of the Papal Usurpations to expose himself to the fencing with two enraged Multitudes which would have produced the same effect as would a Iesuit's Preaching a Postilling Sermon here against the Yearly burning of the Pope to the Populace employed in that Solemnity My Lord I find my self her engulfed in writing a long Letter and the truth is having a great concern for your Lordship's Honour I am willing to take pains to satisfie my self exactly by thus tracing your Lordship's steps on the Stage of the World that I may satisfie others so about your being as averse as any one can be from supporting any Papal Power to invade the rights of Conscience or those of Princes The Roman Historian speaking of Nero saith Tyrannum hunc per quatuordecem annos passus est terrarum orbis And it may truly be said That England formerly has endured the Popes Tyranny and the Artifices of its Favourers for some Ages But the Patience of Man has bounds and the Propagators of such Usurpation who had so long maintain'd a separate Soveraignty here the which is like an Animal living within an Animal did find that as the lesser creature is evacuated by the greater or destroyed therein or doth else destroy the greater Animal it was so held to be in the case of such Power among us and as no doubt it always will be by your Lordship When your Travels were ended and you had with the help of the Education your Father gave you saved him by your knowledge of the Lex terroe from falling as a prey to Arbitrary Power and thereby shewed your self both a good Son and great Patriot the first Scene of publick Employment wherein your Lordship appeared with Eminency was as Governour of Vlster by Authority under the Great Seal of England a Charge of difficulty when the Forces from Scotland under the Command of Major General Munro had so long ruled absolutely there that the English Interest had suffered a great eclipse and diminution How you managed Affairs during your Government there and how by your Councils the most pernitious and potent Rebel Owen Roe O Neil was opposed and his design to swallow up that Province and the Province of Connaught disappointed and the Protestant Interest in both united and encouraged and under your Conduct and Command the Titular Popish Archbishop of Tuam taken and by the seisure of his Cabinet and Papers the Popish design upon Ireland discovered and broken in due time I doubt not you will more particularly inform the World. From that Service your Lordship was upon the ill success of those Commissioners who were first sent to the then Marquess of Ormond employed to make the Capitulation with the said Marquess then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of the City of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands for securing them from the Irish Rebels who had invested and streightned the same Which happy work was effectually accomplished by the Articles made with the said Marquess already published to the World And so the Protestants Interest in that Kingdom made entire and so considerable that they daily gained ground of the Confederate Rebels till at length they were wholly subdued and vanquished After those Articles concluded and reception of the said City and Garrisons your Lordship was called back into England where being a Member of the House of Commons you shewed your self no less useful to this Kingdom And have since in Parliament and Council and other great Imployments in both Kingdoms shewed your self an Eminent Instrument both in his Majesties happy Restoration who entirely trusted you with the Management thereof and in other great Affairs of State and Government to general satisfaction being never by those that knew you so much as suspected for Evil Council or want of Zeal and Faithfulness to your King or Countrey but every day gaining more the Love and Esteem of Protestants and Patriots as you had incurred the implacable hatred of the Popish and Arbitrary Factions I cannot here but observe That a little before the Kings Restoration the spirit of the people universally shewing its resentments so strong and vehement against Lambert and his Committee of Safety and against all the propounders of projects of Government that nothing but his Majesties return to the Throne of his Ancestors could quiet the people and your Lordship then as President of the Council by your great Wisdom Contributing highly to the dispatch of many arduous and intricate Affairs requisite to make that great Revolution without bloudshed when things near their Center were moving so fast it may well be reckon'd among impossible things that your Lordship should now espouse the Papal interest when the Vogue the Humour the Sense and Reason and Spirit of the People are bent against it with as keen and strong and general an antipathy as can be imagined And when I consider that great real power you had in the Kingdom at that time testify'd not so much by your signing all the great Commissions then for Military and Civil Employments as by both the King and the best and wisest of the people in the Three Kingdoms putting themselves in your hands and having their eyes chiefly upon you as to the management of the Political part of that mighty concern I cannot but thinking of your Lordship whom thus the King and Kingdom delighted to honour apply to you these words in Valerius Maximus where he speaks of Agrippa Menenius whom the Senate and People chose Arbitrator of their differences and to â—ompose matters between them Quantus scilicet esse debuit arbiter publicae salutis Yet as great as this Man was he could have no Funeral unless the people had by a pole given the sixth part of a penny to defray his Funeral Charges But your Lordships case in one particular seems harder then his for they who unjustly go to take away your good Name and to make a Papist of you go about to bury you alive Had your Lordship after the King's Restoration aspired after the power of a chief Minister or suffered any such to be committed to you you must have took it with the concomitance of universal envy that hath always in England been fatal to such power England having always thought such power fatal to it 'T is the power it self of such a Minister that is look't on as a popular Nusance and t is impossible for such a great Man by raising his power only to what he thinks a moderate height to keep it secure and lasting For tho a Steeple be built with firm Stone great Art and but with a moderate height yet are there Clouds charged with Lightning and Thunder and moving in the Ayr sometimes not higher than the top of such a Steeple and the Pryamid or sharpness of such a Steeple then as I may say tapping or broaching such a Cloud that comes that way is instantly Burnt and Thundered down And the Multitude of the
the anger of the people diffusive or representative is over but rather the contrary from it s not having appeared violent And indeed as that heat of the body that is acquired not by an approach to a blazing fire but gradually by gentle exercise of the parts is most lasting and most agreeable to its constitution so is it with that heat of popular anger that is the Result of the exercise of mens mindes and of several laboured intense thoughts most durable and salutiferous to the body of the Kingdom It hath been observed by a Man of no Vulgar intellectual Tallents Mr. Philip Nye a Man indeed of great Sagacity in his Generation as I find it in his Book called Beams of former Light viz. We know that in near a hundred years the Reformation gained little upon Popery and Superstition more then was gotten by the first assault nay it decay'd and Popery grew under it so fast as at last we were almost returned into the same condition that we were reformed from and this he sayes may be the cause why the first Reformation prospered no better there were the like severe impositions and Laws made upon occasion of difference among the Protest ants and then advantages were taken thereby and many put out of the Master-Role for Nonconformity who were of greatest courage and most faithful Resolution against Popery and Superstition the then common Enemy The silenâ—cing and ejection of Ministers in Queen Elizabeths dayes reformation being newly begun and the Enemies to it many the friends and those that faithfully engaged few was looked on by the godly prudent of that age as very unseasonable yea the their crimes had deserved it because of the searcity of Preachers at that time There is nothing more frequent in our Suffering Brethrens writings that were then published against the Hierarchy then a bemoaning the great loss to the cause and people of God thereby I will mention but one considering the season saith Mr. Parker though we were worthy yet should we least be deprived now when Popery riseth like the swellings of Iordan yea maketh invasion like an Armed man when there are wanting many on the other side in many Parishes to stand up in the gap against it Doth not the Canon Law it self spare depriving for greater faults when there is penuria sacerdotum quando utilitas ecclesiae exigit Thus far Mr. Nye who whether he has assigned non causam pro causâ or no as to the Vigorous encreasing of Popery after the Reformation I shall not say and shall forbear even with the tenderest and gentlest hand to touch the sore place of the difference among Protestants till we are secured against the Rough hands of any Esaws touching Gods Annointed Nor shall I now debate of which perswasion among Protestants should strike Sail to the others till we have put off the Fire-ship that hath grappled us but shall here say that I think one cause why the Protestant Religion hath not since its first assaults against Popery gained ground of it proportionably was what is necessarily incident to humane Nature and even in the most generous and particularly English Spirits after a great overflowing of passion to find in themselves the lowest ebb to succeed the highest tide and our boyling blood to be the more dispirited afterward by reason of its former heat and for us instantly to fall asleep when our spirits are taken off from the wrack that passion extended them on and to try to recruit our spirits again by the passion of Pitty or Shame which we had wasted by that of Anger like men that after one excess refresh themselves by another And as the great expenses of War which is the passion of Anger raging in the body of a whole Nation Necessarily at last end in a peace that continues till mens plenty blow them up into War again so doth the spending and wasting the Treasure of our Spirits by Anger necessitate us into a quiet that lasts till being thereby recruited we are again capable to take Fire from a fresh provocation and to trouble our selves and others But as men grow older and wiser they grow abler to moderate their passion of Anger and make it like Fire not a bad Master but good Servant to themselves and the Public not a Fire that acts as natural agents ad extremum virium and so as anger acts and rests in the bosom of fools who are so far natural agents only as not guided by reason but as in the Breasts of the Wise where reason rests and makes all passions as its Messengers and Ministers not unresembling what is said of the most High that he makes his Ministers a flame of Fire and so by God-like men who love others like themselves their passion of Anger is made like a Guardian Angel to themselves and others and by thus according to that precept being angry and sinning not the fire of Anger in the Protestants here against Popery having long been light and restless is at last got to its proper Element where it doth not Levitate and where it hath no burning but only a purifying quality and thus the hatred of the English Protestants against Popery may be said to be as the Scripture expression is a perfect hatred being now come to its height and proper Element which perfect Hatred to Popery may always consist with a perfect love to Papists and cinge not a hair of their heads more then a Lambent Fire My Lord I account that we do but Justice to the Persons of many of our Roman-Catholick Acquaintance in pronouncing of them that they have no PLOT but to get to Heaven and to follow the last Dictates of their Practical understandings as to the Mind of God reveal'd in the Scripture I shall tell your Lordship that I entertaining my thoughts sometimes with the great pacificatory ones of our Divines have observâ—d things there said with sharpness enough against the Errors of Papists and yet with great sweetness as to the persons erring and not only exempting these from odium in their holding Problematick Tenets contrary to ours but asserting their just liberty so to do And because one of our Church of England-Divines who hath writ at that rate hath done it with a graceful mixture of wit and frankness I shall here entertain your Lordship with some of his passages about it I intend here to refer you to an excellent Sermon of Dr. Ingelo's Preached at S. Paul's and Printed A. 1659. and where in p. 129. he saith I am afraid that Christian Religion will not recover for a good while that honour which is lost by the uncharitableness of the present Age. God grant that we may return speedily to the sincerity of the Protestant Principles We know not what the Christian Religion is but by the Scriptures and by them we may know for there it is plainly and fully set down In things doubtful if every Christian may not interpret for himself how shall
