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
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
mind in an House will bless him with these Effects and make him grow in favour with God and Man. My Lord I shall in the next place take occasion to acquaint your Lordship that in the Preface and which every Candid Reader of any Book will peruse before his reading of the Book I do explain my self more clearly about some things and words writt in the turbid times and which as one saith well are the worst times to write in tho the best to write of and I do not fear the wanting any mans pardon who shall read over the whole and which may well be expected before the allowance of his Exceptions tho it may seem as copious as one of the Bankers Bills in Chancery But because the former part of the Discourse necessarily requiring those courser Colours relating to Popery to be first laid on before the finâ—r ones and the gilding on the happy Future State of our Country and for that to trouble any ingenious men now with Notions of Popery were to hinder their repose in the state I foretold I have been at the pains of making a large INDEX and where I have directed the Reader how and where to enter into the New Heaven and New Earth of his Country without passing through the Purgatory of any expressions about Popery or the Plot and perhaps the more Loyal and Ingenious Recusants whether Roman-Catholick or Protestants there taking notice of some grateful passages relating to some who were formerly of their perswasions being placed near others that are less so may be the more pleased therewith accordingly as my Lord Bacon observes that a Rose set by Garlick is the sweeter Heaven having furnished your Lordships mind with so many Excellencies that are extraordinary I could wish that it had been my ability or fortune to have here provided for your Entertainment somewhat of value that was not vulgar But my essaying or offering here and there at some matter of thought which by receiving its Form from your Lordships great reason and particularly in p. 158. and the following ones in my making it a Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World that men are neither to get nor lose by Religion and my distinguishing in mens Hypotheses between their Principles denominable as Religionary and such Complicated therewith that are not so and my having judged that none ought to be severe to any Recusant before he hath a Moral Certainty of such person having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Recusancy that are irreligionary and unnatural and my defiance of the petulance of the Faction by my placing Lawrels on those Heads at which it was throwing dirt and my shewing how not only Christians of the Roman-Catholick Church in its great spreading Latitude but even those of the more particular Church of Rome and reverers of the Diocess or Court of Rome are under no obligation by the LATERAN Councel to be either Persecutors or disloyal may shew somewhat of my honest well wishes in this kind I am not so vaâ—n as to think that any thing relating to Numbers or Political Calculations in the Discourse can appear new to your Lordship who are so great a Master in that kind of Knowledge that the most Curious of the Age may therein beg instruction from you But I shall here presume to acquaint your Lordship that I observing that many in the late Conjuncture whom I looked on as honest loyal and learned and ingenious men and some who had formerly a gusto for the real Learning that refers to number weight and measure did render their Conversation so uneasie by talking of nothing but Popery Popery and which I looked on as unentertaining and nauseous as the Porke porke porke I thought it might be publickly useful to lay open a new Scene of Thought before such Persons by shewing them some Calculations relating to the numbers of the People of England founded on somewhat like Records and some to its gradual encrease in Trade as well as populousness and others relating to other parts of the World whereby their Souls having somewhat like a new intellectual World before them to expatiate in might no longer be confined to a perplext word Yet moreover considering how lately it was that they came out of that Conjuncture of Panic fears when so many who went to Bed without their Brains were afraid of rising without their Heads and that as our English World was emerging out of the late general DELUGE of Fears and Iealousies where omnia pontus erant c. the Curious beheld the several births of Mens Reasons attended with Imperfections like those of the Animals referr'd to in his quaedam modo caepta per ipsum Nascendi spatium quaedam imperfecta suisque Trunca vident humeris eodem corpore saepe Altera pars vivit rudis est pars altera tellus and thus saw the spectacles of mens various Vnderstandings gradually creeping into sense and reason and not suddenly likely to be perfected I shew'd so much Complaisance to them as in stead of hastily removing their Thoughts from the Course soil of Popery or the old Papal Vsurpations to build my Fabricks of Numbers and Calculations upon it and I may say that finding their vitiated Fancies rellish'd nothing at that time grateful but the thoughts about Popery I then chose to make that the Vehicle of the Notions I meant as Physick for their Cure. According to the way of judging of the Draught and Proportion in perspective Painting by their respect to the Eye being directed to the Center therein any ordinary Reader 's judgment will be carry'd by the Index to find what was principally aim'd at in the following Discourse namely to incline him to preserve the haereditary Monarchy And he will there find that my next aim to that was in a great part of the Work to dispose those who formerly had been diffident of their Prince to Promote the Public Supplies for the necessary Support of the Government And my judging that our most eminent Patriots would be inclined to value themselves as such on the promoting the same may to some appear as the most sanguine part of my Predictions But as I leave it to any indifferent man to judge of the grounds of Nature I went on in so doing so I may some way support the Credit of my measures of futurity in that Affair by the past event of the Loyal Confidence in His Majesty shewn by his late Parliament in their proceeding so far as they did in Supporting the Government and may add that His Majesty's vast Expences that have been since so Conspicuous to the World in his Naval Preparations and otherwise in the Providing for the Security and Honour of the Nation may well incline any one else to judge well of such Patriotly temper of any future Parliament and to allow of the Reasons by me urged as more Cogent for the present Reign then the former considering the Preparations of our Neighbors
settlement of the same proving Abortive in several Parliaments ib. The French King in the last War did forbid the Importation of Sail-Cloath to England ib. A presage of the future happy State of England and the Authors Idea thereof at large ib. and p. 252. An account of the Rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-cloth and all other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax yearly brought into England and from what Countries deduced out of the Custom-house Books p. 254. All the Hemp and Flax sown in England is observed to be bought up by the years end p. 257. Almost as much Hemp and Flax yearly brought into Amsterdam as into the whole Kingdom of England ib. The Authors judgment of the effects of the necessity that will drive us on to the Linen Manufacture ib. An Account of the fine Linen lately made by the French Protestants at Ipswich and of the Flax by them sown ib. The Author's Censure of the excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery ib. His belief that the future State of England will make men ashamed of their pass'd fears of Popery ib. The Vote of the House of Commons for the recalling the Declaration of Indulgence carried by the Party of the Nonconformists p. 258. Most of the Papists of England in the Year 1610 computed to be under the guidance of the Jesuites p. 260. Many Popish Writers have inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decrets of the Canon Law ib. That Law never in gross received in England ib. Binds not English Papists in the Court of Conscience ib. A Tenet ridiculously and falsly in the Canon Law founded on Cyprian ib. Gratian's founding it on Cyprian gives it only the weight it could have in Cyprian's Works p. 261. Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith cited for Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claiming nothing of Faith and Bellarmine's acknowledging errors therein ib. One definition in the Canon Law and gloss held by all Papists ridiculous ib. The Author thinks he has said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope's Canon Law as they would wish said ib. He thinks himself morally obliged in any Theological Enquiry to say all that the matter will fairly bear on both sides ib. Heylin and Maimbourg cited about the firing of Heretical Villages in France p. 262. Parsons and Bellarmine cited by Donne for rendring some things obligatory that are said by Gratian p. 263. The Author expects that the growing populousness of England will have the effect of rendriâ—g men less censorious of any supposed Political Errors in the Ministers of our Princes p. 265. Mr. Fox cited for his Observation of many Excellent men falsly accused and judged in Parliament and his advice to Parliaments to be more circumspect ib. The Author minded by that passage out of Fox to reflect on the severity in a late Parliament in their Votes against the King's Ministers ib. The injustice of the Vote against the Earl of Hallifax p. 266. The Earl of Radnor occasionally mentioned with honour ib. The Constancy of the Earl of Anglesy to the Protestant Religion further asserted p. 267. Mention of his Lordships being injuriously reflected on in a Speech of Sir W. J. ib. The unreasonableness of the Reflections on the Lord Chief Justice North for advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions ib. The great deserved Character of that Lord Chief Justice p. 268. throughout A reflection on the popularity of Sir W. J. and on the â—â—â—essive Applause he had from the House of Commons after his Speech for the Exclusion-Bill p. 269. Sir Leolin Jenkins mentioned with honour ib. The Cabal of Sir W. J. observed to be full of fears of the Exclusion-Bill passing and their not knowing what steps in Politicks to make next ib. The Earl of Peterborough at large mentioned with honour ib. and p. 270. A further Account of the Authors prediction of England's future happy State ib. and p. 271. The Author observes that the most remarkable late Seditious Writers have published it in Print That they feared the next Heir to the Crown only as Chief Favourite to his Prince and that they judged that the Laws would sufficiently secure them from fears of his power if he should come to the Crown p. 271. An Assertion of his never having advised his Prince to incommode any one illegally and of his not having used his own power to any such purpose ib. The Author judgeth such Persons to write but in jest who amuse the People about being Lachrymists by that Princes Succession ib. The Author reflects on our Counterfeit Lachrymists for not affecting as quick a prevention of any future growth of Popery as was 〈◊〉 care of in Scotland p. 272. He observes that few or none in Scotland fear that Popery can ever in any Course of time there gain much ground ib. The Papists in that Kingdom estimated to be but 1000 ib. The Author believes that the fears of Poperies growth will be daily abated in England and in time be extinguished ib. More Popish Ecclesiasticks observed to be in Holland then Ministers in France and that yet none in Holland pretend to fear the Papists ib. The Authors judgment of the Dissenters Sayings being usefully published ib. Some Notes on the Geneva Bible seditious ib. The same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Popes Canon Law founded on the 13 th of Deuteronomy is chargeable on our late Presbyterians ib. The Assemblies Annotations cited to that purpose ib. The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine p. 274. Bishop Sanderson cited for that purpose ib. Calvin as to this point did blunder as shamefully as our Assembly-men p. 274. Several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines imbibed the error of Hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians ib. The Presbyterians here fired the Church and State with a Civil War ib. The Authors belief that there will never be any new Presbyterian Synod in England nor General Council beyond Sea ib. The Popes Pensions in the Council of Trent that sate for 18 years came to 750 l. Sterling per Month â—b The Author predicts the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty in England ib. The reason of such his Prediction p. 275. The Lord Hyde first Commissioner of the Treasury mentioned with honour ib. What the new Heaven and the new Earth is that the Author expects in England ib. The reason that induced false Prophets to foretel evil rather than good to States and Kingdoms p. 276. at large The same applied to our Augurs who by enlarging our fears and jealousies and their own fortunes thereby rendred the Genius of England less august ib. The Authors measures of the future State of England are taken only from Natural Causes and Natures Constancy to it self p. 277. A short account of several great Religionary Doctrines having naturally pierced through the sides and roots of one another p. 279. The
