Lands the which I believe may by a bold instrument of Eternity drawn by a small Scriveners Boy be effectually Conveyed to any Lay-man and his Heirs for ever I know that the present State of that part of the Land of England that was aliend from the Church is such that it bears not the price of years purchase it did before the Plott and that it is according to the common expression become a drug as to Moneys being taken up on it in comparison of other Lands and it is obvious to consider how much herein the Plott hath prejudiced the Wealth and Trade of the Kingdom in making so great a part of the Land in some regard comparatively useless to the Possessors but I likewise know that hereby Popery will be no gainer for that 't is apparent that the owners of it will be indefatigable in the use of all means lawful to bring Popery to such a State as shall make any men ashamed to say they fear it Tho Holy Church that everlasting Minor that Minor like Sir Thomas Mores Child that he said would be always one will be still labouring the Resumption of what was alien'd from it and hence I believe it hath proceeded that our Kings thô in the eye of the Law always at full Age have thought fit to learn from Holy Church the Priviledge too of being reputed Minors or Infants in Law for so the Books call them that upon occasion they may resume what was alien'd from the Crown and thô the hopes of such resumption would be a bait to help Popery to Multitudes of Proselytes yet the people imagine a vain thing who think such resuming practicable in England and especially at this time if the Calculation of the Ebb of the Coinage of England be as is contain'd in Britannia languens viz. from the foremention'd period of May 1657 to November 1675 near another nineteen years 3 238 997 l. 16s ¾ a Calculation that I think cannot be disproved but by the Records in the Pipe Office where annual account of the Money Coined in the Mint are preserved or by Ballances of Trade made up from that time whereby the exportations eminently preponderating what is imported would evince what considerable quantities of Bullion have been Coyned or by our knowing that since that time Sterling Silver has not still obtain'd the Price of 5 s 2d an Ounce a price that it has not indeed fall'n short of in England about these twenty years past and therefore before the late Act for the Coynage could never be entertain'd by the Mint to be Coyn'd which was by its Law and Course necessarily restrain'd from giving for Sterling Silver above 5 s. the Ounce and which Rate and no more it did afford when the Ballance of Trade favouring us caus'd that vast Coynage mentioned in the former Ternary of nineteen years But in fine his Majesties Royal Goodness to his People in not only quitting what did accrue to him for Coynage but being at the expence of the Coyning the most exquisite sort of Money in the Known world and such as in Curiosity does equal Meddals is an indication of the Ballance of Trade not having employed the Mint sufficiently in making for his Subjects the Medium of Commerce and for the depression of the Trade not only of the English but of more then the European World the Usurper Cromwel is to be justly blamed who not long after the wounds England had felt by the Munster Peace did harrass us by his fantastick War with Spain which not only impoverish'd England but the Trading World and forcibly obstructing the Returns of the Spanish Plate Fleets did particularly put both Spain and France under a necessity of making that Peace that gave the French Crown its leasure to trouble the World. But let any one judge then how ridiculous it is to suppose that the Trade of the Nation must not as I may say shut up Shop if half its wealth should be again juggled into the hands of a few Ecclesiasticks and the old Trade between England and Rome be renew'd of giving the Pope Gold for Lead It must indeed be acknowledged by all who have conversed with History that the absolute and unbounded Power with which the Eastern Monararchs Governed their Kingdoms did not more require an excessive share of the publick Revenue to feed standing Armies then Priests who with their Idols and Superstitions and Crafts did awe and delude People into obedience but as in orderly Commonwealths there is no need of such an immense Charge for Artifice to make men obey themselves so in our Constitution of the English Government it being justly to be supposed that we have all the desireable solid and substantial freedom that any Form of Government can import besides the insignificance of the name of it and insignificant we may well call it who remember that our late real Oligarchists took not only the name of God but the name of a Commonwealth in vain and are to the envy of Forraigners and shame of our former Domestick Propounders blessed with the Soveraign Power of a Great and Glorious King over a free and happy People as the words of the Royal Martyr are in one of his Declarations it may be well said to any one who shall talk of giving half the profits of the Realm to use Art and Imposture to make Members obey their Head so constituted quorsum perditio haec But in a word to come closer to the Case of Popery any one that would have half the Revenue of the Kingdom given to Impostors for the making a Monarch only half a King or King but of half his People and for the tricking both him and them into a blind obedience to a Forraign Head and for the making a Forraign Power Arbitrary and absolute is a very bad Land-Merchant and knoweth not the use or value of the soyle of England and will never find the half of 25 Millions of Acres sold for Chains and Fetters and will be put to the trouble of taking out the Writ de idiota inquirendo against at least three Millions who have already out-witted him and will never think a Forraign Minor and whose concessions are resumable fit to be
in that Quarter to put an end to that which begins in Nomine Domini and that they will not be the rather willing so to do in regard that the North made the World feel the Malignity of both those Proverbs by its old well-meant charity to the Bishops of Rome And since in the days of Popery here in Harry the 8th's time it did pass in Rem Iudicatam that the Pope had no more power over us by the Scripture then any other forrain Bishop it cannot now but seem ridiculous to scruple whether he can thence claim more authority here than any other forrain Prince and he who was exploded here formerly when the Critical Spectators were not so many for having ill acted the part of a King on our stage of the World would be thought mad for personating one after the Play is over Thus too in a less people World Bartolus the famous Lawyer pronounced it to be Haeresie to deny the German Emperor to be King of the Vniverse the which any one would now account Madness to affirm And if in France hundreds of Years ago its Monarch greeted the Pope with the terms of fatuus amens for claiming a Supremacy in Temporals there 't is impossible he can be otherwise thought there now prosecuting a claim to Supremacy in things Ecclesiastic for even his pretensions to that the Clergy of France have damned in their Declaration by setting a General Council above him and which Declaration the great Monarch hath there ratify'd by a perpetual and irrevocable Edict And 't is but with a Consonancy to the nature of things that the Papal Infallibility should be concluded against in that Declaration and since as the Author of the Policy of the Clergy of France relates the Roman Catholick Church there doth so much swarm with New Phil sophers there call'd Cartesians and Gassendists whose new Philosophy has been there by Zealous Catholics observ'd to have ruin'd the mystery of the Real Presence for so the words are in that Book 't is no wonder if the growth of the Messieurs les scavants encreasing with the Populacy of that Realm makes any man's belief of his infallibility pass for a degree of madness accordingly as Mr. Hobbes Chap. 8. Of Man well observes that excessive opinion of a man 's own self for Divine Inspiration and Wisdome becomes distraction and giddiness and this probably may be the final result there of the late fermentation about the Regalia c. and the Pope be tacitly thought so as aforesaid and his Power there insensibly evaporate and without any visible distrubance given to it by the ratio ultima Regum for no prudent person would declaim reproachfully against any of a quiet Phrensy or molest and vex such a one tho living near him and would much less project the disgrace or mischief of such an one living at a great distance tho he should assume to himself bigger Titles than ever the Kings of India or Persia did and call himself Son of the Sun or Lord of the Sea and Land or like some of the Roman Emperors challenge Divinity or be styled Dominus Deus noster Papa And thus may the Pope quietly go on longer to call himself Monarch of the World without being call'd Names for it in France just as the Dukes of Savoy style themselves Kings of Cyprus without any gainsaying from the Turk who likewise did not menace the Pope for causing the Brother of the Vice-Roy of Naples to be in Rome proclaim'd King of Ierusalem nor when that Gentleman in Requital of that favour from his Holiness caused the Pope to be in Naples proclaimed Caliph of Bandas was the Mogul aggrieved thereby And thus probably too will the Enthusiast's who assert a Millennium or Universal Reign of Christ on earth with that quietness and gentleness that the ancient Fathers before the first Nicene Council did pass off the Stage of the World but it will seem ridiculous not to bind such Fifth Monarchy Men in Chains as Mad-men who have in England and Germany endeavoured to biâ—d Kings so and Nobles with Fetters of Iron and who would again make Convulsions in the State by the Diseases of their minds as once Mahomet's Epileptic Fits shook the World and who by promising us a new Heaven and a new Earth would confound the old and only give us a new Hell broke loose But the World will not now be blunder'd into Confusion by such wild Reformers In the Book of the Apocalypse of which Bodin tells us in his Methodus ad facilem Historiarum Cognitionem that Calvin's Opinion being ask'd he answer'd Se penitùs ignorare quid velit tam obscurus scriptor it must be confessed that the Majesty of the Style is agreeable to that of the rest of the holy Text and that the predictions of the future State of the Church and of its splendor in the World are not grosso modo utter'd or attended with any irregularity but on the contrary that God appears there as the God of Order and applying all the exactness of proportion and number and its very fractions to the great things foretold After one Verse hath accounted the number of the Beast to be 666 the next mentions St. Iohn's Vision of a Lamb standing on Mount Sion and with him an hundred forty and four thousand The Bodies of the Witnesses are mentioned to be unburied three days and an half The 4 Angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour and a day and a Month and a Year for to sâ—ay the third part of Men. The Woman was to be in the Wilderness 1260 days and to be nourished there for a time and times and half a time Blood came out of the Wine-Press by the space of 1600 Furlongs There were Seal'd of all the Tribes of Israel 144000. And in the State of Babylon mentioned in Cap. 18th where the voice from Heaven is heard Come out of her my People though all the various Sects of Religion that thrust one another into Babylon will admit of no proportion in their revenge yet it is there say'd Reward her even as she rewarded you and double unto her double according to her works in the Cup which she hath filled fill to her double But near the end of that Book where the great Scene of The New Heaven and the New Earth opens and the Vision of the New Ierusalem is described a Golden Rod was given the Angel to measure the City and the Measures thereof are particularized And tho I pretend not to understand the meaning of any of these obscure passages of Scripture yet one thing seems to me there as Conspicuous as the Meridian Light namely That as the Divine Providence did found the Old World in Number Weight and Measure so it likewise will the foretold New One. The exactness of the Numbers described by St. Iohn in that Prophetick Book written in the Island of Pathmos hath assured us that his imagination was much above the Vapors that
fumed into Mens heads in several Islands anciently and made them Prophetically Fanatick as Gryphiander de Insulis mentions and in his Chapter there De Mirabilibus Insularum saith Alibi fatidici specus sunt quorum exhalatione temulenti futura praecinunt ut Delphis nobilissimo oraculo Homines eo Spiritu Correpti dementes ac fanatici dicti quod circum fana bacchentur But it is confessedly too true That some of the Expositors of this Book and particularly in this our Island did too long here Bacchari circum Fana and have therefore justly had the name of Fanaticks and may as justly expect that their Oracles should be silenced as the Delphic was and that any persons of a sober Party drunk with Enthusiasme will not be again allowed to make all things reel into Confusion Those likewise who did here more cum ratione insanire then the Fifth Monarchy-men I mean the Assertors of Presbytery and who by the pretence of putting the Scepter into Christ's hand projected to put it into their own will find the numbers of knowing men now so encreased that our World will be more averse then formerly against their offers to mend it by their assuming of Regal Power What well willers they were to the Mathematicks of stretching out on our Church and State the Line of Confusion as the Scripture-expression is and how they thought Confusion as commendable a thing as I mention'd Antony's thinking Sedition sufficiently appears out of Mr. Nyes Book I quoted before where the great Architectonical Rule for settling a Government in the Church is rendred to be the destroying its Government by Law Establish'd and he there names it viz. Tollatur lex fiat certamen and thereupon he saith p. 187. It was moved by some Parliament men Friends to Episcopacy when it was to be removed that it might remain till a better Government were concluded but on the other hand it was prudently considered how while that form stood and had the advantage of the Law there would be no freedom in arguing about it But I account that the great Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World as well as of a mans own Conscience is contrary to that of tollatur lex viz. that no man is warranted by any intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the Municipal Laws of their Countries When ever any man quits this Principle he hath made his first step from a Precipice he is fallen from the Pinacle of the Temple and has very presumptuously tempted Omnipotence to save him after he hath thus begun to destroy himself and Religion too and has to Heavens secret Will sacrificed it s Reveal'd The shaking of this Principle is as I may say the shaking of the Earth and as Aulus Gellius tells us in his Noctes Atticae that the Romans did not know to which of all their Gods to offer Sacrifice in the time of an Earthquake but did then only worship an unknown Deity this too will be the fate of Nations where the lex terrae is shook by Enthusiasts namely that too many people will not know what God to adore and their pretended Illuminations will only serve to conduct them to such an Altar as at Athens ground under the Subscription to the unknown God and if perhaps some Enthusiastick weak Brethren arrive not at the denomination of the Forts-sprits applyed in France to Atheists they will be abandon'd to a disposition to close with the next Hypothesis of Religion they shall meet whether that of Deists Papists or Muggletonians or Mahumetans as Bodin speaking of the Cause of several Nations being fixt in their particular soiles saith alii longo errore jactati non judicio elegerunt locum sed lassitudine proximum occupaverunt To this purpose our incomparable Bishop Sanderson in his Lecture de adâ—â—quatâ Conscientiae Regulâ doth with great weight and a profound pious passion reflect on the effects of the breaking the Establish'd Religion in England by our late Reformers and saith Stetit hic aliquamdiu sed non diu stetit effraenis hominum temeritas c. hoc fonte derivata audacia effluxit tandem in apertam Rabiem exivit jamdiu in furorem Anabaptiscum quamvis quo porrò progrediatur vix habet usque tamen progreditur indies nova quotidie parturit opinionum monstra ut nisi ex sacrosancto Dei verbo didicissemus firmum stare fundamentum Dei neque adversus ecclesiam Christi praevalituras unquam ex toto Inferorum portas omnino metuendum foret ne Vniversa Christi ecclesia Atheismi velut diluvio obruta toto orbe funditùs periret Little did many of our deluded Reformers when they broke the hedge of the Law think what Serpent bit them and as little did many of their well-meaning followers think that while their Pastors did speak the Cause of Religion so fair that at that time the very poyson of the aspes of Popery and Superstition was under their tongues for that No Principle hath in it more of the Popishness of Popery if I may so say in the resemblance of the aggravation of Sin by it self viz. the sinfulness of Sin then the legitimation of unjust things by holy ends and this too our last mention'd Bishop brands in his Praelectio secunda De bonâ intentione where having mention'd that a Cardinal telling the Pope in a Conclave that somewhat he propounded to be done was not just and that the Pope reply'd Licet non posset fieri per viam justitiae oportere tamen fieri per viam expedientiae he goes on thus Nimirum is thoc est sapere haec est ex Iesuitarum ni fallor officinis deprompta Theologia omnia metiri ex Commodo Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae sacrosancta dei eloquia qua lubet inflectere Nasi ad instar Cerei torquere distorquere invita Cogere in rem suam And too little do many who justly Complain of Popery's having supported it self by Arbitrary Power on Earth reflect on their having supported that Power against Earth and even against Heaven it self and that the fumes of their Enthusiasme do vainly try to erect a Pillar of smoke against Heaven as I spake before of the Iesuites Morals setting up one of Ignominy against it and that it is an unlucky part of the Arbitrariness of Popery to transplant some of its odious Principles among other Sects as the Devil can at pleasure transform himself into an Angel of light The general received notion of Superstition is that 't is a needless fear about Religion and there is no fear more needless and irrational than that of Gods being unconcern'd in its Protection the which to imagine is more unworthy of the Deity and a greater tendency to Atheism then was the delirium of Epicurus about God's Carelesness of humane affairs and in relation to which Tully in his De Natura Deorum having discours'd of one that deny'd