Primier Ministres adorers who are always pleasing or troubling him with their sacrifices do all with sudden confusion leave him when he begins thus to fall as if Thunder-struck from Heaven We find in Rushworth that Iune the 13 th 4 Caroli it was ordered upon the Question That the excessive power of the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of the Evils and Dangers to the King and Kingdom And we may well suppose that if a Parliament doth still as one man set themselves against a Monopolist but of one little pedling commodity that they will look on a Chief Minister as one that would or in effect doth monopolize the Beams of the Sun I mean the Kings Eye and as one that alone hath the Kings Ear and as one that is the great forestaller of the Court-market of preferments And happy it is for a Chief Minister that the way of Parliamentary Impeachment hath been in such antient usage for that rids the people of the outrage of that Minister and that Minister of the outrage of the people Our Stories speak How barbarously Cruel the brutish Rabble was to Dr. Lamb called the Duke's Conjurer and the reason why the people hate those they call Conjurers so much is because they think such have a power to hurt their Children or Cattel and the same reason makes them hate one that they look on as a Kings Conjurer who they think can hurt their Property and one who on occasion can raise up Domestick and Foraign Devils to molest them and especially if he cannot lay those Devils when he has raised them and who can if he will put the People to charge and to the danger of starving to feed his familiar spirits When once the people find by any mans power the fence of the Law begun to be broken down they will go in at the gap and 't is nothing but the Law that secures a chief Minister and them against one another St. Austin therefore doth rationally in his De Civitate Dei charge the miserable condition of the Romans on the contempt and breach of their Laws and saith he people were promiscuously put to death not by Judgment of Magistrates but by Tumults Neque enim Legibus ordine potestatum sed turbis animorumque Conflictibus Nobiles ignobilesque necabantur Your Lordship therefore when you had been a repairer of the breaches of the Nation and of the Law therein and in the Scripture expression a restorer of paths to dwell in as easily and unconcern'd gave up the great depositâ—m of power the King and Kingdom entrusted you with as ever you restored the least to a private person and have ever since among the Councellors of your Prince both endeavoured to make your Country safe by giving Counsel against any Neighbour Nations being too powerful and to make your self secure by your not grasping more power than you saw in the hands of each of your honourable Colleagues as well knowing that any single Minister that shall here set up to be a Dispenser of the Soveraign Power had need either still wear a Coat of Male and an Iron Brest-plate or bind the whole Kingdom to the Peace Your Lordship can hardly look into antient History without meeting Examples of the People like the Leviathan playing in the Ocean of their power and spouting out their censures both with fury and wantonness when they are dooming the great You know the Lacedemonians did reprimand their Lycâ—rgus because he went with his head stooping the Thebans accused their Paniculus for his much spitting and the Athenians Simonides because he spoke too loud the Carthaginians Hannibal because he went loose in his garments the Romans Scipio because he did snore in his sleep the Vticenses Cato for his eating with both Jawes the Syllani Iulius Caesar for wearing his girdle carelessly the Romans were angry with Pompey for scratching himself but with one finger and likewise for wearing a garter wrought with Silver and Gold on one leg saying that he wore such a Diadem about his foot as Kings do on their heads though yet it seems the only cause of his wearing it was to hide a Sore place there And in these above-mentioned cases we are not to think that those Ancient and wise people who thought the rest of the world barbarous could censure those persons so barbarously for those sensless reasons but out of a hatred to the persons Censured were resolved to strike at the first thing they met how innocent soever in it self in persons they thought they had reason to represent odious A late Great Man who in a Public Speech in Parliament render'd the English tongue as having the Monopoly of the term good Nature found that they had not engrost the thing when they imagined that his Ministry Monopolized much of the Regal power And another eminent person afterward a Minister to His Majesty Suffered as a favourer of the French at whose imprisonment I have heard that the Lovâ—re rang with as much joy and triumph as if they had carried the point in a great fight at Land or Sea and he likewise suffered obloquy as if concern'd in the infamous murder of Sr. Edmond Godfrey from which he was certainly as free as from having killed Iulius Caesar And how far the embroider'd garter about his leg made him like Pompey Envyed I know not But as I said 't is a chief Ministers power the people of England strike at who may not be unfitly resembled to Alexanders Bucephalus that would let none but Alexander ride him nor could Alexander himselfe do it till by holding him against the Sun he kept him from being frighted with the sight of his Shadow And when one Subject seems to be the representative Shadow of the body of the whole people the Sight of him frights them so as to make them uneasie to be ruled And therefore I think his Majesty did rationally provide for the public Security when he signified His pleasure in a Speech in a late Parliament about not Ruling us by a single Ministry I should not wonder if your Lordship were called a Papist if you had been the possessor of any such power that name being now the angriest the people can throw at any one as it was before the late Warres when Archbishop Laud who had writ so well and so much against the Papists fell under the weight of that name But really by the power of that chief Ministry he had in the State of England after the death of the Duke of Buckingham And at that time the currant definitions of a Papist and of one who enjoyed Arbitrary Power were the same And the things made conveâ—â—â—ble or Devils dancing in the same Circle And so likewise the Vouge at this time obtains among the populace who cannot see through the hard words and things in definitions and if you ask them what is a Papist they will tell you he is one that is for Arbitrary Power and asking them what is one that
confesseth and that by God's own appointment three times the Annual Revenue of the greatest of the twelve Tribes Doctor Covel in his Modest and Reasonable examination of some things in use in the Church of England Printed Anno 1604 saith in Chapter the Eleventh Thatâ—the Levites were not the Thirteenth part of the Jews and yet had the Tenth Wherein that Doctor agreed with the sense of the Fathers of the Council of Trent who as 't is mention'd in the latter end of the History of that Council said That in the Mosaical Law God gave the Tenth to the Levites who were the Thirteenth part of the people prohibiting that any more should be given them But the Clergy now which is not the Fiftieth part hath gotten already not a Tenth only but a Fourth part But by exacter Calculations 't is apparent that the Levites though a small Tribe if a Tribe there being twelve beside scarce the sixtieth part of the House of Iacob had perhaps a Sixth of the whole profits of the Land They had the Tenth or Tith of the Land together with its Culture they had in Iudaea a small Country 48 Cities with their Suburbs 2000 Cubits from the Wall on every side and their first-fruits and a great part of the manifold Sacrifices and free-will-offerings of the Male Children of Israel which were to appear thrice yearly before the Lord with some Offering and whatsoever House Field Person Beast c. was by a singular Vow given to God which was to be valued by the Priest himself and all these duties were brought in to the Priest without charge or trouble and those Cities and Lands descended from them to their posterity from generation to generation as also did their Tithes and Offerings I shall here observe that that which hath probably induced so many to err in making the number of the Levites so great as aforesaid was their not considering what yet is really true in Nature namely That the number of people of any Nation from a month old and upwards for so the Levites were counted Numb 3. 39. is more then double their number from Twenty years old and upward and so the rest of the Tribes were numbred Exod. 33. 26. Numb 26. 62. And therefore I infer that the Levites were but about a sixtieth of the number of the other Tribes But during the Theocracy that the Iews sometimes lived under or while God was their King it being worthy of the Divine Empire to design and promote the wealth of its Subjects and consequently that they should encrease and multiply for that alone is real wealth there was no Celibate among the Levites or any degree of Ecclesiasticks to hinder the same Having thus in the way of Calculation glanced on the Ecclesiastical Polity of God's peculiar People or Subjects I suppose the rectitude of that Rule will shew the obliquity or warping of the practice of the Papal Clergy For if we do admit as I believe we well may that there are seven Millions of people in England of which 120000 is a sixtieth part this old Church Polity of the Popes Clergy doth Toto Caelo differ from that of the Israelites in that they spend double the proportion of the wealth of the Kingdom and yet live in Celibate or without multiplying And as Mr Fish in effect said in that his Book do hinder procreation by promiscuous coupling with other Mens Wives But 't is a known great truth that the great business of the Monks and the Ratio studiorum of the Papal Clergy was not to make the Kingdom populous but to depopulate We have for this the testimony of Walter Mappe Arch-deacon of Oxford who was bred up with Henry the Second that the Abbots and Monks in that time were very Criminous in the point of depopulation whence that Proverb arose Monachi desertum aut inveniunt aut faciunt wherever they seated themselves they either found the place a Desart or made it one 'T is said of them That they laid more places waste then ever William the Conqueror or his Son Ruâ—us did when they demolished and destroyed many Parishes to enlarge the bounds of the new Forrest In that Fleet of depopulators there was one first-rate one namely The Abbot of Osney who was for his Talent of depopulating so remarkable that 't was observed that he made all paupers that dwelt within the purlieus of his Possessions And of this Henry the Second took such notice that one day when he had not poor people enough for his Alms on some great Festival he said in a fit of anger That rather then his bounty should be unemployed he would make as many beggars as the Abbot of Osney had done One would think that the Monks should have been well willers to the encrease of the populousness of the Kingdom for that thereby the values of their Lands would have been encreased a thing no doubt that appeared visible to the Reasons of the more Sagacious among them But there was another thing they found palpable that is they found themselves well at ease even to envy in their vast share of the wealth of the Nation whereby they Lorded it over both God's inheritance and the Laity and therefore they did not fancy the sight of the Sea of the people increase by the coming in of the Tide of new generations that would have produced much more persons to maligne and perhaps contest with them they naturally therefore wished the sweet absence of such company from the World just as in Ireland and other thin peopled Countries the Natives living at their ease have sharp regrets against the accession of strangers though they know it would raise the value of their Lands and as in America the Natives wish no improvement to their Country from the Spaniards The Monks had got the Monopoly of Religion and near half the Land by it and not having any certain Issue to endear posterity to them and consequently to oblige them to promote the wealth of the Kingdom in general and to consult thereby the good of surviving parts of themselves for that figure Children make as to Parents they and the Abbots and Popish Bishops cared for no more then being warm in the Pyes Nest while they lived and 't was as natural to them to repel the thoughts of Colonies of people advancing the wealth of the Kingdom by new generations as 't is natural to present Trading persons to prevent the publick good of an Act of Naturalization And as this advancement of depopulation was therefore the interest of the present Monks and Priests so was it of the present Popes who knew they were sure of receiving Aids and Contributions from them as long as numbers of other fresh comers did not drive them off the Stage One would rather wonder that our Popish Monarchs saw it not sooner their Interest to crush the Politics of these holy Depopulators and Pastors that turned the Kingdom into Sheep-walks and who minding chiefly the encrease
longevity of Popery if ever it should call it self here the State-Religion for it can naturally be but a short dull Parenthesis of time in an Age of Sense and the Eye of Reason can see through the duration of it as well as through its absurdities and it can naturally be but like an angry Cloud that with the Eye of Sense we shall see both dropping and rowling away over our heads and shall behold the Sun playing with its Beams around the Heavens near it at the same time and nothing can be easier to you then to dye in the Faith that Popery cannot live long in England and to know that you are not to be compared to an Infidel though you should have provided for your surviving Family nothing but Abby Lands the which I believe may by a bold instrument of Eternity drawn by a small Scriveners Boy be effectually Conveyed to any Lay-man and his Heirs for ever I know that the present State of that part of the Land of England that was aliend from the Church is such that it bears not the price of years purchase it did before the Plott and that it is according to the common expression become a drug as to Moneys being taken up on it in comparison of other Lands and it is obvious to consider how much herein the Plott hath prejudiced the Wealth and Trade of the Kingdom in making so great a part of the Land in some regard comparatively useless to the Possessors but I likewise know that hereby Popery will be no gainer for that 't is apparent that the owners of it will be indefatigable in the use of all means lawful to bring Popery to such a State as shall make any men ashamed to say they fear it Tho Holy Church that everlasting Minor that Minor like Sir Thomas Mores Child that he said would be always one will be still labouring the Resumption of what was alien'd from it and hence I believe it hath proceeded that our Kings thô in the eye of the Law always at full Age have thought fit to learn from Holy Church the Priviledge too of being reputed Minors or Infants in Law for so the Books call them that upon occasion they may resume what was alien'd from the Crown and thô the hopes of such resumption would be a bait to help Popery to Multitudes of Proselytes yet the people imagine a vain thing who think such resuming practicable in England and especially at this time if the Calculation of the Ebb of the Coinage of England be as is contain'd in Britannia languens viz. from the foremention'd period of May 1657 to November 1675 near another nineteen years 3 238 997 l. 16s ¾ a Calculation that I think cannot be disproved but by the Records in the Pipe Office where annual account of the Money Coined in the Mint are preserved or by Ballances of Trade made up from that time whereby the exportations eminently preponderating what is imported would evince what considerable quantities of Bullion have been Coyned or by our knowing that since that time Sterling Silver has not still obtain'd the Price of 5 s 2d an Ounce a price that it has not indeed fall'n short of in England about these twenty years past and therefore before the late Act for the Coynage could never be entertain'd by the Mint to be Coyn'd which was by its Law and Course necessarily restrain'd from giving for Sterling Silver above 5 s. the Ounce and which Rate and no more it did afford when the Ballance of Trade favouring us caus'd that vast Coynage mentioned in the former Ternary of nineteen years But in fine his Majesties Royal Goodness to his People in not only quitting what did accrue to him for Coynage but being at the expence of the Coyning the most exquisite sort of Money in the Known world and such as in Curiosity does equal Meddals is an indication of the Ballance of Trade not having employed the Mint sufficiently in making for his Subjects the Medium of Commerce and for the depression of the Trade not only of the English but of more then the European World the Usurper Cromwel is to be justly blamed who not long after the wounds England had felt by the Munster Peace did harrass us by his fantastick War with Spain which not only impoverish'd England but the Trading World and forcibly obstructing the Returns of the Spanish Plate Fleets did particularly put both Spain and France under a