staking his title to a Heaven and a Crown of Glory I have then such a concern for another as I have when I see a great Ship just launching off the Land into the water and do then apprehend an immortal Soul launching it self into the great Ocean of Eternity and am afraid of its being overset But when I think of a mans having honestly sworn already and in the greatest concern namely in the detection of a Conspiracy against his Kings Crown and Life and consequently having invoked the Omnipotent God to be conditionally his Revenger his Executioner as well as Judge and further think of any one that shall tamper with such a witness and offer him a great Sum of money as his viatical expences to hell to swear contrary to his former oath and by that New Oath to renounce his expectation of a Crown of Glory in Heaven and to endanger his Princes Crown and Life on Earth and to attempt a Mortal wound on Gods Vice-Roy in the dominions of his Soul I mean his Conscience I have both all possible horror overwhelming my thoughts on such a tremendous instance of the degeneration of Mans Nature and I have all the compassion imaginable for your Lordship on one of Mankindes pretending to think it possible that your house should with your consent be turned into a denn for such a Monster An Areopagite was discharged from the Seat of Judicature because he threw away from him a small bird that fled to him from the pursuit of a great one and it was therefore supposed that such a judge alwaies carried cruelty in his breast for that charissimum Deo animal call'd Man and such is the compassionate tenderness of your Lordships mind toward injured and persecuted Mankind that one of those may be allowed to Nest within your house as freely as a poor bird without it But birds of Prey I mean Romes Vultures and either suborners or witnesses suborned to recant have no plea for your Shelter and I am confident rather then your house should be a cage for any such unclean birds you would be content as the expressions of the Prophet are that the Satyr should there cry to his fellow and that the Schrich Owle should rest there and that the wild Breasts of the Desert should also meet there Your Lordship sees what a preferment the Papists designed you for that after according to some of the Narratives of the Plot Sir W. G. was designed Lord Privy-Seal you were to be a providore for a suborned cast witness and a Iackal or provider for the roaring Lion that walks about seeking whom he may devour In fine my Lord they designed your Lordship to be an entertainer or an Host for the Devil But your Lordships name being taken in vain by those who would have retained Mr. Dugdale to take Gods so and the Devils tempting any to undertake for your house being a Sanctuary to a devil are not new things for wonder when you please to consider that the Devil presumed to undertake for Almighty Gods protection when he tempted the Son of God. It seems the shewing to Dugdale the several Kingdoms of the Earth where he should be safe could not prevail with him to be a fugitive from his Conscience and tho it appeared in several Trials and particularly my Lord Staffords the temper desired to have him and that he was sifted winnowed as wheat Yet neither his Faith nor the faith of his Testimony failed him after all the cribration thereof and all that was gained by the endeavour'd suborning him against himself as well as others against him was only the fate of the Thrush who is sometime birdlimed and took by his own excrements Is it not then an example of rare modesty that the diabolical tempters should be the accusers of the Brethren I mean of some of the Kings witnesses that would not be Bribed from attesting the truth in the case of their Political Father The Age wants not the instance of an honorable Person who courting a Lady in order to marriage thought her at last not worthy his farther amours yet who because he did once profess to love her he fought one who reproach'd her vertue But his example is not more herocial than is the practice infamous for such who courted some of the Kings Witnesses both by importunity and gold to espouse their interest and when both were totally and finally rejected make it the the most study'd part of the Romance of their Lives to dishonour them and to shamme inventions of New Tragi-comic Plotts upon them but Plots so damn'd dull as to be seen through in the opening of the first Act and Plots that were most thin where the Actors cryed to themselves like Bayes in the Rehersal Now the Plot thickens and where nothing of the three Vnities was regarded and which no marvel if they brought such confusion still to the Actors as the Story makes to have once happen'd to the old Red-Bull Players at the Tragedy of Doctor Faustus when they complained that they had one Devil more than their Company and when they said a quarter of the house was carried away Your Lordship out of a generous indignation that such Whifflers in Politics should think to lay a tax upon the belief of the Kingdom both without Act of Parliament and without Sense and indeed contrary to the sense of several Parliaments did during a Paroxysme of the Gout cause your self to be carried by your Servants to be present at Councel when the Papists pretended Presbyterian-Plot was there to be considered And if it be true what Mr. Hobbs saith in his ingenious History of the Civil Wars of England That Monsieur du Plessis and Dr. Morton Bishop of Durham writing of the progress of the Popes power and entitling their Books one of them The Mystery of Iniquity the other The Grand Imposture were both in the Right for I believe there was never such another Cheat in the World the Mercury of that cheat being sublimated into the invented cheat of that Plot was too nauseous and strong for the belief of the Kingdom to be able to swallow We may therefore be very well allow'd to put the old great interrogtory of Cicero to these Catilines How long do you abuse our patience especially considering how much to windward we are of them by the detection of their real Treason and do see both the smoke of our gunns and those of their own they fire at us annoying them and while we have had the just advantage of Plaintiffs against them and whereby their recrimination against some of our great number has seemed only dirt thrown in their own defence and at worst but Catilines accusing of Cethegus and considering that we know it only proper to he Religion to justifie the Maintaining the dignity of holy Church by Lies and calumnies Thus Guymenius a famous Popish Doctor ex tractatu de Charitate Proposit. 7. p. 176. cites Bannez 2. 2. quaest 70. art
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
and Principles Religionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is Irreligionary and against Nature The words of exterminating and recalling are often used by Cicero as signifying the contrary and when Mr. Coleman's Letters shewed such an imperious design in him for the Revocation of Popery that had been driven away and banished or exterminated hence by so many Acts of Parliament and even for the Extermination of Heresie out of the North as occasioned such apprehensions in the Government of what was intended by other innocent and modest Papists that made the gentlest of Princes in a Speech in the Oxford Parliament say and if it be practicable the ridding our selves quite of all of that Party that have any considerable Authority c. none need wonder at the past warmth of Subjects expressed against the Recalling of the Exterminated Papal Power nor yet at the warmth of their Zeal against the Principles of the Iesuites propagating an Internal Power here when they had been exterminated from Rome it self and when the Lord Chancellors Speech to both Houses had mentioned the Proceedings against Protestants in Foreign Parts to look as if they were intended to make way for a general Extirpation They are poor Judges of things who think that Doctrines of Religion cannot be said to be exterminated out of Kingdoms and their Laws without the Banishment of the Persons professing them Who accounts not Protestancy sufficiently exterminated from being the State-Religion in Italy and yet Sandies his Europae speculum tells us That there were 40000 professed Protestants there Is not Iudaism sufficiently Exterminated from being the Religion at Rome tho thousands of professed Iews are there tolerated 'T is the publick approbation of Tenets or Doctrines and not any forbearance or indulgence to persons who prosess them that gives Doctrines a place within the Religion of a State for to make any State approve of a Doctrine contrary to what it hath Established is a Contradiction But the truth is the famous Nation of the Iews formerly Heavens peculiar People on Earth having not been more generally guilty of Idolatry during their prosperity than of Superstition during their Captivity and Oppression and Extermination from their Country hath taught the World this great truth that the readiest way to propagate Superstition and Error is by the Exterminium and Banishment of Persons Whatever Church any men call their Mother if the Magistrate finds them to own the Interest of their Country as their Mother and to honour their true Political Father they cannot wish their days more long in the Land than I shall do I remember under the Vsurpation there passed an Act of Parliament as 't was called for the banishment of that famous Boute-feu Iohn Lilburn and under the Penalty of the Vltimum supplicium and he shortly after returning to England and being tried in London where he was universally known and the only thing issuable before the Iurors being whether he was the same John Lilburn those good men and true thought him so much transubstantiated as to bring him in not guilty and when ever I find any Papist not only willing to change the Name Papist for Catholick but the thing Papistry for the Principles of the Church of Rome under its first good Bishops and before Popes beyond a Patriarchal Power aspired to be Universal Bishops and Universal Kings and that even a Iesuite instead of the Rule of Iesuita est omnis homo hath alter'd his Morals and Principles pursuant to the Pope's said Decree so far as truly to say Ego non sum ego I shall not intermeddle in awakening Penal Laws to touch either his life or liberty Nor can any Presbyterians with justice reflect on the Zeal of any for the Continuance of the Laws for the Extermination of Presbytery when they shall reflect on the Royal Family having been by their means as is set forth in this Discourse exterminated out of the Realm into Foreign Popish Countries and of which they might easily have seen the ill effects if their understandings had not been very scandalously dull But there is another happy Extermination that I have in this Discourse from Natural Causes predicted to my Country and that is of the fears and jealousies that have been so prevalent during our late fermentation concerning which the Reader will shortly find himself referred to in many Pages in this Discourse and to have directed him to all of that Nature would have made the Index a Book I have in this Discourse designing to eradicate the fears of Popery out of the Minds of timid Protestants by the most rational perswasions I could shewed somewhat of Complaisance in sometimes humouring their Suppositions of things never likely to come to pass I have accorded with them in the possibility of the Event of Arch-Bishop Vsher's Famous