used then by some of our well-meaning Church-men who thought that the use of some Ceremonies more than our Law required would have brought the Church of Rome over to us ' T is aut Caesar aut Nullus that the Pope would be and he will here keep as many Subjects as he can since not able to acquire as many as he would And the truth is as the attempt of an excellent Swimmer to save one totally inexpert therein usually proves fatal so likely will the generous and charitable design of a Church of a rational Discipline interposing to save one of an irrational and that can do nothing by vigour of reason to bear up it self and is therefore meer dead weight Since the Epoche of the Popish Plot that the Press has been to all writing Mankind so much unrestrain'd the World hath seen little of the Papists Learned Writings or scarce any thing writ with Art and Wit except the Compendium and instead of proving in Volumes that the Church of England is no true Church or that St. Peter was ever at Rome they have extended all the Nerves of their Wit in Pamphlets only to prove that Doctor Oates is no true Doctor and that he was never a â—alamanca And I believe that as the asserting of Popery here per viam Thomae or in the way of the Schools is in the Course of Nature Eternally over so will the adorning it by the way of Curiosity of Wit or Fancy grow obsolete But here it is proper to be observed that in all the Conjunctures before mention'd and in those wherein our former Protestant Princes for deep reason of State have been most favourable to their Popish Subjects by the Relaxation of the Penal Laws and when some Papists made great Figures in the Court and got the Ballance of Court-preferment a while by stealth into their hands and that Holy Church being anew Whiten'd over with some temporary Prosperity many Proselytes did Flock to it as Doves to their Windows yet the Ground that Popery got then was but Made Ground and not natural and was too chargeable to be kept And as the vulgar have falsly imagined that a great Plague has happen'd in the beginning of every Princes Reign so has it been obvious to the more refined observers that in the Reign of every new Protestant Prince Popery has made a fresh essay to augment it self in the Epocha of a new Conjuncture And that as in the most Pestilential times of Mortality even in our Metropolis almost only the poorer sort of People are swept away by it Thus was it too in in those Conjunctures here when Popery boasted of its many Converts But Nemo decipit lumbos and Popery when pamper'd did but Counterfeit a sound strength and as Quintilian's words are Verum robur inani saginâ mentiri and was but in bad travelling Case by that washy adventitious flesh and soon tired in its furious Race while Protestancy had that permanent Motion which Dr. Iackson on the Creed supposeth the Heavens would have if God should move them in an instant and which if he did were he saith more properly to be called A vigorous permanency alluding perhaps to things seeming to stand still when they move fastest Dr. Twisse in answer to him doth to the Expression of a Permanent Motion with a mirth and raillery unusual in him apply that Verse of a Poet whose Horse being tired and not moveable by the Spur said to his fellow Traveller who Rein'd in his Horse to go easily Your Horse stands still faster then mine will go And thus raillery apart I do believe that Protestancy will stand still faster than Popery can go let it be never so high mounted And we may properly resemble the course of Protestancy in any Conjuncture to the Sun which enjoys its Natural Motion at the same time it suffers its Forced and according to Mr. Cowley's Expression doth at the same time run the day and walk the year And we may as properly resemble the height and greatness of Popery in any former Conjuncture and the greatness of Peoples fears of its Growth and Continuance to the dreadful Entrance and dull Exit of a Comet Many Comets have hung over our heads and lasted some considerable time that were bigger than the Globe of the Earth which as they appear'd on a sudden so hath that great Mass of Matter of which they consisted and which threat'ned destruction to the Earth by little and little dwindled to nothing or disappear'd And this hath been the Event of the Growth of Popery and over-growth of its Fears here and I believe will be in any Conjuncture that can come I believe that if such an extremely improbable thing should ever happen as that the Legislative Power should allow the Papists a publick place for their Devotion in every great City in England the very sight of their Ceremonies would encrease and sharpen the Popular aversion against their Church Du Fresnes in his Learned Glossary in three Tomes as to the Scriptores mediae infimae Latinitatis mentions the origination of the use and name of the Surplice and quotes Durand in Ration lib. 3. c. 1. n. 10. 11. for it viz. Eo quod antiquitùs super tunicas pelliceas de pellibus mortuorum animalium factas induebatur quod adhuc in quibusdam Ecclesiis observatur And cites many Authorities about its being used by the Clergy and while the Antient Monks lived upon the labour of their hands and wore such Leathern Clothes as labouring Rusticks in the Towns with whom they wrought it was but a necessary piece of decency when they retired to their Oratories to Worship God together to have that covering of Linnen that might hide the sordidness of their Clothes and so probably that Linnen Surplice appearing in it self decent and carrying with it more respect from the just Reverence those Innocent Ancient Monks attracted it came by that means first in fashion in the Church to be worn by the better habited Priests and being here enjoyn'd by the Laws of our Sovereign and therein declared to be a thing not in its own nature necessary it seems to me to be an uncivil humour in our Dissenters so much to quarrel the use of it and do suppose that the Civility of the French Nation appearing in the Protestants of that Realm who are here and to whom it is natural not only to comply with Princes but even their fellow Subjects in the use of all Ceremonies they expect to be treated with may instill such a humour of Complaisance into some of those here who were aggrieved at our Churches or as I may say our Kings Ceremonies as all the Learned Books of our Divines have not yet done But if after the disuse of our Ceremonies in the late Usurpation the sight of a Surplice doth fright them so much from our Church how would they be disgusted to see one with a shaven Crown with his Amice Girdle Aube Maniple Stole
most vital part Sincerity hereby in danger to be exterminated For as 't is a thing well known to Merchants and Goldsmiths and Mint-Masters that if the Par as they call it or exact Proportion between Gold and Silver be not observ'd in any Country either the Gold will carry all the Silver out of it or the Silver all the Gold so it may be affirm'd too That if there be not a Par or Proportion observ'd as to Religion and Profit or Wealth either the Religion of a Country will carry out all the profit or Proventus of it or the profit will carry out or exterminate Religion I will not therefore here Prophecy that the World will never but say that it can never be fixed in a quiet and orderly State and free from the Importunity and Sedition of Hypocrites till its Present State be such that Men can neither get nor lose by Religion And till the World recovers this Golden Age namely that Gold cannot carry out our Religion and People us with Hypocrites or our Religion Gold the World will be but a great disorderly House and scarce worth any Mans being Monarch over it As the Irish call their last Rebellion by the name of the Commotion so some have happen'd to call the Present State of Peoples Minds in England which is so disorderly by the name of a Fermentation and this Fermentation can never be over in our English World till there shall here be neither profit or loss by Religion and that no Man shall be more or less Rich by more or less Combining with any Party to cry up or decry any Religionary Tenets or Propositions One would wonder that since Religion and particularly the Christian with its Credenda doth Crown the reason of Man and likewise annex by the exuberance of the Divine benignity a Crown of Glory hereafter to the Believers that any Men should for their belief of Propositions not contrary to reason and wherein the credit of the propounder was supported by Miracles expect to be rewarded in this World a humour that hath been regnant even among Christians from the time of our Saviour's being on Earth to the present Age and a humour that so poyson'd the Iews of old that they thought it not Tanti to have their minds freed from the slavery to Error unless the Messias would have deliver'd them from the servitude of the Romans and because he did not and did decline the being made an Earthly King when the Iews with their Hosannas were tempting him to it they Accused him Capitally for saying That he was a King whenas it was not he but they that said it and they put him to Death reverà because his Kingdom was not of this World and a humour that would not quit the Stage when the first Christians did but boldly still faced the World as appears by the notion of the Millennium having been so much applauded by all the Fathers of the Church and the Christians before the first Nicene Council But methinks from the Example of the Christians of old who did Ambire Martyrium to such a degree that St. Gregory saith Let God number our Martyrs for to us they are more in number then the Sands as if the work had been too hard for another Archimedes with his Arenarius to Calculate the number of the Martyr'd Christians and one Author accounts that excepting on the first of Ianuary there is no day for which Records do not allow 500 Martyrs at least and that for most days they allow 900 and who did ennoble the Christian Religion by shewing to the World an Example of Contempt of Death and even of Life beyond that of the Ancient Romans I say from the Example of those Christians who did in shoals dye daily for their Religion Ours may if they please be taught the modesty not to expect daily livelihoods from it and to account they have very fair play if they do not lose their livelihoods by it 'T is moreover observable that under the Iewish Theocracy Providence had then so ordered things that no Man should get or lose by Religon The Tribes had then their shares of the good Land by lott and the Levites only had that affluent proportion of the Proventus of the other Tribes that I have before Calculated and which would have tempted many of the other Tribes to have march'd over to the Officium and Beneficium of the Priesthood had not God their Monarch provided against that by the confinement of the Administration of the Priesthood to one Tribe and its descendents by natural generation But as to the notion of getting or losing by Religion I shall recommend to your Lordships reading a small Pamphlet printed in two sheets of Paper in Folio and call'd The great Question to be consider'd by the King and this Parliament c. to wit How far Religion is concern'd in Policy or Civil Government and Policy in Religion c. On the disquisition of which a sufficient Basis is proposed for the firm settlement of these Nations to the most probable satisfaction of the several Parties and Interests therein and subscribed by the name of Philo-Britanicus Who the Author of it was I cannot learn but do easily find by the Book that he is a Man of great Acumen of thought and that Matters of Religion and State especially relating to this Kingdom have been very much thought of by him and that the Author was certainly neither Papist nor Presbyterian and so far from being a favourer of the Church of England that he doth interminis make the publick Maintenance of the Clergy to have been the Bone of Contention in these Nations p. 8. and there saith It will be found to stand on the same foot with Abbies and Nâ—â—neries and their Lands and there further as a propounder would give all the Church-Lands to the Crown and the Tithes to the People and then tells us That all Fears and Iealousies and Animosities on the account of Religion will be pluck'd up by the Roots That Author in p. the 5th doth very acutely observe That Popery hath two Parts the one is that which is meerly Religious that is which relates properly to Religion or Conscience and which is peculiar to them such as the believing of Transubstantiation Purgatory Adoration of Saints and Images yea and the superiority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churchmen all which and those of this kind may be believed and professed without prejudice to Civil Society and as being matters relating to Conscience come not properly under the Magistrates Cognizance the other part is the opinion of the Pope's Power over Princes and States his obsolving the people from their Obedience his giving them dispensations to kill Princes and destroy them and allowing them not to keep faith to Hereticks and such like which as they are destructive to Government are truly no part of Religion but a politick contrivance long hatch'd by the Bishop of Rome and his dependants