necessity of making that Peace that gave the French Crown its leasure to trouble the World. But let any one judge then how ridiculous it is to suppose that the Trade of the Nation must not as I may say shut up Shop if half its wealth should be again juggled into the hands of a few Ecclesiasticks and the old Trade between England and Rome be renew'd of giving the Pope Gold for Lead It must indeed be acknowledged by all who have conversed with History that the absolute and unbounded Power with which the Eastern Monararchs Governed their Kingdoms did not more require an excessive share of the publick Revenue to feed standing Armies then Priests who with their Idols and Superstitions and Crafts did awe and delude People into obedience but as in orderly Commonwealths there is no need of such an immense Charge for Artifice to make men obey themselves so in our Constitution of the English Government it being justly to be supposed that we have all the desireable solid and substantial freedom that any Form of Government can import besides the insignificance of the name of it and insignificant we may well call it who remember that our late real Oligarchists took not only the name of God but the name of a Commonwealth in vain and are to the envy of Forraigners and shame of our former Domestick Propounders blessed with the Soveraign Power of a Great and Glorious King over a free and happy People as the words of the Royal Martyr are in one of his Declarations it may be well said to any one who shall talk of giving half the profits of the Realm to use Art and Imposture to make Members obey their Head so constituted quorsum perditio haec But in a word to come closer to the Case of Popery any one that would have half the Revenue of the Kingdom given to Impostors for the making a Monarch only half a King or King but of half his People and for the tricking both him and them into a blind obedience to a Forraign Head and for the making a Forraign Power Arbitrary and absolute is a very bad Land-Merchant and knoweth not the use or value of the soyle of England and will never find the half of 25 Millions of Acres sold for Chains and Fetters and will be put to the trouble of taking out the Writ de idiota inquirendo against at least three Millions who have already out-witted him and will never think a Forraign Minor and whose concessions are resumable fit to be
particular Law hath declared the Militia to be solely in the King I most humbly take my leave of your Lordship at present and am My Lord Your Lordships most Faithful Servant To the Right Honorable THE LORD MARQUESSE OF HALIFAX MY LORD ACcording to the Common Civility of Ships paying a Salute to the Forts on the Coasts they come near the Course of my handling the following Subject necessarily giving my Thoughts an approach to the Considering the great use that Providence not long ago made use of your Lordship's great Abilities as a Fortification for the Defence of the Hereditary Monarchy I have held it here but common Iustice to Congratulate to your Lordship your heroical Loyalty and great Success therein on one MEMORABLE Day It pleas'd God in whose Book the Members of Mens Bodies and Talents of their Minds are written then to call forth your Head and Heart and Tongue your flowing Elocution your fixt Iudgment your great Presence of Mind and Thought your comprehensive Knowledge of the past Publick Affairs at home and abroad and even the generous ferment in your Blood and to put them all to signal use in preserving the whole Body of the Kingdom Your Lordship's Goodness was herein the more God-like for that as the great benign Father of the Creation was pleas'd with being a Benefactor to such whose Ingratitude he foreknew and to some who would render him as negligent of the Concerns of his Creatures and to others who would represent him as unjust in his Prescriptions and cruel in his Designs and taking pleasure in the Destruction of Souls so your Lordship was resolv'd on your Beneficence to your Country in the black Conjuncture of our Fears and Iealousies and you were then Communicative of the brightest Beams and sweetest Influences of your serene and great thoughts to it when you knew that by some of the People for your so doing you would be maligned and mis-represented as an hostis Patriae I shall Presume to give your Lordship no further trouble then by the syncere Profession of my being My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE OBLIGATION Relating to the King's Heirs and Successors In point of Conscience discuss'd As resulting from the OATHS of ALLEGIANCE and SUPREMACY and the Takers of those Oaths proved to be thereupon become bound to bear Faith and True Allegiance to those HEIRS and SUCCESSORS in the Due and Legal Course of DESCENT I Shall without Proem or Passions here approach to the Great Areopagus of the Court of Conscience and having stated the Question of what Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors results from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in point of Conscience shall deliver my judgment of the same in some Conclusions and answer Objections that may occur I shall here take Notice that the word Obligation from being Originally a Band or Ty of the Law for Payment of Debts hath been since frequently applied to the discharge of Moral Offices Obligatio est juris vinculum quo necessitate restringimur alicujus solvendae Rei Instìt de Obligationibus And pursuant hereunto men may be properly said to pay their Allegiance to Princes in discharge of their Natural Obligations and their Oaths But here I consider not the extent of the Obligation of the Natural Allegiance that English Subjects owe their Monarchs nor yet their Obligation to Allegiance from the Divine Law positive nor from the Lex terrae tho yet I account it very plain that we are on all those accounts bound to pay them Allegiance but do choose to confine my discussion of the Obligation to Allegiance as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and as mentioned in our Statutes in relation to our King's Heirs and Successors and most particularly from that CLAUSE in the Oath of Allegiance viz. I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and him and them will defend to the uttermost of my power against all Conspiracies and Attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity c. And THAT in the Oath of Supremacy viz. And do promise that from henceforth I shall bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King's Highness his Heirs and lawful Successors and to my power shall assist and defend all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors c. And I here enquire how far the Obligation resulting from those Clauses in those Oaths in Relation to such Heirs and Successors may be judged in point of Conscience to extend As to the Question thus explained and stated I shall lay down these following Conclusions First That those Oaths and indeed all others do respect a Duty to be performed in the Future time that is at the least some time tho perhaps a very small one after the Obligation contracted as is well open'd by Sanderson in his first Lecture of the Obligation of Oaths and where he shews that this happens in every Oath assertory as well as promissory for whoever sweareth obligeth himself ipso facto to manifest the truth in that which he is about to say whether it be in a matter past or present by an Assertory or in a Future matter by a Promissory Oath Secondly That by that part of an Oath Promissory contained in the forementioned Clauses of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy as likewise by all other Oaths Promissory the Party swearing is bound to endeavour for the Future as much as in him lieth by his Deeds to fulfil what he hath sworn in words and this Sanderson in his second Lecture hath well asserted as to an Oath Promissory viz. That he who endeavours not to perform that which he hath promised is guilty of Perjury in the Court of Conscience 'T is plain that in an Assertory Oath if I took the same with a wellcompoâ—ed mind and have given my Testimony truely I have discharged my Duty and have my Quietus from my Conscience for the same But in an Oath Promissory and particularly in the Promissory part of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I am not discharged by the sincerity of my intention in my promise I have engaged my self to Action and have lanched my self into a Sea of Business from that time forward till the end of my life and as there is occasion and opportunity I am to DO what in those Clauses I have promised to the King and his Heirs and Successors And thus the Style of DOING runs in Numbers 30. 2. If a man swear an Oath to bind his Soul with a Bond he shall DO according to all that procedeth out of his mouth Thirdly That those Oaths and all others are to be taken in the sense of the Imposer For the Oath being taken that the Imposer may be assured that the promise of the Person swearing shall be effectually made good to him there would be no assurance thereof in
Hereditary Monarchs He knew that a Popish Parliament in England had shewed their Abhorrence of the Pope's being somewhat like an Excluder-General of Kings and an Arbitrary one too as appeared by the Words in the Statute of 25 H. 8. viz. The Pope contrary to the inviolable Grants of Iurisdictions by God immediately to Emperors and Kings hath presumed to invest who should please him to inherit in other mens Kingdoms and Dominions which we your Loyal Subjects Spiritual and Temporal abhor and detest and the practices at Rome for King Iames's Exclusion had made deep impressions in his thoughts As he was a Prince of great Reading he could not but know particularly the many Anti-Monarchical Tenets that were published by many Popish Commentators positive Writers School-men Canonists and never censured by any Index Expurgatorius tho yet several Popish Authors who asserted the Power of Kings were so censured and particularly Bodin de Republicâ and he could not be ignorant of Popes having required several Crowned Heads to swear Fidelity to them and their Successors and that particularly the Pope sent Hubertus to require William the Conqueror â—o swear Allegiance and Fidelity to Him and his Successors and who magnanimously refused so to do and that the Papacy endeavoured to root its Power in the World by obliging men in their Oaths of Fidelity to any particular Pope to swear the same likewise to his Successors according to the common Style in those Oaths viz. Fidelis obediens ero Domino Papae c. suis successoribus and that thus too the Oath of all Popish Bishops at their Consecration runs and that the Great Austrian Family had not more carefully secured to it self the Scepters of the Empire by the Constitution of a King of the Romans than the Papacy had made Provision of that King 's being sworn that he would from that time be a Protector and Defender of the Pope and Church of Rome according to those words in the Oath as I find it set down in Magerus viz. Ego N. Rex Romanorum FVTVRVS Imperator promitto spondeo polliceor atque juro Deo leato Petro me de caetero protectorem atque desensorem fore summi Pontisicis sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae c. He had moreover considered the great Fermentation in the minds of so many Loyal People in England by Queen Elizabeth's being so reserved as She was in the business of the Succession and which as Dr. Matthew Hulton Arch-Bishop of York mentioned in a memorable Sermon he preached before her at White-Hall Gave hopes to Foreigners to attempt fresh Invasions and bred fears in many of her Subjects of a new Conquest and who thereupon very loyally said then The only way in Policy left to quell those hopes and asswage those fears were to Establish the Succession and at last intimating as far as he durst saith my Author the nearness of Blood of our present Sovereign he said plainly That the expectations and presages of all Writers went Northward naming without any Circumlocution Scotland There is an Abstract of this Loyal and Learned Sermon and which throughout pointed at the Succession in the History of some of the Bishops of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth printed in the Year 1653 and the fate of the Sermon was such that tho perhaps it tickled not the Ears of that Queen it so far touched her Conscience that the Historian saith She opened the Window of her Closet and gave the Arch-Bishop thanks for it No doubt but Parsons saying in his Book of the Succession That he thought the Affair about it could not be ended without some War did much heighten the Popular Fears of War happening thereupon and 't is most probable the long fear of War in that Fermentation did variously weaken the Kingdom Nor is it a new thought for the long fears of War to be held to bear some proportion to the mischief of War it self in obstructing Trade and Commerce insomuch that several Writers of the Regalia and fiscal matters among the Tractatus Illustrium have told us That Quando timor belli idem operatur quod ipsum bellum remissio sit conductoribus i. e. of the Revenue and hath Entituled them to defalcations We may imagine by the just effects of our late Fermentation what the state of the Body Politick was in that namely like the state of long tormenting anguish in the Body natural upon the pricking of an Artery and importing often more trouble and danger than the cutting of one And by the great triumphant Flame of joy appearing in the Act of Recognition in King Iames's time and which appears in our Statute-Book as I may say lâ—ke a Pyramid of the Fire of Zealous Loyalty and greater and higher than any former Act of that nature we may judge how overjoyed all the Loyal People of England were on his coming to the Crown and as Pliny in his Panegyrick saith of Nerva's adopting Trajan It was impossible it should have pleased all when it was done except it had pleased all before it was done the same might be applied to the Case of King Iames's Succession to the Crown The very Title of the Act speaks the Triumph of the Hereditary Monarchy viz. A Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James his Progeny and Posterity There was an end of all the dreadful inconveniences of the uncertainty of the Succession and of the fears of the People of what was worse than being torn in pieces by wild Hâ—rses I mean the rending their Consciences by contrary Oaths about the Succession as in Harry the 8th's time There was an end of the â—ears from the growing greatness of France and fears of any Foreign Fremuerunt gentes England was restored to it self and Scotland added to it and tho Boccaline like an airy Iâ—genioso in his Politick Touchstone makes England weigh less on the throwing Scotland into the Scales any one will find that in him but grave Romancery who shall consider what with Oracular Wisdom another-guess Statos-man than Boccaline told Harry the 4th I mean D'Ossat in his long Letter to him from Rome Book 7th and Anno 1601. where he saith That the Pope desisted not to hope that his Maiesty might be perswaded by reason of State to endeavour that the Kingdoms of England and Scotland may not be joyned in the Person of one King considering the great mischiefs that the English alone have done to the French more than all other Nations put together c. And indeed that England is at this day preserved not only from the danger of being overbalanced by France but from the loss of its ancient figure of balancing the World must highly be attributed to the Hereditary Monarchy being fixt in the Line of King Iames and to Scotland being thrown into the Scales as was said and if any one shall tell me by the way that the weight of Scotland was prejudicial to Loyalty in