Prophecy tho I account the same as remote from likelihood as any one could with it and do believe that if that Great and Learned Man could have foreseen the mischief that Prophecy hath occasioned by making so many of the Kings good Subjects disquieted thereby and which by at once Chilling their Hearts and heating their Heads hath rendered them less qualified for a chearful and steady discharge of their respective Duties he would have consulted privately with many other Learned and Pious Divines about the intrinsick weight of the matter revealed to him before he had exposed it to the World for that in the days when God spake by the Prophets yet even then the Spirits of the Prophets were always subject to the Prophets and there is no Fire in the World so bad a Master as the Fire of Prophecy It is observable that there hath scarce since this Prophecy been a Conjuncture of time wherein men uneasie to themselves would make the Government so but this Prophecy hath been reprinted in it and cryed about and few Enthusiasts but are as perfect in it as a Sea-man in his Compass The substance of it was to foretel Persecution that should happen in England from the Papists in the way of a sudden Massacre and that the Pope should be the Contriver of it and that if the King were restored it might be a little longer deferred A person less learned than that Great Prelate could easily give an Account of the past Out-rages of Massacres that have been perpetrated by Papists and of the tendency of the Iesuites Principles to the very legitimating of Future ones but the most Pious and Learned Man in the World ought with the greatest Caution imaginable to pretend to Divine Revelation of Future Contingencies in a matter both so unlikely and so odious as this and which might probably occasion so much Odium to so many innocent Papists and so much needless trouble to so many timid Protestants That Pious and Great Prelate did not I believe foresee that at the time when his Prophecy should dart its most fearful influence St. Peter's Chair would be filled
Popery but some of their old stock Tho some Presbyterians have not hitherto learned that Modesty and Policy from the Papists as to leave off their unjust valuing themselves on their Numbers yet as I know not of any number of Gentlemen that would choose to live in any Parish in England under the severity of that Church Government and who would not rather desire to be exterminated from their Native Country than to live in it with Presbytery Paramount so neither do I believe that Presbytery would be endured by many of our illiterate Mechanicks now more than heretofore if they were taught its rigour And tho likewise another Sect of Dissenters more Gentlemanly than that of the Presbyterians I mean the Independants do in the little Pamphlets they write trouble us much with proclaiming their Numbers and as if they were not only the sober but the major part of the Nation they are very ridiculous in trying to make themselves that way dreadful contrary to what is in Fact true I believe that the number of those who in the late times listed themselves in the particular gathered Churches and subjected themselves to their Laws and Contribution to their Pastorage was always inconsiderable and as an Argument of that 't is in this Discourse mentioned that the Pastors of the most Opulent of those Churches in London did most readily quit their Posts when they could obtain Head-ships of Colleges and that in a Conjuncture when Independancy was in a manner the form of Church Government owned by the State. These Churches were always very few in the Country and are now fewer and scarce visible unless we will call the Bands of Quakers by the name of Churches and a name I do not hear they think fit to use I am of opinion that under the Christian Religion so much â—uller of Mystery than the Pagan Iewish and Turkish its Divine Planter did necessarily make Christians loving one another the Characteristical Mark of their being such and under the noble freedom allowed by the Protestaâ—ts Religion to try all things and to trust no Religionary Tenets but what they have tryed a Heterodoxy as to some speculative supposed Tenets of the Church of England may among some inquisitive persons have long gained ground and still do so There was in London an Independant Church under Cromwel's Government and Mr. Biddell was their Pastor and among other Tenets denominable as those of Religion they owned these following viz. That the Fathers under the old Covenant had only Tempâ—ral Promises and That the Vniversal Obedience performed to the Commands of God and Christ was the saving Faith and That Christ rose again only by the Power of the Father and not his own and That justifying Faith is not the pure gift of God but may be acquired by mens natural Abilities and That Faith cannot believe any thing contrary to or above reason and That there is no Original Sin and That Christ hath not the same body now in glory in which he suffered and rose again and That the Saints shall not have the same body in Heaven that they had on Earth and That Christ was not Lord or King before his Resurrection or Priest before his Ascension and That the Sainâ—s shall not before the day of Iudgment enjoy the Bliss of Heaven and That God doth not certainly know Future Contingences and That there is not any Authority of Fathers or General Councils in determining Matters of Faith and That Christ before his death had not any Dominioâ— over the Angels and That Christ by dying made not satisfaction for us and 't is possible that such Religionary Tenets as these which are far from being de lanâ caprinâ and are contrary to the Articles of our Church may not be extirpated tho yet I believe there will never be any Fermentation in our Church or State produced here by them if in course of time any of them should happen to be the Sentiments of any of our Princes and much less that any Prince if so opining would consute others as Hereticks with Fire and Sword and as Calvin coâ—futed Servetus There was likewise in our Metropolis another Independant Church of which Mr. Iohn Goodwin was the Pastor and by which Church the Tenets of Arminiâ—s were received and which tho they have ceased to ferment the State yet the opinions of men equally pious and learned will in all likelihood be always different about the same and as to these Tenets the Questions are not such as are called Questiones Domitianae or of catching of Flies But there is a sort of Questions that is little better and that in our busie World will not usurp the time they have done and that is such as are of the Nature of that I have spoke of toward the Close of this Discourse that made the fermentation in a Church of Separatists that went hence to Amsterdam namely Whether Aron's Ephod were blew or Sea-green and tho I have asserted it That mens liberty of professing Religionary Tenets may be reckoned as a part of their Purchace by Christ's Blood yet methinks to make the Son of God leave the Bosom of his â—ather and take a Journey from Heaven to Earth to impress on it right Notions about the lawfulness of signing Children with the Cross or of mens kneeling at the Sacrament or standing at the Creed or bowing at the name of Iesus or of placing the Communion Table in the East or of wearing Surplices Tippets Lawn-sleeves or square Caps or of keeping of Holy-days or singing Psalms to Organs and to resolve the World in some plain points as namely Whether the Soveraign Power may not lawfully enjoyn the observance of the external Circumstances of Divine Worship which every man doth in his own Family or Whether it be not as lawful for the Sovereign Power to enjoyn kneeling at the Sacrament as 't is for private Persons to command their Flocks not to kneel and the resolving who doth most hurt by Christian Liberty either the Magistrate who commanding me to kneel telâ—s me the thing is in its own nature indifferent and that he doth not and cannot change the nature of things in themselves or my private Pastor who shall tell me That my not kneeling is necessary to salvation and the resolving the Question Whether I may lawfully â—oyn in a set form of Prayer with a Congregation when 't is plain that another man 's conceived or extempore Prayer is as much a form to me or to another as any printed Prayer can be or the resolving what Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots calls a frivolous Question as made by some Separatists viz. What Warrant have you to use this or that Form of Prayer or to pray upon a Book and to which he answers That it is Warrant sufficient that we are enjoyned to use Prayer Confession of Sin and Supplication for Pardon c. No set Form thereof determined therefore any fit Form warrantable this Form that we
and likewise any one that owned any of those Pernitious Principles that strike at the heart of the Civil Government and that they would presently give his Majesty an accompt of all their own Names Places of abode and Numbers of their Families and that they would not live in nor come to the Court nor into any of our Cities or great Towns without leave obtain'd pursuant to the Statute of the 35 th of Elizabeth Ch. 2. wherein 't is Enacted under several Penalties That they shall not remove above Five miles from their dwellings and to give in their Names to the Constables Headborough and Minister c. and that the people might be delivered not only from any danger by them but any fears that might fall on a wise man either of their power or numbers encreasing I should joyfully entertain such an invention But what way of that kind is practicable I am altogether ignorant But do suppose that the present Lawes Oaths and Tests ought to continue till with the Consent of His Majesty and Lords and Commons in Parliament we are further secured I know that we ought to be much more vigilant over English Papists then over any Forrainers for that 't is a kind of a Rule that Angli nil modicum in Religione possunt and therefore that no Popish Priest who is a Subject to England can with the public safety live here Your Lordship hath I think as comprehensive a knowledg of the affairs of Ireland as any man can have and therefore I shall here tell you that a Gentleman of Ireland told me that in the times of the usurpt powers 't was in the Act of Settlement for Ireland by the Parliament declared that it was not their intent after almost a National Rebellion to extirpate the whole Irish Nation but that after an exception of certain persons as to Life and Estate the Act orders some Irish to be banish'd the Kingdom and other Irish to be transplanted to some part of Ireland allowing them such proportion of Land and Estate there as they should have had of their own elsewhere in Ireland if they had not been removed What effect that Transplantation had I know not but I suppose it easier to remove a handful of men from one corner of the Land to another then 't was to remove almost a Nation And do suppose there are some Papists in England as innocent of this late Plot as there were some in Ireland of that Rebellion The Dean of Canterbury doth in his incomparable Sermon before the House of Commons on the 5 th of November 1678 acknowledg the Piety and Charity of several persons who lived and dyed in the Roman Communion as Erasmus Father Paul Thuanus and many others who had in truth more goodness then the Principles of that Religion do either incline men to or allow of And so I think my self bound in justice to Judge in that manner of some Papists of my acquaintance Thus the Epicureans of old tho their Principle of making happiness consist in pleasure was detestable gained this point that many of their Sect were honest men And so much Tully acknowledged to be true but with a Salvo to his exception against their Doctrine Speaking of Epicurus and his Followers L. 2. De Finibus Boni Mali he saith Ac mihi quidem videtur quod ipse vir bonus fuit multi Epicurei fuerunt bodie sunt in amicitirs fideles in omni vita constantes graves nec voluptate sed officio consilia moderantes It seems to me that Epicurus was a good man and many of his Sect have been and are faithful in their friendships and constant and serious men in every condition of life and managing the conduct of their life 's by duty and not pleasure But then saith he hoc videtur major vis honestatis minor voluptatis and afterwards he saith atque ut caeteri existimantur dicere melius quam facere sic hi mihi videntur melius facere quam dicere As much as if he had said No thanks to their Principles but their honest inclinations the force of honesty shew'd