Chap. 15. Touching the jealousies raised against him who hath these Words The worst effects of an open Hostility come short of these designes this was the opinion he had of the Loyalty of such kind of dealing Thirdly much what of the same Nature and also to the Effect is that way of Preaching when Men exert the utmost of their skill to Wyer-draw out of Texts such thing againsts that Religion those Texts in their prime aspects and genuine sence to have little of any such things in them This can shew nothing else but a vement intention to the management of this opposition this an eminent Person who I care not to name hath lately done when Preaching upon Psalm 47.5 God is gone up with a Shout c. takes occasion on from thence to argue against the Popes Supremacy and the Roman Catholick notion of the real presence as an ingenuous Person who in Print animadverted on the Sermon hath observed whatsoever ground he may have for the first because the Text speaks of an Eminent Exaltation of God as he had shewn his Power and Glory to the Church in those daies and from whence those Believers might in some measure conclude the Supremacy of Christ in his spiritual Kingdom I will not dispute Though I believe our Doctors do not think this Supream Dignity of Christ exclusive to the Supremacy of arch-Arch-Bishops or Bishops in England for then they would destroy their own Hierarchie only they would have no one that should be universal but keep the Principality to themselves I say whatever ground he had for the first the other was drawn out of it no other wise than by Head and Shoulders for there is not the least semblance of any such thing in the Text. Another I have met with and that is of a certain Person who finds Arguments from a Text before Noahs Flood against some Catholick Practices he Preacht upon those words And Enoch walked with God and because it was said of him that he begat Sons and Daughters the Dostor for that was the degree under which the Preacher stood applyed it to rebuke the R. Clergies abstinence from Marriage but I think it had been better spared because the R. Catholick Church Men if I understand them aright do not decline Marriage for that they hold it inconsistent with Purity and Piety but are guided rather by that Maxim of St. Paul 2 Tim. 2.4 No Man that Warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this Life and though we affect not their inforced abstinence that way yet certainly the freer any Man is from the care of providing for a Wife and Children the more he is at Liberty for the Ministerial Function That which I would say is that all such distorted Applications of Texts seem to me to be more of a kind of Peevishness than intended for Edification for it states not the Case fairly unless the R. Catholick Doctors had declared themselves in the same Manner so that I know not what all these odd Applications of things mean unless it be for fitting the People with matter for their tongues to talk of and filling their minds with fears and jealousies that something is coming upon them more than in their own reason they can any wise apprehend And what indeed as I said before is like to be a more natural issue of such Sermons then to draw the Peoples thoughts into a Multitude of Musings and fill their Mouthes with as much discourse to know what all these things Mean and where they will Center for to come to plain English either they must think these Preachers to Preach very Impertinently and as an exercise of Wit when they see them thus fetch things about and about that they may at every turn have a blow against the Catliolick Religion or they must think them under some profound Discoveries of the Catholicks doing or tending some strange things which no body else can find out or imagine For surely say the People among themselves our Ministers would never thus lay about them if something more than Ordinary were not in the Case Oh! saies one soon after such Sermons are ended how notably did our Doctor pay off the Papists to Day Ah! saies a second and is he not a Man of rare Parts that can find such matter against them out of such a Text which I never understood before Oh! saies a third they would not be so much upon this Subject but they fear we shall be over-run with Popery we little think adds he what Sad Times are a coming Thus and ten times degrees worse do the People Banter among themselves upon their hearing such kind of Sermons In the midst of all this talk let me I pray put in a word or two among the rest and ask according to the purport of my Question how these things consist with the Church of Englands Loyalty and the Passive Obedience they have formerly urged against the Dissenters and whether they believe the People by all this talk are like to Honor their King while they are suggested to believe that he is suffering such hard times to come upon them as they are hinting at 4. And which is as bad as bad can be and as much against true Loyalty if not Piety also as any course that can be used this is when they so order their expressions in these Preachings as to turn any of the parts of that Religion into Redicule or expose them in a way of contempt Those that know any thing very well know that this hath been a Common way taken up by the Church of England Divines wherein they have not only many Masters in the Art but very Famous Doctors also that study to make a Merriment of that way of Religion which hath been different from theirs Witness the beloved Books of our old Friendly Debates and Doctor Sherlocks knowledge of Christ wherein he so notably abuses and derides the Notion of our Primitive Reformers in the Doctrines of our Vnion with Christ Justification Perseverance c. which were afterwards generally held by the Church of England Bishops and Preachers until some few years before our last new Vniformity Act some of which together with the friendly debate it self as also the designs of such undertakings may possibly before another year go about be re-debated in a new Friendly Debate like his own But I must now proceed to my instance under this head as I have done before wherein I shall bring only two The first is from a Sermon Printed the other is from a Sermon Preacht and that in the City by a Lecturer there sometime the last Spring The Printed Sermon is that of Doctor Tennisons before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen c. at an Aniversary Meeting to Commemorate the Eminent Charity of the City Hospitals I confess the Sermon was Preacht before his present Majesty came to the Crown however I shall make use of it first because it is a Publick Testimony of the Strain and Vain of