in King Iames's time for making the Oath of Allegiance a Praemuniment in our Consciences against Popular as well as Papal Usurpations I shall here call in Testimonium adversarii I mean the publisher of Cardinal Perron's long Oration made in the Chamber of the 3d Estate or Commonalty of France upon the Oath of Allegiance exhibited in the General Assembly of the three Estates of that Kingdom and in his long Preface to which he calls our Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance detestable but saith That the greater number of the Deputies of the 3d Chamber did frame the form of an Oath which they wished might be ministred in that Kingdom as that which bears the name of ALLEGIANCE in ours whereby the same principal Article is abjured namely That no French King can be deposed for any Cause whatsoever and that the contrary Opinion is Heretical and repugnant to the Doctrine of the Scriptures But this difference is found between the two Oaths that whereas the English one in one of the Clauses seems to exclude not only the Authority of the CHVRCH over Kings but even of the COMMON-WEALTH also yea tho it should be accompanied even with that of the Church that of France shoots only at the abnegation of the Churches Authority The Author however in that Preface and which was Permissâ— superiorum contrary to the Loyal Sentiments of the Majority of that 3d Chamber inserts very impiously and disloyally That Kingly Authority cannot come immediately from God to any man but by Miracle and that all the Kings whom we know do either rule by force of Conquest and in that Case the Authority of the Common-wealth if it be Vsurped may be resumed or by Donation Election Marriage or Succession of Blood in which Cases Kings forfeit by not performing the Conditions under which either they or their first Ancestors did enter whether they were expressed or necessarily implyed But neither that Author nor any other Roman Catholick Writer hath writ with greater Contempt of and Spight against the Power of Kings than some Nominal Protestant Authors have to the scandal of Christianity done and that I may shew how necessary it was that the Oath of Allegiance should be levelled at the outragious Principles of Disloyalty in Protestants as well as Papists I shall conclude my Answer to this Objection with a reference to a Book of some vile Nominal Protestants who having according to the Bishop of Winchester's Expression aforesaid derived Doctrines of Sedition and Rebellion from the Church of Rome 's Writers were I may add grown therein perhaps more learned than their Masters It was printed in 8 o beyond Sea in the Year 1556. and called A short Treatise of Politick Power and of the true Obedience which Subjects owe to Kings and other Civil Governors with an Exhortation to all true English men Compiled by D. I. P. B. R. W. Who the Authors of it were I know not nor the meaning of those initial Letters of Names but do judge it to be in Principles of Sedition and Treason as bad as Doleman of the Succession or Mariana and to have startled King Philip and Queen Mary as much as the Book of Killing no Murder did Cromwel I never in the Course of my viewing Books saw but one of them and the Reader will quickly see why no Library durst in the Reign of those Princes harbor it 'T is there asserted That the Body of every State may redress and correct the Vices of their Governors and ought so to do And the Book endeavours to prove the lawfulness of killing Tyrants by the Law of Nature and prophaneth the Book of God by citing for a desperate use some extraordinary Acts of private Persons there recorded and indeed a loyal man cannot read the Book without horror and especially when he shall consider what were the effects of this detestable Book It helped to provoke the fury of Philip and Mary to flie out into the Arbitrary Proclamation several Months before her death for the declaring of any one a Rebel and being without delay executed by Martial Law with whom that and other Books of that Nature printed beyond Sea should here be found And another effect of the publication of that and those other Books was to irritate the Government against those poor Innocents who were here martyr'd and who sufficiently abhorred such Treasonable Books for this Book was published beyond Sea and probably imported here about two years before her death But for the honour of our English Exiles then I judge that none of them had a hand therein I having observed many Words and Idioms and Phrases there to have been Scotish It is probable that King Iames and his Ministers had heard of this execrable Book wherein some Nominal Protestants trumpetted out their Principles of real Rebellion and no wonder then if the Oath of Allegiance was therefore framed with Clauses to secure the Government from all irreligionary Principles of Protestants as well as Papists It hath been objected in the second place against our being become bound to the Kings Heirs and Successors by Virtue of those Oaths that it is by all Casuists agreed that among the Tacit Conditions that are presumed to be in all Oaths and which are to be regarded as much as if they were express'd Rebus sic stantibus is one and that that therefore as none of the King's Heirs was then excluded from the Privilege or Right of his Lineal Succession by the Legislative Power so if things thus stood with him at the time of the Descent of the Crown that is at the time of the Kings decease the Oath obliged to the payment of absolute and irrespective Loyalty to him then and that thus when the King's Heirs and Successors were Kings and Queens of this Realm according to the Style of some old Oaths they would be Entitled to our Allegiance and not otherwise In Answer to this Objection I shall say first that if we should admit that which is not true that the Rebus sic stantibus were so to be applied in this Case yet it is most clear that the Takers of these Oaths who were any Members of the Three Estates in Parliament were thereby ipso facto and actually bound as I have said in the 7tâ— Conclusion not to do any Act there to exclude the Succession according to proximity of Blood and moreover any of the People who took these Oaths were thereby Morally bound not to choose any to represent them in Parliament from whom they might fear their endeavouring of such Exclusion Secondly Premising that there was somewhat of irreverence in supposing that the Legislative Power would ever afterward make a Solutio contiâ—ui as I called it in the Hereditary Monarchy yet it must be said that any supposed Act of that kind would be Null and Void as the Loyal and Learned late Writers of the Succession have shewed and to whose Writers of that Subject I refer and therefore our Obligations to
that have been since augmented Yet however I doubt not but that if it had been Gods will further to have lengthen'd the last reign the Course of Nature would then have operated as I have mention'd And if it shall appear that those natural Considerations I have urged shall have the success of such further Parliamentary Supplies to His gracious Majesty as may tend to the further greatning of his Character and that of the Kingdom I shall account my claim the more equitable to have the pardon of my fellow Subjects of what Religionary Sect soever for any thing in this Discourse that may disgust them And as an eminent Protestant Divine hath in a Printed Sermon thus said viz. that man is not worthy to breathe in so good a Land as England is who would not willingly lay down his life to cure the present divisions and distractions that are among us I shall say that any Subject deserves not to live here under the Indulgence of so good a Prince who for the helping him to money by all due means for the defence of this good Land would not wish himself as well as his Bigottry a Sacrifice and who would not as to any Extravagant dash of a Pen lighting on his Party and bringing Money to his Prince cry foelix peccatum rather then such Divisions and Distractions and Diffidences of the Government and stifling of Publick Supplies should still live as were formerly known in some Conjunctures and when the Art of Demagogues appear'd so spightful in endeavours to frustrate the Meetings of Parliaments But our Prince having freed all his dissenting Subjects from their uneasiness under Pecuniary Mulcts for Religion and the Members of the Church of England from the uneasiness of imposing such Soul-Money will I doubt not when he shall please to Call a Parliament find from them such necessary Supplies for the support of the Body of the Kingdom as may ease him under the weight of his great Desires for it and that it will then appear to all as absurd to Crown such a Head with Thorns as hath taken the Thorn out of every man's foot in England and that his pass'd Sufferings for his Conscience and others of his Communion having too suffer'd for his Conscience bespeaking us in those words of the Apostle Fulfil ye my joy that both his and theirs will be then Consummated and as the Ioy of those of the Church of England and of all nominal Churches in England hath been fulfill'd by him and that as Luther was pleas'd in a Christian-like transport of good Nature to Profess in his Epistle to Jeselius a Iew Me propter Unum Judaeum Crucifixum omnibus favere Judaeis we shall for the sake of one of the Roman-Catholick Communion who hath formerly suffer'd so much for his Conscience and since done so much for the freedom of ours shew all those of that Communion our favour to such a proportion as may compleat his and their Ioy. My Lord I am here obliged to acknowledge that tho while the several Parts of the following Work were written in the times the Government charged both Papists and Anti-Papists with Disloyalty and Plots I express'd my sense of the Non-advisableness to have the Penal Laws against them repeal'd pending such Charge and Plots I desire the Reader to look on me as very far from insisting on any thing of that nature in this Happy State of England now that the Corner Stone and that some of the Builders rejected hath thus successfully united the sides of the Fabrick of the Government in Loyalty My Lord It is near a year since I writ my Thoughts at large concerning the Subject of the Repealing those Laws and they are in the Fourth Part of my Work about The Dispensative Power of which the two first Parts conclude this Volume ready for the Press and reserving my poor Iudgment in this great Point till the Publication of the whole I think I shall then set forth my Opinion as founded on Medium's that have not appear'd in Print from other Writers and which I believe will not only not give offence to any Member of the Church of England but be of general use in allaying the ferment the Question hath occasion'd And if as they who were long fellow-Passengers in a Ship among violent Tempests and Hirricanes do usually from their being Participants together in the danger and horror take occasion to raise a friendly esteem and well-wishes for each other such of the Loyal whose belief I referr'd to as imbarqued with mine in that of the Plot during the late Stormy Conjuncture shall be the more favourable to what I write I shall be glad both for their sakes as well as mine but do further judge that what I have so largely in the following Discourse asserted and by Reasons taken from Nature concerning the Moral impossibility of the belief of the Tenets of the Church of Rome gaining ground here considerably on the belief of the Doctrine of the Church of England will tend to secure any one from fears of our losing our Religion by any loss of the Test that may happen a thing that none I think will fear who are of the Iudgment of the House of Commons in their Address to the late King on the 29 th of November 1680. that I have referr'd to in my Fourth Part and where they say that POPERY hath rather gain'd then lost Ground since the TEST ACT and make that Act to have had little effect I have in the following Discourse referr'd to that Act as represented to have had its rice in the year 1673. from the alledged petulant Insolence of Papists in that Conjuncture and I took notice of a learned Lord since deceas'd as vouching somewhat in Print of such temper among some of them And a Proclamation that year charging the Papists therewith I was implicitly guided thereby to take the thing for granted and as to the which considering since the publick Passages in that Conjuncture I have otherwise judged But as I think no loyal Roman-Catholick should in that Conjuncture have suffer'd any Prejudice for any ill Behaviour of any other of that Communion then much less ought any such thing be now and when there appears so noble and general a spirit of Emulation among all men of sense in the Diffusive Body of the People about who shall make the Head and all Members of that Body most easie and for the doing which we may well hope that the People representative and the other Estates of the Realm will come with all due Preparation of Mind when it shall please His Gracious Majesty to assemble them My Lord I have nothing further to add but my begging your Lordship's Pardon for this trouble and my owning the many Obligations I am under to be My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Earl of Anglesy having shewed me an Affidavit and Information against him delivered at the Barr
