of Protestant or Papist Enemy or Ally All were equally devoted to destruction in it The Duke of Lorrain was actually turned out of his Dukedom The Prince of Orange his present Majesty was deprived of his Principality of Orange The Empire was partly to be given up to the Turk and the remaining Princes were to apply themselves to France for Protection and to chuse his Son King of the Romans The Dukedom of Savoy was to be brought in under the notion of Pupillage The Princes of Italy were frightned bought or wheedled out of their strong Holds and the Keys of their Country such were Caâ—al and Guastalla put into French hands Sicily was perswaded to Rebel and sollicited to serve the Spaniard as they had done the French before in the famous Vespers Genoa was to be Bombed England bought and Holland drowned Spain had a Barren Queen designedly made so as many believe put upon him that his Crown might fall to France by Succession The Northern Kingdoms whose cold and distance secured them from immediate attempts were yet taken off from assisting their Neighbours and bought into something worse than a neutrality The great Contrivers and Managers of these were the French King the great Turk and I need not name the third in the Triumvirate 'T is too much that we groan yet under the mischievous effects of their Conspiracy which has been no less pernicious to all Europe than that of Antony Lepidus and Augustus was to the Roman Common-Wealth There is no doubt but all these have been designed attempted and almost brought to perfection within these 20 years by strength of this Confederacy and there is not one Prince or State in all Europe that has not been concerned in the fatal effects thereof But 3dly This design was levelled more immediately at the destruction of the Protestants of Europe The Extirpation of the Pestilent Northern Heresie has been long known to be the Principal Article in it and was probably the pretence and bait that induced his late Majesty to espouse it He was not fonder of being obeyed without reserve than of propagating his Religion and perhaps he chiefly desired an absolute Authority over his Subjects that he might compel them to come into the Bosom of his Church What business had he with a standing Army or numerous Troops of Dragoons but to employ them as Missionaries to convert his Heretical Subjects The example of France had taught him their use and that Dragooning was a much more effectual way to Reconcile men than Sermons or Arguments In short by this Conspiracy the Protestants of France are already destroyed those of Savoy turned out of their Country those of Holland have been invaded and forced to cover themselves with their Waters And as for us in Ireland I need not tell you how we have been used The least hint is sufficient to refresh your memories and the danger we have escaped is yet so near that it supersedes all necessity of a description It has been said of some that when they have been shewed the next morning the danger they escaped in the night they have died with apprehension I am sure no Precipice can have a more dreadful prospect to those that have escaped it than our danger ought to have and will have to all that duly consider and look back on it But God has Redeemed and Saved us out of our Enemies hands He has brought us back into our own Land and we are now before him this Day to Magnifie him for our Deliverance Let us therefore joyn in that which is the burthen of this Psalm O that men would Praise the Lord for his goodness and Declare the wonders he doth for the Children of men But 4thly This Conspiracy had a peculiar respect to the Free States of Europe 'T was about the time of the entring into this League that famous saying was applied to Holland Delenda est Carthago It was pretended to be of ill consequence to Princes and Crowned Heads to let a Common-Wealth be their Neighbour lest the fight and example of Liberty might influence their People they combined therefore to destroy them that the slaves of France might not understand that there was a milder Government in the World than the Tyranny of their Master If his present Majesty cou'd have been prevailed on to come into the Confederacy he needed not have ventured his Life to rescue England and merited a Crown by such hazardous undertakings He might have been a King out of hand in his own Country and secured of his Succession to the English Throne but he scorned Crowns of Lewis's giving much more one that he cou'd not take without injuring his Country the Liberty of which is due to his Ancestors and the Preservation of it to Himself But when they cou'd not corrupt they resolved to destroy him and that more particularly because they look'd on him as the Patron and Defender of the Liberty of Europe to which they on all occasions declared their enmity 'T is not imaginable with what Passion and Zeal their whole Party here used to enlarge on the Praises of an Absolute Government how impatient they were to hear any one name to them the Laws the Liberty of the Subjects or a Common-Wealth No the King's Will was the only Law they cou'd endure to hear of and they mightily