may be unquestionable with a City-Rout a crowd of credulous Fools or resolute Knaves But if ever the Countrey has an occasion for a Triumvirate to write Paradoxes Lyes and Forgeries it will wisely pitch upon Mr. Baxt. Mr. H-t and this Person of Quality You are willing to lay a great Obligation on his Majesty from his Act of Oblivion but yet ungratefully forbear to mention your Party so much as oblig'd Then you address your self to the King's Friends and their Friends the Papist together I thought your Lordship could not allow Roman-Catholicks any relation or acquaintance with men that love the Religion of the Church of England and King of it as in common Charity my Lord some of us at least may be thought to do But why must we and they be thought such Intimates It no way appears upon Record my Lord as the Familiarity of your Party with the Jesuits neither has Mr. Oates sworn that they frequent our Churches as he testifies they do your Conventicles therefore without being such Favourites to them if you please we will obey your Injunctions and Consider what Promises Declarations and Engagements the dissenting Protestants had both of his Majesty his Lords and Bishops at the time of his coming over and how they have since been used and with what Submission and Loyalty they have carried themselves And now must tell your Lordship having considered and weighed every jot and tittle of it I can answer you to every Punctilio first that the Promises your dissenting Protestants had have certainly been made good to them perhaps above their bargain and expectation I am sure beyond their merit and desert not only the Laws when in full force against them and such Offenders have been seldom executed but for a while wholly suspended with a general Toleration although that I confess they will by no means grant to have been done in their favour notwithstanding it seem'd extorted by their own clamors and importunity and was the Counsel and Advice of some that are now the greatest Patriots and Bigots of their Cause And 't is very notorious that this dissenting Protestant all the time of that Indulgence resented it as an Act of Grace and Favour though I confess never the nearer won to Peace and Conformity with such a condescention but had their tender Consciences as much harden'd and steel'd with the Lenitives of Moderation as ever they could have been in the hottest flames of a real Persecution But as soon as ever they came to be bridled again by the Law with a seasonable restraint the Wretches that at best but flatter and dissemble when they command any thing in the Government presently arraign'd it as a design of introducing Popery though it truly promoted nothing more than the growth of their own Faction and made the Beast insolent and unruly by giving it the reins whom the curb of a severe Discipline might have made more gentle and tame And now I would have your Lordship tell us a way of satisfying so froward and perverse a Sect that is clamorous till it is indulg'd and then is discontented at its own Indulgence But beside all this your Lordship very well knows that they were not only conniv'd at in their Religious Schisms and sanctified ways of violating the Canons of the Church and the Laws of the Realm but some of them were advanced to Places of Honour and Profit and far'd once altogether as well as those that had more faithfully served the King and dutifully conform'd to the Discipline of the Church But granting these Promises and Declarations were not so punctually perform'd is the Government pretently to be upbraided for it And his Majesty almost told in plain terms that had you thought he would have fail'd you so he should never have got in the Throne so easily and can these grumbling and discontented Wretches be call'd the Restorers of his Majesty that would capitulate with their Prince for his Birth-right stand upon Terms and Articles like Rebels in a Garrison before they will surrender and are now sorry they had not made him compound for his Kingdoms at a dearer rate Your Lordship knows all this to be as true as the Suggestions of their hard usage are false and malicious would you have the greatest Laick of your Faction made the greatest Minister of State too that has been done already and your Noble Peer himself advanc'd to the Mace would you have some Head of your canting Priests preferr'd to be the Head of our Church and a thing put for the Pillar of it that has twice endeavour'd to undermine it why somewhat of this has been offer'd too and we have Mr. Baxter's own word for it that he refused a Bishoprick and now for God's sake my Lord what usage would you your self advise to be shown to such Miscreants whom neither Honour or Profit can perswade so much as to suffer the Government to remain undisturb'd Thus much for our Promises and Usage now my Lord for their Loyalty and Submission which you so vainly extol and magnifie but I wish your Eloquence a more copious Theam when-ever you have a mind to write a Panegyrick or else you 'l want indeed a great deal of Invention or rather another part of Rhetorick plain Hyperbole to make amends for the barrenness of the Subject You talk of the difficulty of finding a parallel Instance but all the while don't instance in one single act of this unparallel'd Submission and you vindicate your own Party just at the same rate as you vilify all others only with general Assertions