a flame of Zeal reflected in these words on the Queen her self Our posterities shall rue that ever such Fathers went before them and Chronicles shall report this Contempt of learning among the Plagues and Murrains and other Punishments of God they shall leave it written in what time and under whose reign this was done If the good Bishop had considered the vastness of Queen Elizabeth's Expences before mention'd in desending the Protestant Cause contra gentes he would have given her day to have built and endowed some Churches and to those expences before mention'd it comes into my memory here to add what I then forgot which is related in the Travels of Mr. Fines Moryson who was Secretary then to the Chief Governor of Ireland in her Reign viz. That she expended in 4 years time on that Kingdom a Million and one Hundred Ninety Eight Thousand Pound Sterling which Sum so laid out then on Ireland will seem the more considerable when by a late Report of the Counsel of Trade in that Kingdom drawn by Sir W. P. The currant Cash of that Kingdom is made to be but Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pound Sterling But this by the way and to resume my discourse of our Clergies neither getting nor losing by Religion I shall say that as the acceptable free restoration of the Church as well as the Crown to its Lands shewed that there was no fear of its injuring the Ballance of the Kingdom or hurting Religion by its weight so hath the following acquiescence of all dis-interested men in the same evinced that weight to be no gravamen In a Pamphlet called a Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country Printed in the Year 1675 generally supposed to be writ by the Earl of Shaftsbury and which asserts the Justice of the Declaration of Indulgence the Author in p. 5. speaking of the Church of England becoming the head of the Protestants at home and abroad saith For that place is due to the Church of England being in favour and of nearest approach to the most powerful Prince of that Religion and so always had it in their hands to be the Intercessors and Procurers of the greatest good and protection that Party throughout all Christendom can receive And thus the Archbishop of Canterbury might become not only alterius orbis but alterius Religionis Papa and all this Addition of Honour and Power attain'd without the least loss or diminution of the Church it not being intended that one Dignity or Preferment should be given to any but those that were strictly conformable The natural inclination in all ingenious Men not to cast an evil Eye on the Church Revenue appears in Mr. Marvel 's Second Part of the Rehersal transpos'd p. 146. where he saith I am so far from thinking enviously of the Revenue of the Church of England c. That I think in my Conscience it is all but too little and wish with all my heart that there could be some way found out to augment it And our ingenious and great Lord Chancellor Bacon in his certain Considerations touching the pacification of the Church of England hath with great equity decreed our Parliaments to be in some sort indebted to the Church Moreover that Gentlemanly way of writing used by our great Divines in a late Conjuncture against Popery and so suitable to the refinement of Wit and Reason in the Age and wherein without the Pedantry of unnecessary Words or Quotations or raising a dust out of the Learned Rubbish of the Schoolmen they generally with a manly Style and clear reason and skill at that weapon got the Sword out of their Enemies hand by the Argumentum ad hominem and shewed us that Popery and Implicit Faith were not Calculated for the Meridian of this Age hath I think made all ingenious Men Conformists in this opinion that if their Genius had been cramp'd with the res angust a domi their thoughts had not in their Books appeared so great and therefore I hope that all the well writ works of their hands and seasonable discourses against Popery at that time when it was ready to curse us and to rise up against our Religion will make all thinking Protestants to say Amen to that Prayer of Moses Bless O Lord Levi 's substance accept the work of his hands smite through the Loyns of them that hate him that they rise not again It will I doubt not appear to rational and thinking men that our little interloping Churches or Congregations that set up with their precarious Power and small stock of Learning or Revenue will no more be able to break the great Compacted Body of the Papal Church that hath the Monopoly of the Religion-Trade in so many parts of the World then a few interloping Merchant-men to break the Opulent Dutch East-India Company who have engross'd so much of the Spices of the World that sometimes they cause several Ships loadings of them to be at once consumed as knowing what quantity and no more will be useful to the World. And somewhat like that thing too the Polity of the Anglican Church in Harry the 8 th's time perform'd while it drove a Religion-Trade with Rome and yet consumed a great quantity of its superfluous Merchandize and the same thing hath been done by our National Church as to remaining parts of the Romish Superstition in succeeding times and indeed Superstition which is a kind of Nimiety of Religion is so incident to Humane Nature and is so destructive to the Polity of Churches and the substantial Commerce of Nations that it is worthy the Power and Care of Nations to consume it And considering that the Church of Rome hath still valued it self for being terribilis sicut castrorum acies ordinata it is a vain thing to contend with such a Regular Church Militant without our having of general Officers and as exact a Conduct or to think to have such Officers without Honourable Maintenance from the Publick For none doth go a Warfare at any time at his own charge When I think how in the Primitive times while a Cloud of Persecution was always over the head of the Christians that yet they strain'd themselves so much in Contributions for the Pastorage of their Souls that all the Pastors then were so far from losing by Religion that some were tempted to that Office for filthy Lucre as we may see out of Peter Ep. 1. Ch 5. Vers. 2. tho yet too so little comparatively was to be gain'd by all thereby that others probably undertook that Office by constraint as the same place intimates and that therein the Apostolick Prudence was conspicuous in ordering it upon the whole matter that the generality of Pastors then should not get or lose by Religion I may reasonably conclude that we who live in the flourishing and prosperous State of Christianity ought to provide that the meanest Pastor of Souls in England may live competently and decently by that
man certainly apprehended no reason of an additional Commandment Thou shalt not fire thy Neighbours house and had he been convinced that the Pope in his decrepit Age had made a Commandment for the firing of it and whole Cities and had so pronounced è Cathedrâ would probably have imputed the lingua dolosa and the caâ—bones desolatorii to his Doctrine and the smoak from that fiery Doctrine would have had the effect of opening his Eyes But as for Mr. Cressy's Idea of the Massacring any Incendiaries tho they had been tooâ—â— in flagranti if he had staid in his old Church I mean that of England he would have found any such thing sufficiently stigmatised by its Doctrine which makes the King to bear the Sword and that not in vain and allows not the Rabble to be a Terror to Evil Doers nor Hell to break loose for the support of Heaven and which inculcates Obedience to the Law of the Land for Conscience sake and even that Law permits none to Assemble in Arms against a declared Enemy but by the Kings particular Commission and he must therefore go to China or to Rome that will have a Street or a Town or the Vniversitas or Community therein punish'd for the pretended or real faults of particular persons Moreover the English Genius hath not in Story that I know of been tainted with Infamy for penetrating any thing of that horrid Nature except in the old days of Popery in relation to the Iews and the Lay-Rabble was then put upon it by the Rabble of Fryars and Monks who owing Money to the Iews were that way willing to confute their Creditors And since the time that that Great and High Judg of Reason as well as Equity and to whom the Custody of the King's Conscience was Committed and who hath held the Scale of Equity with as steady an hand and tender heart and as discerning and watchful an Eye as any of his Predecessors did place the dreadful Guilt of the Firing of London where he did at the Condemnation of the Lord Stofford and probably had satisfied his Judgment for the doing of it by Observations or Examinations of Passages that occured elsewhere rather then at that Tryal for there the Evidence did not rise clear and high enough for the occasioning that part of his Sentence and since the time that the People of England by their Representatives threw the Guilt of that Fire on the Papists and the Magistrates of our Metropolis inscribed it on the Monument the populace have been as calm and temperate in their judging of it and as perfectly free from resentments of Revenge against all the Papists in general or any one Papist in particular as if none but that poor angry Antiquary Mr. Prynn had censured them for it and whose Thunder the World being so long used to did so much despise that his popularity could scarce have obtain'd an out-cry for the killing of a single Mad Dog. I must confess tho by the reiterated Confession and by the Execution of Hubert a Papist it appear'd that he did set Fire to the House in London from whence its rage began and tho his Confessing of Peidelow to be one of his Accomplices in the Fact exempts it from being doubted that Papists burn'd London and tho after I had heard of that judgment of the Lord Chancellor and of the House of Commons and of the Magistrates aforesaid and was shewn that Papal Tenet by your Lordship I doubted not of the Justice of attributing in my thâ—â—ghts one part of the Guilt of the Fire to some Jesuited Papists and that it might be said with the same propriety of Speech that London was Fired by the Papists as 't was by Sir Walter Raleigh that Harry the 4 th of France was kill'd by the Papists yet I never thought any considerable number of the Gentry among our Lay-Papists would have practised any thing of that kind tho the Pope himself should have Commanded it There was a Book containing Observations on our late Affairs of Church and State Printed in the Year 1680 called the Arts and Pernicious Designs of Rome wherein is shewed what are the Aims of the Iesuites and Fryars c. by a person of their own Communion who turn'd Romanist about thirty years since and throughout that Book as he in general fortifies my observation of a Protestant when turn'd Papist not being able to abandon all Candour his mind was first nourished in so he doth it particularly p. 25. where having in Proposition 4th spoke of the Mischiefs we havâ— received from some Popish Orders and particularly that of the Iesuites he saith as followeth in Proposition 41 viz. Amongst which the late sad disaster happening to the City of London not to mention divers others of like nature happening in divers other places since if it were a Practice of any Humane Contrivance and not a meer judgment of God from Heaven upon us cannot reasonably be thought to have been the Project or Practice of any other Men then these and to have come originally from Rome and the Consistory there who beside the bad Principles already mentioned which legitimate such doings at all times that they judge it convenient for their ends were without doubt willing to signalize that year 1666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some in that Party who have had the confidence to affirm and as it were to predict that in this year Rome and their pretended Antichrist the Pope should be utterly destroyed That it appear'd a Practice of Humane Contrivance by the very Confession of the Incendiary is plain and that it was by the People in the City then suspected so I have said but so far were our plain English natures from charging it on any Lay English Papist that Mr. Marvel in his Growth of Popery Printed Anno 1677 having said That we may reckon the Reigns of our late English Princes by a Succession of the Popish Treasons against them adds And if under his Majesty we have yet seen no more visible effects of the same Spirit then the Firing of London acted by Hubert hired by Peidelow two French Men which remains a Controversie it is not to be attributed to the good Nature or better Principles of that Sect but to the wisdom of his Holyness who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special Mark of his Indignation I presume not to charge or discharge any sort of men about this Fact further then the Law hath done whether Papists or Priests or Fifth Monarchy-men for of a Conspiracy to Fire the City on the day it was fired on several of that latter Sect had been before Convicted and deservedly Executed for it as we must either Grant or Arraign the Justice of the Nation and therefore Mr. Cressy had reason to blame Mr. Prynn in some measure for concluding that the Papists were the only Incendiaries of the City
Civil Wars observes well That there were at first in the Parliaments Army a great many London Apprentices who for want of experience in the War would have been fearful enough of death and wounds approaching visibly in glistering Swords but for want of judgement scarce thought of such death as comes invisibly in a Bullet and therefore were very hardly to be driven out of the Field And now therefore should any Great Person descend to ask my poor Opinion of the proportion of the danger we are in of a Relapse into the Plague of War I would give it by bringing the Doctrine of Dulce bellum c. into use and application thus namely I would Calculate the number of the inexperts now here living and who were not living in the time of the last War a thing not hard to do sufficiently for my purpose and thus I essayed to do it the last year when I fancied to employ my thoughts on that Subject diverting my self with these Queries 1. What part of the People of England now living are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. Of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War 2. What numbers of those who lived in 1641 about which time the War may be supposed to have begun are now dead 3. What proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War for it may be said that perhaps War may be sweet to such surviving experts 4. The War of Ireland ending about the year 1653 how many may the number of such inexperts there be supposed to be 5. The People of Scotland being now above a Million as are the People of Ireland and the Scotch War ending at Worcester Fight September the 3 d 1651. How many are now living in Scotland that lived there that day and what may be the number of the inexperts there In order to the satisfying my self in these Queries tho I know that many do make the Civil Wars of England to end with the surrender of Oxford in Mid-summer 1646 yet because several Acts of War in England were committed long after 1646 viz. in Lancashire Kent at Colchester Worcester I supposed not the English War to end till 1651 about the same time with that of Scotland both Kingdoms as they are but one Island so intermixing and bringing mutual Calamities on one another and besides a few years at that distance of time would not much alter the State of this Case so then as to the first and last Queries I thus concluded that the People of this Island in the year 1651 were and always are about one half of them under the age of 16 before which time as they are reckoned unfit for War so may they likewise be thought inexperts as to the miseries thereof and the other half above that age and that of this latter half more then one other Moyety are dead in these 28 or 29 years which have passed from 51 to near 80. For if we reckon only Arithmetically without any Consideration of Geomerrical proportion in the Case which with reason enough the Observator on the Bills of Mortality takes in yet 28 ½ the number of years in 51 in which the said half are supposed dead and 27 ½ for the years of the other half surviving and fifteen for the Age of the Inexperts from 1651 makes 72 the full Age of Man so that the surviving Experts are not a fourth of the whole And again at least one half of this fourth either through forgetfulness by Age or Dotage or for want of understanding all their whole life time may be very well counted among the Inexperts also And thus the Inexperts will be above seven eighth parts of the whole People And if in answer to the third Query we shall add the Number of the Gainers by the War which perhaps some will estimate but small and of those who lost by the Peace and Settlement on the Kings Restoration with the Heirs Executors and Principal Legatees of both and to these three last sorts the War was so very sweet that they may very well be reckoned for the Equivalent of three or four or perhaps many times more the number of the other common Inexperts we may on the whole matter judging modestly conclude the Inexperts of all the former sorts not to be less then 9 10 nine Tenths of the whole People and to these also they who have spent their Estates and cannot well live in Peace may be properly added I satisfied my self as to the fourth Query concerning Ireland that it may bear at least the same proportion with what was asserted in relation to Great Brittain and tho the War in the former lasted some years longer yet there are other Considerations obvious enough that would more then ballance that As for the Query about how many are now dead who were living in 41 the Principles I have variously discoursed of out of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality may easily satisfie Curiosity therein I account that of the Lords Temporal in the Kings Long Parliament that sate the 8 th of May 1661. there were dead 77 at the Dissolution of that Parliament in Ianuary the 25 th 1678. And of the 26 Bishops that sate on the 8th of May in that Parliament only 2 were alive in the 25 th of Ianuary 1678. And of the House of Commons which sate in the 8th of May 1661. And consisted of about 520 odd Members there died during their sitting viz. in 17 Years and 8 Months 307 Members viz. in each year about 1 17 th part which is one in about 30 of the whole of that House every year And these things considered we may well conclude that of the Parliament that sate on the 3 d of November 1640 there are few living and I think that of that turbulent House of Commons scarce 16 are now living and that of the Assembly of Divines that met the first of Iuly 1643. all the Divines except 2 are dead The Sculls of many of those hot Spurrs of Church and State that troubled us so much on the Stage of the World have perhaps since diverted us in the Scene in Hamlet and no doubt but of the poor handful of surviving Experts of them the most considerate are not now considering how by any Projects to put the World either in Tune or out of it but are tuning their fancies to the still Musick of the Grave We see that many of the Sons of the Divines of that Assembly and of other Presbyterians are true Sons of the Church of England and are of the Clergy in it But tho I am no Concurrer with their Estimates that make the number of those who gain'd by the War to be small for as the Judicious Author of the Regal Apology Printed in the Year 1648 and by the