I think that an eximious man impeacht in Parliament and there acquitted will need no Herald to proclaim his worth nor his deserving to be restored in integrum to the Royal Protection and Favour when that his own works have praised him in the gates that is in the Jurisdiction where they were so strictly scann'd My Lord if any could prove your Lordship to be a Papist he need not call that accumulative Treason in you nor need he go about by torturing the Law to make it confess many Felonies to be one Treason many Rapes to be one false coming But Popery in you would be plain down-right palpable and rank Treason by vertue of the Statute of 23 of Elizabeth Ch. 1. which makes it High Treason for any person in the Dominions of the Crown of England to be withdrawn from the Religion then established to the Romish Religion That your Lordship hath been bred a Protestant and been so as it were ex traduce there needs no other evidence then the contents of this Letter and that you have not been withdrawn to the Romish Religion you have declared by the Series of your actings against it that shew your Mind beyond the power of words and 't is by the help of that great Wisdom God has given you that our English World expects that a way may be found how to make it more clearly appear to the eye of the Law when any others have been or are withdrawn to the Romish Religion a thing perhaps at present of somewhat difficult proof For without supposing that the Pope can or will give them dispensations to take all Oaths and Tests that can be devised doth not a reserving some fantastic sense to themselves make nonsense of all Oaths and that one word Equivocation make them proof against all other words Doth not that with them sanctify or at least justify all other words they can use May they not on these terms safely swear there is neither God nor Man nor Hell nor Devil that is meaning not in a Mathematical point or in Vtopia and that they saw not such a Man such a day that is not with the eyes of a Whale And have not the late dying Speeches of some of these Imposters and particularly Father Irelands shewn us that in the points of mental reservation and equivocation they persevere in the impudent owning of that which would unhinge the World and turn humane Society into a dissolute multitude And do we not believe many to be Papists who we know have taken the Oaths and Tests Hath not a Papist some Years since writ of the lawfulness of the taking of the Oath of Supremacy I speak not this my Lord to derogate from the Wisdom of our Ancestors that appointed these discriminations nations and do think that when we have used all the lawful means we can to know who among us are Papists as certainly as we do what is Popery and to keep Papists from hurting us and themselves we ought to acquiesce in the Results of the Providence of God. But what all those means are tho I know not yet I am apt to believe that your Lordships comprehensive knowledg of men and things and of the true interest of the Kingdom hath qualified you to tell your Royal Master and His Houses of Parliament nor do I believe that the difficulty of either finding out such means and making practicable things be practised will blunt but rather whet the edg of your Industry in this case as being of Quintilians mind who Judged that there was Turpitude in despairing of any thing that could be done I think his words are Turpiter desperatur quicquid fieri potest â—Tis certainly the interest of the King and Kingdom that the numbers of the Papists here and especially of those withdrawn from Protestancy to the Church of Rome should be known in the case of which Apostates tho it be impossible without seizing on the Papers and Archives of one certain Priest to see the Original Acts of their Recantation of Protestancy yet is it most certain and on all hands confessedly true that Eminent Overt-Acts of abhorrency of Protestantisme are alwayes required at the admitting one who was of that Religion into the bosome of the Roman Catholic Church which any one will be convinced of who reads the Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Villeroy of the 20 th of Octob. 1603. from Rome where he gives his Opinion against the Queen of England being made Godmother at the Baptism of Madam That Cardinal who had incomparable skill in the Canon Law and the knowledg of all the Customs of the Papal See and who had lived at Rome above 20 Years saith in that Letter I account it my duty to write to you freely that that cannot be done without very great Scandal to good Catholicks nor without the extream displeasure and offence of the Pope You presuppose that the Queen of England is a Catholic but Here we know the contrary tho some believe that she is not of the worser sort of Heretics and that she has some inclination to the Catholic Religion And I will tell you moreover that tho she were in her heart of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion as much as the Pope himself so it is that she having been bred up in Heresie and outwardly persisting in it as she doth she cannot according to the Canons be held for a Catholic in public acts of Religion till she hath first both viva voce and by writing under her hand abjured all Heresie and made profession of the Catholic Faith. Nor was it ever known that in the case of any Protestants Apostacy to the Church of Rome any Pope ever dispensed with those Canons and therefore it may well hence be inferr'd That if evidence just so much as the Law requires as to such Apostacy be given that no superpondium or proof of overt-acts more then necessary ought to be expected for that overt Acts almost impossible to be proved may yet necessarily be presumed but this by the way And therefore now further my Lord if fas est ab hoste doceri be adviseable in the case as strict Circumstances may be required in the conversion of Papists to our Church as are in the withdrawing of any from our Church to theirs Indeed if I were a Member of Parliament and any one there should be so happy as to invent a way and propound it whereby the present Lay-Papists in England might let us have a Moral Certainty that they neither consented to nor concealed the late Plot and likewise that they did really detest all those desperate Popish Principles that are fundamentally destructive to the Safety of the King and Kingdom and that they would harbour no Priests born in the Kings Dominions nor send any of their Children to be bred in Forrain Seminaries and on the contrary that on occasion they would discover to a Magistrate any such Priest or one who sent his Children to such Seminary
and likewise any one that owned any of those Pernitious Principles that strike at the heart of the Civil Government and that they would presently give his Majesty an accompt of all their own Names Places of abode and Numbers of their Families and that they would not live in nor come to the Court nor into any of our Cities or great Towns without leave obtain'd pursuant to the Statute of the 35 th of Elizabeth Ch. 2. wherein 't is Enacted under several Penalties That they shall not remove above Five miles from their dwellings and to give in their Names to the Constables Headborough and Minister c. and that the people might be delivered not only from any danger by them but any fears that might fall on a wise man either of their power or numbers encreasing I should joyfully entertain such an invention But what way of that kind is practicable I am altogether ignorant But do suppose that the present Lawes Oaths and Tests ought to continue till with the Consent of His Majesty and Lords and Commons in Parliament we are further secured I know that we ought to be much more vigilant over English Papists then over any Forrainers for that 't is a kind of a Rule that Angli nil modicum in Religione possunt and therefore that no Popish Priest who is a Subject to England can with the public safety live here Your Lordship hath I think as comprehensive a knowledg of the affairs of Ireland as any man can have and therefore I shall here tell you that a Gentleman of Ireland told me that in the times of the usurpt powers 't was in the Act of Settlement for Ireland by the Parliament declared that it was not their intent after almost a National Rebellion to extirpate the whole Irish Nation but that after an exception of certain persons as to Life and Estate the Act orders some Irish to be banish'd the Kingdom and other Irish to be transplanted to some part of Ireland allowing them such proportion of Land and Estate there as they should have had of their own elsewhere in Ireland if they had not been removed What effect that Transplantation had I know not but I suppose it easier to remove a handful of men from one corner of the Land to another then 't was to remove almost a Nation And do suppose there are some Papists in England as innocent of this late Plot as there were some in Ireland of that Rebellion The Dean of Canterbury doth in his incomparable Sermon before the House of Commons on the 5 th of November 1678 acknowledg the Piety and Charity of several persons who lived and dyed in the Roman Communion as Erasmus Father Paul Thuanus and many others who had in truth more goodness then the Principles of that Religion do either incline men to or allow of And so I think my self bound in justice to Judge in that manner of some Papists of my acquaintance Thus the Epicureans of old tho their Principle of making happiness consist in pleasure was detestable gained this point that many of their Sect were honest men And so much Tully acknowledged to be true but with a Salvo to his exception against their Doctrine Speaking of Epicurus and his Followers L. 2. De Finibus Boni Mali he saith Ac mihi quidem videtur quod ipse vir bonus fuit multi Epicurei fuerunt bodie sunt in amicitirs fideles in omni vita constantes graves nec voluptate sed officio consilia moderantes It seems to me that Epicurus was a good man and many of his Sect have been and are faithful in their friendships and constant and serious men in every condition of life and managing the conduct of their life 's by duty and not pleasure But then saith he hoc videtur major vis honestatis minor voluptatis and afterwards he saith atque ut caeteri existimantur dicere melius quam facere sic hi mihi videntur melius facere quam dicere As much as if he had said No thanks to their Principles but their honest inclinations the force of honesty shew'd it self more Predominant in them then that of pleasure and as other mens Principles are accounted better then their Practises these mens Practises are better then their Principles It is I think Gods standing Miracle in the world who is able to make a divulsion between the formal and the vital Act namely to make fire not burn to keep some men from undoing themselves and Mankind by the genuine consequences of the Opinions they profess in matters of Religion And thus it is happy for the World that Caliginosa nocte premit Deus nepotes discursus And he can by an Omnipotent easiness when he pleaseth Divert a mans understanding from seeing any first-born consequence from his opinion as well as a more remote one Moreover the Divine Power doth in the Government of the World interpose it self sometimes between professed Notions or Principles themselves and mans intellectual faculties Good men sometimes do not believe even the existence of that and of some other divine Attributes where the things to be believed are to be seen by the light of Nature And bad men habituated to lying sometimes do at last believe the lyes and shamms themselves made though yet for the most part it happens what is perfectly worthy of the Divine Power and goodness when men are with Candor and purity of mind seeking after Truth that-Heaven does so influence their understandings as that they are not by false lights artificial seduced to believe any thing against the light of Nature nor given up by weak arguments to strong delusions These things considered I think that that great Divine of our Age the Lord Bishop of Lincoln hath with a Noble modesty and charity in the Title of his unanswered and unanswerable Book against Popery exprest the Principles of that Religion when really believed to be pernicious And having said all this I need not trouble your Lordship or my self much further about finding a way to prevent the Papists from troubling us but do suppose that the Papists themselves are most concerned to labour in such an invention And instead of their being led by any hellish Principles to destroy any City of Course by Sinister means That is by burning it they may if they please in their Devotion address to Heaven for that favour to its old chosen People on Earth mentioned in Psalm 107. v. 7. And he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a City of Habitation I suppose that after so eminent a Person as the Lord High Chancellor of England in his Speech at the Condemnation of the Lord Stafford made that great interogation Does any man now begin to doubt how London came to be burnt and after the Vote of the last Parliament the last day of their Sitting in these words viz. Resolved That it is the Opinion of this House That
the City of London was burnt in the Year 1666 by the Papists designing thereby to introduce Arbitrary Power and Popery into this Kingdom they will not think it strange that they should not be permitted to live in any of our Cities again till they have shew'd how orderly they can live in one of their own And therefore I think we may without breach of Civility or at least violation of justice apply to them some part of the words which I find quoted by Dr. Bramhall Lord Bishop of Derry in his just vindication of the Church of England out of Gers. part 4. Ser. de pace unit Graec. as the farewell Speech to the Bishop of Rome when the Graecian and all other Eastern Churches parted from him whom they acknowledged only as a Patriarch Namely We acknowledg your Power we cannot satisfie your Covetousness live by your selves How it is in the case of the People of Switzerland Papists and Protestants living apart by themselves in several Cantons cannot be unknown to your Lordship Nor that the Protestants and Papists when they there made their League at first joyntly to maintain their Liberties against the House of Austria then agreed upon this also That if any of the Natives living in the Cantons of either side should change their Religion that then they should be permitted respectively to sell their goods and transplant themselves to the Canton whose Religion they embraced But I shall tell your Lordship That of late the Popish Canton Switz did break this agreement and would not suffer some of their Native Inhabitants to partake of this freedom and did confiscate the goods of some Families that changed their Religion and at the instigation of the Fryars and Iesuits they condemned some of them to death and others to the Gallyes which was the cause of a Commotion among them The Gentleman of Ireland who discourst somewhat to me of the Transplantation of the Irish Papists told me it was into the Province of Connaught and think into the In-land parts of that Countrey for to have trusted them to live in Maritine Towns there whereby they might have let in an invading Popish or other Forrainer were to have trusted them with the power of the Keys of the Kingdom And he further told me That the transplantation was managed with much satisfactory tenderness to those Papists and that as to English and Irish it had partly the nature of a bargain that gave content on both sides and secured them against each other after all the mutual exasperations that had passed and when 't was fresh in the memory of both English and Irish that 't was the promiscuous and scatter'd dwelling of the English among the Irish before the Rebellion that tempted the Irish to butcher them and made the English Sheep for the Slaughter and when it was not likewise forgot that in former Wars the partition or distinction of the English Pale did secure the English inhabiting within its district I askt the Gentleman if they were not stinted to a certain number of Priests and care taken that none of them should be Iesuits and that the chief Governour of the Countrey should know their Names and whether any Priests Natives of that Country were allow'd them as to which enquiries he did not fully satisfie me but I supposed that since all Religions have a Priest-hood that somewhat of that kind was allowed them and that since the Order of the Iesuits was invented in the Year 1540. by the Pope as a Poysonous Stumm to put a new fermentation into the Romish Ecclesiastical Rites and Discipline which were almost dead with age and like vina vetustate edentula and quite dispirited with the Thunder of the Doctrine of Luther and the lightning of Learning and Knowledg then flying through the World and that that Order of the Iesuits was as it were a Court erected to begin with execution and to confute gainsayers by cutting their Throats No Iesuits were permitted to officiate among those transplanted Papists and considering that the Priests Natives of Ireland were the known fomenters of that Rebellion that both English and Irish might rather consent to some Secular Priests bred in Holland or France being employed in the New Irish Colony and who had