it self more Predominant in them then that of pleasure and as other mens Principles are accounted better then their Practises these mens Practises are better then their Principles It is I think Gods standing Miracle in the world who is able to make a divulsion between the formal and the vital Act namely to make fire not burn to keep some men from undoing themselves and Mankind by the genuine consequences of the Opinions they profess in matters of Religion And thus it is happy for the World that Caliginosa nocte premit Deus nepotes discursus And he can by an Omnipotent easiness when he pleaseth Divert a mans understanding from seeing any first-born consequence from his opinion as well as a more remote one Moreover the Divine Power doth in the Government of the World interpose it self sometimes between professed Notions or Principles themselves and mans intellectual faculties Good men sometimes do not believe even the existence of that and of some other divine Attributes where the things to be believed are to be seen by the light of Nature And bad men habituated to lying sometimes do at last believe the lyes and shamms themselves made though yet for the most part it happens what is perfectly worthy of the Divine Power and goodness when men are with Candor and purity of mind seeking after Truth that-Heaven does so influence their understandings as that they are not by false lights artificial seduced to believe any thing against the light of Nature nor given up by weak arguments to strong delusions These things considered I think that that great Divine of our Age the Lord Bishop of Lincoln hath with a Noble modesty and charity in the Title of his unanswered and unanswerable Book against Popery exprest the Principles of that Religion when really believed to be pernicious And having said all this I need not trouble your Lordship or my self much further about finding a way to prevent the Papists from troubling us but do suppose that the Papists themselves are most concerned to labour in such an invention And instead of their being led by any hellish Principles to destroy any City of Course by Sinister means That is by burning it they may if they please in their Devotion address to Heaven for that favour to its old chosen People on Earth mentioned in Psalm 107. v. 7. And he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a City of Habitation I suppose that after so eminent a Person as the Lord High Chancellor of England in his Speech at the Condemnation of the Lord Stafford made that great interogation Does any man now begin to doubt how London came to be burnt and after the Vote of the last Parliament the last day of their Sitting in these words viz. Resolved That it is the Opinion of this House That
are to be cut off and thus they are to be law'd every three years for the preserving the Kings Game and the peace of his wild Beasts The Regarders of the Forrest are to make a TRIENNIAL enquiry about it tunc fiat per visum testimonium legalium hominum non aliter that is not Arbitrarily there must be legal Judgment upon legal Testimony and no Dog law'd without Judicial proceeding This Forrest Law made in the time of our Popish Ancestors did suppose that the Kings Game could not be preserved nor the Peace of his Wild Beasts by the Dogs being then either exorcised or their lapping a little holy water or any expedient as I may say without expeditation which did ipso facto destroy their Power of destroying the Kings Game and the Peace of his wild Beasts and therefore that 's the only valuable Garranty we can have from those who without Law and against Law would hunt down the King himself and his Tame Subjects that the excrescence of their power should be hambled or expeditated but the modus of this I do again say ought by them to be tendered to the Consideration of his Majesty and the Triennial Regardors of the Kingdom I am sure 't is worthy the consideration of us English what the Learned Frenchman Monsieur Bodin tells us in his Book de Republica Lib. 5. Cap. 6. Vna est tenuium adversus potentiores securitatis ratio ut scilicet si nocere velint non possent cum nocendi voluntas ambitiosis hominibus imperandi cupidis nunquam sit defutura And now my Lord to give your Lordship a home Instance of Jealousie taking Fire in some meerly from the power of another to do them hurt I will instance in your self at this conjuncture of time The nature of Iealousie renders it to be a troublesom weed and yet such an one that growes in the Richest Soil of Love my meaning is that 't is a fear of Love not being mutual when one doth love intensely with desire of being so loved My Lord in the picture of your mind that I have already drawn in this Letter I have only done you a little right and not at all favour'd you and 't is but Justice to you to acknowledge that the Protestant part of your Country hath a singular love for you with a desire of being so loved by you and 't is in this Critical conjuncture of time that your power makes them fear the love not to be mutual Your Lordship knows that fear in people is an aversion with an opinion of hurt from any object and they soon hate those things or persons for which they have aversion and fear of hurt by power disposeth men naturally to anticipate and not to stay for the first blow or else to crave aid from Society and from others especially whose concern may be the same or greater then theirs and who are their representatives and to wish ill to those who make them sleep in armour or to stand in the posture of Gladiators with their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on another and to be still in procinctu and all those passions sprung from the Root of Jealousie as far as they exceed the bounds of reason are degrees of madness And tho mans life be a constant motion and for the most part in both a Rugged way and near Precipices yet during that madness men are still by their own Scorpions scourging it to make it move faster then the regular and intended pace of Nature and injuring themselves with their passions are content too to wound another through their own sides And thus my Lord give me leave to tell you That 't is a kind of a Complement from people to a great good man of whose power and of whom they are jealous when that it may be said of them that they are occasionally faln mad for love of him One part of your Power namely that wherein you are a Conduit-Pipe to convey the grants of Honour and profit from your Royal Master the Fountain of Honour 't is possible for you to quit and that with pleasure too that you may have time to quench your great thirst after knowledge in that great collection of waters into which so many Streams of learning have met from all ages and Nations I mean your vast and choice Library And I may well suppose that your Lordship hath now that sense of Greatness and of power by publick Employment that Cardinal Granvel expressed at his retirement from the same That a great Man is like a great River where many sorts of Creatures are still quenching their thirst but are likewise still muddying and troubling the Stream Your Lordship knows who said thâ—â— actio est conversatio cum stultis lectio cum sapientibus In the Scene of the busie World you are necessarily troubled with the affaires of men whose being born was unnecessary to the world and there you are usually put to play at hard games well with ill gamesters the jest that fortune playing in humane affâ—ires commonly puts on the wise to spoil their busie sport there you are sometimes deafen'd with Complaints of Mimick Apes and grave Asses of airy fools and formal fops one against another but in your noble Library you have the advantage of the still Musick of the Tomb you have the weight of many dead Authors making no noise you have Socinus and Calvin standing quietly by each other and some Authors content with the dust of your Library who thought one Christian world not enough to trouble 't is there you will avoid any trouble by Authors of gilded outsides intruding nor be molested as now by nonsense in fine clothes You cannot now quietly enquire after the fountain of Nile for the noise of its Cataracts nor appease your thirst after knowledge otherwise then tanquam canis ad Nilum for fear of the Crocodiles of the World devouring you nor have a view of the tree of knowledge without a Serpent of envy circled about it nor have time to look on the pieces painted for eternity nor to mind the Eclipses in the Heavens while you are preventing your own being eclipsed in the Earth But my Lord there is another kind of power inherent in you and that you cannot part with such a power as King Charles the first in his Eikon Basil. affixes to the Character of his favorite when he sayes he looked on the Earl of Strafford as a Gentleman whose great abilities might make a Prince rather afraid then ashamed to employ him in the greatest affaires of State. Your very Reputation for power is power for that engageth those to adhere to you who want protection Your Success in your past conduct of publick affaires is power for it makes men promise to themselves good fortune while they follow you Your eloquence that fastens mens ears to your lips is power Your great knowledge in the Law whereby you possess that Engine by which you can be
innocency which yet perhaps may be necessary to be done for the use of those who know you not hereafter when the heat of the day and your Services in this critical juncture shall be over and would now shew as meanly as if a General in the time of Battel having some dirt or dust lighting on his face should while he was among the bullets employ his barbers washballs to cleanse it and that too when the fate of the battel seems to totter and is near decision one way or other and while there is hardly room for the Quid agendum to wedge it self in and he that saith consider is almost a foe and therefore once when a great Commander had no way to save himself and his Army but by their swimming with their horses through a River to attack their Enemy he did only to that question of quid agendum put to him by his Officers suddenly eccho back the reply of agendum and with his horse took the River and while now 't is with us as on board a Ship in the time of Fight or of a Storm when they are Fighting with the Elements and the Master or Steersman orders any thing to be done the case will bear no dilatory answer of words and the answer there is Done it is I say after all this that there is a reason which in my opinion renders any mans writing unnecessary now either to the World or himself and that is this That words and Language the which formerly having the stamp of common usage and of reason on them passed as currant coine for the Signification of mens minds and as a medium of commerce are in this juncture as useless that way and of as little value as lether coine called in and this Age wherein both the word and thing called shamme hath been brought in use and shamme calls it self an answer to that great question What is wit tho with as little reason as if a lye should call it self an answer to that old great question What is truth hath inforced those that do not love to be shamm'd upon not to measure mens actions by their words but their words by their Actions And tho a mans written books are called his works yet have I observed an occasion of Sarcasme given thereby when one speaking of a particular Divines excellent writings said he loved his works but hated his actions And written works are now indeed but actings as when a man doth agree gestum in scena on the Stage of the World and for them he finds but only a Theatrical applause Nor so much as that when like the Actor crying O heavens he looks down on the Earth As he is alwaies accounted but a smatterer in knowledge who is a pedant or petty-Chapman in words so he playes but at small games in politicks who is a pedant or trader in words or who indeed will give any thing for them He who doth verba dare has bad morals and who gives any thing else for them has bad intellectuals and according to that old Monkish verse they said Res dare pro rebus pro verbis verba solemus The only real security therefore that the World hath for its quiet is mens only giving a seeming belief to seeming professions and protestations for as Ayr out of its place makes Earth-quakes so if the articulate air of mens words gets beyond my hearing into my belief it may there raise those commotions of passion that may make me trouble both my self and the World and particularly by the passion of jealousie before-mentioned on my desire where I have a