in that concern What the discourses of the Church of England People have been and still are upon this Subject I have mentioned already I am not so in love with repeating ill Languages as to name it over again It is no wonder the People should talk at the rate they have done while they hear and see what has been said and done by their Leaders in the Clergy The Declaration was no sooner dispersed about the Kingdom but Doctor Stillingfleet Re-prints his Sermon called the Mischief of Separation Preacht before the Lord Mayor of London against the Dissenters Worship in as sharp a manner as his wonted Oratory useth to do towards those he hath a mind to lash of which he may hear more at another time What he intended by the new setting it out himself best knows I inquire not after it I shall only inform him that this Act of his is looked upon by many as a direct affront to the Declaration as if he would have the People to believe that His Majesty had tollerated a Mischievous thing The Oxford Clergy do as good as call it by the opprobrious Name of a Suspected Artifice for when their Liocesan moved them to make some publick Testimony as a few others of their Church had done of their thankful sense of what the King had declared touching their being protected in their present Station and Worship they excuse themselves by making it one Reason of their refusal that by doing so they should forfeit their Reputation with the Nobility Gentry and Commonalty of their Cummunion and that it may tempt those Persons to disgust them for their rash Compliance with suspected Artifices Language I should have scarce expected from the greatest Clown in the Country however I perceive they resolved to speak their thoughts Freely by which we may a little know their Minds From the Preaching I spoke of before the People were taught how to form their Jealousies against the King as that he would alter their Religion and these Men now tell them the Declaration is the Artifice they suspect for the bringing it about If they say I strain this too far and put upon it a sense they intend not I must then pray them to explain their own sense more fully and tell us what it is that in that Expression they do intend for until they do I cannot understand them otherwise than I now Write there being such a near Relation between the Peoples Addressing to the King and the Declaration it self from whence they take the occasion as none can hardly say the one is a Suspected Artifice but they must say the other is so too But there are other strains not inferiour to this I have last named They will not thank the King by an Address because forsooth it will make the Exercise of their Established Religion to be Precarious As if when a Father shall say to any Son at his coming to Age SON Care was taken upon the Marriage of your Mother to setle an Estate upon you which now you shall injoy so far from any interuption from me as I promise to give you the best protection I can in your possession of it The Son shall say Sir I must not thank you for any thing of this least I make my Title to what I have too Precarious I wish they come not at last to say we must not thank Almighty God for the Spiritual Blessings he bestows upon us by his Covenant of Grace since that Covenant was made and Established with our fore Fathers long before we had a being and that in a firmer manner than all our humane Establishments can pretend to be I cannot believe otherwise but that all subordinate relations stand bound upon every signal Testimony of Special Favour they receive from their Superiors to make their acknowledgements of thanks whatsoever Obligation they may conceive their superiors might have before-hand put themselves under while it was in their Power to have done otherwise with us if they had pleased nor do I see any thing in all these Doctors Arguments that is like to alter my Opinion Had all the People in England told me four or five years ago that I should have seen and heard such things as these and others I have lately met with from divers of our Church Men towards the King I do professedly declare I should never have believed them I hear also they have Question'd or Disobey'd rather his Orders in disposing of some Places which his Majesty would fill up or where he thinks it convenient to make an Alteration Ay! is it come to this alreeady will they thus dispute it with their King if they begin thus I know not where they will make an end as Men when once but of the way of their Duty no body knows where they will Stop There is one thing more in these Oxford Mens Reasons for their Non-Addressing with their thanks to the King which I cannot pass by without some Remark They say they do not offer those Reasons as the sense of their own Minds only but undertake to affirm them to be the Opinion also of the best part of the Clergy of the Kingdom by the best I presume they mean the greatest part but how they came so soon to know each others Minds in so great a Kingdom as this is unto many no small wonder I hope they are