no knowledg of the Intrigues of the several Interests in that Country and would not by kindred or relation to any of the great Families there perhaps be tempted into Factions I have heard from that Gentleman of Mr. Peter Walsh a Fryar in Ireland and of his endeavours in the Art of Cicuration of some of the Romish Clergy Layety who there were Wolfes and that without Sheeps cloathing and reclaiming them to Principles and Practices consistent with civil society and what proficiency his Disciples have made therein I being a stranger to that Kingdom know not but according to that saying bonus est quem Nero odit have the better opinion of him for those endeavours of his having been Crown'd with the Popes Excommunications It was a noble saying I have heard of one of the House of Peers this last Parliament I hate not the persons of any Papists but I am an enemy to Popery In like manner I should be glad that all the Mercy were shewn them that were not Cruelty to the Public but they are to excuse any one that will not forget that when they begun the last outragious Rebellion in Ireland which no words need or can aggravate they enjoy'd there equal Priviledges with the English if not greater the Lawyers were Irish most of the Judges Irish and the Major part of the Parliament Irish and in all disputes between English and Irish the Irish were sure of the Favour and any one would be inexcusable to this Kingdom who forgot that King Iames's unparalel'd kindness to his Popish Subjects in suspending the execution of Penal Laws against them in sparing their purses in remitting the arrears of what they owed Queen Elizabeth for pecuniary penalties nay giving into their hands what money of theirs as his due was in the Exchequer was but the â—rologue to their intended Tragedy on the Fifth of November And what provocations they had to be ill wishers to the Life and Crown of the last King as appeared by the detection forementioned presented to His Majesty by Arch-Bishop Laud and a Charge given against them in Print by the Reverend Dr. Peter Du Moulin which he offer'd to make good and ad quod non fuit responsum let any one Judg who further does look on the Parliaments Addresses in Rushworths Collections And unless some of them had loved ingratitude for ingratitudes sake they would never have enter'd into that Conspiracy against his now Majesty whose Life is the delight of all Mankind but theirs And yet since according to that expression that God is not the God of the Iews only but also of the Gentiles so it being true that the King is King of the Papists as well as Protestants King of
the Irish as well as of the English and a common Father to them all it may be worthy of His Royal goodness and a God-like thing in him to distribute to them all the Kindness that would not undo themselves and others as the Divine bounty dispenseth itself to the Sinful yet with respect to the Government of the World. And as the love of an Indulgent Father may be measured more by the kindness he would shew an obstinate son were he qualified to receive it then by what he doth who tryes all methods to reclaim him by his Will Disinherits him and goes down to the shades below without revoking such a Will and yet in his life-time with the tenderest bowels and softest language he was constantly bemoaning that Sons being not a Subject fit or capable to participate in the Estate equally with his Brethren Thus too may the love of the Pater Patriae and of the Country it self be demonstrated to these our obstinate Brethren more by the Favour we do not afford them then by what we do having often seen the truth of what Solomon saith that the prosperity of fools destroys them But as I said before I would be glad that the Papists themselves would try to find out what way of security the Wisdom of His Majesty and His great Councel may acquiesce in so that any bitter way may not be prescribed to them by public Authority as perhaps this of Transplantation or some other may seem and that persons of innocent Tempers and Principles may not be carryed off with those of noxious ones as all strong purging Phisic disposesseth the body of some good Humours as well as bad and I therefore wish that they may rather satisfie His Majesty that they have transplanted into their minds some such Principles as are to be found not only in Protestant but Heathen Authors to incline men to be Gods and not Devils to one another and those Principles growing in the Soil of Nature when transplanted into the mind of a Christian are much more generous and improved like the Vines on the Rhine transplanted into the Fortunate Islands and whereby a Protestant King may Sit securely in His Throne and His Protestant Subjects sleep securely in their houses and walk securely in the Streets without fear of the fate of Sir Edmond Godfrey and Mr. Arnold pursuing them upon a declaratory sentence that they are Hereticks by a shabby Consult of a few ignorant Priests in a blind Cabaret without citing them to shew cause why they should not be knock't on the head by Villains who account themselves the Popes Sheriffs and at the worst that happens to them his Martyrs a fate of Proteâ—â—ants worse then they suffered in the Dog-days of Queen Maryes Reign that Canicula Persecutionis as Tertullian's phrase is for then they were not murder'd but after a Tryal for their Lives and Liberty granted to recant at stake Methinks when they consider the Popes Decree made at Rome the second of March 1679. condemning some Opinions of the Iesuits and other Casuists the which in Latin and English was printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1679. and see thereby that the Augean Stable of the Casuists being so full of Filth that it could hold no more the Pope to avoid the scandal of the World and danger to those Souls who by the practice of those Opinions were not at that time sent to the place from whence there is no Redemption though yet as the excellent Author of the Preface to that decree here printed judiciously observes That the Pope treats those Opinions very gently and mercifully and indeed doth not declare them ill in themselves or such a Nusance to souls that he could not dispence with and when they likewise consider that most of those Opinions if not all were Rules allow'd by Iesuits or other Casuists for Confessors and Penitents to go by in the securing of the great concern of Eternity till that time and that Guymenius with the approbation and permission of his Superiors in the year 1665. favours most if not all of those Opinions with a colourable gloss out of Councels Fathers School-men and Divines and endeavours to throw off the Odium from the Iesuits for them upon the whole Roman Church they should now be so awaken'd as throughly to examine both those and other points in that Religion supposing that some future Pope may declare the Souls left in the lurch that hold some other Opinions recommended to them by their Spiritual guides without their having obtained a papal dispensation to hold them My Lord though I believe your Lordship to have ever had as keen an Antipathy against Caballing with any Papists as good old Iacob shewed he had against that with Simeon and Levy of which he said O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their assembly mine honour be not thou united yet their necessary applications to your Lordship in your administration of the Privy Seal and their voluntary recourse to the hospitality of your noble and constant Table where any one in the habit of a Gentleman is allowed to be your Guest giving you opportunities of discoursing sometimes with Papists I suppose your advice to them to consult with one another in peace how to satisfie His Majesty that all bloody Consults being by them abandon'd he himself may enjoy the Kings peace and we his Subjects enjoy that Peace of the King which his very Wild Beasts in the Forrest enjoy as I said before and where any of the Inhabitants if they have lights in their Windows that may affright the Kings Deer are lyable to punishment by the Forrest law and that we being delivered from the hands of our Enemies may serve God without fear in holiness and righteousness all the dayes of our Lives and not be in danger of being in the Kings High-way knock't on the head like Weasels or Polecats by base Ruffians not worthy to feed the Dogs of our Flocks I say I suppose your Lordships advice backt with those reasons against Popery that you alwayes carry ready told may especially at this time when the ecce duo gladii or two Votes of the House of Commons in the last two Parliaments cannot be forgot by any of them occasion their offering that to the consideration of His Majesty and his great Councel that may render the Kingdom safe from any hostility of their Principles or Practises Your Lordship hath one advantage in giving advice beyond most men I know and perhaps no man is Master of that advantage more then your Lordship and that is your advice to any of Mankind is the advice of a friend for both by your natural temper and a habit that can plead the prescription of sixty years for its continuance in your Soul and a sharpe edge of Wit and Reason to justifie your claim to it so it is that you are in a constant readiness to shew your self a friend
Matthew for the building of theirs But this by the way And now putting the Question who are to be loved best either the Popish Priest and Levite that help'd to wound Ireland formerly when it fell among Thieves and Rebels or those compassionate Samaritans who put it on their own Beast and poured Oyl into its Wounds and took care of it till it was restored to its true Owner I suppose a Protestant will say the latter and will account that no fire should be called to fall on the heads of such hospitable Samaritans and that others should be spared who instead of powring Oyl into our Wounds did it into our flames when they burnt our Citie Your Lordship hath shewn your self a compassionate Samaritan to Two Kingdoms to which your healiâ—g principles and practices have been beneficial and in this you have out done him in the Parable who did not stay to see the effects of the gentle Medicaments of Oyl and Wine he bestowed on his Patient's Wounds but your Lordships long attendance on the affairs of the Public brought you to see the Languishing Kingdom revived and to have at once both its Head and Senses restored when Providence made our Sovereign to be his repenting Peoples choice But my Lord these Kingdoms have not yet done with your Skill and may have Wounds that require your Wine and Oyl the Lyons Heart and Ladies Hand I mean such Tenderness and such Courage and so great Judgment as you have formerly shewn A Raging Acute Disease that hath been long not only besieging but storming a mans vital parts and with extream difficulty at the long run repell'd by Nature doth yet commonly leave such dregs in his spirits that depress and enfeeble them in the remainder of Life and a man come to himself after a long madness labours still under a dejection of his spirits both by grief and shame thinking of the arrear that he is in to God the World and himself by his former madness and this is the present state of England after its former state of distraction and men with shame now look on their former Physitians and some are apt with that Merry Mad-man in the Poet to be angry with those that took pains about their being cured 'T is true indeed the Kings Restoration cured us of our Civil Wars yet may a man be cured of his Wounds and afterward dye of the Feaver his Wound put him into and our condition is such that 't is some degree of Heavens Mercy to us that our Feaver is continuing for no man can dye in a Feaver as no man can dye without one And our spirits are so sunk under the weight of the Disease we have long languisht under that our Stomach cannot endure any Cordials or especially the same long certainly that strong Physic that would at first have cured us would now kill us Yet now in this conjuncture several of our Political Physitians seem by their retirement to have given us over as if they were of Hippocrates his mind who said that a Physitian should not discredit his generous Medicaments by employing them on a desperate Patient Methinks 't is pity that any of our Pilots should quit the Helm in a Storm and that they should not as Cicero's expression is Sententiam tanquam aliquod navigium ex Reip. tempestate moderari Those words in Prov. 1. A man of understanding shall attain to wise Councels some read Vir saepiens gubernacula possidebit I presume not to Censure any man but I hope that no cross Winds will ever make your Lordship leave the Helm but rather invite the continuance of your Skill in beating and tiding it out as the Sea phrase is and in not overshooting the Port. Your pacific Genius and great Wisdom have in several angry conjunctures produced an unexpected calm by your offering unexpected Expedients a Talent that is indeed very rare and conducive to the quiet of the World as leading Potent Parties from their declared Opinions without the shame of a seeming retreat It happens still in Navigation that what makes the Passenger merriest makes the Steers-man most thoughtful Namely the sight of Land And therefore tho I and others who make no figures in the government of the Kingdom seem to be glad at our sight of land that is the extermination of Popery from England after we have been so long nauseated and Sea-sick with it yet 't is now our occasion for the skill of such a Pilot as your Lordship is greatest when we are endanger'd by some Protestants of narrow Spirits and Principles as by Shelfes or brevia syrtes shallow waters and by little Rocks or breaker's just covered with water and which are only to be discovered by the swelling roughness of the water they occasion It has pleased Divine providence to cast your Lordships whole life of Action into difficult times such as are called in the New Testament 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and translated perilous times And such as Cicero calls Maxima Reipublicae tempora and difficillima Reip tempora Your life hath been a continual contestation with principles pernicious to man-kind and you have been under your Prince a Nutritius pater for the most part to men who have like froward and unquiet Children been crying for each others properly in things civil and in Religion and have thought themselves persecuted when they could not persecute others Nor have you been too much a Latitudinarian as to Church discipline Nor of too narrow a Spirit or principles as to any Protestant Dissenters And I think Envy never charged you for giving any advice that tended to the injuring the ballance of Christendom or the power of England in setling it or the persuading us to love some of our Neighbours better then our selves You who are so far from offending any weak brother That you are ready with the Apostle rather to abstain from eating flesh while the World stands and therefore will much less kill or devour him and lest of all will you offend a weak Brother-Protestant Country or help any else to devour it and will not injure any of those Countreys that you visited abroad when the world and you saw one another by projecting their Mischief And therefore as I find in the Prolegomena of Grotius de jure belli pacis that Themistius speaking to Valens the Roman Emperor he told him that Kings if they would be guided by the Rule of true wisdom they must non unius sibi creditae Gentis habere rationem sed totius humani generis esse non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tantum aut 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it may be justly said that the Counsellors of Kings should alwaies advise them not to take care only of the concern of their own people but of the happiness and quiet of all man-kind and not only to be lovers of the Macedonians or lovers of the Romans but to be lovers of Men. I never