he pleased And there in Book 7th 't is said That the Pope on further application from the Ambassadors of Princes that that Clause might be damned as contrary to the liberty of Ambassadors and Bishops in propounding what they thought profitable those for their States and these for their Churches the Pope gave them good words about it but did nothing and Book 10th The Spanish Ambassador desiring the Retractation of that Clause and that otherwise the Council could not be called free and that its freedom was to be dated only from the time of such Retractation and that the Emperor insisted on its abrogation and that by reason of that Clause no German had yet come to that Council yet nothing was effected for its revoking and still the Proponentibus legatis stood as a Rock and all their Addresses dash'd themselves in pieces producing nothing but the froath of excusatory words from the Pope about it and in fine all that could be gained was in the end of the Council after that Clause had had its full effect and done all its Execution against the freedom of the Council and particularly of the Ambassadors and Bishops there and was like a Post-horse ridd to his Stage and had brought all the Cloak-bags with the Holy Ghost from Rome to turn it to grass with a Formal Declaration or Protestation contrary to Fact that the meaning of the Synod was not by that Clause to change in any part the usual manner of handling matters in general Councils c. A crying Con licensa to the Bishops and Ambassadors after the cutting of the Throats of their Liberties And now can any Opiniatre yet further think that a Representative of English Commoners will ever think those Republican Projectors of liberty who do bare faced cut them off from the freedom of their share in Enacting any thing but what another House shall propound and that nothing shall have the Sanction of Law but what enters the Stage with a proponentibus Patriciis or by the Proposition of any other House the Style of one of Cromwels two Houses and who do set up for Inventors in Politics by reviving the exploded Constitution of the Athenians among whom Anacharsis observed Wise men did consult and Fools determine But the days are pass'd and gone that gave People of subtle and uneasie Brains the leisure of digging in Politics further than the Center which whoever doth digs not downward but upwards and that Center I account the ancient lex terrae to be and he who hath got beyond that doth digging upwards destroy the real Foundations of Churches and States while he is laying imaginary ones But since according to the saying in hieme nil movendum men of Sense who love to be tampering with Physick in other seasons will in that be averse from stirring the humours and trying Conclusions on themselves and in the churlish State of the World abroad that is in prospect all State Empirics that would any where advise a change of Fundamental Governments will find an unruly Patient of the World and all our sober Political Virtuosi will be necessarily inclined to study how to maintain and support our old Government instead of projecting any new one And in order to the support of our old one I dare say that there will be no more suspension of Royal Aids on the account of the Arminian Controversie or the freedom of our Wills while we are busied in preparing to defend the freedom of our Estates and Bodies from Forraigners and securing both Prince and Peoples not being predestinated to ruine by them The Extinguishing the maintenance of the Clergy will not pass for a new Evangelical Light but the exactest provision for the Enabling Crown'd Heads to support their Civil Government and their Clergy and with the observance of equality and proportion in the same respecting the State of their Kingdoms will be worthy the thoughts of the most illuminated Doctors for as among the Divines it is on all hands agreed that from the 40th Chap. of the Prophecy of Ezekiel to the end of that Book the thing chiefly designed in the Portraiture of the great Vision of the Prophet is to represent the figure of Church and State under the Gospel so there is great proportion kept in the same and not only the curious colouring but the exactness of draught and design required in a great Historical Painting and no wonder if the same appeared so express'd on the Table of the Prophets imagination when God himself was pleas'd there to paint it partly after the exactness and proportion of the Iewish Oeconomy and with many Additions of Curiosity and to which tho a litteral interpretation is not applicable and on which tho no expectance of the Erection of another material Temple at Ierusalem or in Iudea is to be founded or of 12000 Reeds of Land for the Temple and Priests yet may it thence be naturally inferred that the preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and Priest and with respect to number Weight and Measure in the Future times of the Gospel was then the care and design of Providence The 45th Chapter that doth so nicely assign the Portion for the Prince and Priest ordains or rather predicts a Royal Patrimony for the Prince in the way of a ballance of Land as 't is said in the 8th Verse In the Land shall be his Possession in Israel and my Princes shall no more oppress my People and the rest of the Land shall they give to the House of Israel according to their Tribes The consideration of this may probably reforme the men of curious imagination who are still making the Metal of Government more fine than the Standard and thinking to leave out there the necessary Mixture of the baser allay that the frail State of humanity requires to make it currant and without which it would be too brittle for use and projecting how to make the Government of Church and State with ease to live upon nothing or on Taxes in a confused and blundering manner laid when the thought of an inspired Prophet in this Vision relating to the time of the Gospel the which is called by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews the time of Reformation applied all the exactness of Mathematics to the supporting both the Crown and use of the Keys by an ample and certain Revenue And as the great Tax of Augustus on the Roman World or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of Capitation or Pole near the time of our Saviors Birth served to confirm the Christian Religion in the accomplishment of the Prediction of Christs being born in Bethlem and to cause Ioseph and Mary's going thither a resembling effect in the Confirmation of the most rational kind of the Christian Religion I mean the Protestant do I expect from our Future Legal and Equal Taxes and as I mentioned my Lord Bacon's saying of the Parliaments being yet in debt to the Church since
Petition yet the Impartial Thuanus doth it and in Book 135. and on the Year 1605. going to relate the History of the Gun-powder Treason he saith Ad libellum supplicem pro libertate Conscientiarum à Majorum Religioni addictis i. e. the Papists in proximis Comitiis oblatum à Rege rejectum fama erat alium his proximis quae jam aliquoties dilata erant porrectum iri qui non repulsae ut prior periculum sed concessionis vel ab invito extâ—rquendae necessitatem adjunctam haberet Itaque qui regni negotia sub principe generoso ac minime suspicioso procurabant nihil pejus veriti in eo laborabant ut petitiones iis adjunctam necessitatem eluderent Verum non de gratiâ de quâ desperabatur decimò obtinendâ sed de repulsâ illà vel cum regni exitio quod minime rebantur illi inter conjuratos agebatur And as to the Puritans Petition to King Iames The Resolution of the Lords and likewise of the Iudges assembled in Star-Chamber shortly after doth I think refer to it in the 3d § viz. Whether it was an offence punishable and what punishment they deserved who framed Petitions and Collected a Multitude of Hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick Cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King that if he denied the Suit many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented where to all the Iustices answered that it was an offence finable at discretion and very near Treason and Felony in the punishment for they tended to the raising of Sedition and Rebellion and discontent among the People to which resolution all the Lords declared that some of the Puritans had raised a false rumour of the King how he intended to grant a toleration to Papists c. And the Lords severally declared how the King was discontented with the said false rumour and had made but the day before a Protestation to them that he never intended and would spend the last drop of Blood before he would do it I remember not in the Millenary Petition any such expression as the insolent intimation that thousands would be discontented if it were not granted but do on the occasion of this ruffianly way of petitioning by Papists and Puritans remember what Alexander ab Alexandro speaks of the Persians who worshipped Fire that they did once in their supplicating their God threaten him that if he would not grant their Request they would throw him into the water I was therefore no imprudent Act of the Nonconforming Divines who had been deprived of their Livings to publish voluntarily such a Protestation of their Tenets as aforesaid after the detection of the Papists Gun powder Treason Plot and by which Act the Government was diverted from putting such a Cautionary Test on their Party as was on the Papists by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Certain it is that both the Parties appeared very rude in the manner of their Petitioning In the Decrets where the Text saith that a thing is done Contra fidem Catholicam the gloss explains it to be Contra bonos more 's and so it may be said that both the Petitioners for the Roman Catholick Faith and for the others alledged Catholick Faith were injurious to each by their unmannerly Petitionings as well as to their Prince and their being both such frequent Aggressors against his quiet gave occasion for the Question to vex his Reign viz. Which were the worse of the two or whether they were not equally bad and so many may carelessly render them according to the saying Rustici res secant per medium What Bishop Elmore the Bishop of London thought in such a Case I have said and yet that Bishop as Fuller tells us in the Church History was a Learned Man and a strict and stout Champion for Disciplinâ— and on which account was more mock'd by Mar-Prelate and hated by the Nonconformists then any one And a great Son of the Church and Minister of the State hath judiciously in a publick Speech inculcated the different regard to be had to those who stray from the Flock and those who would destroy it Moreover a great Iustitiary of the Realm in the Tryal of one of the Popish Plotteâ—s took occasion to observe That Popery was ten times worse then the Heathen Idolatry And Dr. Burnet in a printed Sermon having said That in many places Lutherans are no less and in some tbey are more fierce against the Calvinists then against Papists adds like a strange sort of People among our selves that are not ashamed to own a greater aversion to any sort of Dissenters then to the Church of Rome I hope the Authority of that great Divine and excellent Person will in the point of this Comparison help to allay such a mistaken Aversion to some mistaken Dissenters I care not who knows the great deference I have to the judgment of that great Historian of our Reformation and whose History of which as the House of Commons has done right to by one of their Votes so likewise hath the highest Judicatory in England I mean the House of Lords by a late Order of theirs by which the Thanks of that House are given him for the great service done by him to this Kingdom and to the Protestant Religion in writing the History of the Reformation of the Church of England so truly and exactly and that he be desired to proceed to the perfecting what he further intends therein with all convenient speed c. As the words in the Iournal are My reading lately ten small printed Controversial Discourses between two Baronets of Cheshire near of kin to each other in which are many references to Historical Antiquities concerning the Illegitimacy of one Amicia Daughter to one of the Earls of Chester and my observing that one of those Authors blames the other for not better learning the duty to his deceased Grand-mother as his words are then by divulging the shame of her Illigitimacy and saith there is no Precedent in Scripture of any man that did divulge the shame of any person out of whose loyns he did descend except the wicked Ham and that the other Author thinks himself on the account of truth and for its sake to assert her Illegitimacy those many Tracts passed about that Controversy from the Year 1673 to 1676 occasioned my thinking that thus have some Writers that would take it ill perhaps not to be thought legitimate and true Sons of the Church of England took too much pains to prove the Birth of its Reformation to be illegitimate to the great Applause of the Papists and that our Reverend Historian of it did seasonably come in to Aid his Mother Church by publishing the very Records that would secure her from a blush on that account and leave that Mauvaise honte as the French call it to be Enemies and hath appear'd by his very laborious and judicious Writings to be a
Person as of very great Abilities so of a great and frank inclination to employ them even to the over-obliging a Country and which though naturally attended with envy from some must too be with acknowledgements from others of that Dignity and Authority that his mind is possessed of and such as Valerius Maximus speaking of as innate in Famous Men who have no extrinsic Authority saith of it Quam rectè quis dixerit longum beatum honorem esse sine honore And he who in the course of his History and his other Works hath appear'd so Impartial and Accurate in his Observations of Men and things may very well be supposed not to have been partial in his comparison of Papists and Dissenters nor do I think he receded from his usual close judging of things when in one of his Books he said that it is not to be denied that it were better there were no Revealed Religion in the World then that Mankind should by its influences be so vitiâ—ted as to become more barbarous and cruel then it would be if Acted by no higher Principles than those are with which Nature inspires Men. I will not with our Learned and Reverend Iudge undertake to compute how many times Popery is worse then the Religion of the Romans but this I will say that had I been in the Roman Senate and had there heard any one propound to them a removal of their minds out of that Coast of Religion which by the light of Nature lay open before them into the Region of the Iesuites Morals I would have said My Masters let us keep where we are and should have expected that the Reasons I would have urged for their so doing would have had the effect of the good Omen that happen'd in that remarkable Crisis when the Roman Senators were debating whether they should quâ—t Rome or remove to Veij and when a Souldier then coming on the Guard and his Captain being heard to cry out to him Signiser signum statue hic optimè manebimus occasioned their adhering to Rome I think that no Protestant who compares the Tenets of the Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time with the Tenets of Popery will prefer the latter before the former But it is not deniable that before King Iames's time and then and since many Puritans and Nonconformists have made great Schisms in the Church and disturbances in the State and that especially in some particular Conjunctures The great Epoche of 41 in England and likewise in Ireland will in our Histories preserve the Memory of the outragious Principles of many Presbyterian Divines in the one Kingdom and of Popish ones in the other but if any shall be so partial to the Papists as either to justify their Commotion in Ireland or to deny all part of the influence that Commotion had on ours here he will find himself a vain imposer on the World. A great inspector into our modern English Affairs I mean the late Earl of Clarendon hath in his Animadversions on Cressys 's Book against Dr. Stilling fleet said That nothing can be stranger then that Mr. Cressy should so magnify the general obedience of all Roman Catholicks that none of them was ever in Rebelâ—ion against the King or his Father when he knows very well and hath some marks of it that the whole Irish Nation very few Persons of Honour excepted joyn'd in Rebellion against the King but for that Rebellion neither Presbyterian Independant or Anabaptists had been able to have done any harm in England For the Scots Rebellion was totally suppressed and their Army disbanded before the Irish Rebellion begun It was that which produced all the mischief that succeeded in England and gave those Sects in Religion opportunity to bring in their Confusion to the destruction of Church and State c. But as to the Papists coming in for their share in the guilt of our Commoâ—ion here we have the incontestable Authority of the Royal Martyr who in one of his printed Declarations saith And we are confident that a greater number of that Religion meaning the Popish is in the Army of the Rebels then in our own and 't was there before said All men know the great number of Papists which serve in their Army Commanders and others The Author of the Regal Apology printed in the Year 48 in p. 36 answereth that part of the Declaration of the House of Commons that so unworthily râ—flects on his Majesty as to offering a toleration to the Papists in Ireland tontrary to his former resolutions which saith the Author was on great and pressing necessity which hath no Law and to that degree of necessity as the two Houses had driven him so the Consequences were to be set on their Score not his own yet even then in his Letters about that Affairs published by themselves he doth insist on it that the Bargain may be made as good as can be for him But I have seen other Letters from one of his Secretaries to the Irish which I am assured were true wherein where these expressions after expostulation of their delays in his Assistance He is inform'd that taking advantage of his low Condition you insist on something in Religion more then formerly you were contented with He hath therefore commanded me to let you know that were his Condition much lower you shall never force him to any further Concessions to the prejudice of his Conscience and of the true Protestant Religion in which he is resolved to live and for which he is ready to die and that he will joyn with any Protestant Prince nay with these Rebels themselves how odious soever meaning his two Houses rather then yield the least to you in this particular I should with extreme reluctance touch the Sores of these Sects who yet have both at several times given such deadly wounds to the peace of the Kingdom but that they are Nusances to the publick quiet in raking up the odious Comparisons of one anothers practices and that the Papists on the occasion of any of the worse sort of Protestants or Nonconformists being Convicted of Sedition or Treason a thing that may be expected from the degeneracy of Humane Nature to happen oftener from some of a Religion of so great Numbers then from a perswasion that has Comparatively but a handful of men for its Disciples just as accordingly perhaps where one Papist is hanged for Clipping or Coyning twenty Protestants are so â— are so apt to expect that the World should acquit the present Principles and former practises of that Sect from Disloyalty on their Out-cry that they are no Puritans or Presbyterians and as ridiculously as if a false Coyner Arraigned for the Fact should trouble the Court with a Plea and Noise that he was no House-breaker and but that on the detection of a Plot of Papists several persons that have in their publick Capacities done many Acts of Hostility to the Interest of the Kingdom yet entirely by being more