not hatching another Association for securing the Protestant Religion as that which they so much exploded in one of the late Parliaments if they are much good may do them I intend not to be of the Fraternity but supposing them to have this intelligence one from another more then I am aware of I may still wonder how they undertake so far for the Nobility and Gentry as to know their thoughts so much in the case while they seem to fear that thanking the King for his promised Favours will forfeit their Reputation with them as Men that had too rashly complyed with suspected Artifices I think by the Carriage of many both of the Nobility and Gentry towards the Kings Person and his afairs in the Court and Country I may reasonably conclude they give them no grounds for such a Conjecture In my apprehension therefore this looks too much like a Substile insinuating their own dislikes into those that are in that honourable Station that thereby they may be pre-ingaged against his Majesties proceedings than any real ground they had to fear their displeasure if they should have returned the Kings thanks for the assurance he hath given of his protecting and Supporting their Church To say no worse of the matter it is no fair dealing towards persons so much their betters nor hath it so much as one spark of Loyalty in it towards the King How the people should avoid the being ensnared in their Loyalty by such bad Examples as these I no waies apprehend my fears I must profess are not a few and I shall crave so much leave as to
The conclusion then is this not to believe him is to censure him and to censure him is to do evil against him and every evil thing done against him is against our Loyalty Now this consuring must be so much the worse in as much as while Men follow the consequences of their own Reasonings they can see no grounds to believe that the Protestant Religion can receive any prejudice by any thing that can arise by the Declaration without offering a kind of violence to their own reason There are some persons who have given very great Reasons against the likely-hood of the Catholicks Religion overthrowing or suppressing Protestantism none of which I shall repeat I shall only take notice of two other things which I perceive to be much overlookt which to me seem of very great force in giving Protestants a full assurance as to this Case The first is in that the Declaration indulgeth those of the Protestant Religion which are at the remotest distance from his Majesties own Way for so I must repute the Protestant Dissenters in England to be as using no kind of Liturgy or Ceremonies in their Worship nor so much as acknowledging the office of a Protestant Diocessan Bishop which is indeed the great Protestancy of Christendom whereas the Church of England rigidly imposing the one and stilly maintaining the other together with their Symbolizing in both these respects with the R. Catholick Church and Worship Yea and in many Doctrines too of late which the first Reformation opposed have been thought to have been so near them as the effecting of an union to the extirpation of the Dissenters was the only thing feared and this not without ground while those Dissenters saw the Church of England upon the Death of his late Majesty to renew their prosecutions somewhat sharper than before But these fears are now abundantly removed which truly I must say could hardly have been done by any other means than that which his Majesty hath taken by his Declaration which must be to all Men of understanding an evidence on his behalf that he can have no designs against the Protestant interest nevertheless the Church of England judging otherwise 2. The Admission of the French Protestants in such Multitudes as are come over hither doth also confirm me in the same belief They are a kind of Presbiterians who because they would not become Papists are fled hither where they have not only the Exercise of their Religion but also very large Relief raised for their Necessities and that too by his Majesties own order What greater Testimonies than these can be given of his readiness to support Protestanisme And that He Acts in the highest degree of Sincerity to that Principle upon which he Grounds his Declaration viz. that Conscience is not to be forced from which we that are Protestants cannot but repute our selves exceeding safe and may conclude the Exercise of our Religion to be constantly continued to us and that because the Protestant Interest from all these things is more and more strengthened and allowed to make its utmost advantage to maintain it self in his Majesties Kingdoms all which may be so pleaded against the Censoriousness I here condemn as to make it appear to be every whit as irrational as it is disloyalty The utmost that can be said as to the benefit designed to the Catholicks by the Declaration is only that his Majesty would have those of his own Religion enjoy the same Liberty of Worship he hath given to the Protestant Dissenters and that they may be capable of serving him in Publique Employments as Protestants do which as it is all that is allowed them so as far as I perceive it is as much as they desire To the First I would ask how can the King well do otherwise according to that Divine Principle upon which he proceeds and how can Protestants deny it that hold the same Principle with him which I find none of them oppose when the case is put home and they have been pinch'd upon the point for even our Church of England Divines themselves choose rather to plead the obligation men are under to obey the Laws of the Land whereby their Liturgy and Ceremonies are setled than to insist upon the denying this principle and most generally justifie all their compulsions and penal inflictions from the Authority of our humane Laws telling the people that the Dissenters were