kindness that it should be mutual and when positive words brought me into the fools paradise of believing it possible a thing perhaps not possible in nature that two bodies and minds whose faculties must needs be different should have an equal intenseness of love for each other no president of friendship particularly that of Ionathan and David having shewn it and in the conjugal love the passions of the weaker Sex being observed to be the strongest and that of jealousie as well as Love jealousie particularly being most potent in minds most impotent and in persons most diffident of themselves And this may in some sort console your Lordship after all your restless endeavours to merit the love of all your Countrymen if it be not exactly mutual But this by the way The great names of Protestant and Religion began to adorn each other in the year of our Lord 1529 when some of the Electors and Princes of the Empire with a protestation opposed the Decree relating to the Mass and Eucharist made at Spiers and when some of the Capital Cities of Germany joyn'd with them to protest the same thing But every one knows that a protestation is a revocable thing and that a Protestation contrary to actions revokes it self And that the word Protestant hath not been in the World as the Poets term is of calling grass green or the like otiosum epitheton I believe the Papists will grant and 't is not one Protestation made and not revoked either by words or actions that can make that term consistent with our Religion or render a man worthy to be call'd one 'T is not a good continual claim to our Religion that yet is for land we are disseis'd of that is made only once a year whilst we live No the Protestation that the Protestant Religion requires is such a continual one as is reiterated upon every fresh act and attempt of the Papal Religion against ours 't is not a going to our Cells and saying Lord have mercy upon us but 't is our watching in our Stations and our shewing no mercy to the principles of Popery that are alwaies attacking the quiet of the World either by Storm or Siege or undermining 't is like the Protestation required when the defendant hath declined a Judge that must be made toties quoties as any new Act is done by the Judge without which the first Protestation grows insignificant 't is not one Act of protesting the Popes Bills of Exchange for good money we paid him and his giving us bank-tickets upon purgatory or giving us some fantastick Saints pretended Hair or Nailes protested with so much scorn by our Popish Ancestors in Henry the 8th's time that a piece of St. Andrews finger covered with an ounce of Silver pawn'd by a Monastery for forty pound was left unredeemed at the dissolution of it which shewed that that commodity would even then yeild nothing and was a meer drug in Scotland of which Country he is call'd the Saint Protector but 't is further like a protestation against the Sea at the next Port made toties quoties goods in a Ship are damnified by its rage which the law requires the Skipper to make or else leaves answerable for the dammage And if a poor Tarpauling who must alwaies plough the Sea for his bread during life and there still contest with the angry Elements
the Basilisc of the Papal Supremacy and notify'd it to the Nations of the Earth that England is an Empire that being the Style of the Statute of the 24 th of H. 8. c. 12. Viz. That this Realm is an Empire and that the Crown thereof is an Imperial one And the words of Kings and Emperours of this Realm being then attribued in our Statutes to the Monarchs of England and as the great expression in the Prophesie of Ezekiel c. 16. v. 13. is applyed by God to the Iewish state And thou didst prosper into a Kingdom it may be justly said that Harry the Eighth's defying the Popes Usurpation made England prosper into an Empire 'T was his doing that made him hors de page and 't is only the doing it that will make the French King truly so too For 't is only Air that any feed a Monarch's fancy with who would amuse him with an Vniversal Empire abroad till he hath obtain'd one first at home as no Man is to expect to govern his Neighbours Family who is Control'd in his own And like a Master who imagines himself great while he is feared by none but some of his own Servants so how little terrour did Queen Mary's Reign give to any parcel of Mankind but a few of her own Subjects of which the number that she burnt and made to languish in Prisons and such as left her Kingdom by migration to forreign parts would easily have kept Callais for her and prevented the ignominy of her Politics in losing the Real Key of France while she was finding the Imaginary Keys of the Church But 't is a truth not contestable That Queen Mary's Reign in which her persecution of her Subjects was so barbarous and such a scandal to Government That Dr. Heylin himself applyes to it in the Title Page of his History of Queen Mary that passage in Paterculus Hujus temporis fortunam ne deflere quidem quispiam satis digne potuit nemo verbis exprimere potest served only as a foile to the lustre of Queen Elizabeth whom all Generations since have called blessed and who was not more lov'd by the English then she was feared by the French and was offered Calice if she would but have connived at the continuing of the French forces in Scotland and who sent to the great Henry the Fourth a Mandamus to build no more Ships and had more money offered her by her Subjects then she would accept and yet as is said in Towsend's Historical Collections had spent a Million of Money in her Wars with Spain and laid out 100000 l. to support the King of France against the Leaguers and 150000 l. in defence of the Low Countries and discharged a debt of Four Millions she found the Crown indebted in Nay our Historians tell us that She payed the very Pensions that were in arrear in her Father's and Sister's time to divers of the Religious persons ejected out of Abbeys It was Queen Elizabeth who by all her Alliances and especially her Offensive and Defensive one with the States of the Vnited Provinces in the Year 1578. laid such a deep and sure foundation for a vast trade of the English Nation to be built on that it 's overbalance is said to have brought to be Coined in the Tower of London from the first of October 1599 in the 41 st Year of her Reign to March 31st 1619 being 19 years 4,779 314 l. 13 s. 4 d And from March 31st 1619 to March 31st 1638 being 19 years 6,900,042 l. 11 s. 1 d And from March 1638 before May 1657 being 19 years 7,733,521 l. 13 s. 4 d England alone by verture of that her Alliance having till the Peace of Munster 1648 enjoyed almost the whole Manufacture and best part of the Trade of Europe And it was but just for Heaven to punish in England the greatest villany that could be wrought on Earth I mean the murder of the best of Kings by suffering the Trade of England to have its fatal decay in that year 1648. For then I count our over-balance of Trade for the last mentioned Nineteen years had its Period and 't was by the effect of that Peace that both Holland and France and Spain cantonized the power of our Trade and the most Soveraign of our Manufactures Till that black year 't was to be ascribed to the result of Queen Elizabeth's politics and not to the conduct of the Long Parliament that England did as to Trade both do its business and play and as to its Commanding the Trade of the World did Sail with a Trade-wind and during that Wind it could not happen that any should meet us or overtake us in our motion whatever mean Pilots were at the Helm It was for the completing the last ternary of the Coinage that I mentioned the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or nineteen years ending in 1657. For I believe that both Astrea and Trade left our Land in that fatal Crisis of 48 of which the Mâ—nth of Ianuary produced the Signing of that Peace at Munster and the horrid Arraignment and Martyrdom of that matchless Prince 'T is therefore not to be admired That Queen Elizabeth's provident Ensuring such a plenty of Traffick and Riches to her Kingdom both for her own and future time she had what praemium of Taxes from her Parliaments she pleased accordingly as King Iames tells the Parliament Anno 1620 That Queen Elizabeth had one year with another above 100000 l. in Subsidies and in all my time I have had but four Subsidies and six Fifteenths and he said his Parliament had not given him any thing for Eight or Nine years England did thrive apparently while it was to Queen Elizabeth a Puteus inexhaustus But while it was such an one to the Pope was in a miserable and consumptive state as any one must necessarily conclude who considers that the nutritive juyce of the wealth of the Kingdom was diverted from cherishing its own Head to pamper the Bellies of Forreigners Deplorable then was the condition of the English Crown when as we are told by the Antiquitates Britan. f. 178. in the Reign of Hen. 3d. Repertus est Annuus reditus Papae talis quem ne Regius quidem attigit And when according to Matthew Paris f. 549 in the Reign of that King Anno 1240 it was complained of That there remained not so much Treasure in the Kingdom as was in three years extorted from it by the Pope But what is more strange we are told in Cotton's Collections p. 129 of the times of Edward the Third That the Taxes paid to the Pope for Ecclesiastical dignities did amount to five times as much as the People paid the King per annum One would wonder that so martial a Prince the Scene of whose Reign lay almost in continual War should be so careless of the Sinews of it as to permit so much of the wealth of the Kingdom to be mis-applyed and that too while all manner
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
Scene of Merchandizing was not open'd in Europe till about 6 or 7 hundred years ago and till then none were there worthy the names of Merchants except some few in the Republicks of Italy who lived in the Mediterranean parts trading with the Indian Caravans in the Levant or driving some inland Trade and then and some hundreds of years afterward the Nations in the worst Soil of Europe being the greatest breeders and having superfluity of nothing but people had no invention for living but by being Murderers and by the boysterous Trade of Fighting their way into better Quarters and during that dark and Iron Age that produced Herds of Men void of knowledge there was nothing in humane Conversation or discourse valuable and in our European World it was scarce worth Men a few steps to gain one anothers acquaintance but on the gradual encrease of knowledge there Men found a readier way at once with delight and profit to exchange Notions and Commodities of Traffick and the Protestant Religion at last drawing up the Curtain that kept all things obscure on that Stage of the World Men being better taught the knowledge of the God of Nature and of Nature it self were grown worth one anothers knowledge and were for the surprizing brightness of their intellectual Talents gazed on by the wondring World like in Machines Gods coming down out of Clouds and it was worthy of the bounty of Heaven then to spread on the Earth the Commerce of Men and the Medium of Commerce too and to allow them to converse together with more splendor by the Donative of the American Mines when the dawn of the knowledge a little before that of the Reformation had rendred them conversable Creatures and fit for the interviews of one another and shortly afterwards by a mighty encrease of Navigation many did pass to and fro and knowledge was more and more encreased Thus as I have some where read of a saying of one of the Fathers Deus ambit nos donis formâ suâ the Divine Goodness provided that the World should Espouse the beauty of the Reformation with a great Dowry and that it should appear particularly in England with the great Figure that Wisdom makes in the Proverbs Length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour And the truth is conspicuous in our English History that former intervals of some Efforts of Trade and of some of withstanding the Papal Encroachments were alway contemporary and liv'd and dy'd together and they were no sooner risen out of the Grave where the barbarity of former times depressed them but they were again found in one anothers Embraces That the Stock and Wealth of the Kingdom is vastly encreased since Harry the 8ths time is visible to any one who considers what Stow saith in his Annals on the Year 1523 the 15th Year of his Reign That when in a Parliament held at Black-Fryers and where Sir Thomas More was