admired and praised the submissive temper of the Mahometans that counted themselves happy to be under a Power which when it pleased might present them with a Bow-string They did not mince the matter but openly professed that they designed to free the King from the chains of the Laws and the Pupilage of Parliaments or as the Irish Proposals I mentioned before word it make his Monarchy absolute and real The very terms of the League according to Abbot Primi were to secure to the King an Absolute Authority over his Parliament and the Re-establishment of the Roman Catholick Religion in the three Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland But 5thly This Confederacy or rather Conspiracy had a peculiar relation to Ireland The great Body and Magazine of Men whose hands were to perform this Work in these Kingdoms were to be raised out of Ireland The Irish Proposals I have so often mentioned promise 150000 part of them were to be the King 's immediate Guards part of them the standing Army of England and all of them the Instruments of our slavery In order to make them considerable and to hire them to do their work cheerfully Ireland was to be seperated from the Crown of England and made independant on it The English interest in it was to be destroyed and the Protestants under the notion of Whigs Fanaticks Cromwelians rooted out of it How near these things were to taking effect you all can witness they were not only designed and attempted but actually for the most part executed upon us our Estates were taken away and this Kingdom cut off from England by Acts past in their late
pretended Parliament our Houses were filled with Soldiers and Dragoons our Churches possessed by Romish Priests our Persons shut up in Prisons and our Religious Assemblies interdicted Our Friends and Relations our Nobility Gentry and Clergy driven for the most part out of the Kingdom attainted for Life and Estates and an Army ready to be transported into England if God had not put a stop to their Designs and confounded their Devices 'T is by his Mercy we are Redeemed from the Lands from the North and from the South and therefore let us give Thanks unto him and Praise him You see then the Extent of this Design that it took in all the Princes and States of Europe that it struck at our Estates our Liberty our Lives and above all at our Religion that it was carried on by many and powerful hands and by the most secret and efficacious methods And who else cou'd defeat such a contrivance or put a stop to it but the same God that bounds the Sea with a heap of dust and says to the Waves thereof hither shall you come and no further III. Which is a proper Introduction to my third Head the miraculous Concurrence of Providences for our Deliverance in breaking this Design so deeply laid and vigorously prosecuted These were so many and so remarkable that I doubt whether ever any Revolution was accompanied with a chain of such strange and unaccountable Accidents I shall mention only a few that every body must have observed and leave you to judge whether the Finger of God must not be acknowledged in them First therefore It was strangely unaccountable that the Pope who seemed to have a great stake and interest in this Design and as one wou'd imagine was most deeply concerned in the success of it should upon a trifle break with the French King and not only desert his Party but most cordially espouse the opposite side and that the King of France who never before stuck at any thing when interest was in the case upon the World 's counting it base or wicked shou'd refuse his Ghostly Father common Justice in Matters of so little moment as the Regale and Franchises It is plain that the Pope has right on his side in both these and that the French King was not much concerned either in profit or honour to defend them The Regale being a new Usurpation and the Franchises an ancient Nusance yet so obstinate have both sides proved in the contest that we hope 't is become irreconcilable Now if this had not happened the Counter-League of the Princes of Europe to the French Conspiracy cou'd hardly have been entred into or continued 't is this takes off the odium from the Emperour and King of Spain of assisting his present Majesty to redeem England and deprives the French King of the advantages he proposed to himself by declaring this a War of Religion It being rediculous to pretend a Holy War against the Father and Head of his Church This aversion of the Pope to the French designs is an obstacle in the way that neither Lewis nor James can yet get over tho the one begs hard and the other offers fair to remove it Having profered the Pope all that he desired at first and to oblige the French Clergy to own his Infallibility into the bargain Thus God shews that the hearts of Kings are in his hands that he can make them stoop and do mean things when it will do them no good and obstinate when yielding would be serviceable to them It cannot but be esteemed a further Providence that two Popes should succeed one another of the same humour which is not common and should persevere in the same enmity to France But 2dly