but your Lordship shall see I will more fairly demonstrate their Treasons and Insurrections than you have done their Loyalty and Submission His Majesty was hardly settled in his Throne before these submissive Villains began to disturb it in 61. Venner and his Crew were plotting on the Government discovered and executed for High-Treason about 62. Phillips Tongue Gibbs and one Stubbs with another were arraigned for a Plot as Hellish altogether as this of the Papists the latter of which confesses the Fact before his Tryal the other four abiding it were upon full evidence condemned and executed In 63. we have one Captain Oates mustring up his Regiment of Traytors In 66. Another little Mutiny and Rebellion of a parcel of discontented Officers and Souldiers lately Mr. Colledge that with his last breath profess'd himself a dissenting Protestant condemned and executed for a more unparallel'd piece of Treason than any incomparable Instance you can give of Dissenters Loyalty and last of all for a head to this Comet this long train of Rebellion out comes the treasonable Scheam of Association and alarms the Kingdom with the fearful Presages of a second War Thus much my Lord for the submission of English Dissenters since the Restoration and now for the Loyal deportment of your Scottish one How many Field-Preachers since 60. have been executed renouncing with their last breath all Allegiance and Supremacy Kid and King
many Covenants and how improbable it is that those who enter'd into a League to fight against Charles the First should associate themselves for the preservation of the Second But these are but such Arguments I confess as the Schools call â probabilibus that which makes it demonstrably plain are the Shifts your Party use to avoid the Imputation whose Answers when they are question'd about it are like those of conscious Criminals full of Distraction Sometimes they fancy the truth of its being found not plain enough and then they deny the Matter of Fact then they begin to distrust that Refuge and stand up for its defence backing it with a President in Queen Elizabeth's time and pray my Lord Would you not take the young Bear to be the Whelp of such a Dam if you found her licking the little unform'd Monster into shape Then for its being found in the Closet we have a plain positive Oath and that of a very credible Witness The Keys sworn to be deliver'd by your Earl s own hand his Servants by when the Papers were put up and the Bag seal'd And sure his vigilant Domesticks would never suffer their Master to be so grosly abus'd had they put up other Papers than were found and brought Treason in their Pockets when they came to search for it My Lord It was the same poor defence Colledge made to the finding his treasonable Ballads and when nothing else could confront the Evidence it was insinuated as if they were laid there by the Searchers And you would do well to use some better Arguments for so great a person whom you would prove innocent than they did for a rascally Joyner whom all impartial people thought guilty But nothing makes it more unquestionable than those poor Shifts you use in questioning it You say Gwin dares not swear it and any one by what you say there to the contrary would swear you don't deny it and all your Argumentations look so conscious and guilty that they betray the very Cause they pretend to defend Among Heads that have but one grain of studied Logick or natural Reason 't is alway presum'd that nothing can be like it self and what-ever has any Reference must have another Extream to which it may refer and then what need of all this Comparison and Similitude if there be nothing found with which you would compare it What need has your Lordship to talk of Queen Elizabeth's Association as a Parallel if nothing since has been contriv'd like it by your Friends and Associates But you will say There has been a pretended one put upon you Then my Lord let me ask you Would you take all this pain to justifie a piece of Treason forg'd by your Enemies Did any of your Party write in favour of the Papers found in the Meal-Tub If these are your Measures and best Politicks what better Encouragement can there be for Shams and Forgeries than by writing Panegyricks and favourable Parallels on those Treasons of which you are suspected and accus'd You very civilly will allow his Majesty a Prerogative to call a Parliament but like the curs'd Cow that gives a little good Milk which she presently kicks down with her heels or Mr. H-t that defends the Bishops in his Book and blows them up in the Post-script your next Lines talk of having them conven'd frequently and sit usefully that is indeed whensoever your selves please and as long as your Faction shall think fit or till Grievances are redress'd and the Bill of Exclusion pass'd But for these Matters I may with better Authority use your own words in the business of the Charter Assure your Lordship It will be long before it be done But I would fain have you fix my Lord that indefinite Term of Frequent Parliaments Is your Lordship for Triennial ones again The Consequences of that were too fatal to expect such another unreasonable Grant And besides it is not above a twelve month since that your Lordship had one and that to your Mind too and therefore as yet no Reason to complain But if great Emergencies as you say shall determine the Prince to convene his States sure you