Speaker 800000 l. was required to be raised of the fifth part of every mans Goods and Lands that is 4 s of every Pound to be paid in 4 years but it was denyed and it was proved manifestly that if the fifth part of the substance of the Realm were but 800000 l and if Men should pay to the King the fifth part of their Goods in Money or Plate that there was not so much Money out of the Kings hands in all the Realm for the fifth part of every Mans Goods is not in Money or Plate c. And then consequently if all the Money were brought to the Kings hands then Men must barter Cloath for Victuals c. And there it was further Argued that the King had by way of Loan 2 s. in the Pound which is 400000 l. and if he had 4 s. more in the Pound 't would amount to 1200000 l which is almost the 3 d part of every Mans Goods which in Coyn cannot be had within the Realm That the Merchandizing Trade of England was before the Reformation and sometime after managed chiefly by Forraigners we Learn out of Heylin's Edward the 6 th p. 108 where he saith that Edward the 6 th Supprest the Corporation of Merchant Strangers the Merchants of the Stilyard concerning which we are to know that the English in the times foregoing being neither strong in Shipping nor much accustomed to the Sea received all such Commodities as were not of the growth of their own Country from the hands of Strangers resorting hither from all parts to upbraid our laziness namely Merchants known by the name of Easterlings who brought hither Wheat and Rye and Grain c. for their encouragement wherein they were amply priviledged and exempted from many impositions I shall here deduce a proof of the growth of the Revenue of the Nation from the growth of that of the Church and to prove that the Revenue of the Church Nation of England were in the year 1660 about Quintuple to what they were at the time of the Reformation I shall say first that Godwin in his Catalogue of Bishops makes the Revenue of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops to be valued at the time of the Reformation near 22000 l. per Annum and if we admit the Revenue of the Deans and Chapters to be double the Sum viz. 44000 l. then will the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy appear to have been then 66000 l. per Annum But Dr. Cornelius Burgess a Man vers'd in the speculative and practick part of Sacriledge doth in his Book concerning Sacriledge call'd Two Replies and Printed Anno 1660 affirm that the Bishops Deans and Chapters Lands were at the end of the late Civil War sold for two Million three hundred thousand pounds and he saith there was offer'd since his Majesties Restoration seven hundred thousand pounds more to confirm that Sale whereby the value of the said Land is made to be in the year 1660 3 Millions And Mr. Prynne in his Printed Speech in the House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the satisfactoriness of the Kings Answers to the Propositions of both Houses doth in Page 68 there affirm That near one half of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops Possessions and Revenues consists in Impropriations Tithes Pensions and the like and if we may suppose the like as to the Revenues of the Deans and Chapters then according to that Estimate will the value of the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy of our Church be about 6 Millions the twentieth part whereof viz. at twenty years Purchase is 300,000 l. per Annum and the 12 th part of the same viz. at 12 years purchase is 500,000 l. per Annum so that what at the time of the Reformation was worth but 66000 l. per Annum was in the Year 1660 worth between 300 and 500000 l. as aforesaid In the next place I shall prove the Remainder of my Position that the Revenue of the whole Nation is about Quintupled also for that the
of Enemies a name that the Impotent passion of Subjects makes them so familiarly vex one another with and thereby shews them not such fit depositaries of Heavens Artillary as Soveraigns are so is it extremely unbecoming the Glorious height to which the Doctrine of the Cross hath exalted humane Nature for men as I may say to deâ—cend from Heaven to Earth for Dirt and to Hell for Fire-brands to throw at one another and petulantly to call those that were sometime Aliens and Enemies in their mind c. always such after the Divine reconciliation or even to manage the most lawful and just War Sine quadam bene volentiâ as St. Austines words are or to think that they can justly assume the great Name first used at Antioch and yet retain a Constant and Stated enmity against any Person whatsoever For according to the Excellent saying of Tertullian Christianus nullius est hostis But the Bosome of that wise Princess was no resting place for Anger and all the Popes Thunder could not discompose her and as in all Games they who in their play retain a Constant Equabillity of mind are generally most Successful so was she in the great Political Game she play'd by being Semper eadem and the Papal Excommunications seem'd to her as despicable as the Curses of loosing Gamesters and I doubt not but by her Prudent and just Administration of the Government of Church and State she hath laid the Foundation of the English Nations being Semper eadem in the Royal Line and of the Protestant Religions being so too and that no delendam fore can Issue out against either humanly Speaking and that any Popish Successor that can come here will find it his interest to use the Politicks of Queen Mary as a Sea Mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land Mark to go by and it being clear accordingly as Sir W. P. in his Manuscript discourse called Verbum Sapienti demonstrates it Cap. 2. of the Value of the People that each Head of Man-kind is as certainly valuable as Land that the many Strangers who have Transplanted themselves hither need never fear that they will be so undervalued as in the Marian days The Families of French Protestants that have lately come here have filled 800. of the Empty New Built Houses of London and have given us too an occasion of entertaining Angels in those untenanted Houses whose Ruinous appearance before made them seem to the vulgar such as they call haunted but from which no Prince can ever think of exorcising the inhabitants without Conjuring away his own Revenue of which about one moity depends on that City and where the Rents tho fallen as I say would yet have been much lower but for the Tenancy of these Forreigners and the expectation of others There is a very great President in our English Story and that is of a Prince of the Popish perswasion and yet one who was a sharp persecuter of the Extravagances of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and one who by the Introducing of Forreignors here to Manufacture our Wooll saved the Life or Being of the Nations Trade which his Predecessors had left in a Gasping Condition and one who by his Patronizing of Wiclif sufficiently shew'd that if those Forreigners had been Wiclifists he would yet have been a Fautor of those Hereticks and one who more disoblig'd the Pope by seizing on the Lands of the Alien Oâ—thodox Clerical Idlers then he could have done by the entertainment of many Heterodox lay Alien Manufacturers 'T is needless to say that I here mean our great Edward the third of whom and of Queen Elizabeth the prudence was as memorable as of any Princes that ever Sate on the English Throne And I will never despaire of any Heroick Prince here of the Roman Catholick perswasion with his Scepter upholding the trade of the Kingdom as those two great Names did and that too by the same methods if ever he shall come to find it in the tottering Conditon that they did and it may be well supposed that the experience the Kingdom hath since gained under King Iames and the Royal Martyr and His Present Majesty of the publick benefit that hath arisen from the reception of Forraign Artists who have been Heterodox in some ritual points about our Religion will make their expulsion seem a Solecisme And every Sagacious Person will I believe accord with me that the Spider hath done much more good to humane kind by furnishing it with the Invention of Weaving then harm by any thing of Poyson I shall be glad to know from your Lordship whether on your search among the Records of State either in the Exchequer or Paper-Office you can find Foot-steps of any thing like those returns of the Numbers of the People in London mentioned out of Howel and Cotton I am sure that the knowledge of the Numbers of our People ought by Statesmen to be accounted their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in this conjuncture as the opus diei and to pass no longer for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that those of them who take their measures either of the publick Strength or Revenue without respect to this are but State-Eâ—thusiasts and such who in their reckonings do according to our Common Phrase reckon without their Host and do not govern their Politicks by the Arithmetick the Scripture suggests in the question of What King goeth to make War against another King sitteth not down first and Consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand Bodin in his de Republicâ speaking of the Numbering of the People saith That the benefit that redounds to the Publick thereby is infinite and that thereby Princes and States know what Souldiers they may have and what Numbers they may send abroad to Collonys I have been informed by a Person belonging to the Custom-house that near 10000. Persons have had their Names entred as gone out of the Ports of London and Bristol for our Plantations in a years time And no doubt but the Number was great that then went away thither from other Ports and likewise of such that went from London and the out-Ports whose Names were not entred But I was not a little surprised of late when I read it in a Book newly Printed called The Negros and Indians Advocate and Dedicated to the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury where the Author pag. 171. Speaking of the Kidnappirs trade or mistery saith A Trade that t is thought Carrys off and Consumes not so little as 10000. out of this Kingdome yearly which might have been a Defence to their Mother Country c. 'T is certainly a sign that we are very rich in the number of our People when we can endure such a quantity of them to be yearly stolen without the pursuit of a Hue and Cry. Yet in this point Scotland is reported to be somewhat more unhappy then England for those who
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
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
at all in the World whether reveal'd or natural then that any such Hypothesis or Doctrine that Authorised a Practice of that nature should be universally receiv'd in it as its Religion For tho natural Religion acquaints me with the Divine Power and gives me hopes of my Creators not rendring me miserable by that Power and the rather when I have seen that many of the Contemners of Heavens Thunder lived prosperously on Earth yet if a Model of Religion pretended to be the only reveal'd one shall controuling all the Dictates of natural Religion enjoyn the firing of whole Cities and mankinds confused outraging one another I must abandon my further hopes of Bliss from such a Being as was it self miserable for so that would be whose nature was still in a fermentation of Anger and Passion and rear'd up Men as the Workmanship of its hands only to dash those curious but brittle Vessels against one another and that even for such a Being 't were more eligible to be then to be always so miserable as well as 't would prove so for my self too then to be always in Torment by Anger But we know that as God is the God of Order and not of Confusion so he is likewise an overflowing Fountain of Goodness and so infinitely benign that if his Nature were rightly represented to an ingenious Atheist if he did not at last believe he would ardently wish there were a God and I think if there be any number of that degenerate sort of Mankind called Atheists as was said that such degeneracy must needs be chiefly caused by the mis-representations of the Divine Being I have before mentioned how Tully in his de Natura Deorum shews great Wit in his Anger against the Epicureans for their representing the Deity as unconcern'd for Mankind and against the rendring God careless of the welfare of his Creature man he there exclaims Deinde si maxime talis est Deus ut nullâ gratiâ nullâ hominum charitate teneatur valeat How passionately then would he have upbraided any