not punished for their disobeying the Law a fine way indeed to turn the odium of those things upon the Parliament which themselves are ashamed to own and yet procured and so much struggle to have continued To the Second I would ask also how we shall object against it when we consider that His Majesty must needs in Equity have the same right to the service of all his Subjects as any Parents have to the Service of all their Children or any men have to that which they call their Property Tell me I pray why we should insist upon holding our own property and deny the King His I would be glad to see our Doctors who lately preach'd up Morality so much in the Socinian way as if they would make the whole Institution of Christianity and of Christ's coming into the World to be only a subservient thing to the Establishment of the Primitive Moral Religion to shew upon what principles of Moral right a King shall be denied the choice of those that shall Serve him more than a Noble Man the choice of his Steward or the Master of a Family his own Servants As yet I would never understand that human Laws could supercede any Moral Right fixt in the Original Divine Constitution of things I am no States Man but judging naturally according to the ancient usages of the Kingdom the King is not to be imposed upon in this particular when a King dyeth all publick Commissions formerly granted to his respective Officers become void Nay which is more if a Parliament be then in being his Death dissolves them the reason whereof I could never hear to be Grounded upon any other bottom but that a King was not to be imposed upon or bound up as to his Publick Ministers and Officers by any Act of his Predecessors There is 〈◊〉 thing more I would take notice of at this time which I have not 〈◊〉 so much 〈…〉 to which I would say something here if I knew how to 〈◊〉 it in and this only what I observe from many of the Church of England who when they have little to 〈◊〉 against that excellent Principle his Majesty proceeds upon in granting 〈◊〉 for Gods free worship nor the Moral Justice we owe him in choosing his own Officers they would fain pick a Quarrel with his Power and 〈◊〉 these things should 〈◊〉 come to us in a Parliamentary way I must confess the Power of a King is a thing so sacred and so strongly Lodged and Seated in himself as I have not 〈…〉 the least to peep into it Only
quality too much influenced it may be by such kind of Preaching have not been wanting to express themselves at the same rate of Ill Reflections against his Declaration touching which I have heard such hard Speeches as I could not possibly have thought could have ever come from Persons in Membership with that Church To be plain and short they have not only in the general suggested that there would be an Alteration in the National Religion but they stick not to say that the present Liberty granted for the free Worshipping of God is purposly to introduce Popery and contemptuously compare the Liberty granted by the Declaration to a Scaffold set up for that intent which must be so much the worse said of them as that the Declaration it self assures them the Protection of their own Religion as it is now Established I shall not Expatiate on the Occasions Grounds and Methods of our English Reformation either in Doctrinals or Discipline but only observe that after some beginnings in K. H. 8ths time and further progress made under K. E. 6th all turned Retrograde by Q. Mary In the Reign of Q. Elizabeth things were brought again to some seeming Consistency and then that which we now term the Church of England by a Sanction of State received its full Estabishtment The Constitution and Nature of which Church is now become to be an Independent National Hierarchy of Arch Bishops Bishops Deans Arch-Decons Prebendarys c. whose chief Worship was at first made to be with a Liturgy but such an one as wherein it was in Vnity with no other Church upon the face of the Earth tho by this time there were divers other Protestant Churches in being Yet was this set up and setled with as much absoluteness as if it had been all indited by the Apostles or our Saviour Himself Unto this Worship whosoever came not or absented by the space of a Month was to be punished in the forfeiture of twenty pounds successively for every Month so offending This was the beginning of the Penal Laws for the support of the Reformation after which others were made more severe especially against those who were in Church Orders of the Catholick Religion for Death was to be inflicted upon any of them that were but so much as found to be within the Kingdom This Reformation had not long continued before divers Protestants themselves began to find it faulty it was much wondred on all hands when it was observed how all was pretended to be done in it according to the Rule of the Scripture while that Rule and their whole constitution did so much disagree That they should keep up among themselves a Superiority of Pastors and reject the having one to be universal That they should with great violence inforce a few Ceremonies singled out for some unknown use and yet cast off others used in the Church from whence they reformed no less inviting and significant There were also great Exceptions against their Liturgy the R. Catholicks complain'd that tho' indeed it was taken almost all out of their Service yet it was so mingled and mangled as that they had made it utterly defective to the ends of a compleat rule of Worship for them to joyn with Many Protestants who liked well enough to see a Reformation begun yet thought the first undertakers went but half way but above all other things it was greatly misliked that such new things and so different from all others Churches should be so severely imposed These things as Cambden writes presently bred great distraction 'T is