may give him and his Council leave to judge whether they are really so or not Otherwise Dr. Oater's Quarrel with the Scotch Knight or the Disappointment of the City-Feast may by some be thought Matter of great Emergency and worthy the Consideration of a Parliament neither will the People my Lord as Things stand now be all of your Sentiments in thinking his Majesty's Friends and Counsellors humble Tories stupid Fools or designing Villains the best opinion you can have of them for not advising his Majesty as you think fit to call a Parliament We know those that gave worse Advice both for the Kingdom and all Christendom beside those that in their best regreted the Success of their own Councels and maliciously took now and then a few good Measures lest others should do it for them I can't apprehend my Lord what that distance of Time is in which without a Parliament our Liberties would expire and our selues on a sudden be shackl'd into Slaves We han't seen one for a whole year and perhaps may not for another and yet after many expir'd I dare swear our Magna Charta will be still the same though your City-Charter may not We will allow you Parliaments to be the Subjects Birth-right but then I hope we are not born to all sorts of Parliaments that Position my Lord would make you put in for a Right to that in Forty one since by special Act declar'd Traitors Your Lordship proposes by way of smart Interrogatory Whether the King's Prerogative in appointing the day will deprive us of the Right of having them in such a time and his Power of dissolving can render them useless to us I confess to men of your own Principles and Sentiments 't is impossible to answer them for such are resolv'd to take it for granted that the not letting them sit when they please is a deprivation of the Right of the Subject and the dissolving them when the King pleases is that which makes them useless whereas there are as great Men and as good Head-pieces who think the quite contrary And that his Majesty's appointing the day is the only Security we can have for their Sitting Perhaps without it we might have a Convocation of Rebels but not a Parliament a major part of Members treasonably associated but never an House of Commons lawfully assembled And then in this Case also differing so far from your Opinion that they think the only thing that can make them useful is the King's Power to dissolve them I confess to men that make an House of Commons to patronize all their Irregularities to countenance all those gross Abuses they put upon the Government to such a Dissolution is a useless thing indeed and deprives them of the making an honourable Assembly a pretended Abettor of all their scandalous Actions
us who they are that make the Nation timorous and fearful and therefore my Lord you might have forborn to have term'd them in such terrible Jargon a Militia we having nothing that can be call'd so but the Train'd-Bands and his Majesties standing Forces unless you have procur'd an Army to obey that major part of disbanded Members The growth of the French King ought least of all to be imputed to us since your own Faction is alway the Promoter of foreign Invasions as well as of domestick Broils and nothing makes a Neighbouring Prince look higher than the Civil Dissentions amongst his Neighbours which will be sure to keep them low the Wars here at home on our Continent made William of Normandy take that opportunity of invading it who had bought his Conquest at a dearer Rate if Harold had not sold a great deal of English Blood before the Footing we once had in France might have been still retain'd had not the jealousies of a Faction at home given occasion for their revolting abroad while Malecontents here were always quarrelling at the Government of the Regent there and our Kings necessitated to leave Forces to keep their Subjects orderly in England when they might have subdued their Enemies in France And to what sort of People now do the French owe their growth But your Lordship has less reason again to take up such a defensive Weapon in the Vindication of your noble Peer when it wounds the Party that wheels it in the Rebound more than ever it does the Adversary in the direct Stroak All the Kingdom knows who they were that perswaded the breaking of the Triple League and then the whole World may judge who nurst up the King of France to this height had that Old one been yet inviolated there wou'd have been no need of this New one of Gueranty The French Conquests had never made up so large a Map or the Spaniards retain'd so little Footing in the Netherlands so that upon Computation my Lord to all that poor Bankrupt Country your own Friends will be the Creditors and all Christendom in your debt for a vast expence of Blood as well as Moneys and well may your Lordship's Party be contented to see a most Christian King lord it over all Europe when they envyed even his Majesties success against the Moors in Africa and those that were so little mov'd at the Siege of Tangier can never be much troubled at the Conquest of Flanders In the next Page you very fairly confess your self a friend to Protestant Dissenters the Confession is somewhat generous and superfluous too because we should have understood that without it but the Reasons you give for it are most absurdly vain and ridiculous First you say because there is not yet found an Infallible decider of Faith the