Mushroom Sect of Philosophers if such had sprung up in the World as in his time and before there never did that had represented the Nature of the Deity as solicitous and careful only of procuring the misery of Mankind and disorder of the World and enjoyning men to spit fire at one another exposing them to the sury of Wild Beasts if they lived in Desarts and of wilder Creatures that is themselves if they lived in Cities There was an Ingenious and Learned and Pious Divine I mean Cressy who in our days forsook the Communion of the Church of England and turned Roman Catholick and went beyond Sea and returned to England in the Conjuncture of the petulant Insolence and was so far infected therewith and likewise with the Chagrin incident to sickness that he writ very peevishly against our Church and one of our great Church Men and his Writings were justly censured by the Earl of Clarendon but according to my former Observation so much of the Character of the rationality of the Protestant Religion that he was long bred up in remain'd in him indelibile that I believe had he been made an Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity he would neither have took away a drop of Blood from any Protestant nor a hair from his head and in his Reply to that Noble Lord he is so candid as speaking of the Position charged on Roman Catholicks that no Salvation is to be had out of that Church to affirm that all Catholicks grant that this is not necessarily to be understood of an actual external Communion and that many Christians of vertuous devout lifes and having had a constant preparation of mind to prefer truth whensoever effectually discovered to them before all temporal advantages they dying in this disposition tho not externally joyned to the Church will be esteem'd by our merciful Lord as true Members of his Mystical Body the Church No Papist but one bred a Protestant could have had thoughts so large concerning the extent of the invisible Church or fancy that what is before mentioned is granted by all Catholicks and should I hear any Priest in a Fryars Cowle grant what is abovesaid I should fancy that he remain'd an invisible Protestant and that he continued so exuberantly good in his natural disposition as not to be able to frame an Idea in his mind of the damning of Mens Souls and making Coals of their Bodies and Bonefires of their Cities for mistaken Sentiments in Religion and had Mr. Cressy lived till this time 't is possible your Lordship by your Notification of that fiery Tenet of the Papal Church aforesaid might have been an instrument of his visible Return to our Church for his labour'd heating himself with Passion upon the mention of the Practice of that thing in his Church History shews sufficiently how he would have abhorr'd any Church that abhorr'd not that Tenet The Place I refer to in his Church History is in the 14th Book 4th Chapter where he doth strenuously endeavour to prove that Monk Austin was unjustly Accused of having killed 1200 Brittish Monks and having said there § 9th yet of late this poysonous humour of Calumniating God's Saints is become the Principal Character of the New Reformed Gospel he goes on thus I will add one example more of a Calumniator to wit Mr. William Prynn a late stigmatised Presbyterian c. But alas what repentance can be expected in such a person speaking of Prynn who is inveteratus malorum dierum when we see in his decrepit Age his rancorous Tongue against innocent Catholicks yet more violently set on Fire of Hell so far as to sollicit a general Messacre of them by publishing himself and tempting others to damn their Souls also by publishing through the whole Kingdom that in the last Fatal Calamity by Fire happening to London they were the only Incendiaries This he did tho himself at the same time confessed that not the least proof could be produced against them but said he it concerns us that this Report should be believed Complaints of this most execrable Attentat were made and several Oaths to Confirm this were offer'd but in vain But however surely there is a Reward for the innocent oppress'd and whatsoever Mr. Prynn may think doubtless there is a God that judgeth the World. Let him therefore remember what the Spirit of God saith quid detur tibi aut quid apponatur tibi ad linguam dolosam sagittae potentis acutae cum carbonibus desolatoriis is what must be given to thee and what must be assign'd to thee for thy Portion O deceitful Tongue sharp Darts cast by an Almighty Arm with devouring Coals of â—uniper And it follows § 10. With as good reason therefore St. Austin may be Accused of the slaughter of those Brittish Monks as St. Columban a holy Irish Monk c. might be charged with the most horrible death of Queen Brunecheld c. This good
hands for discharging with Courage the Duty to his Prince that the Law of Nature and of the Land required from him have given the Name of Martyrdom to his Fate and I should ascribe the same Name to any one that should suffer the same Fate by the hands of any Ruffians that called themselves Protestants for his asserting the Religion by Law Established and discountenancing the Doctrine of Resistance and the Principles that subvert the Right of the Inheritable English Monarchy and doing what he was by the Law of Nature and the Land obliged to for the asserting the one and discountenancing the other Thus therefore do I judge that Name due to the Dire Fate that the late Arch-bishop of St. Andrews sustained from the hands of those execrable Presbyterian Bravos who defiled their Land and the light of the Sun there with the open Murder of that Prelate And supposing that the great Harry the 4 th of France who was so abandoned by Heaven to little Fears on Earth as when the Duke of Sully was perswading him not to recall the Iesuites to answer him thus Give me then security for my Life did yet receive the doom of the Fearful in this World for his continuing his Protection to his Protestant Subjects according to the Laws of Nature and of his Realm I shall not deny the right that the Nature of his Fate hath to be Crown'd with the Name of Martyrdom 'T is very possible that some wretched Protestants so call'd may to the scandal of the Name of Religion design Out-rages and Sedition and the late Publications of many Seditious Pamphlets by them and the Re-printing of some of the most Rebellious ones that faced the Light in the times of the Usurpation and for example of the Political Catechism and of the Rights of the Kingdom in which latter the Murder of the King is justified and the Right of the English Monarchy struck through the 5th Ribb by the Authors making it Elective hath given the Government a just Alarm of the designs of the Publishers of such Pamphlets and of their Abettors and they serve among Men of Caurion as a suspicious sign of some mischief intended by them as the extraordinary Commotion of the Waters is to Whale-fishers an indication of a Whale approaching and from such as well as from some of the Emissary Slaves of the Iesuites here what can any who act with the highest zeal in their several Capacities to assert the Rights of the Crown and Church expect but according to the Stile of Cicero against Cataline Nisi ut notent designent oculis ad caedem unumquemque nostrum But as to any who for the just discharge of their Natural Obligation and Duty as Magistrates or private persons shall suffer the worst of Fates I shall not deny the name of Martyrs so neither shall I think him worthy the name of an English man or a Regarder of the Divine Natural Law who doth not if a Magistrate by the due Execution of the Laws or if a private person and of Signal parts and Learning by his discourse and writing notifie the absurdities and inconveniences of any Seditious Principles chargeable on any perswasion of Religion whatsoever every Subject being under Moral Obligations duly to represent to the Pater Patriae and to his Brethren Subjects the dangers imminent over them by any destructive Principles or Practices whatever disguise of Religion the same may assume and it is most worthy of the most generous dispositions that can be in men who own the love of their Country with Monuments of Praise to honour the Memories of those Heroic Persons who were so unnaturally dealt with for asserting the Rights of the God of Nature and thus fell its Noble Victimes and who in the Race of their Lives were Agonists for it and to resemble the Justice of the Lacedemonians among whom those that died for their Country were proverbially said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and were Crown'd with Olive and other Branches and with Praises Extoll'd to the Skies and to this Custom probably the words of the Doctor of the Gentiles have a reference where he saith to Timothy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fight the good Fight of Faith and St. Paul sutably was but just to himself when writing to Timothy I am ready to be offered up c. he added I have fought a good fight c. And thus too may our Royal Martyr be said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and considering how great an Agonist and Confessor Queen Elizabeth was and how often she was designed for Martyrdom by some of her Romish Antagonists the Londoners were but just to her when adorning their Churches with the figure of her Monument they placed over her Effigies the Inscription of I have fought a good fight c. And as the old Agonistical Games were among the Graecians and Romans instituted in honour of their Gods and as critical seasons for their shewing their love to their Country by their then making Leagues and agreeing on the great Concerns of Peace and War and Men then in various Contentions of the Body and Mind shewed their utmost Abilities so doth the Divine Natural and Positive Law oblige all Christians in any Conjuncture or Season of Colluctation between true and false Religionary Principles to shew their Athletic Habits of mind in the most consummate manner and earnestly to contend for the Faith and indeed the Christian Religion in the Rule of its Practice having throughout the New Testament made Agonisme Essential to its Morals which one word of Agonisme is Comprehensive of more vigour than all the Heathen Precepts of Morality include or perhaps all the written Practices of Piety and Devotional Books let him by my consent be devested of the Name of Christian who on any just occasion shews not himself as an Athleta for his Religion and Country in all lawful ways by entring the Lists with all Principles of Hostility to either whatever the Event may be but still with a fair respect to the persons of all Contenders for even that the Agonostic Games required and particularly Ne quis in Colluctatione vel pugilatu antagonistam studio deditâque operâ conficeret alioqui ne victor Coronaretur nay so averse were the Athletick Laws to cruelty that they obliged all Contenders to endeavour Quo mollior leviorque ictus minus laederet and especially to abhor the Brutish Art of biting one another the abhorrence of which I do expect will grow more and more in fashion between Religionary Antagonists notwithstanding the many exorbitant incivilities I find practiced by some such Contenders towards the persons of each other in the present Conjuncture wherein I have observed that too many of the Protestant as well as Popish Antagonists have by cruel mockings and biting words and Shams made it their chief business but in one thing to resemble one of the old Agonistic Games namely that of the Wrestlers who after their having been first annointed