It must be owned as a signal piece of Providence in God to have raised up a Man endued with the Courage Closeness and Activity of his present Majesty Who durst attempt so strange and inhumane probability such an impracticable thing as our Deliverance 'T is a rare thing in the World that one Man should have the dexterity to engage and the wisdom to manage so many different Interests into a Confederacy and argues a particular Providence 3dly It was another piece of Divine ordering that his Majesty should be so particularly interessed and engaged to undertake this Work before it was too late and our destruction unavoidable If we had gone on a few years in the course in which we were in all probability our condition would have become altogether desperate But the eagerness of the Conspirators to cut off their present Majesties from all hopes of Succession to the Crown made them introduce a Prince of Wales two or three years sooner than they were ready for him they knew very well when he appeared the persons concerned would be provoked to the height and that then if ever their present Majesties must appear for their Right and the Kingdoms for their Deliverance against which they were not as yet prepared for they had not yet sufficiently trained the Irish nor filled the Army in England with Papists for want of which they were not able to make any resistance against the Prince of Orange Having awakened him before they were prepared for him and necessiated him to make his descent into England whil'st the Arms were still for the most part in the Protestants hands and the Papists in no capacity to awe them 4thly The very pretended Birth of the Prince of Wales was so ill managed that it was not so much as a well contrived Cheat. The very Papists complained of it and that publickly in Print There was published here amongst many others under the late Government a Virulent Paper against his present Majesty Entituled England's Crisis or the World well amended To give it the greater credit the Author pretends to be a Protestant and the evidence of truth forced from him this following passage One reason of his the Prince of Orange's Expedition had at least a shew of Justice in the Quarrel I mean the business of the Prince of Wales which I cannot but confess some People managed as if they designed either that we should not believe at all or if we did our belief should be as implicit as to Successions and Inheritances here as that of the Romanist is in his expectation of Inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven hereafter This it is true they imputed to the Treachery of Councellors and Managers But when their Zealots writ and King James permitted such Accounts of that Matter to be published 't is a sign the business needed an Apology and that by God's just Judgment on them their usual dexterity failed them in it 5thly It was a peculiar Providence in this Affair that King James did not adhere determinately to any Councels or Councellors but did things irresolutely and by halves I find Papists in their Letters to him complaining of this and cautioning him against it one intreats him for God's sake not to listen to trimming Councellors whose aversion
But 4thly Where they could not Murther Protestant Princes it is hard to say where they have not attempted it they endeavour to defeat them of their Succession We all are satisfied that this was the only womb that conceived a Prince of Wales for us and gave him a Birth There was an attempt of the same kind in the days of Queen Mary which did not succeed to their mind but time and experience make men wiser hence it is that the contrivance that proved abortive then did with us come to perfection but in such a manner that at the same rate if allowed we might be sure never to fail of an Heir to defeat a Protestant Successor A fifth means of promoting this design was by calling the Turk into Europe and by supporting that common Enemy of Christianity to the ruin of those that profess the holy name of Christ. And the French King that he might embroil Christendom by Sea as well as by Land has made his Pride stoop to his Interest and condescended to buy a Peace with the Algerines Covenanting with them to assist them in their Piracies and their enslaving Christians A Man and his designs are known by his Friends and Confederates Now the French King's Allies are the Bandity of Italy the Pirates of Algiers the Turks and Tartars of Asia and the Tories of Ireland What a mercy of God is it to give us a Deliverance from the Conspiracy and Designs of such Monsters The depth of this Design appears from a sixth method used to effect it and that was to stir up and animate one party of Protestants to bite and devour another 'T is not bare difference of Opinion that makes men of different Sects so strange and unsociable to one another as we commonly observe them to be but their strangeness and enmity proceeds either from interest or from some peculiar Principle that obliges them to persecute and destroy all that differ from them tho in a trifle Where neither of these happen or where men of different Opinions are not encouraged or