incredible saies he what Controversies and Disputations arose upon this which he speaks in relation to Queen Elizabeths time and the new impositions that followed the first Setlement and the prosecutions to inforce that uniformity for he gives us an Account how about the Year 1583. Bishop Witgift who was advanced from the See of Worcester to that of Canterbury propounded to the Ministers three new Articles for their Subscribing which set on foot those differences But more to my purpose is the Lord Treasurer Burleghs Letter to the Arch-Bishop himself upon these Commotions dated July 5th 1584. Wherein he complains of the Arch Bishops proceeding and the ill effects thy were like to have upon the Queens Safety May it please your Grace saith he I am sorry to trouble you so often as I do but I am more troubled my self not only with many private Petitions of Sundry Ministers recommended from Persons of Credit for peaceable Persons yet greatly troubled but also I am dayly now charged by Councellors and publick Persons to neglect my Duty in not staying these your Graces proceedings so Vehement and so General against Ministers and Preachers as thereby evil disposed Persons are animated and the Queens Majesty endangered It seems from hence that this has been an Old Trade among our Episcopal Clergy first to make very uncouth Impositions and then perplex peaceable Ministers that cannot Conscienciously subscribe them And a little while after he tells His Grace again how these proceedings were rather a device to seek for offenders than to reform any I wish we had not as much occasion to say the same thing now in reference to some of our late Contrivances as this grate State Man did then however from the premises the conclusion may be fairly made how unsutable a thing it appears to have been then judged for the Reformation to think to settle it self and its Princes in peace by such Methods Nor did these Distractions cease with the Death of that Queen for though the Non-conformists might not have been dealt with so severely upon Kings James the firsts coming to the Crown in regard the manner of the Church of Scotlands worship differed much from the Liturgy and Ceremonies of England by which means things might continue in the more quietness and peace for a while yet in some competent time the Clergy who were always working both with him and King Charles the first to keep the Reigns of their Church Discipline as strait and hard upon them as may be prevail'd much upon both those Kings to countenance them in divers of their new injunctions until all things broke our into a most woful Confusion I know the Church of England are unwilling to own that the rigorous Imposing and Prosecuting their new Articles Oaths and Subscriptions brought on the War in 1641. but those that will give themselves the trouble to look into the Printed Speeches still remaining with us spoke then in the House of Commons may there be satisfied how they improved were to bring an Odium upon the Kings Government and inflame the Spirits of the People into a War which ever since may justly be called Bellum Episcopale What deplorable miseries this War produced to the Royal Family first to the Nobility and Gentry next yea and to the Clergy themselves at last How their Liturgy was trod under foot their Bishops and whole Hierarchie rooted up their Church Lands sold and
a second Reformation proclaimed to correct the first are all things fresh in Memory to those who are still living and saw them and all the world has wondered how the Church of England did so soon forget them as it appears She did for She was no sooner out of the Fiery Furnance of her Afflictions by the Restoration of King Charles the 2d but down right she falls upon her old pollicies of effecting an uniformity by vertue of Penal Laws when they had seen before the event of them in their Predecstors to have given them so much discredit and when they might have sufficiently learned how impossible it is upon Protestants Principles to erect and enforce a National uniformity in Religion to any one way of Worship but that there would still be Dissenters who upon their own Principles may plead an Exemption from it However they resolved to make a second Experiment and once more to try if they could make the whole People in England to be in their Religion all of one Complexion to which purpose a new Act of Uniformity is made more strict than that which went before with a new Test of Assent and Consent annexed thereto for bare Conformity in the use of the Liturgy will not now do there must be Swearing also All other waies of Religious publick Worship are made Conventicles and the Act of 20 l. a Month for not coming to Church revived and tho' it was alwaies thought to have been made directly against R. Catholicks it must now be made a sharp Scourge equally to all Dissenters What Confusions and Troubles these things brought upon His Majesties Subjects may be understood something from those who have given a publick Account of them a Printed Catalogue has informed us of neer 2000 Ministers turned out of their Livings by the Uniformity Act which was soon followed by another made at Oxford that turned them also out of their Houses to seek their Bread where they were no wise like to find it Another who was well able to make the Estimation informs us of fifteen thousand Families ruined by the Conventicle Act by proceedings against their Estates and Imprisonment of their Persons among whom he saies five thousand dyed under their bonds And if we suppose but three Children a peice to belong to those Families one with another we must compute no less than forty five thousand sufferers in their Estates by these Penal Laws for if the Parents be ruined their Children cannot but be deep Sufferers with them Do we talk of Queen Maries daies as times of