mind was there in the Divines that governed our Church in the times of the late Vsurpation when those Triers of Ministers would allow none to have a Living or Cure of Souls that asserted the Tenets of Arminius in Religion which yet carry a face of so much probability to be maintained that a man who having used his utmost care in the investigation of truth therein asserts them may claim it as his due by the purchase of Christs Blood that when he is required to deliver his opinion about the same his asserting it that way should not expose him to punishment And there is no Controverted Religionary Speculative Point of that Nature wherein there is among Learned Men probabilis causa litigandi and in some Cases too where it may touch too close upon our Articles and Homilies in which liberty of differing in Judgment is here either prejudicial to their Interest or common Esteem Thus tho all the Reformed Churches make the Pope to be Antichrist and particularly our Church of England in its Homilies hath done so our Famous Dr. Hammond adventured as he thought himself obliged in Conscience to publish it that Simon Magus was the man. The most judicious Comparers of times are sensible that there is now a more valuable libera theologia in England then was during the Usurpation How glad would many of the Independent and Presbyterian Divines then have been of the liberty to have taught their Flocks the Notions they then thought of importance as to the Divine Decrees tho they had been allowed to have so done only in Surplices or in Vests of Indian feathers or any habits imaginable The old way of arguing about speculative points in Religion with passion and loudness and being tedious therein is grown out of use and a Gentlemanly Candour in discourse of the same with that moderate temper that men use in debating natural Experiments has succeeded in its room and 't is accounted Pedantry for any one in good Company to pass for a Victor in Notions by having the last word and seeming a Baffler in dispute And the truth is our Divines and the Lay Literati having since the King's Restoration been more addicted to the Study of real Learning then formerly which requires quiet of thought in its pursuit hath brought noise out of Request I need not again mention the Obligation our Land hath received from the Royal Society in making so great a Plantation of real knowledge in it 'T was high time at last when the Kingdom was settled on its proper Basis to improve it with such strong and nervous knowledge that would be like the strong man keeping Possession in mens understandings during which either Poperies or Presbyteries Kingdom of Darkness cannot overthrow our Quiet There were in the Year 1599. reckoned in Christendom 2,25044 Monasteries and from whence all the great Revenue there bestowed on men to think sent not perhaps one Notion of real Learning into the World. But their professed business was to extinguish the light of Knowledge and not to increase it and that which they made their real Study was to find out Artifices to make Mankind fit still and quiet in the dark and to invent torments and punishments for those that would not do so and to ridicule those who pryed into nature and but looked toward Arithmetick and Geometry by the Name of Students of the black Art and Conjurers a humour that was not quite exterminated hence from the time of Fryer Bacon to my Lord Bacon for our pious Martyrologer mentioning occasionaly Dr. d ee the Mathematician called him Dr. Dee the Conjurer Thus Almighty God tho the first thing he made for the World in general was external light yet one of the last things he hath made or so much blessed the World with is real Learnings intellectual Light and even that whereby we so knowingly converse with his works of Nature and so careless was Mankind in considering the frame of their own bodies that Dr. Henshaw a late Ornament of the Royal Society hath truely observed it in his Book of Fermentation That within the Compass of this last Century the knowledge of Anatomy hath been enriched by a full third part at least Mankind was so busie in murthering one anothers bodies of old under the Notion of Christians and afterward as Hereticks that it had no leisure to dissect them and was wholly taken up by studying experiments of Cruelty equal to the making of live Anatomies of each other And tho the Holy Iesus came into the World not to destroy mens lives but to save them and for that purpose tho the Divine Philanthropy chose that time for his coming into the World when the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was arrived at a greater heighth then ever before yet by the depraved nature of man perverting and corrupting the use of Religion the fantastick vile sacrificing of men hath since encreased In the Infanticidium of Herod's that was presently after the Birth of the Holy Child Iesus Samuel Siderocrates saith that there were slain of Infants of 2 years old and under that Age 444000 and Paulus Volzius makes them to be a Million and 44 Thousand And afterward among the Heathens he was accounted the Magnus Apollo not who could find ways of saving but destroying Christian men No fewer than seven Books were writ by Vlpian to shew the several punishments that ought to be inflicted on Christians And tho Livy saith of the Romans in hoc gloriari licet nulli gentium mitiores placuisse paenas yet Tacitus tells us of the Christians in the 15th Book of his Annals Primo correpti qui fatebantur deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt Ea pereuntibus addita ludibria aut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent aut crucibus affixi aut flammandi aut ubi defecisset dies in usum nocturni luminis urerentur Several Authors relate it as a Decree of Nero ' s Quisquis Christianum se esse confitetur is tanquam generis humani convictus hostis sine ulteriori sui defensione capite plectitor Enough hath been already said to parallel the Cruelty of new Rome with that of old toward the Heterodox and how ingenious the Virtuosi of the Inquisition have been in finding out such torments for Heretics as can multiply one death into a thousand I with horrour think of How profound a submission and deference to the unaccountable Will of Heaven doth this Consideration require namely that Christs little Flock even in the Ark of his Church is not only endangered by a deluge from without but by one within and that of its own blood and that the Sheep of Christ appear to a common eye to be as it were made on purpose to feed the grievous Wolves that are entred in among them and as it may be supposed that thousands of harmless Sheep were in the Ark of Noah
told me he knew well enough that the Canon Law did not as such bind all Papists in foro conscientiae but he would stay in no Church that he should find to be built in any Akeldama or Field of Blood that is a Church that approved of Tenets destructive of Civil Societies or condemned not Tenets that where any other Religion than the Popes was would Condemn men like Nebuchadnezor to grasing and to solitude or if they would live in Towns or Cities make them live there in Houses under Ground as Dr. Browne in his Travels saith He saw some Towns in the Turkish Dominions where Christians so lived like the Troglodytes and subterraneous Nations about Egypt and which might be occasioned by many Armies marching that way and burning of Towns en passant and that till the Pope disclaimed this power and damned such Tenet in his Canon Law that hung up there a Light conspicuous to the World for the lawful kindling of the Torches that should set fire to Heretical Cities such Cities as he called Heretical would be in fear of their being incendio delendae and that in the mean time the Iesuites who assert the plenitude of his power would implicitly obey his Commands and their Emissaries execute theirs without considering whether Gratian as a Fool or a Knave misapplied Cyprian and he granted that if as an Universal Censor morum the Pope did Command the Iesuites or others to inflict spiritual Censures in Cases of Sin or Non-belief of any Religionary Notion and those Censures were not to operate beyond the Soul that Civil Societies might yet be maintained but to give the Pope power to issue out Orders to burn the Cities and Towns where the Roman Catholick Religion is not professed is said he to give him Arbitrary Power over a great part of the World and to leave it to his Arbitrage whether there shall be any Political Government and Commerce in the States and Kingdoms of Hereticks and the World might suffer Confusion by the Papacy's having this power de facto as much as if it had it de jure and that several places have been burned as Heretical and when certainly they had a right not to be so served and particularly the Heretical Villages at the Massacre of Merindol of which Dr. Heylin in his Geoghraphy in Folio makes mention saying that in the Year 1560. there were above 1250 Churches of the Hugonots in France which cannot in such a long time but be wonderfully augmented tho scarce any of them have scaped some Massacre or other Of these Massacres two are most memorable viz. that of Merindol and Chabiers as being the first and that of Paris as being the greatest That of Merindol happened in the Year 1545. the instrument of it being Minier the President of the Council of Aix for having Condemned those poor people of Heresy he mustered a small Army and set fire on the Villages He directed me further for the proof of that Fact to Maimbourg's History of Calvinism Book 2d where he mentions the Decree of the Parliament of Aix to which Heylin refers and saith Maimbourg of it Par le quel il Condamn ' par Contumace dix neuf de Ces Heretiques à estre brasléz c. ordonne que toutes les Maisons de Merindol qui sont toutes remplies de Ces Heretiques soient entierement démolies renverses de fond en comble c. He further said that there was another guess Fire projected by the Jesuites as was before mentioned out of Thuanus and which was abetted by the Pope which shewed there was another Pope beside Eugenius that thought the burning of Heretical Cities lawful and meritorious and he referred it to the Consideration of the Criticks in Gun-powder how far so great a quantity of it lodged in a strait Vault might have tended to the demolishing of the Heretical Cities of Westminster and even of London if the experiment of the Gun-powder Treason had took effect for said he the utmost power of Gun-powder was never yet tryed He told me that Osborn in his King Iames having spoke of the Gun-powder Treason saith I never met two of the like conceit concerning any effect or extent this Powder might have reached had it not failed of success some men confining it to the Circle it lay in and no farther whereas the judgment of others no less experienced delivered at least the whole Isle to the fury of it and then he quotes it as the more probable Conjecture then that it could not but work dire effects on the City it self He further discoursed that in this Case of securing Protestant Cities from Fire at the Popes pleasure Pere Veron's artifice in making the Church of Rome chargeable with nothing to be believed but what is proposed by the Catholick Church in her general Councils or by her Vniversal Practice to be believed as an Article or Doctrine of Catholick Faith or any Papists in this Case joyning with Protestants to decry the Canon Law is but trifling away time as to any giving light to our understandings or keeping Fire from our Cities for if each Pope believes he hath this power and the Jesuites too believe it the Notion of a things not being de fide will not be sufficient to save our Cities when the Incendiaries even by the Doctrine of probability may save their Souls and when they shall have such Doctors as the Pope and Gratian and as they may think Cyprian for the opinion of burning the Nests of Heretical Hornets He moreover mentioned how Bellarmine as to the Tenet of all Christian Monarchies owing subjection to the Pope said the contrary to it is Heretical tho he well knew that no definition of the Church ever made it Heresy and might as well have called the denial of this Incendiary Power of the Pope against Heretical Cities to be Heresy Moreover he told me he had read Bellarmine cited in that Book of Donne p. 277. for writing against a Doctor who had defended the Venetian Cause against the Popes Censures and reprimanding that Doctor in these words viz. It is a grievous rashness not to be left unpunished that he should say the Canons as being but Humane Laws cannot have equal Authority with divine for this is a Contempt of the Canons as tho they were not made by the direction of the Holy Ghost and yet saith Donne citing that Doctor that impugned the Canons those Canons that he referred to were but two and cited but by Gratian. And that Donne further in that Page observed that when Parsons is to make his advantage of any Sentence in Gratian he uses to dignify it thus that it is translated by the Popes into the Corps of the Canon Law and so not only allowed and admitted and approved but commended and commanded canonized and determined for Canonical Law and authorized and set forth for Sacred and Authentical by all Popes whatsoever Treat of Mitag ca. 7. ◠42. That moreover tho we