suffered to hurt one another we see they live very easily and lovingly together of which Holland is an undeniable instance and likewise this City under our late common sufferings in which the generality of Protestants notwithstanding their difference in Judgment lived with much mutual confidence and friendship but it is a Principle of the Roman Church that every Prince is obliged to root out and destroy all Hereticks out of his Dominions and that under no less a penalty than Deposition This is required of Princes by the Councils of Lateran and Constance and all Popish States and Princes have been so true to it in their practice that I do not remember that there has been nor believe that there is at this present any Prince or State of that Persuasion who doth Tolerate any Religion besides their own in their Country where they are able to suppress it with safety to themselves and they have generally been so eager upon it that many have attempted it to their own destruction No wonder therefore if their Persons and Religion be very odious to men of different perswasions since every body naturally hates one that is always ready to do him a mischief But I wish that they had kept this Principle to themselves and not industriously sowed it amongst Protestants among whom they first by their Emissaries sow false Doctrines and raise Schisms and then set up others to persecute and destroy those whom they themselves have seduced And when they have prevailed with one Party to bait worry and exasperate another to the height they then take them off for a time and put the Rods and Axes into the hands of the oppressed and whilst they yet smart under their sufferings they stir them up and encourage them to revenge themselves on their persecutors By which Arts they make the breach irreconcilable and the difference tho inconsiderable in it self to become the ground of an eternal Schism and Feud between the parties whom they have thus dashed against one another We all know that these were the methods used to set us together by the ears ever since the Reformation and in the two last Reigns 't was particularly observable that Toleration and Persecution succeeded one another by turns and were timed just as they served most effectually to set People a madding against one another One day the Laws must all be put in execution and none must be a favourite that would not be forward to execute them the next day the Persecution must not only be stopped but the instruments of it exposed to the revenge of those they had exasperated and forced to take their turn in suffering by the Actions and Law-suits of such as they had wronged Thus the common Conspirators against our Peace Liberty and Religion blow the coals and kindled a flame amongst us that was like to devour us all and 't is God's great mercy that we have escaped it These are a few of those considerations which might be offered to shew the depth of this design from which our good God has graciously redeemed us II. But I haste to the Second Head of my Discourse whence we may have occasion to magnify God's goodness in our Deliverance and that is from the extent of the design against us which was equal to its depth it being of a vast and comprehensive Nature The true and great design was to satisfy the ambition of the King of France by advancing him to the universal Monarchy of the West England might be cullied and wheedled with the imaginary pleasure of Mastering his Parliament of getting his will of his People and setling Popery Holland with the hopes of gain and a free Trade The Pope and Emperor with the specious pretence of re-establishing the Catholick Religion but the true and bottom-design was to enslave Europe and to make the French King as great and as pernicious to the Western Princes and States as the Turk has been to the Eastern And they did not miss the matter who in the Emblem represented these two as sawing the Globe asunder whilst the King of England's part was to pour in Oil to make the work more easie for them a thing so destructive to the true interest of his Crown that it is a miracle how he could be prevailed on to accept of the employment much more how he should be able to prevail with his Subjects to assist him in it Whatever be pretended of the stubborness or ungovernableness of the People of these Nations it certainly argued a very passive and submissive temper in them to give Money so liberally and to Fight so fiercely as they did to destroy themselves and their fellow Protestants to make sport for their common adversaries and serve the interests of their most inveterate and most dangerous enemy the French King Secondly The Design was universal and aimed at the destruction and enslaving all the Kingdoms and States of Europe No distinction