great vehâ—menâ—â— and Master-like in the Councel about two hours proving that the Power of Iurisdiction was given wholly to the Pope and that none in the Church besides â—ath any spark of it but from him and that while Christ liv'd in the flesh he govern'd the World with an absolute Monarchical Government and being to depart out of the World he left the same form appointing his Vicar St. Peter and his Successors to administer it as he had done giving him full and total Power and Iurisdiction and subjecting the Church to him as before to himself That in Councels be they never so frequent if the Pope be present he only doth decree neither doth the Councel any thing but approve and therefore it has been always said Sacro approbante Concilio yea even in Resolutions of the greatest weight as was the Deposition of the Emperor Frederic the Second in the General Councel of Lions Innocent the Fourth a most wise Pope refus'd the approbation of that Synod thaâ— none might think it to be necessary and thought it sufficient to say prâ—sente Concilio How comes the Case now alter'd when we behold the Iesuites now crucifying the Decree of their King the Pope after all their former Hâ—â—anna's to him while he was mounted on the World as his Ass and after all their deaâ—â—ing of the World with Blessing him in nomine Domini and see them now putting but a reed of Infallibility in his hand and see his Scepter in theirs and see their fourth Vow to the Pope annull'd and what performance then can Hereticks expect from any Promises they make to them and might not the Iesuits wiâ—â— the salvo of a Protestation against the Inquisition or with a thousand Expedients if they had pleas'd allow'd Receipts from the Inquisition to rid the World of a Pestilence as frankly as Protestants use the Jesuits Powder against Agues and without intending more Honour to that Court than the Sacred Writ did to the Devil in recording for our instruction several things by him spoken And have not we a candid account of this Arcaâ—um in a very Ingenious Discourse lately Translated into English and call'd The Policy of the Clergy of France to destroy the Protestants of that Kingdom and writ in the way of a Dialogue between a Parisian and Provincial where p. 67 and 68. Le Cheise and the Iesuits Party are said to have effected the suppression of the said Decree in France upon pretence that it issued from the Tribunal of the Inquisition and that in the Draught of an Order of a Parliament in France for the suppressing the Publication of this Decree these words were put viz. Tho that these Propositions are justly Condemned and that Father Le Cheise caus'd these words to be raâ—ed out and has put in their stead That even the good things which come to us from the Tribunal of the Inquisition ought not to be receiv'd But if upon occasion of what was discours'd by that Author it be further said that the setting up of those unmoral Casuistical Tenets in France was the erecting a Pillar of ignominy against God I will ask if one who is revera an incompetent Iudge shall go to demolish any such Pillar set up against my Father and I have already own'd that that Iudge doth infallibly know the bounds of his Iurisdiction and have obliged my self to him by the foremention'd fourth Vow that what thing soever he shall Command that belongs to the profit of Souls and the Propagation of the Faith I will without any tergiversation or excuse execute as far as I am able for this is the Jesuits fourth Vow to the Pope shall I then be active in the hindring a Decree of this Nature given by this Judge from being executed at the same time I Protest against it shall I make no Protestation for the honour of my Father And do you think in this Inquisitive Age the Cheat of an Inquisition will elsewhere pass long since that Court that is used by ordinary Inquisitors for the torturing the Bodies of Christians and mutilation of the Image of God cannot be allow'd to shew severity to the body of Sin to the Image of the Devil in depraved Minds and that while your unerring Iudge of Law and Fact is in Person there praesiding Are not you that surpreâ—â— the Dictates of your own Vniversal Pastor such unreasonable Men as we may well pray to be delivered from All our Jesuited Papists must still expect Expostulations of this Nature Their Head was before at Rome and their Brains too but if they now make a Schism from the Pope himself they will come under the Denomination of Acephali the Name of some ancient Heretics that is the People without a Head unless they will own the Hydra of the Jesuits for their Head which it seems the Hercules of Rome could not subdue I believe many of them will consider what sure footing they have where they are while they see their Moses flying from his own Staff when made a Serpent I mean his Order of Jesuits and see the Collusive or Sham-Serpents of the Jesuits devour those of their Moses and Juglers by Deceptio Visus and lying to impose on the eyes of the World against the sence and reason of Mankind and even of the Pope himself and 't will be very ridiculous for them who have been cheated out of their own Religion to think that some who are the Jesuits Bubbles can cheat us of ours and that while they are grown Seekers they should make us loose our Church and that when the Spiritual Monarchy of the Pope is in a manner Run Down by the Republic or Society of the Iesuits they should think to cheat us of our King and Church and that our Religion can be run down by such Spiritual Outlaws and Rebels against the Pope himself and such as perhaps the Pope may in time be induced to oblige the World by suppressing after their Injuring all Morallity and the most vital parts of Christian Religion and the great avow'd use of his Power in the whole Christian Common-wealth by their Suppression of his said Decree I hope while the Fan is in his hand he will throughly purge his floor and esteem the Disposals of rich Benefices in France to be poor Regalia sancti Petri for him to vindicate in Comparison of the lives of the Souls of his Flock that he and all ingenuous Knowing Mankind Know must be destroy'd by such Casuistical Principles and without his doing which he cannot in the least deserve the Title of his Holiness For the determining the truth about such Principles he need not say as one of his Predecessors did about the Iansenian Speculations that he had no skill in Divinity A very little skill in Natural Divinity and such as may be had by the Reading a few Lines in Tully's Offices would accomplish any one with what would demonstrate the things allowed by the Casuists to be unworthy both of the Divine and
Capite usque ad Calcem retexuerunt ex divina Sophisticam fecerunt aut Aristotelicam saith he in vitâ Hier. praefixâ ipsius operibus And Doctor Colet the Dean of St. Paules whom Erasmus often in his Epistles calls praeceptorem unicum optimum did as Erasmus saith in his life account the Scotists dull Fellows and any thing rather then ingenious and yet he had a worse opinion of Aquinas then of Scotus And tho Luther had angred Harry the 8th by speaking contemptibly of Thomas Aquinas whom that King so highly magnifyed that he was call'd Rex Thomisticus Collet was not afraid to Pronounce in that case as Luther did And here it may not by the way be unworthy of your Lordships observation as to the concert that is between the Genius of one great Witt and another that Erasmus and Mr. Hobbs had the same sense of School-Divinity and School-Divines For Mr. Hobbs in his Behemoth or History of the Civil-Wars speaking of Peter Lombard and Scotus saith That any ingenious Reader not knowing what was the designe of School-Divinity which he had before siad was with unintelligible distinctions to blind Men's eyes while it encroach'd on the Rights of Kings would judge them to have been two the most egregious blockheads in the World so obscure and sensless are their Writings The New Testament was no sooner open'd and read then in Erasmus his translation and in the English Tongue but the Popes Cards were by the Clergy that playd his game thrown up as to all claim of more Power here by the word of God then every other forreign Bishop had and both our Universities sent their judgments about the same to the King which methinks might make our Papists approach a little nearer to us without fear of infection for we allow the Bishop of Rome to have as much Power by the Word of God as any other Bishop and 't is pitty but that Judgment of our Universities were shewn the World in Print and sent to the French King and particularly the Rescript or Iudgment of the University of Oxford as not being any where in Print that I know of but in an old Book of Dr. Iames's against Popery Cromwel the Vicegerent to H. the 8th had as Fuller saith in his Church-history got the whole New-Testament of Erasmus his translation by heart but the sore Eyes of many of the Clergy were so offended with the glaring-Light the New-Testament in Print brought every where that instead of Studying it as that great Primier Ministre did they only study'd to suppress it and thus Buchanan in his Scotch History saith that in H. the 8 ths time â—antaque erat caecitas ut sacerdotum plerique novitatis nomine offensi eum librum a Martino Luthero nuper fuisse Scriptum affirmarent ac vetus testamentum reposcerent i. e. They look'd on the New-Testament as writ by Martin Luther and call'd for the Old Testament again And the truth is if Luther had then set himself to have invented and writ a model of Doctrines against Iustification by works and redeeming our vexation from wrath divine by Summs of Mony and against implicit Faith and many gross Papal Errors he could not possibly have writ against them in terminis terminantibus more expresly then the Writers of the New-Testament did But the New Testament was then newly opened and the legatees permitted to read the whole Will over translated into a language they understood after they had been long by fraud and force kept out of their legacies by the Bishops Court of Rome whose Artifice had formerly in effect suppressed that Will and that inestimable legacy of liberty from all impositions humane being particularly shewn to Mankind there was no taking their Eyes off from this Will nor taking it out of their hands nor suppressing the study of the Greek language it was originally writ in King Harry the 8 th had received his Legacy thereby who before was but a Royal Slave to the Pope and the triumph of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was eccho'd round his Kingdom like that of Archimedes when he had detected the Imposture that had mingled so much dross in the Sicilian Crown 'T is true he retained the profession of several Papal Errors and such as he being vers'd in School-Divinity knew would still keep themselves in play in the World with a videtur quod sic probatur quod non accordingly as the learned Dr. Iones has observ'd in his Book call'd the Heart and its Right Sovereign that Image-Worship Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended on each side to the World's end Harry the 8 th therefore did in his Contest with the Papacy Ferire faciem and did fight neither against small and great but the King of Rome as I may say He attaqued the Pope in his claim of authority over all Christians the authority that Bellâ—rmin calls Caput fidei the head of the Catholic Faith. ' T is therefore very well said in a Book call'd Considerations touching the true way to suppress Popery in England Printed for Mr. Broome in the Year 1677 Whatever notions we have of Popery in other things the Pope himself is not so fond of them but that to gain the point of authority he can either connive or abate or part with them wholy though no doubt he never doth it but insidiously as well knowing that whatever consession he makes for the establishing his authority he may afterward revoke c. And so the Author saith p. 12. That Harry the 8 th for having cast of his obedience to Rome was therefore judged a heretic and that was look't on by Rome as worse than if he had rejected all its errors together He was a thorough Papist in all points but only that of obedience in comparison of which all the rest are but talk I account therefore in Harry the 8 ths time Poperies most sensible and vital part viz. the Popes supremacy did end in England per simplicem desinentiam The radical heat and moisture it long before had was gone like a senex depontanus it was held useless in a wise Senate He establish't the doctrine of his own supremacy without a Battel fought nor did any Rebellion rise thereupon but what he confounded with a general Pardon Many of the Scholars of the University of Oxford did mutinously oppose the introducing the knowledge of the Greek Tongue there and were thereupon call'd Trojans and others of the Schollars were as rohust and loud for that Language who were therefore called Graecians but by a Letter wâ—it by Sir Thomas More to that University and by the Kings Command which Letter is extant in the Archives of the public Library there the Schollars being admonished to lay by those names of distinction and likewise all animosity against the Greek Tongue and to encourage the learning of the same it was there at last peaceably receiv'd The day-break of learning