under the Gospel and tho no Presbyterians that I know of were here Arraigned for any design to fire our Metropolis and some Fanatical Fifth-Monarchy men only were Arraigned Convicted and Executed for such a design and whose Names I think might on that account have been properly enough engraven on the City Monument yet of the out-â—age of our Presbyterians having actually fired the Church and State with an intestine War the whole Kingdom is a Monument and where now their Principles are so seen and seen through that I believe any other such inhumane Ecclesiasticks as many of our former Presbyterians were will be ashamed to appear among us Their Assembly is adjourned to the Grave and no Divines will I believe in any future Course of time find the People of England willing to have 4 s. a day the wages of each in the Parliaments Synod allowed to them for endeavouring to bring our Consciences under the Mosaic Pedagogy and the noise of the World from Hammers of Hereticks either in any Presbyterian Synod in England or in any new Popish General Council beyond Sea will I believe be utterly over And tho perhaps the Centum gravamina did heretofore cause the last pretended General Council to be called I mean the Famous Tridentine one I may looking on the Course of Nature conclude that there will never be any General Council more and that not only for that the Pope hath been hors de page since the breaking up that of Trent but because that having been Revera a Council of Pensioners and having stood the Papacy for Pensions in 3000 Crowns a Month i. e. in 750 l. Sterling and having put the Popes to that Charge during its sitting for 18 years as it is easie to Calculate how much in pounds Sterling that Council cost the Popes in all so it is as easie to foresee that if the Pope should have occasion for the fellow to that Council he would not have that quantity of Money to spare for the same There is another thing that I may from the Course of Nature fortel much quiet to my Prince and happiness to my Country by and that is the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty and of an inglorious Loyalty-Trade as well as of a Religion-Trade and mens not thinking they are to have Offices or Donatives for not being Villains or that by Monopolizing to themselves the name of the Loyal they should expect therefore a lucrative Monopoly the which would stain their Loyalty indeed and make it as null and void as any Monopoly for the word Loyal being used for Lawful he is not homo legalis in one sense who is bought to be just The apparent vast number of the Kings Subjects rendring them too many to hope all for largesses and the too great probability of the Future State of England according to my Notion requiring for the support and defence of the Government all that to be employed in order thereunto what giving Parliaments can well give will make People ashamed to cling to the Royal-Oak like Ivy and by preying on its vigour make it the less able to give shelter by its branches I was overjoyed with a piece of News a Gentleman sent me namely that he discoursing once at dinner with the Lord Hide the first Commissioner of the Treasury concerning the Insolence of some mens expecting to be rewarded by the King for not doing mischief to his Government or Revenue his Lordship occasionally mentioned somewhat to this effect viz. that the Trade of â—â—ch men was now broke there will now be no more taking off of men as the word was and if by his Lordship's Advice to his Great Master the resolving against taking off of men by Pensions and Rewards was settled as a new Fundamental Rule in the English Politicks as I am informed it was I shall think his Lordship deserves to find an everlasting Triumph in the History of the Age and to be more honoured by England than if as Commander of an Army he had vanquished very many Thousands of its Enemies for that the taking off of Hydra's Heads by Gifts as was beforementioned would be an endless work and the ill effects thereof inclusive of so much Hostility to the publick would be innumerable But God be thanked the King by the Political Conduct of this his Minister is now made Victorious over all those Enemies and if I had heard that any near his Majesty had moved for a day of Thanksgiving by reason hereof I should not have wondered at it the thing being of so great importance to England And no doubt but the shame of any mens diminishing the Royal Revenue by begging from the Crown will be the greater when the necessary improvement of our Land by our numerous People shall have enriched as many as deserve to be so and when to all who are industrious there will every where be multiplex praeda in medio posita and the effects of diligence fill all hands with profit and eyes with pleasure This is one kind of a New Heaven and a New Earth that perhaps we may shortly see in old England and when men shall by enquiries about Religion design only lucriferous experiments and not luciferous as my Lord Bacon's Phrase is and men shall improve their fortunes by the improvement and culture of the Earth and to this effect we find the Prophecies of Prosperity to the Iews in the old Testament expressed by the Trees yielding their fruit and the Earth their encrease the Seed shall be prosperous the Vine shall give her Fruit and the Ground shall give her encrease the Earth shall hear the Corn and the Wine and the Oyl c. And they who are now by seducers that augment wild fears and jealousies directed to look up for strange Prodigies to the Sky will need no Monitors to behold with joy the unusual fruitfulness of the cultivated Earth and therefore I think that one Philosopher looking on the Future State of England may well say to another Aspice venturo laetentur ut omnia saeclo Then shall men on the account of Profit turn their Swords to Plough-shares and the Religion-Trading false Prophet baffled by fate shall then say as 't is in Zachary Non sunt Propheta agricola sum I do not wonder at some mens menacing our English World with ill news from Fate It is no irrational thing to suppose that the false Prophets in all ages did often find it turn to their private account to foretel evil rather than good to Kingdoms for that many might hope to mend their fortunes by the publick ruines and would therefore be well pleased with the Predictors of ill to the publick and would celebrate the Predicters and therefore it was not without cunning contrived that the prolation of Events by the ancient Oracles should be in a double sense sometimes because it might then be a moot point whether the Party of those that desired the quiet or disorder of great Bodies of People was
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
Happiness he tho differing from me in speculative points yet hath by his Practical Devotion proportioned his means to that end better than I have done Moreover because it is a dishonourable thing for any man to receive a Religion in gross and servilely to own all the Religionary Sentiments that the Major part of any Church seem to do I will not so much as in my secret thoughts charge such a Person with owning all the Religionary Tenets of the Church of Rome and much less with owning any one of the Tenets that is Irreligionary how justly soever chargeable either on the Papacy or any of its Adherents I who am a Son of the Church of England have considered how its Constitution hath been prop'd up in various ways and on different Hypotheses by several of the Fathers and great Writers in that Church before Arch-Bishop Laud's time and since and how some of them in some points receded from its Articles and that many of them did in several Doctrines of importance variously interpret its Articles My Conversation with several Divines of that Church who are equally Learned and Pious hath let me see that in many Theological speculative points they differ much from one another and yet retain perfect Charity for one another and their Notions as to which points they have in prudence not troubled the Populace with And yet even in our very Protestant Populace in this Conjuncture of Zeal against Popery I have observed so much Candour expressed to Protestant Writers who have asserted some speculative points that seemed to agree with the Doctrines of the Church ofâ— Rome that no one man hath either called them Papists or Protestants in Masquerade for so doing I have not heard of any who hath censured Mr. Baxter as a Papist or Popishly affected since Dr. Tully in his printed Letter to him p. 21. desiring him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see the very small odds between His Iustification and the Council of Trents addeth for to me neither of them turns the Scale upon the other There was likewise after the beginning of the Popular Out-cryes of the Danger of Popery a Learned Metrophysical Book of Dr. Glisson who was Professor of Physick in Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society Printed and Dedicated to the EARL of SHAFTSBVRY and in the 28th Chapter there viz. De substantiarum penetrabilitate mutatâ quantitate the Dr. saith That 't is better to admit Penetration than a Vacuum however we have been taught from our Child-hood to believe that there is no penetration of Bodies and Dimensions and doth Combat those old Notions of Philosophy with which Transubstantiation was opposed formerly and yet was never censured so much as Popishly affected for so writing nor have I observed any one to blame him for it or to have animadverted on his Book I have likewise observed that several Protestant Divines have not been in the least reproached or censured as maintainers of Purgatory when they have professed their Beliefs that the Souls of good Men after Death go to a good Hades and of bad Men to a bad one and are to stay in those common receptacles till the day of Judgment It is hence obvious that there are ingenious Protestants who do not take up their Religion in gross and that the fear of Popery or hatred of it is not generally so much founded on the Speculative Religionary Propositions maintained by Papists as partly on the Arbitrary Power claimed by the Pope to impose Creeds on men and by which Power he may if he pleaseth command them to believe that there are no Antipodes and excommunicate any who believe there are as one Pope long since did and partly on his claiming a Power to disturb the measures of their Loyalty to their Princes In such a Conjuncture therefore as this when 't is so much out of fashion to think any one the less a Christian or the less a Protestant for differing from others of the Church of England in such point as aforesaid it would be an aggravation of the immorality of our not acknowledging the honour due to any Person of the Roman-Catholick Communion because supposed to own Speculative Religionary Tenets of this Nature and which too have no influence no Mens Conversation with each other or on their Actions as they are Members of any Civil Society and as one saith would be still the same with all the Consequences of them tho there were no other Person besides one's self in the World. And therefore as I will rashly charge no Protestant with the servile resignation of his reason to any true Church nor look on him as one who doth More balantium antecedentem Ducem sequi so I will not without just ground and certain proof charge any Papist with the taking up his Religion in gross from the Papal Chair nor with the owning all the Religionary Tenets that many Romanists do and much less with any one of the Irreligionary Tenets imputable to any Order of the Church of Rome or to the Papacy To think any Papist the less a Christian for owning such Tenets which being held by some Protestants we think them not the less Christians for doth most notoriously come under the Sin of Acceptio personarum and is contrary to that Precept of St. Iames viz. My Brethren have not the faith of our Lord Iesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of Persons and by which accepting of some mens Persons the duty of honouring all men and valuing their real worth is manifestly outraged I will by no means therefore rashly charge any particular Papist with owning the Tenet that he is implicitly to obey the Commands of the Pope without weighing the Justice of them for I find the contrary Tenet own'd in print by the seven Divines of Venice as Ames mentions it in the Preface to his Puritanismus Anglicanus where he saith In Tractatu illo Iudiciosissimo à septem Theologis meaning those of Venice de interdicto Papae conscripto verbatim ponitur nervosè firmatur haec propositio viz. Christianus praecepto sibi facto etiam à Pontifice summo obedientiam praestare non debet nisi prius praeceptum examinaverit quantam materia subjecta requirit an sit conveniens legitimum obligatorium is qui siâ—e illo examine praecepti sibi injuncti caeco quodam impetu obedit peccat And do not many of the Church of Rome by their being picque'z d' honneur upon the being called Papists give some indication thereby of their being not obliged to pay an absolute blind Obedience to the Pope And tho Bellarmine and several of the Popes Parasites have called those Hereticks that believe not the Iure-Divinity of the Popes Monarchy over the World yet all the Gibelline Papists of old made it HERESY to say that the Emperor was not by Divine Right Lord of the World. Moreover tho some Papists have writ opprobriously of the Scripture and called
it as well as made it a Nose of Wax yet is the reverence of others of that Church for those inspired Writings sufficiently known and as may appear by that great saying of Panormitâ—n so often cited by the Protestant Writers viz. Laico verum dicenti cum Evangelio magis credendum quam Concilio falsum dicenti contra Evangelium It is so easie a thing for every man of ordinary reading and observation to expatiate on the common place of the disagreements of the Writers of the Church of Rome in various important Religionary Doctrines that I need not here do it 'T is a common Observation that in Spain and Italy it is the common opinion that Latreia is due to the Cross which in France and Germany is not so and that at Rome no man may say that the Council is above the Pope nor at Paris that the Pope is above the Council and as to the great Doctrine of Iustification every one hath heard of Bellarmin's Tutissimum and of Stephen Gardners laying his dead grasp on Christ's Merits as he was sinking and as to some Papists not believing the School Conclusions in that Church there is a famous instance cited by Crackanthorp in his Logick concerning a great Roman Catholick Writer who said Sic dicerem in scholis sed tamen maneat inter nos diversum sentio Sic dicimus in scholis sed tamen maneat inter nos non potest probari ex sacris literis And therefore since as was said every man hath a right to his good name till he hath justly forfeited it I will honour such a Roman Catholick as before described with the reputation of his being a good Christian and shall think that I am Morally bound to esteem all Papists so qualified to be better Christians than any Orthodox Protestants that want those Moral Endowments and according to my Obligation to honour all men and love the Brotherhood and consequently to be readier to do good Caeteris paribus to Christians than to those who are strangers to Christianity will thus love such a Papist as a part of that Brotherhood and by our Saviours measures in those words of the same being his Brother Sister and Mother whosever shall do the will of God will take notice of and honour and love such a Roman Catholick as much as if the closest Iura sanguinis united me to him and with respect to not only the ONE Blood that all Nations were made of but the ONE Blood they were redeemed with and by virtue of those other words of our Saviour viz. That if any man will do his Will he shall know of the Doctrine c. will account that in points necessary and essential to such a mans salvation our blessed Lord hath been as ready to make his Doctrine known to him as effectually as he could be supposed to make it known to such near Relations They are expressions worthy of a Divine of the Church of England in an excellent Sermon that goeth under the name of Dr. Tillotson viz. I had rather perswade any one to be a good man than to be of any party or denomination of Christians whatsoever For I doubt not but the belief of the ancient Creed without the addition of any other Articles together with a good life will certainly save a man. And since Iustin Martyr when Trypho the Iew demanded his thoughts of the Salvation of the Iews then living and expected that he would pronounce them damned the Martyr answered That he hoped they might be saved if with their Ceremonials they did also observe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The Eternal and Natural Rules of indispensable Holyness and since he notwithstanding the barbarous uncharitableness of the stiff-necked and narrow souled Iews who would not shew a Traveller the way that was not of their Religion did yet shew the invincible Charity of a Christian to them being ready as he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. To receive them friendly and to communicate all things to them as BRETHREN or affectionate friends it may well be esteemed an uncouth sight see some peevish Nominal Protestants who observe none of those Rules yet to exclude Papists out of the Christian Brotherhood and even to damn them who with the Ceremonies of the Church of Rome do most religiously observe those Great and Noble Rules And therefore tho the reconciling of Churches is by some good men hoped for and by all good men wished yet since it can by no rational men be supposed possible without a previous reconciliation of Persons first had and that this latter is no Project but a Moral Duty and Vital part of Christianity and that 't is an empty Project for any one to think to deserve the name of a Christian without being reconciled to the whole Creation of God and being first reconciled to his Brother as the Expression is in St. Matthew I shall with that this Duty of honouring all men and as inclusive of our internal affection and testifying before God the worth and excellence that is in any Roman Catholicks and of the interpreting all doubtful matters relating to them in the better part as was before explicated out of Ames may more and more be thought of by Protestants as Essential to their Christianity Any one who will consider that Canon of our Church viz. It was far from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy France Spain and Germany or any such like Churches in all things that they held and practised c. that it only departed from them in those particular points wherein they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integrity and from the Apostolical Churches which were their first Founders may see the great perfection of the Principles of the Church of England in honouring all men and loving the whole Brotherhood of Christianity and our Duty wherein as necessary to Salvation is very excellently inculcated by a great Father of that Church I mean My Lord Primate Bramhal in his just Vindication of the Church of England p. 15. where having said That the Communion of the Christian Church Catholick is partly internal partly external and made it part of this Internal Communion to â—udge charitably one of another to exclude none from the Catholick Communion either Eastern or Western Southern or Northern Christians c. to rejoyce at their well-doing to sorrow for their Sins to condole with them in their sufferings to pray for their constant perseverance in the true Christian Faith for their reduction from all their respective Errors and their re-union to the Church in Case they be divided from it c. and lastly to hold an actual external Communion with them in votis in our desires and to endeavour it by all those means that are in our Power he tells us in plain terms that this internal Communion is of absolute necessity among all Catholicks And in p. 26 th he declareth to the