to his Religion and cunning design of spinning out his Life with their Pian Piano put them upon urging to him that great alterations are dangerous when carried otherwise than by slow and inperceptible degrees The same tells him that nothing causes irresolution more than a medley of Councellors of a different Religion from their Prince yet King James could never free himself from this Medley And that is the reason that his Actions were never of a piece and that he commonly spoiled his business by doing too much and yet too little thus he ought either not to have brought any Irish or French into his Army or made the whole intirely Papists He ought either to have accepted the French King's Assistance and Fleet without reserve or else broken with him altogether and declared against him But by hanging between both he lost the affections of his own Subjects which might have supported him and the benefit of Foreign Assistance his doing and undoing things had the same effect in which and many other particulars his not sticking intirely to one sort of Councellors was to us a great Providence I must reckon it as a sixth That the States of Holland should without scruple trust their All into His Majesty's Hand and be content to run his fortune which they plainly did in his Expedition We all know that the Vnited Netherlands are a free People most Jealous of their Liberty and who have done and suffered more to maintain it than perhaps any Nation in the World And as they are jealous of their Liberty so they are close and wary and not apt to venture too much at one slake Now that such a People should commit the absolute disposal of their Navy their Armies and their Money the very Sinews of their State to one Man and venture all in the same Bottom with him was an unbounded Trust and Kindness as his Majesty himself is said to have expressed it to them They trusted not only him but the Winds and Seas for his sake And tho' they had such intire confidence in his Conduct and Faith as not to ask him what he designed yet the hazard of a Winter-Voyage where the whole of their State was at once exposed to the Mercy of a Tempest was sufficient to have stumbled them had not the same God that inclined the hearts of Israel as of one man towards David knit their hearts to him and made them tender of his Life and Person where they without hesitation ventured their State 7thly It must be owned as an effect of the same Providence that King James's Court and Ministers were so blinded that they could not see into his present Majesty's designs And so secure that they would not give credit to the many Advices given them of these Preparations of which we can give no other account than that of Job Chap. 5. 13. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness and the councel of the froward is carried headlong they meet with darkness in the day and grope in the noonday as in the night 8thly I shall only mention King James's deserting his Army in England on which if he had absolutely cast himself and depended on their Fidelity it is certain by what has happened since that a great part of them would have stood by him There were enough to make a vigorous Opposition who were willing to run his Fortune if God had not enfeebled their Courage and put fear in their Hearts It was this opened the way to one of the greatest Revolutions that ever happened in that Kingdom almost without a drop of blood which must be owned as a singular Providence 9thly It was an over-reaching act of Providence to make that the Key to open a way for our settlement which was projected by our Enemies as the certain means to embroil us for ever I suppose no body doubts but those who advised King James to desert the Kingdom believed that we could never come to a settlement without him and yet the event proved directly contrary to their expectation for his presence in all probability had been such a rub to our settlement that it had not been easie to get over it It was indeed strange we should come to a Resolution so soon especially where the weight of the matter was so great and the opinions of men so divided that in the near equality of voices the wisest could not foresee how it would end till Heaven it self determined it For what else could have brought such different Interests and Judgments to acquiesce in the conclusion Neither in the 10th place must we imagine that the strange and absurd division of Protestants in England into Jacobites and Williamites happened without a Providence Whatever sence some may have of it in other respects we of this Kingdom must own it as a great and signal Mercy King James and his adherents here reckoned upon a strong and numerous Party in England and were affraid if they had utterly destroyed us that they should have lost them and therefore in many cases were obliged to bear an easier hand towards us than otherwise they would have done And whatever Favour or Forbearance we received from them was intirely due to this consideration This was the use God made of this Faction and now it has served his purpose I hope he will extinguish it 11thly God in his Providence so ordered it that King James found an unexpected diversion in Ireland that employed all his Forces till things were setled in England and till his present Majesty had leisure to break the Enemies power in Scotland and prepare for the Conquest of Ireland Had King James on his Landing in Ireland found no opposition in it but been intirely at Liberty to joyn his Forces with that Party