same Logick will afford you an Argument for the befriending Turks and Mahometans who have a sort of Faith too and believe better in their Alcoran than men of your Principles can do in the Creed Secondly because they live soberly and honestly by you but did they do so when they plundred sequestrated and massacred their fellow-Subjects when they deposed fought and murder'd their Soveraign I can assure your Lordship they were as true Protestant Dissenters as any of your Friends and do they live soberly and honestly now when they violate the Laws most immoderately abuse the Government grosly and combine together treasonably I will concur with your Lordship in an Abhorrence if you can bear with that expression of Popery grant that it is a Religion inconsistent with Government and full of rebellious Principles But suppose my Lord that the Alcoran did authorise the deposing and murdering of Princes For as their History tells us there are Fanatical Sects among those Heathens too Would your Lordship for that ever have the better opinion of the Popes Bull that first pulls off their Purple Robes and then delivers them to be crucified Or did the Turks Mufti preach up Rebellion would you think Priests and Jesuits good Subjects The blackness of one Negro will never make another of the same colour appear white And yet my Lord this is the very Case the Popish Councils have allow'd the deposing of Kings and how can you defend our Assemblies that have commenc'd the same sort of Casuists Pope Hildebrand countenanc'd that Arch-Rebel Phocas against his Soveraign yet you are a Friend to Mr. Baxter that maintain'd the Usurpation of Oliver Cromwel their Suarez and Bellarmines no doubt are damn'd by you for treasonable Doctrines and yet you can own your self a favourer of Knox and Buchanan 't is plain my Lord that both these Religions are rebellious and these treasonable Positions have been on both sides defended and some of the very Reformers of our Religion have been so little Friends to Monarchy and so much agreed with the Romanists they dissented from as to tolerate in some Cases the dangerous Doctrine of deposing Kings and there is still but a small interval between a degraded Prince and a Prisoner and then it was the Assertion of our Royal Martyr that died for it and verified the fatal Aphorism in his blood that there is but a little distance between their Prisons and the Grave Your Lordship reflects on the black Transactions of Court-Converts but I can tell you of the blacker Crimes of those that have deserted it and become your own Proselytes such as have been drawn from their Love and Allegiance to their Soveraign with the Sorceries Cunning and Carresses of your High and Mighties that can keep open Entertainments for every staggering Judas and make the Devil and Sedition enter the compleated Apostate with a Sop these are those that are now a days betraying their Soveraign too with a sort of Kiss and with a pretence of discovering his Enemies about him would dispossess him of his real Friends and perswade the Nation they know every evil Minister of State from their having been a little concern'd in the Affairs of it But what does your Lordship think of the Faith and Integrity of these Runagadoes that were formerly nothing but Objects of your Hatred and Indignation Enemies to King and Country And what security have you they will serve you more faithfully than they did their Prince those pamper'd Iesuruns that fatten'd with his Bounty kick at him only for withdrawing his hand and like a politick sort of Table-Brutes fawn no longer than they are fed But can any soul living take the suggestions and insinuations of these discontented Wretches for Gospel-Truths and their discoveries of the slips and failings in the Government which none ever was without for Revelation when these lying Oracles of the Rabble are possest with a Devil of malice and revenge two things that quickly transport any disaffected Creature beyond the bounds of Truth Reason and Humanity it self Will any indifferent person concur with those who thinks the Kings business ill done only because they can no longer solicit it Can
an unbias'd man believe the justice of his Courts corrupted and his Judges Arbitrary because it is the opinion of some perhaps that have a mind to sit on the Bench Are those fair and competent Asserters of an Arbitrary Power and good Witnesses of their Princes Tyranny only because they are banish'd the Court and could see nothing of it when they sate in the Council Lastly can he truly fear Popery that is of no Religion at all and be an impartial Judge of the Temper of the Duke of York that is his avow'd and mortal Enemy neither the Civil Law or Common will admit of any prejudic'd Evidence And for God's sake let the King and Government when they are arraign'd have as fair play for it as one of your Joyners or Coblers a Colledge or an Hewson would expect Next my Lord you would prove the Queens Association to have been carried on without her knowledge from a certain Speech of hers to her Parliament but whether the Quotation be false or true we won't dispute at present but this seems to me a plain sort of owning the Paper of which your Friends are accused only you would say somewhat for your selves in not acquainting his Majesty with it a little sooner by telling the Kingdom his Predecessor Queen Elizabeth knew nothing of such a Combination