sharp Persecutions Alas they were little to this Doctor Burnet gives an account but of 284. that suffered death in Her time and what is this to 5000. that have dyed under this Church of Englands Persecution nor doth he say any thing of loosing their Estates or the Childrens being deprived of what their Parents had I know a great matter is made by punishing Persons with Death but for my part I see little difference between suffering by the present Execution of Death and being stifled or starved to Death by the necessities and hardships of a Prison and supposing it lawful to make such a choice in case I must necessarily suffer by one of the two I should choose to suffer by the former rather then by the latter and I know many more to be of my mind How those of the Church of England can defend Her from being the only procuring cause of all these Miseries to those Multitude of afflicted Persons and Families I can no waies apprehend let them that can do it begin their Work as soon as they please in the mean time I hope they will not be angry if I endeavour to shew them how much all their proceedings this way was against the mind of King Charles the second who all along endeavoured to put a stop to their Severities from the desires he had that his Subjects might have injoyed the Liberties in Religion which they now do and this before he came into England as well as afterwards so soon as he saw what work was like to be made by the Execution of those Laws they had got him to sign chosing other more pious and peaceable Methods for his Subjects Ease Let us hear some of his own Words viz. His Declaration from Breda April 4th 1660. gives the first assurance of this We declare a Liberty to tender Consciences and that no Man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences in Opinion which do not disturb the Peace of the Kingdom Then again Feb. 10th 1667. Speaking to the Parliament one thing saies he I hold my self obliged to recommend to you at this present which is that you would seriously think of some course to beget a better Vnion and Composure in the Minds of my Protestant Subjects in matters of Religion c. Which undoubtedly must be intended towards the mitigation of the Penal Laws for in his Declaration March 5th 1671. He complains again of the severities then in use saying That it was evident by the sad experience of 12 years that there was little fruit of all those forcible courses and many frequent waies of Co-ertion that we have used for the reducing of all erring and dissenting Persons Again in his Speech to both Houses of Parliament 1678. I meet you here with the most earnest desire that a Man can have to Vnite the Minds of my Subjects both to me and one another and resolve it should be your fault if the success be not sutable to my desires Thus for neer twenty years together was this King labouring against the Violences of the Church of England towards those his Subjects whose Worshipping of God differed from theirs and who were the Men but themselves that then opposed Him in it And at whose door but theirs must all these deplorable Calamities be laid that have happened by the want of that Indulgence that King would have given and is now granted by his Royal Brother and Successor they may if they please consider it more fully at their Leisure His Majesty that now is by a Gracious and most Wise Retrospection upon all that had been Transacted in these Affairs during the four last Kings Reigns and from a God-like compassion towards his Oppressed Subjects in the midst of their Calamities sends out his most refreshing Declaration suspending the Execution of all those Penal Statutes that had been but very little before so fiercely Executed Upon this many thousands of the Protestant Dissenters of all perswasions through out the Kingdom who had been formerly by the Church of England represented to the late King as a sort of Humoursome Fanatical Disobedient Persons and Enemies to Monarchy and every thing else that looked that way come in with their Humble Acknowledgments First of Gods goodness to them as believing such a publick Mercy could not be but by immediate his guidance of the Kings Heart in the thing after this they declare their Joy and Thanks
King is like to be Honored by all this I leave to all these Preachers to Judge Secondly Preaching against the Kings Religion must then be inconsistent with the Loyalty as before described when it is so managed as to beget in Men those Jealousies Censures and Suspicions as shall in any wise alienate their Hearts and Affections from him and their service of him When I consider this well and call to mind what a kind of influence irresistable I have observed in such kind of Preaching where the Kings Religion or the Government is any wise concerned to have had on the minds of Men. I cannot but pray our Doctors to consider well with themselves what prejudice they may do the King before they are aware and perhaps repent when it is too late As those London Preachers did Anno. 1641. 