dâ—bent ut aliquid operentur and that verba cum effectu sunt accipienâ—a And as 't is said in the Civil Law Semper in stipulationibus in caeteris contractibus id sequimur quod ACTVM est and as actus is there taken for a general word sive re sive verbis quid AGATVR here is an ACT of the Swearer done in relation to such HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and he is promittendi reus in the Civil Law Phrase and as he is there called Reus qui debitor est omninoque obligatus ex quavis Causa and as he who hath promised any thing is said Reus debendi and so Reus constitutus dicitur qui se obligavit ff Quod met Caus. l. 14. § Labeo But on the whole matter our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy contain in them nothing impossible and nothing ambiguous and do ipso facto or in plain English oblige us as soon as taken to be ready to pay our Allegiance to the King and afterward to his Heirs and Successors as respectively due according to the Legal Course of Descent And if any one be frightned with Sir W. I's Day-Dream of Treason viz. in being immediately upon the taking of the Oaths under some Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors let him repair to our Statute-Book and he will there find as good Bail provided for him in the Case as Heaven and Earth can give for in the Preamble of an Act of Parliament the King and three Estates tell him of the Duty that every true and well affected Subject not only by BOND of Allegiance but also by the COMMANDMENT of Almighty God OVGHT to perform to his Majesty his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS 7 o Iac. c. 6. In fine I shall hereupon affirm that should any English Subject who hath taken these Oaths live to the age of Nestor and in the course of Nature â—ee several of our Kings Heirs and Successors in the due and Legal course of Descent Succeeding one another and should such Subject be never call'd on to reiterate those Oaths in the Reign of any of them he would yet by these Oaths before once taken continue obliged to bear true Faith and Allegiance to them all Successively And thus in the first faederal Oath we read of the Father of the faithful obliged himself at once in relation to Abimelech and his SON and his SONS SON and we know how afterward God was pleased to oblige himself at once to Abraham and his SEED and how after that God was pleased to oblige himself by his Oath and Covenant made to David and his SEED as to their Succession in the Royal Throne of Iuda And 't was to this the words in the Psalms ONCE have I Sworn c. refer And therefore this Scriptural Representation of God after the manner of Men condescending in the Government of the world to bind himself ex gratiâ as aforesaid may well inculcate to us the reasonableness of our becoming ipso facto bound by our Oaths to pay the debitum Iustitiae to his Vice-Roys and their HEIRS and SUCCESSORS To proceed therefore I shall lay down this as a 6 th Conclusion and genuinely deducible from the former one viz. That by Virtue of those two Clauses the takers of those Oaths do particularly bind themselves not only against the Aiding and Assisting or Abetting any Rebellion or any Vsurpation of the rights of his Majesty's Heirs and Successors that can happen but to the aiding and assisting of the Crown and preserving its Inheritable Rights on all Emergent occasions Sanderson in his 4th Lecture of the Obligation of Oaths puts the Case concerning the Person to whom an Oath was made viz. Whether he who hath Sworn the performance of a thing to another the Party to whom he Sware being deceased be bound to make it good to the Heirs and Successors of the said Party And his words are I answer ordinarily he is It is certain that the Party Swearing is obliged if he express'd that he would perform the Oath unto the Heirs of the other It may also be taken for granted that he is bound tho he expressed it not if the Oath taken relates to DIGNITY because DIGNITY varies not with the change of Persons Whence if any Subject or Souldier Swear Fidelity to his King or General the Oath is to be meant to be made unto them also who succeed to that Dignity Yet Ames our Learned Non-conformist in his Case of Conscience 4th Book Chapter 22. viz. De Iuramento as to the 11th Question and about the Obligation of an Oath Ceasing saith Quum aufertur ratio juramenti juramentum cessat ratione Eventus qui casus est eorum qui jurarunt se obedituroâ— Domino aut Principi alicui qui postea cessat esse talis But perhaps had the Case of so strict an Oath as that of Allegiance to our Prince and his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS layn before him he would have writ otherwise of its Obligation For as the Consideâ—ation of the forâ—mentioned Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy did sufficiently prevail with the Ejected and Persecuted Divines of the Church of England and most of its Lay Members to avoid all sinful Compliance with the late Vsurpation and Vsurpers so it did likewise with many of the Presbyterians and others to avoid the same and particularly to refuse the taking the ENGAGEMENT set up by the Republicans and even to Publish in Print their holding themselves obliged by those Oaths so to do I shall instance in two that did so Mr. Pryn in his Book before cited mentions those OATHS as in direct words extending not only to the late King's Person mentioning King Charles the 1 st but his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and Inviolably binding the Swearers in perpeâ—uity in point of LAW and CONSCIENCE so long as there is any Heir of the Crown and Royal Line in being and that upon many Vnanswerable Scriptural Precedents and Legal Considerations c. He had before charged those with apparent Perjury who had taken those Oaths to the King and his HEIRS and yet repute those few Reliques of the old Parliament then sitting forcibly secluding the Lords and Majority of their Fellow Members to be a lawful Parliament within the Statute of 17 Car. Cap. 7. or submit to any Oaths Taxes or Edicts of theirs as Parliamentary or Legal I refer the Reader to the Book and which because somewhat Scarce I think to have reprinted The other Person of the Presbyterian Communion I shall refer to for this is the Author of a learned Tract in 4 to printed in the year 1650 called An EXERCITATION concerning VSVRP'D POWERS wherein the Author very substantially proves that by virtue of the Obligation to the King's HEIRS and SUCCESSORS resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it is not lawful to give up ones self to the ALLEGIANCE of an VSVRP'D Power and saith very well in p. 16. If I should do that I should yield assistance to the
and not any Religionary Regeneration and That the accession of the Crown purgeth all Obstructions And that that Prince did by the Oath of Allegiance design only to twist the Band of our natural Allegiance the stronger an Allegiance tyed not to Princes Faith of the Cross but to their Crown appears throughout his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance He likewise in his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 9. doth with some warmth of words reflect on the Malice of some who impudently affirm That the Oath of Allegiance was devised for deceiving and entrapping of Papists in point of Conscience and saith That tho the House of Commons at the first framing of the Oath made it to contain That the Pope had no Power to excommunicate me which I caused them to reform only making it to conclude that no Excommunication of the Popes can warrant my Subjects to practise against my Person or State c. so careful was I that nothing should be contained in this Oath except the profession of Natural Allegiance and Civil and Temporal Obedience with a promise to resist to all contrary uncivil violence From thence it appears that what looked like the Religionary part of Popery namely the Pope's exercising a Spiritual Power against him or the Notion as Aquinas delivers it That there is Potestas in summo Pontifice puniendi omnes mortales ratione delicti he intended not to whet the sharpness of the Oath against but only against the Irreligionary part of Popery beforementioned and as to which he might rationally depend on the Zeal of any Heir or Successor tho Roman Catholick concurring with his therein He having in the foregoing Page mentioned how that Parliament that was to have been blown up made some new Laws against Papists saith So far hath my Heart and Government been from any bitterness as almost never one of those sharp Additions to the former Laws have ever yet been put in Execution The Execution of some Laws of pecuniary Mulcts on Papists who in that Conjuncture believed the irreligionary part of the Papal Power might seem to carry such a Face of Justice with it as the practice of the Custom-house doth pursuant to the 13th and 14th of Harry the 8th c. 4. Whereby any English man or born Subject of England who shall swear Obeysance or live as Subjects to any Foreign Prince shall pay Aliens Customs but 't is a madness to think of any Prince's abdicating his Temporal Power and swearing Temporal Obeysance to any one and no man but he who has Laesa principia can suppose that King Iames who avowed in his Premonition That no man in his time or the late Queens ever died for his Religion nor yet any Priests after their taking Orders beyond Sea without some other guilt in them than their bare coming home and who p. 16. of his Apology avows and maintains to his own knowledge that Queen Elizabeth never punished any Papists for Religion but that their punishment was ever extorted out of her hands against her will by their own mis-behaviour could ever intend that by the withdrawing of Allegiance from any of his Heirs in the Course of their Lineal Succession on the pretence of any of their Religionary Notions or other pretence or ground whatsoever there should be a solutio continui or political death inflicted on the Hereditary Monarchy by the preserving of which the lives of all the People of England could only be preserved He in his Premonition and Apology discharged the Moral Offices of honouring all men with relation to Papists his Subjects and judgeth some of them to be of quiet dispositions and good Subjects and in p. 3 4. 46 47 48. of his Apology he makes a difference between many of his Popish Subjects who retained in their hearts the print of their naturâ— l Duty to their Sovereign and those who were carried away with that Fanatical Zeal the Powder-Traytors were and useth the expression of quietly minded Papists and Papists tho peradventure zealous in their Religion yet otherwise civilly honest and good Subjects and acknowledgeth That his Mother altho she continued in that Religion wherein she was nourished yet was so far from being superstitious or jesuited therein that at his baptism tho he was baptized by a Popish Arch-Bishop she sent him word to forbear to use the spittle in his Baptism which was obeyed and in his Premonition speaking to Roman Catholick Princes and wishing them to search the Scriptures and ground their Faith upon their own certain knowledge and not on the Report of others since every man must be safe by his own Faith but leaving this to God his Merciful Providence in his due time he further wisheth them to imitate their Noble Predecessors who in the days of greatest blindness did divers times courageously oppose themselves to the encroaching Ambition of Popes and acknowledgeth That some of their Kingdoms have in all Ages maintained and without interruption enjoyed their liberty against the most ambitious Popes c. and saith That some of those Princes have constantly defended and maintained their lawful freedom to their immortal honour and concludes his Premonition with earnest Prayers to the Almighty for their prosperities and that after their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth they may live and Reign in Heaven with him forever This Learned King did sufficiently thereby Proclaim himself an Enemy to the Papal Tenet of founding Dominion in Grace as to those Foreign Popish Princes and could not therefore but more abhor the effects of it in the Case of his Hereditary Successors and he having judged that those Foreign Princes who owned the Religionary Tenets of Popery did yet constantly defend and maintain their lawful freedom from all Papal Vsurpations to their immortal honour and with so devout a Charity pray'd for their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth and that they may live and reign in Heaven afterward could not but suppose that any of his Heirs who might be of the Roman Catholick Communion would yet disown any Tenet of Popery that was irreligionary and would Exterminate all Papal Vsurpation and that they might here expect a happy Reign on Earth and a happier in Heaven hereafter leaving it to God to open their Eyes as aforesaid in matters Religionary and to render them fafe by their own Faith. King Iames in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance doth incidenter prop up the Justice of the Oath of Supremacy and in p. 49 50 51. doth insert 14 contrary Conclusions to all the Points and Articles of which the Oath of Supremacy consists to denote the absurdity of the opposing that Oath and which Conclusions tho many Clerical and Lay-Papists among his Subjects might maintain yet he might well think it Morally impossible for a Roman Catholick Prince here to do so and he gives a very good reason for the inducing any one so to judge of his measures viz. That those Conclusions were never concluded and defined by any compleat General Council