same purpose That internal Communion is due always from all Christians to all Christians even to those with whom we cannot communicate externally in many things whether Opinions or Practices But external Communion may sometimes be suspended more or less c. and he doth afterward in p. 18 assert That Christian Communion implies not an Vnity in all Opinions and shews That the Roman and African Churches held good Communion one with another while they differ'd both in Iudgment and Practice about Rebaptisation As for any projected Universal Vnity of Opinions I look on it to be as impracticable as our levelling Republicans EQVAL Division of Lands in the late times by their wild Agrarian Laws for the Birth of the next Child would necessarily break that their Model and the same fate might be expected to happen the same way to this Model of Vnity of Opinions or perhaps by the birth of the next hour But this Internal Communion is a thing most possible and our Duty tho without hope of Unity in all Religionary Opinions to ensue thereby according to the Doctrine of this Great Primate If then we are Morally bound to have this Internal Communion with all Foreign Roman Catholick Princes and their Subjects as before described how can we without horror think of the excluding any Heir to the Crown for fear of his believing the same Religionary Notions that they do from the Catholick Communion and of excluding him from his Birth-right on such an account whom we must always have this Internal Communion with and rejoyce in his good successes and condole with him in his ill and to hold an external Communion with him and any Church he is of in votis in our desires and to endeavour it by all means that are in our Power Did any endeavour it who would by depriving him of his Birth-right on that account and holding the same Tenet with Papists of Dominium fundatur in gratiâ gave him such a just Cause of Scandal as without the Divine Spirit assisting him might endanger his withdrawing from the whole Christian Communion And tho the honest Heathen could tell us That Cavendum est ne poena major sit quam culpa and all Casuists agree That Poena non debet excedere delictum and tho Magna Charta tell us That Ex quantitate poenae cognoscitur quantitas delicti quia poena debet esse commensurabilis delicto yet attempted to punish him by the loss of his Birth-right of the Crown when it could not be certain to us that he had committed any fault at all and when by the judgment of Charity we were bound to believe that he had committed none To many of our Nominal Protestants whose thoughts and Ideas of Christian Communion are too narrow to extend not only to a National Church but to a Parochial one this Notion of the incomparable Primate for whose august Charity one Christian World of Religionary differences was not enough to overcome about internal Communion will I believe seem new Doctrine and Duras Sermo but if they would be true Christians instead of being called true Protestants this Duty of Internal Communion from all Christians to all Christians must be practised by them and if this Duty hath a Divine Right for it as to the Persons of Papists abroad it must be operative as to those here at home He who loveth not his Brother whom he hath seen I may ask how can he love either his God or his Brother that he hath not seen The sham-war among any Protestants and Papists must not only be lest off but they must honour the Persons of one another and Protestants are not only to forbear robbing Papists of their Goods on pretence of carrying away their Images and Pictures but are to honour the Image of God shining in the lives of or the Gifts of God dispensed to any Papists Mr. Burroughs in his Irenicum p. 38. saith We accounted it Tyranny and Persecution in the Bishops when they would not suffer such as could not conform to their Church Discipline and Ceremonies to teach Grammar or practise Physick and saith That there was no dependance between their Errors if you will call them so and these things To deny the Church and Commonwealth the benefit of the Gifts and Graces of Men on such a pretence that they will abuse their Liberty we thought it was hard dealing yea no less than a Persecution Suppose a man differs from his Brethren in point of Church Discipline must not this man have a place in an Army therefore Tho he sees not the reason of such a Discipline in the Church yet God hath endued him with a Spirit of Valour and he understands what Military Discipline means c. Ought not then Persons of his Principles to revere the Heroical Endowments of an Heir to the Crown which do much preponderate as to the continuance of the being and well-being of the Kingdom to supposed Orthodoxy in some Mysteries of the Gospel as was shewn out of Mr. Ny King Iames had great Talents in Polemical Divinity to prove by words that the Pope was Anti-Christ but will not these latter Endowments necessarily prevent the Pope's being Anti-Christ in Deeds if he were inclined to hurt us by shewing himself such Ames in his Puritanismus Anglicanus giveth this as the chief Reason why the Puritans hold the Bishop of Rome to be THE Anti-Christ viz. For that he being an Ecclesiastical Ruler doth arrogate and exercise the chief Power over Kings and Princes And doth any one fear that he can exercise such Power over a Prince of these Endowments And I may add have not many Factious and Republican Nominal Protestants here compleated that Figure of Anti-Christ How many Vertues must any indifferent man overlook in this Pope who thinks he would outrage our Civil Government and how many Vices must he wink at in such Persons who thinks they would not do it And by Virtue of our blessed Lords having decided it that he was the better Son who said he would not do the Will of his Father and did it may it not be said That those Papists who say they will not take these Oaths and yet perform their Natural Allegiance are more loyal than such Nominal Protestants who have took the Oaths and observe them not As much an Abhorrer as I am of the Principles of the Iesuites Condemned by this Pope I shall yet think my self bound by the Moral Offices beforementioned out of Ames not to charge the belief or practice of them on all Persons in that Order For when I consider the Devotional Books of some Iesuites writ with such strong and lively expressions of the Practick part of Religion as any Person of Candor will think to be founded on a real deep sense of all Moral Offices lying warm at their hearts I account it impossible for them to have believed some of those Tenets and as I once observing at the Anatomy of a poor Malefactor that his Stomach
appeared not able to contain above the Quantity of a Quart would easily have thence inferred had I heard him accused of being wont in his life-time to debauch by ingurgitating vast quantities of Liquor that there could be no such thing so shall I think it not possible that this sober Party of the Iesuites who are really devout can swallow such Irreligionary Principles as too many others of them have done We know that not many eminent Popish Writers but particularly Azorius the Iesuite hath writ against the Iesuites Doctrine of Equivocation and Mental Reservation and Crackanthorp and Ames and other Protestant Writers in their Writings impeaching that Doctrine of the Iesuites have quoted Azorius as on their side in that point I doubt not but many Pious Persons of that Order are glad of this Pope's having damned such Tenets which they never did or could believe and I will now upon the Popes having condemned them judge no particular Papist to believe them till I find cause so to do And notwithstanding the hard usage our Learned Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Book had from the Author of The Compendium saying That the Title of the Book confuted the whole because it mentioned the Principles approved by the Church of Rome pernicious when really believed and practised I shall still think the Pleonasm or exuberance of the Charity in so qualifying the danger of the Tenets he confutes to be worthy a Prelate of the Church of England and do think the like of the Charity of the Bishop of Winchester expressed in his printed Sermon of the 5th of November where having spoke of the Doctrines of Dissenters tending to Sedition and Rebellion that seem to be derived from the Church of Rome he saith if those Doctrines are believed and practised they must necessarily produce Confusion among us and do think that if the Papists could gain the point namely to be looked on by Protestants as not to believe several parts of the Tenets of Popery that are Irreligionary and particularly that about the Exterminium of Hereticks enjoyned by the Lateran Council to be not believed by them it would be a point very well gain'd and any one who could gain it for them would be a more useful friend to them than ever Bellarmin was To give a man the Lye is the greatest dishonour and therefore when any Papist shall tell me that he believes not the Lateran Council as obliging or other Tenets chargeable on the Papacy I shall not tell him that he doth but shall pass my judgment of Charity that he doth not believe the same and shall account him still a Roman Catholick tho perhaps erroneously denying that to be a General Council as I account Luther a Christian and Owner of the Authority of the Bible tho he erroneously denied the Divine Authority of the Epistle of St. Iames. The Learned Author of The Advocate of Conscience Liberty printed in the Year 1673. and said to be Mr. Brown a Franciscan in his 8th Chapter viz. Of Roman Catholicks being not guilty of Practices or Principles destructive to Government and reproaching the ENGLISH and Foreign Protestants with such Principles saith Was it from any of their Books meaning the Books of the Papists you have drawn those wild Maxims That the Authority of the Magistrate is of Humane Right That the People are above the King That the People can give Power to the Prince and take it away That if a King fail in performing his Oath at Coronation the People are loosened from their Allegiance That if Princes fall from the Grace of God the People are loosed from their Subjection Do not these Doctrines proceed from Wicliff Waldenses and other Sectaries And then mentioning Calvin for owning such Maxims saith That Calvin l. 4. c. 3. Instit. from his high Consistory giveth this Absolution to all Oaths of that Nature Quibuscunque Evangelâ—i hujus lux effulgeat ab omnibus laqueis juramentisque absolvitur But that Loyal Franciscan there happened to injure Calvin by a false quotation which I believe he had took up on the Credit of the Romanist Author of Monarcho-machia or Ierusalem and Babel who had cited the 4th Book of Calvin's Institutions for that purpose but very falsly for Calvin in all that Chapter hath not a word of such Oaths of Allegiance as Subjects take to their Sovereigns but treating only of Monastick Vows he saith Nunc postquam veritatis notitiâ sunt illuminati simul Christi gratiâ liberos esse dico c. i. e. from those Monkish unwarrantable Vows that they had made and out of Error and Ignorance held themselves obliged by But I doubt not if Parsons alià s Doleman and the Book of The Prelate and the Prince had been shewed to this Franciscan he would have answered to this effect viz. These men and many Roman Catholick Authors by them cited held those disloyal Trayterous Principles beforementioned but I fall will a Sacrifice rather than hold such I honour the spirit of Zeal against Disloyalty that runneth through his Book and in p. 204 205 206 207 208. he very learnedly endeavours to answer the objection about the Lateran Council and saith thereupon what the matter will bear and he and many other Roman Catholick Writers have disown'd the Authority of that Council as obligatory and therefore the judgment of Charity will incline any one to think that such Roman Catholicks would not disorder the World by it Moreover some Protestant Writers have judged that Council to be invalid and Dr. Donne who was very well studied in the Learning that relates to the Canon Law and General Councils doth particularly in his Pseudo-Martyr p. 377 378 379 380. take a great deal of pains to shew the invalidity of that Council and that it was never meant to oblige Sovereign Princes But the Author of The Prelate and the Prince doth in p. 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236. with much Learning statuminate the Authority of that Council and asserts it to have been a General one as the Cardinal Perron and the Bishop of Lincoln have done yet what I have mentioned of that Famous Cardinal 's not believing the Principle of the Church of Rome founded on that Council for Princes exterminating their Heretical Subjects as always Obligatory nor promoting the practice thereof in France where the Huguenots were then about a 7th part of the whole People hath justified the reasonableness of the Charity of our Bishops in qualifying the danger of some Papal Principles with the restriction of their being really believed and practised and the same Rule in my Notion of their danger shall always guide me that is to say when the Poyson of such Principles is really swallowed it must then be pernicious The poyson may lie in the Boxes of the Canon Law or a General Council and yet not poyson the minds of pious Catholicks nor foul their fingers I having found just cause so far to honour all the Roman Catholicks of my
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole 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 Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
more and more And it was natural for our Divines in this Conjuncture thus to do when so many factious counterfeit Protestants were by their outcries making Papists of them and publishing infamous Pamphlets that expressly shook the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and of the Church by Law Established and with an intent to shake the same in that time when the Exclusion was designed and as appeared particularly by the reprinting for that purpose the Pamphlet of the Rights of the Kingdom and in which the Author did endeavour to prove the Peoples Right to choose their Bishops The Clergy therefore seeing such Nominal Protestants by that real part of Popery of founding Dominion in Grace thus bent on the ruine of Church and State were concerned to bend all their forces of reason in permonishing People of their danger from that part of Popery Thus as when a Light-house is set up to warn Navigators of a Bank of Sand if yet by the force of the Sea and Wind such Bank happens to be removed the Light-house must be removed likewise the same thing was accordingly done by the Justice and Prudence of our Divines giving us a notification of the Sands of Popery having shifted their place The late Experience that our Church had of its usage under the Great Vsurper and of his putting it out of his Protection as knowing the born and sworn Allegiance of its Church-men and likewise its Doctrine must necessarily make them true Adherents to the King's Heirs and Successors hath necessarily taught them that they cannot externally flourish under any Vsurper whatsoever They know that the Oath that Cromwel's Parliament Enacted to be taken by him was a Canting Oath and to which he was sworn to the uttermost of his Power to uphold and maintain the true reformed Protestant Christian Religion in the Purity thereof as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament to the uttermost of his Power and his understanding The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England was not to expect to be upheld and maintained by him nor can it be upheld or maintained by any Vsurper Dr. Gibbon the Author of the Theological SCHEME averred to me that Mr. Nye and he attending a Committee of Parliament in the times of the Vsurpation that Mr. Nye being desired by the Committee to give them a definition or description of a Minister of the Gospel then answered A Minister of the Gospel is one sent forth by the State to preach the Gospel receiving protection from them and maintenance under them and all others restrained and we know that he and others then treated the Church of England in words and things like an Ecclesia maligrantium and how they were then RESTRAINED ab Officio c. and just as the Faction and Schism of many Nominal Protestants began about 41 to call our Divines Names as I have observed so lately