1642. who then extravagantly Preacht against the Liturgy Bishops and their Injunctions as our Church-Men have lately done against the R. Catholicks and I pray what followed but that fatal War whose sad effects we all to this day deplore The prejudices raised in Persons upon the account of difference in Religion are hardly possible to be related let me instance in Protestants only where the distance is not so great even according to the Church of Englands own acknowledgments as it is between the R. Catholicks and the Protestants and yet how have they carryed it one towards another as they have gotten power successively into their hands where let the Church of England come in for as great an Example as any of the rest have not they thought so hardly of their Non-conforming Brethren in the Ministry that could not comply with them in things which themselves say are but indifferent as that those that refused to wear a Surplice must be kept so poor as not to be able to buy a Shirt Ay! I might go yet a great deal higher did not the prejudice of many and those some of them zealous enough for the Church of England influence them so far as to conceive that because his Majesty was of the R. Catholick Religion he was not fit to be their King Church-Men may think of these things as they please but I am sure our wisest sort of States Men were of another Opinion as appears pears by what was enacted in the Parliament Anno. 13. Car. 2d who sensible of the ill effects such prejudices may produce where the King is the object of them made a Law That whosoever should publish or affirm the King to be an Heritick or a Papist or that he endeavoured to introduce Popery they should be disinabled to hold any Office or promotion Ecclesiastical or Civil making equal provision against either Catholicks or Protestants that might offend this way And the reason of this may be collected from the words of the Act it self which was because they knew the representing of the Religion of a King in a way of odium to the People was a thing tending to excite them to the hatred or dislike of his Person and Government Among other things I hear of as to this Preaching there is one dislikes me Exceedingly as having in it the most potent influence of any thing I know tending to the setting of the People in opposition to the King and that is those Sermons especially that intimate to them as if a time of PERSECVTION were coming on and the Obligation that lies upon all Persons to suffer whatsoever Persecution they meet with rather than to renounce any part of their Religion A Doctrine of excellent goodness in it self but I suppose now much mistimed unless we fear that Millions of Jews will invade us and set up the Mosaical Sacrifices again for I know not from whence Persecution can otherwise come if his Majesties Declaration as he desires be turned into an establish'd Law which I conceive none but the Church of England will endeavour to hinder While some Considering Men think with themselves how little this of Doctrine they have heard Preacht upon for twenty years before and now to be taken up since the King is come to the Crown and made the Common Theam of the Pulpit they know not how to interpret it otherwise than that the Preachers would have the people believe that their Religion is like to be denyed them and if they will stand to it they must expect to Suffer which that they may the better do it is necessary that they learn before hand how to behave themselves under such Providences And here again it would make a Man Smile to see how the World turns round I well remember that when the Dissenting Ministers were first displaced at St. Bartholomews 1662. Divers of them took their leave of their People the Sunday before in some Farewel Sermons divers of which were Printed by a good token that some of my acquaintance were soundly Punished for Printing them In these Sermons such Texts were chosen as from a Moral Prognostication they then made from the Conventicle Act they thought fittest to induce the People of a Patient Bearing of what was coming upon them I shall name only that of Heb. 10.14 about taking joyfully the spoiling of their Goods which was pertinent to the manner of their Sufferings since by that Act all their Moveables lay liable to the informers distresses The same course is now taking by Divers Church of England Doctors they have their particular Texts also fitted to what their Opinions are of the Times One Preaches upon taking up the Cross as if a new Persecution were indeed coming on Another calls upon us by his Text to contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered to the Saints as if a new Creed were to be immediately introduced A third forewarns us of the Apostacy of which St. Paul speaks and this is applyed to the R. Catholick Religion I mention these but as Specimens by which we may judge of the rest but here they would do well to take notice what some Men say of themselves viz. that they do the same things which they before condemned in others and for which they caused them to be punished which is so much the worse in them than in the Dissenters for the latter had some shadow of reason to Preach as they did when they saw a sharp Law newly made against them but for the Doctors of the Church of England to Preach thus who have all the Laws on their side and the Kings Declaration to protect them for them to do this and no other ground to proceed upon but their Misbelieving the Kings Word what else is it but a Disingenious Disloyalty and that of the highest kind Or what would they have the People think under all these things And how can they do otherwise than produce most desperate Jealousies The fatal Consequences whereof and the Resentments that a Royal Breast cannot but have of such Treatment I shall refer to the Judgment of King Charles the First to be informed of who in his Meditations