that appeared for him in our neighbouring Kingdom every one is sensible how fatal the event might have proved not only to England but also to the Liberty of all Europe But it pleased God to find him work here by an unexpected Opposition which not only imployed but ruined his best men and lost him such an Opportunity as never could again be expected If we consider the Places and Persons that made this Opposition it is a Miracle that they should undertake much more that they should succeed in it and it looks as if God Almighty in his Providence had raised them up for that juncture and inspired them with Resolution in an extraordinary manner to shew his power in their weakness and his care of us in the seasonableness of their undertaking Our Enemies were very sensible of the unluckiness of this accident as they called it and curst Derry and Eniskillin as the occasion of the ruin of their affairs 12thly It was certainly a great Providence to us that his Majesty in person should undertake the Reduction of Ireland At a time and in such circumstances that King James and his Party judged it impossible and promised themselves that they had made him such work at
we feared and granted us for the most part opportunity of meeting together to Worship him and in many things rather afforded our Enemies an occasion of shewing their Malice and wicked Intentions against us than of executing them So that we must acknowledge with the Psalmist that the Lord has chastned and corrected us but hath not given us over unto death 3dly Let us be thankful to God for our Deliverers and thankful to them for the great Pains they have taken and the great Dangers they have run to effect it This is in a manner all we can return them at present for all the Pains and Costs they have been at for us and for all the Generosity they have shewed towards us our Enemies having disabled us in a great measure either to help our selves or make any retribution to them However what we can do let us do chearfully And let us return at least our hearty Acknowledgments and Prayers to God for them Especially for Their Majesties whose parts have been so signal in it that they revive in our minds the Memories of the ancient Hero's the Kings and Queens of England the Edwards Henries and Elizabeth that made us safe at Home and dreadful to our Neighbours If we consider what we have seen the King do in Ireland and what part her Majesty in the mean time acted in England it must be our own faults if we are not a happy People under such Princes and we must be very ungrateful both to God and them if we are not sensible of his goodness in blessing us with such Governours either of which seems capable of Governing much larger Territories than they yet possess And I hope as they are entitled to them so in time they will acquire them 4thly Let us spare no Pains nor Cost to perfect this Happy Work of our Deliverance and let us remember that if this had not happened we must have lost our Estates and Liberty and perhaps together with them our Lives Who would not within these last three years have given one half of his Estate to save the other And then what great matter if we give half of our Incomes for some years to enable Their Majesties to secure the whole to us since whatever it cost us 't is but restoring part of what we have saved or had restored by Their means 5thly Let us not Grudge or Murmur at the Hardships or Difficulties with which we may be obliged to struggle for a few years No great Cure was ever perfected without putting the Patient to some pain and then why should we expect it those that saw not what we suffered under the late Government may think some things hard at present But I observe that the People of this Kingdom that seem to have the greatest cause to complain are best satisfied which gives us reason to suspect that if any complain 't is rather from their dissatisfaction with the present Government than their particular uneasiness And I am afraid some amongst us are become like the Roman Common-Wealth in the time of Sylla which as the Historian observes could neither indure its Wounds nor its Remedy 'T is want of experience in the World for any one to expect that such a great Revolution should be brought about without exposing many to Hardships and Difficulties But he that has Patience shall see the end of his Hope Lastly Let us lay aside all Animosities amongst Ourselves and all Virulency against our Enemies Let us be Charitable to the Distressed and mindful of those that have not yet obtained their share in this Deliverance Let us perform our Vows and Engagements to God which we made in our distress Let us say aside Self-interest and set ourselves to lay the Foundations of a Solid Peace in Piety and Justice That the God of Peace may delight to bless us and our Governors and grant us an Intire Victory over our Enemies a Happy Union and Agreement amongst Ourselves and minister unto us many more Occasions of Thanksgiving FINIS Sir Henry Sidney five times Chief Governor between the Years 1557 and 1578. Adam Loftus Arch-bishop of Dublin three times Lord Justice between the Years 1582 and 1600.