any more than himself and that she look'd upon it as an obligation from her Subjects to find so many hands unknowingly subscrib'd but granting they agree in this circumstance that such a Loyal Design as well as a Treasonable one may possibly have been carried on in the dark Can you imagine my Lord She would have taken it for an Obligation too had they tender'd her a Paper that would have sworn her out of her Supremacy and lodg'd it in the major part of her House of Commons and with what face could ever any Subject offer a scheam of Rebellion to his Soveraign and desire of him the liberty to commence a Rebel and a Traytor only for his defence and preservation The Story of the Queen of Scots which you would make so plain a Parallel is in my judgment as little to the purpose First Did the Queen of England shew her self as vigorous in opposing the disinheriting of her next Heir as our King has been both kind and just in asserting the Rights of his Brother and Successor Secondly Do you think if she had really declared her self against the proceedings of her Parliament in that Affair her Subjects would have enter'd into an Association to have done it by themselves No no your Lordship is too good an Historion not to know that things were then carried on with her Majesties Connivance and tacit Approbation and that she acted her part of the Tragedy like one of Matchiavel's Monarchs behind the Curtain and for which even Writers very favourable to your own Party and no Causines have justly condemn'd her And it seems all your own factious Crew don't agree with your Lordship in thinking the Proceedings against that unfortunate Queen so fair and honourable for very lately a certain Protestant Buffoon has prov'd it plain Murder in his second part of a thing call'd a Speculum or the View and Reflection of a Chimera half Droll half Author and half Ass and from that very Case this Hotch-potch Animal proves King-killing to be the Doctrine of the Church of England but I hope you will agree with me because he differs from you in this point that this his Argumentation is like the rest of his Stuff very ridiculous but as for his abusing the Church-men there you may shake hands again for he paints them out very pleasantly like Fools Anticks and Jack-Puddings and you draw them out terribly all in blood Governours of the Popish Interest revengeful implacable and such as never forgive so that between you the Clergy may be pretty well secur'd of an Odium when you can expose them even in the two several extreams But would a Jew take such to be Christians that vilify the Church of which they would seem to be and ridicule the very Religion they are thought to profess And here I can't but observe a Barbarous as well as a Malicious hint of your Lordships who when you have represented how violent the Parliament was against the Succession of the Queen of Scots with a cruel and emphatical Malice cry out Nay and against her Life too We know my Lord the Parliament help'd the Grand-Mother to the Block and you saw another made the Father stoop to it But would you have your Associated Baalites sacrifice the Blood of the Son too This is stretching up a private Revenge to vye even with the Vengeance of the Almighty and an angry God only visits to the third and fourth Generation Your Lordship in this Insinuation shews a great deal of Inhumanity not to be parallel'd but by that of your Friends the Dissenters in their Association or the Cannibals of the West-Indies which as some say infest our Plantations there and refresh themselves in nothing more than in the Blood of an Enemy These are the bloody Measures which your Passion transports you to and not your Judgment directs People look through these transparent Politicks like Water and see nothing but Malice and Revenge at the bottom Your last politick Observation is That his present Majesty is the first Prince that ever was perswaded to be so willing to settle indubitably the Title of his presumptive Heir But why perswaded Has he not natural Affection enough to be willing himself And would he not much rather be thought the first should he humour your Faction that ever unnaturally disinherited a kind Brother and his Heir apparent And I believe nothing grieves you more than that his Majesty's Consent must be requir'd and could a Parliament be gotten once to act again without him no doubt but the Bill of Exclusion would be the first Act of the Session But the Law of Nations ever since the Time of Justinian the Laws of the Kingdom down from the Conqueror have happily placed the Sanction of every Law in the Will of the Prince and you and your Friends must be contented my Lord till you can perswade the King to give you his Le Roy Vult and the Crown and Scepter to the Bargain And seeing you are pleas'd to call the D. of Y. but a presumptive Heir and seem to lay such a stress and Emphasis upon the new-coin'd word we will discuss this Business a little further My Lord if I mistake not your Friend you pretend to vindicate was the first that applied this pretty Distinction to the next Heir of the Crown It looks like a piece of State-Sophistry and your noble Friend some say was fam'd for a fine distinguishing Logical Head when a young Academick and a body would almost swear this Vindicator the Vindicated and the noble Peer differ only like the little Man with three great Names who still makes but the same person