of England doth of Hers which he ought to have told People if he had designed in a Christian way to have to reprehended them but his not doing this and jumbling and jingling all of them together as he doth is equally Unrighteous as it is Scurrulous but let 's go to the next The other is a Sermon Preacht upon that Text Mat. 16.6 When ye fast not as the Hypocrites from whence the Preacher would needs have a fling against Catholicks keeping Lent for it was in that time that the Sermon was Preacht whereby a subtile way he had found out he would have them guilty of the Hypocrifie here intended because while they abstain all that time from Flesh yet said he they make full Meals of other food I never yet heard any Man twitted or told of his full Meals or great Eating but it was either to deride him or break a jest upon him and so I look upon this to be and by the smiling of some of the People I was told of that heard the Expressâ—â—â— I suppose they thought so too Now I shall neither take upon me to justifie the Observation of Lent nor the manner of Fasting used in the Church of Rome yet this I cannot but say if what the Gentleman speaks of be Hypocrisie in them what is it in the Church of England who keep it as a Religious Fast but yet teach their People no abstinence at all but leave them to seed on all sorts of Flesh and well pallated Sauces as often and to as full meals as they please That the Church of England keep Lent as a Religious Fast their Commissioners at the Savoy Meeting with the Non-conforming Ministers shall speak for them for when the Non-conformists opposed the keeping it a Religious Fast they answered them That their Fasting of 40 daies may be in imitation of our Saviour for all that had been said to the Contrary for tho' we cannot arrive to his perfection abstaining wholly from Meat so long yet we may fast forty Daies together either as Cornelius his Fast till three of the Clock in the Afternoon or St. Peters Fast till Noon or Daniels Fast abstaining from Meats and Drinks of Delights and thus far we imitate our Lord. Thus they setled their Lent as a Religious Fast but by what has followed it seems they never intended to injoyn their People any of those abstinencies in which that Fast ought be kept if it be kept at all so that I may ask where is the Hipocrisie now But while I am thus Writing I call to mind two great Reasons as they are esteem'd which I hear alledged in justification of their present Preachings First they say all Ministers are to declare to the People the whole Council of God and by vertue of their Ministerial Office they have a power of Preaching what they think most fit Secondly they tell us that there are a great number of R. Catholick Priests up and down the City privately Alluring and Perswading the People to embrace that Religion which tenders their Preaching against it at this time absolutely Necessary Unto both these I shall give a distinct answer First I shall not dispute their Power in Preaching upon what Subjects they please nor do I know so much as one Man that would deprive them of that Liberty so that it be alwaies exercised and kept within the bounds of those things which the People may assuredly know are indeed the absolute Counsel of God but in controversial matters I know not how this can be for the People must needs know that one part in all such Sermons must not be the Counsel of God but against it for though both parties Preach upon that pretence yet there is but one Truth which hath alwaies made me think that Controversies were not fit for Sermons but rather Books or private Conferences for while a controversial point is handled in a Sermon the hearer may start some Objection in his thoughts which it may be the Preacher never so much as toucheth at whereby the whole matter is left in doubt which as often as it happens such hearers cannot receive those things as the Counsel of God though they should really be so and there all the labour that way is lost Again it may be questioned that supposing those Doctrines against which our Clergy Men are so frequently Preaching should not be the Councel of God it may yet be considered whether or no it be according to the Councel of his will they should just at this time above all others shew their opposition to them when they can hardly manage it without endangering the People from falling off from a very great Duty towards their King in which we are sure it is the counsel of God they should in no wise be defective It was the Councel of God that Circumcision an Ordinance which himself had made for the Jewish Church should not be continued in the Christian Church and St. Paul so Vehemently Preached against it to some Churches as that he told them if they were circumcised Christ should profit them nothing yet upon another Consideration he Circumcised Timotheus at Lestria It is a weighty point I leave it to our Doctors to consider how far the Councel of God is to be Preached with respect to the different Circumstances both of Time and of different Cases Again do not all Men know what great prophanness there is among Multitudes of those who profess themselves Members only of their Sanctuary some are great Drunkards others as great Oppressors some common Swearers and that also of those horrible Oaths or Expressions which ought not to be Named and not a few most desperate Whorers too many also Sabbath Breakers whereof divers to my knowledg come frequently to Church and very often receive the Sacrament Now I should think there are no Councels of God more necessary to be Preach'd to such Sinners than those that should convince them of the Evil of these desperate Courses and set them right in their Morals before their Heads are filled with Disputations in the Controversal parts of Religion and yet who but such Men as these after a Sermon Preach'd against the Catholick Religion talk more of it than they I hope the Church of England Doctors do not think that the only Capital Sins in England are the Worshipping of God without their Liturgy and Ceremonies as the Dissenters do or to be of the R. Catholick Religion and yet many wise Men of my acquaintance have been tempted to believe so by the Cursory Sermons we have had this Twenty Years wherein we have had Preaching against these two Ranks of the Christian profession than can be heard aaginst all those gross Impieties I have named To the Second Objection that supposes a Multitude of Persons in holy orders of the Catholick Religion to be privately inticing the Protestant People to leave their Religion I thus Answer That whether this be true or no I cannot tell but if it be