the Popish Plot was made the Vehicle of the Poyson of some Mens Calumny and neither Machiavel nor Iesuit did ever more sledfastly practise the Divide Impera than such men in that Conjuncture did that by weakening us with our Divisions they might at once destroy the Lineal Succession of our Hereditary Monarchs in the Realm and the Succession of Bishops in the Church and our Kings in their Coronation Oaths swearing to keep Peace and Agreement to the Holy Church the Clergy and People Factious and Schismatical Persons having broke their own Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy may be said to have endeavoured to break the King's Oath according to the old known form of the Indictment of some of our Iudges for Bribery in which it was said that our Kings being bound by their Oath to do Iustice to their People such Judges did Violare Sacramentum Domini Regis It hath pleased God by the fierce Zeal of several Non-Conformists for the Exclusion to open the Eyes of many Conscientious and Loyal People among them and to bring them thereby to the Bosom of the Holy Church of England for they seeing such Doubts and Objections as some had raised against the Obligations of our Oaths to be but Scruples and that considerate serious and devout Persons of the Church of England had soon thrown the Scruples away were naturally thereby induced to throw off other Scruples and it was likewise but natural to them to think that their very Doubts and Objections for their having separated from the Church of England were but Scruples And as to doubts tho the Rule is Quod dubitas ne feceris yet not only Sanderson but Ames hath told us that Scruples are not to be regarded for Ames in his Cases of Conscience l. 1. c. 16. viz. Of a scrupulous Conscience having said That a Scruple is a fear of the Mind about what one is to do which vexeth the Conscience as a little Stone in ones shooe troubles the foot he wisely concludes That Multi scrupuli cum non possint commodè tolli contrariâ ratione deponi debent quasi violentiâ quadam dum excluduntur ab omni consultatione and that Scrupulus est formido temeraria sine fundamento atque adeo non potest obligare He there mentions A man being said to be scrupulous in discussing his past Actions or in ordering his futuâ—e ones and I am confident that many of the Loyal late Non-Conformists when they consider their past Actings will now accord to say that many of the clamorous pretences they were tempted to urge for Liberty of Conscience ought to have been as Ames's words are laid aside with violence and I do likewise believe that many of the Pious Members of the Church of England who while the Formido temeraria and sine fundamento carried them to incline to think it lawful to shake the Foundation of the Hereditary Monarchy and the super-structures of their Oaths by new interpretations do with a pious horror think of the poor Vapours pent in their Imaginations that made such Temporary Earthquakes in their Moral Offices of Loyalty and might have made perpetual ones in the Kingdom And that because some of our English Princes long ago whose Titles were cloudy did de facto make use of the Legislative Power to render them clear to the People for any to think that therefore the Monarchy was not then de jure and jure Câ—ronae Hereditary and that therefore after the Liquid Oath of Allegiance made to statuminate the most clear Title of a Crown that can be supposed it could since be lawful for any Parliamentary Power to disturb the Succession and dispense with our Oaths can appear to the Considerate to be nothing but a Scruple unworthy their thoughts And moreover because some of our Princes heretofore desired their Parliaments to intermeddle in setling the Succession for any therefore after the Oaths to think it might be lawful to disturb their Prince with renewed importunities again and again to alter the Course of the Descent after his various Declarations
to the Persons of the Papists and likewise of the Divines of our Church but was afterwards sufficiently sensible of their intolerable rancour and animosities against both and of the infamous use and application they made of the Iesuits Doctrine of Calumny and of the Weapons they borrowed from Parson's of the Succession to promote the detestable Exclusion and of their borrowing from Athens and old Rome the Thunderbolts of their old REPVBLICAN Curses viz. of ENEMY c. and throwing them at the most Loyal of our Patriots and absurdly calling them Enemies to the King and Kingdom because they asseâ—ted the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy in opposing the Exclusion By that kind of Republican Curses they gave us the omen of what they would have been at And so extravagant was the use of that anathema in the late Conjuncture that when one in a great Assembly moved against Sir G. I. a Person that all the Loyal must own for his steadiness to the Hereditary Monarchy and for his having first kindled that great Zeal for Loyalty which doth now like a wall of Fire defend our Metropolis that he might be voted such an Enemy as aforesaid a Burgess for that City as I was info m'd did Ridiculously and Presumtuously move that he might be voted an Enemy to Mankind But it was easie for such as had took Gods name in vain so to take Mankinds I shall not degenerate from the Moral Offices of Charity to mens Persons if I call the Exâ—lusion that would have broke the Balance of the Monarchy that was the old Balance of the World enmity to Mankind but shall without my here calling any men names leave it to the soft voice of God's Herald called Conscience to suggest it that tho a man who was deluded a while by the error of the Exclusion that would have been so fatal to the Realm might by reason of any good intentions so for a while ill guided not deserve perhaps to be judged to be an enemy to the King and Kingdom formaliter yet that if after Consideration and all thoughts made about his Sworn Allegiance he doth not make a stand but shall at any time again endeavour the going over the Rubicon of the Bloud Royal in its Line of Succession stated by God and Nature and the defending his false-steps beyond it by Association or Arms â—I say I shall leave it to Conscience to tell him or warn him by the indeleble Characters of natural right there so legibly Engraved how much he will deserve the censure of such an enemy as hath been mentioned and shall be glad he may be thereby to better effect warn'd then Caesar was from his Vsurpatioâ— by the great Senatus Consultum which Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law Printed in the year 1530. saith that he saw remaining Engraved on a Marble Pillar by the River Rubicon viz. Iussu mandatúve P. R. Commilito armate quisquis es Manipularisve Centuriove turmaeve legionarie hic sistito vexillumve sinito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa ductum commeatumve traducito Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo adâ—ersus praecepta ierit fueritve adjudicatus esto P. R. H. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit penatesque è sacris penetralibus asportaverit S. P. Q. R. Sanctio Plebisciti Sâ— ve C. He likewise saith that In Portu Arimini alterum est adhuc ejusdem sententiae senatusconsultum and which appearing to be a Noble piece of Curiosity and expressive of the same sense wiâ—h the former tho with some difference of words I shall here entertain the Reader with viz. Imp. Mil. Tiro armate quisquis es hic sistito vexillumve sinito arma deponito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa arma exercitumve traducito Si quis ergo adversus praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto Hostis P. R. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit sacrosve penates è penetralibus asportaverit Sanctio plebisciti senatusconsulti ultra hos fines arma proferre liceat nemini Rivallius having cited these Senatusconsulta saith that Quibus senatusconsultis Caesar fortassis territus cum è Galliâ rediens ad Rubiconem usque pervenisset adversus Pompeium populumque Romanum bellum gesturus esset militibus dixisse fertur et etiam nunc regredi possimus quod si Ponticulum transierimus omnia armis agenda erunt And thus let all members of theâ— true Church Militant in these Realms by what name or title soever known who have been tempted to think the Exclusion lawful thank Heaven that they have lived to repent of the same and that even now they may go back from the sinfullness of such thought and consider that if they had passed over this Rubicon they were to expect beside the fate of their Involving their Country in War the other tremendous one of being found fighters against God to whom they were sworn I have little further to add but to acquaint the Judicious READER that I desire if he findeth any thing here-said that he may reasonably think to be not according to the Theological measures of the Church of England or the Political ones of the State or against the moral Offices of Charity toward the Persons of 〈◊〉 men or against the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians tho I know of no such thing here said it may by him be taken as non dictum There is no keeping of Passion in number weight and measure and particularly of that of Anger The Excellent Bishop of Downe that was Doctor Ieremy Taylor hath often told me That when he was to return an answer to a Friends Letter that had Anger in it he never concern'd himself to return an answer to the angry part of it because he considered that the anger of his Friend was over before the Letters arrival But against all the Irreligionary Principles of the Iesuits and particularly that of the Founding Dominion in Grace I would crave aid from Posterity for the continuance of my Indignation in the known words of O me propè lassum juvate Posteri but that the Pope hath saved me the labour and so I hope those Principles in them are retiring to theâ—r Eternal rest and I desire not to hinder their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that no pious Roman Catholick may labour under the weight of being Censured as one who is necessarily to believe and practice some Principles beforementioned out of the LATERAN Council I have mentioned various things that may be of use to that effect and perhaps more satisfactory than what hath by any of their Church been said who have denyed it to be a General Council Such denyal will not effectually do their work since Cardinal Perron hath as I said shew'd it to be a general one and his reputation for his profound Judgment and Learning being so great and such that the late Learned Lord Faulkland the Secretary of State was wont to say That Baronius and
their Guardian and account it a very preposterous thing that since our Saviour refused to divide an Inheritance his pretended Vicar should do nothing else Moreover Holy Churches resuming all its Lands out of Lay hands would appear the more strange in England when we see as my Lord Primate Bramhal saith in his vindication of the Church of England p. 212 that the very Kings of Spain impose Pensions usually on Ecclesiastical preferments to the 4th part of the value and particularly one Pension on the Arch-Bishoprick of Sivile in favour of an Infant of Castile of greater value then all the Pensions there imposed by the Pope and when we know that the French King doth for the behoof of so great a number of Lay-men impose so many and great Pensions on the Abbeys without saying to the Abbots more then Car tel est nostre plaisir Sir Edwyn Sands in his Europae Speculum writ in the Year 1599 and in the time of Harry the 4 th of France speaking of that Kingdom saith That there the Church Prelacies and other Governments of Souls are made the Fees and Charges of meer Courtiers and Soldiers and our excellent Animadverter on Monsieur Sorbier reflecting on that Country Intimates in effect how there the chiefest spiritual dignities are entailed upon Families and possest by Children They who unjustly cry out of the Constitution of the Church of England for interrupting the Trade of the Kingdom would be loud enough in their Complaints of Omnia comesta à Belo under Popery He who knows not that the Revenue of the King now depends in a manner solely upon Trade and that Trade depends on populousness and that the encouragement of people to live under any Government is that great thing call'd Property in their Estates Religion and Laws and that therefore any thing that calls it self Religion that goes to exterminate above a hundred and fifty persons for every one it leaves for so the Proportion between Non-Papists and Papists by the Bishops survey made about the Year 1676 was return'd to be and to call them Hereticks and which makes their Goods and life ipso facto a forfeit of the Law will not ipso facto exterminate Trade is fitter for the Galleys or a Trading Voyage to the Anticyrae then for any discourse of Trade and Commerce Your Lordship hath in your Travels sufficiently seen it long since exemplified that the Protestant Countries for the quantity of Ground exceed the Popish in Trade and numbers of People and that thus the Protestant Hanse Towns have eclipsed their Roman Catholick Neighbours and Amsterdam Antwerp and the Vnited Provinces Flanders and that in Flanders where the Ecclesiasticks are Proprietors of seven parts of ten of the whole Country Levies of Men and Money for the defence thereof have been made with so much slowness and difficulty and been so inconsiderable as not to have secured themselves against Invaders Nor did the Ecclesiasticks there think it worth their while to strain themselves in Contributions to resist an Invader who is of their own Religion the which made the French Kings Victories there flie like Lightning more then our over-rich English Regulars did to oppose William the Conqueror when he came here under the Popes Banner And thus were they here and in Flanders are like Wenns in the Body which draw to themselves much nourishment and are of great trouble and no use and thus ridiculous is it that so over great a part of the property of the Land should be linked to persons who are no way linked to the interest of the Country more then professed Gamesters and Empyrics and Soldiers of Fortune and are no more damnified by Popish Invaders then Fishes of the Sea are by Earth-Quakes But on the other hand in the United-Provinces how easily and soon are vast Taxes raised when their All is at Stake to what a prodigious encrease of the numbers of their People have they attain'd since the Reformation insomuch that the Author of a Political discourse of the Interest of Holland Printed in Dutch in the Year 1669 and Licensed by Iohn de Witt and by Van Beaumont makes the People in the Province of Holland to be 2 Millions and 400 thousand and so likewise doth Pellerus in his Learned Notes on Klockius de Aerario p. 300. and there cites that Book of the interest of Holland when as Gerard Malynes in his Lex mercatoria makes the People in Flanders in the Year 1622 to have consisted of a hundred and forty thousand Families and he reckoning each of them one with an other at 5 persons makes the Total of the people in Flanders to have then amounted but to seven hundred thousand Souls And yet as that Author of the interest of Holland saith the Province of Holland can hardly make 400 thousand profitable Acres or Morgens of Land Down and Heath not put in and that the 8 th part of the Inhabitants of Holland cannot be nourished with what is growing there but tells us what prodigious Granaries they there have and that Amsterdam that in the Year 1571 was about 200 Morgens or Acres of Land was in the year 1650 enlarged to 600 Morgens or Acres of Land in Circumference and to have in it three hundred thousand Souls And the defence of the Zelanders Choice Printed in the Year 1673 mentions Aitsmas Liere to have reckon'd the publick Incomes of Holland alone in the Year 1643 to have amounted to 1100 thousand pound Sterling and the Author of the Interest of Holland saith that in one Year in a time of Peace viz. In the Year 1664 the Inhabitants of Holland did over and above the Customes and other Domains of the Earls or States of Holland pay towards the publick Charge as follows viz. To the States of Holland 11 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Maze 472 898 Gilders To the Admiralty of Amsterdam 2 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter 200 thousand Guilders Which comes to in all about 14 hundred 87 thousand Pounds Sterling How meanly do the Atchievements of Venice and their Efforts to aggrandize their Republick compared with Hollands shew in story for the quantity of years many times doubled since the Dutch threw off the Yoke of the Papacy History hath recorded the longevity of the Venetian Government as it has of Methusalem of whom we read not 〈◊〉 great thing he said or did or attempted but a few days of the short life of Alexander in the Ballance of same weighs down the 999 years of the other The very Religion of Popery makes the Venetians more narrow in their principles and even in their Rules of Traffick then are the Inhabitants of Protestant Countries The Popish Religion doth hamper its devout Professors as to Trading with Hereticks and holding Communication with such as are ipso jure ipso facto excommunicated and giving any Quarentine to men said to be infected with Heresie insomuch that we are told in D'