by some accidents be made to cast Anchor or they may be sunk but they cannot be forced to go back When a man hath long been compell'd to creep with Chains on him through a toilsome dark Labyrinth and having extricated himself out of it and being come to enjoy his liberty in the light of the Sun the persuasion of words cannot make him go back again My Lord I lately mentioned the Motto of the Royal Society of England of which your Lordship is a Member and I look on the very constitution of that Society to be an inexpugnable Bulwark against Popery In which Society many of our choice English Witts have shew'd as much subtilty and curiosity in the Architecture of Real Science and such as tends to the edification of the world as any of our Countrey men heretofore did in those curious but useless Cobwebs of holy Church call'd School Divinity And the constitution of that Society hath not only been useful in encreasing the Trade of Knowledge among its members by a joyned stock but moreover hath tended to the raising in the Kingdom a general inclination to pursue Real science and to contemn all science falsly so call'd and the Raising of this inclination I will call a Spirit that can never be Conjur'd down nor can the knowledge that depends on number weight and local Motion be ever exterminated by Sophisms or Canting or terms of Art Nor will they who have from this Society learned to weigh Ayre give up their Souls to any Religion that is all Ayre without weighing it or notwithstanding any hard name that may come to be in vogue ever forget that bread is bread His Majesty by the founding of this great Conservatory of knowledge presently after his Restoration wherein his great Minister then the Earl of Clarendon was an honourable Member did convey real knowledge and a demonstration of his being an Abhorrer of Arbitrary Power to all that can understand Reason and affect not the ridiculous Treasonableness of Bradshaw's Court to say that they will not hear reason for had he like the Eastern King 's affected Arbitrary Power he would have used their artifice of endeavouring to cast mists before the understanding faculties of his Subjects and to detain them from knowledge by admiration and to deprive them of sight like horses that are still to drudge in the Mill of Government by blind obedience But to shew that he abhorr'd both such obedience and implicit Faith and that he intended to establish his Throne as well in the heads as in the hearts of his Subjects he presently setled this Great Store-house of Knowledge that shew'd it was his desire and ambition by the general Communication of Knowledge in his Dominions to Command Subjects whose heads were with the Rays of Science crown'd within And therefore I think His Majesties Munificence to the Royal Society in giving them Chelsey-Colledge at their first institution was very Consistent with the Primary Intention of the erecting that Colledge which was to be a Magazine for Polemical-Divinity wherewith to attaque the Writers for Popery for the very planting of a general disposition to believe nothing contrary to Reason is the cutting of the graâ—s under Poperies feet and His Majesty providing for the growth of reason did apparently check the growth of Popery as well as of Arbitrary Power without the prop of which Popery can never run up to any height more then the Sun-flower without a supporter and the setling in men an humour of Inquisition into the truth and nature of things is as I partly said before an everlasting barricade against the Popes darling Court of the Inquisition That great and noble notion of the Circulation of the blood took its first rise from the hints of a common persons enquiring what became of all the blood that issâ—â—d out of the heart seeing that the heart beats above Three Thousand times an hour thô but one drop should be pump'd out at every stroke and if any one shall tell me that he believes that Popery with its retinue of implicit faith and ignorance can over-run us I will ask him what will then become of all that knowledge the vital blood of the Soul that hath issued from the heads of inquisitive Protestants and been Circulating in the World for above a Hundred and Fifty years and I doubt not but it will be in mens Souls as long as blood shall have its Circular Course in their bodies and maugre all the Calumnies cast on the Divines of the Church of England for being fautors of Popery I shall expect that our learned Colledge of Physicians will as soon be brought to disbelieve the Circulation of the blood of our Royal Society to take down the Kings Standard that they have set up against implicit faith as our learned Convocation the learnedest that ever England had be brought to believe the principles of Popery I know My Lord ' tâ—s obvious against this my hypothesis of the unpracticableness of Popery being here the State-Religion to say that in little more then Twenty years time Four great changes in Religion happen'd in England and that the generality of the people then like dead Fishes went with the stream of the Times but I ask if the generality of the people had been throughly enlighten'd in the rationality of the Protestant Principles Twenty years together would they have return'd to the belief of the Popish Will they now do it after the establishment of a Rational Religion for above a Hundred years together Can Popery now find the way into most Mens brains here presently after the whole Nation almost were Preachers and when all our great and little unruly disagreeing Sects yet agreed in this as a fundamental that the Bishop of Rome is the Antichrist If Printing had been free in Turky for a Hundred years and a libera Philosophia and Theologia had been there in fashion for a Hundred years and every man had been allow'd his Judgment of discretion so long about the sense of the Alchoran or of the holy Scripture and of all Books of Religion could ignorance even there come into play again or if the Turkes had drank Wine for a Hundred years together could any one Conjure the glasses out of their hands by telling them there was a Devil in every grape If that Law in Muscovy that makes it death for any Subject to travel out of that Kingdom without the Emperors Licence lest his Subjects having seen the freedome of other Countreys should never again return to the Arbitrary Power in their own again I say if that Law had been repeal'd for a Hundred years and multitudes of oppress'd mankind had thence found the way to breath in the ayre of Liberty like men could they be persuaded to return to the Yokes of Beasts again When a floating Island has been a Hundred years fixt to the Continent can any teach it to swim again Consulitur de Religione is likely to be the eternal
of Experiments of Taxes were tryed on his Subjects who payed him toward his charge of the War with France Wool and Grain as not having Mony enough to supply him wholly therewith and when as it is said in Cotton's Collections A long Bill was brought in by the Commons against the Usurpation of the Pope as being the Cause of All the Plagues Murrains Famine and Poverty of the Realm so as thereby was not left the third Person or Commodities within the Realm as lately were and the Commons did desire that it might be enacted That no Mony might be carried forth of the Realm by Letters of Lombardy or otherwise on pain of forfeiture and imprisonment But the Pope knew it seems there was mony to be had out of England though the Commons grudged it him and that a complaint of the Commons of the decay of Trade was no proof of it but rather in his case an indication of the contrary for that 't is Proverbial with Rich Men when they have no mind to part with their mony to say they have none and it appears out of a balance of Trade on Record in the Exchequer that in the 28 th year of Edward the Third the Sum of the over-plus of the Exports above the Imports amounted to 255214 l. 13 s. 8 d. This however shews sufficiently the Indignation of a Popish House of Commons at the Pope and his Lombard-street Bankers who convey'd his mony for him hence by Bills of Exchange and if our late Parliaments have not thought fit to comply with the demands for satisfaction of Protestant Bankers there much less will future ones favour any of the Popes Lombards That the Pope formerly had as much mony here from the publick as the King we may well believe possible since 't is generally held that Wolsey's Revenue equalled Harry the Eighth's Matthew Paris tells us Anno 1240 Misit Papa Pater noster sanctus quendam exactorem in Angliam Petrum Rubeum qui excogitata muscipulatione infinitam pecuniam a miseris Anglis edoctus erat emungere i. e. Our holy Father the Pope sent an exactor Peter Rubeus into England who with a kind of Mouse-trap trick â—â—ped the poor English of infinite Sums of Money And the expression of Wiping the English of infinite Sums of Mony was in fashion among all eminent later Writers of ours against the Papal Usurpation and 't is particularly used by Parker in his Antiq. Britan. where he saith Praeterea indulgentiarum dispensationum similiumque fraudum immensâ copiâ— infinitis pecuniis Anglos emunxerunt Nothing less then infinity of Treasure out of one Island could supply the great exacter of Rome who it seems resembled him that Cicero brands by saying infinitum genus invenerat ad innumerabilem pecuniam Corripiendam But there is now no catching a Nation in Mouse-traps As the Pope has never thought it worth his while to send Emissaries to Denmark and Sweden and some other Northern Countreys to spunge Mony out of them which he knows that great spendor called War that so generally infests them makes them have none to spare for the Popes use and Curia Romana non vult ovem sine lana so will the future vast charge too likely to be for ever incumbent on England and other parts of the World in providing and maintaining Capital Ships effectually provide against the profusion of any on the Projector of Religion at Rome and against Romes being to us as Matthew Paris called it of old barathrum proventuum And any who considers that his Majesty hath not without difficulty obtain'd Supplies of Mony from late Parliaments and that they have been all appropriated to certain publick uses may well give the Pope City-security that he shall have no Mony from England and no Man I think now supposeth that any thing that time can cause can make the Pope get much Mony out of the Exchequer of England but one who as Charoâ— says was born in a Bottle and never saw the World but out of a little hole But if according to the Calculations that have been by some made the currant Coin of the Nation doth not now exceed Six Millions and the publick Revenue in times of Peace has amounted to somewhat near one Third of that and if the Pope should be allow'd here to have a spiritual income equal to the King 's and the restored Abbots and Monks and the other Clergy be allow'd another Third for so the accounts of their proportion were totted by some Critical Calculators the whole Laity would be nichil'd as the Exchequer word is King Edward the First as the Antiq. Britan. mention sent some of his Courtiers to treat with the Clergy about the Quota of their supplying him viz Misit ex aula suâ Nuntios qui suo nomine agerent cum clero quoniam eorum tranquillitas Major fructus atque reditus annui tunc essent longe uberiores quam populi ut ad Regem in his bellicis angustiis adjuvandum se ostenderent promptiores And it appears out of Cotton's Collections That in the fourth Year of Richard the Second The Clergy confess'd they had a Third part of the Revenue of the Kingdom and therefore then consented to pay a Third part of the Taxes But in those ancient times of Popery beside the Clergies share in the Ballance of Land it might be justly added to the Inventory of their Wealth That they generally engrossed the highest and chiefest Offices in the Kingdom and that from the Office of Lord High Chancellor to that of the very Clerks in Chancery and other Clerks places whence to this day the officiating Registers of Courts are called Clerici or Clerks whereby they caught in a manner the whole Kingdom in a Purse-net 'T is therefore no wonder that the great affluence of the Riches of the Clergy drew to them that Popular esteem that as the Antiquaries observe the English word Sir was affixed to the Christian Names of Clergy-men from King Iohn's time down to the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and which was also express'd in Latine by the word Dominus as for example in the witnessing of a Deed Testibus Domino Willielmo de Massy persona de Bowden Matheo Hale c. And of the people calling their Parish Priests by the name of Sir William Massy and the like as in ordinary Communication we call Knights we have the instance of the first Christian on whom here for his Religion incineration was practised viz. Sir William Sautre Parish Priest of the Church of St. Scythe c. in London in Henry the Fourths time for so he is Styled in the Acts and Monuments Bishop Sanderson who in his profession of Divinity was greater then any praise was likewise so accurate an observer of the weight of what he affirmed in the Pulpit though it was not of a point of Theology that every thing he there said has a Title to be regarded And he in his Sermons in fol. ad
been likely to have done being disappointed as to their gratiae expectativae of the Lands of the Bishops had they been let loose to have depended on maintenance by Oblations in such Towns and Cities and where they would have probably tryed with a diversified Curse ye Meros to fly in the faces of Masters who would not feed them I have before said how the Parliament sweetned them into obedience by the luscious power of oppressing their fellow Subjects But neither by any Revenue adequate to those Impropriate Tithes nor by any such power of oppressing that prerogative of Devils to torment can it be imagined that a Popish Successor will ever be able to ensure the obedience of his Clergy to himself His Bishops and Dignitaries will be like the Popes Trent Titulars without a Title I mean one to a Dignity or Benefice and the burden of the Clerical Papists maintenance lying still on the laity will make Popery soon visibly grow weary oâ— it self I shall here take occasion to observe that Tithes were first called Impropriate by the sarcasm of the dislodged Monks who thought that the Tithes Appropriated for that was the Antient Law-term for them were improperly placed on Lay-men but both the present possessors and all that know that 't is necessary for England's being a Kingdom and no Province that its Riches accruing by the number of its Inhabitants and by improvement of its Soil should keep its weight in the Balance of Christendom especially considering the growth of France will for ever think it very improper that so much of its Land and Wealth and Populousness should be sacrificed to Religious Idlers and that according to Bishop Sanderson's account almost half of the Land should be turn'd into Franks for Boares or as I may say Sties for such as are Epicuri de grege Porci or such as were call'd Barnevelts Hoggs he having called the Monkish Herd by that name of whom if any angers one they all rise against him and if he pleaseth them all there is nothing to be got but Bristles That Herd was not a little molested as Mr. Fox tells us by a private Gentleman one Mr. Simon Fish in the Year 1527. who writ a little Book called The supplication of Beggars addrest to the King and it had the honour to reach his Eyes and to be lodged in his Bosom three or four days and to bring its Author to be embraced by the King and to have long discourse with him as Mr. Fox affirms who Prints that Book wherein the Author with much laboured curiosity attaques the Revenue of the Monks with Arithmetick a Science necessary for the strengthening of Political no less Military Discipline He saith there in the beginning That the multitude of Lepers and other sick People and Poor was so encreased that all the Alms of the Realm sufficed not to keep them from dying for hunger And that this happened from counterfeit holy Beggers and Vagabonds being so much encreased These saith he are not the Herds but Wolfes c. Who have got into their hands more then the third part of your Realm The goodliest Lordships and Mannors are theirs Beside this he sets forth that They have Tithes Oblations Mortuaries c. And he therein saith That there being in England 52000 Parishes and Ten Housholds in every Parish and five hundred and twenty Thousand Housholds in all and every of the five Orders of Fryers receiving a peny a quarter that is Twenty Pence in all yearly from every one of these Housholds the Total Sum was 430333 l. 6 s. 8 d. Sterling He further sets forth That the Fryars being not the four hundredth Person of the Realm had yet half its profits There were in that little Book many things so pungent and so confirm'd by Calculation that the Clergy put no meaner a Person then Sir Thomas More on the answering it in Print and it occasion'd the Bishop of London's publishing an Edict to call in that little Book and the English New Testament and many Books writ against the excesses of the Priests Well therefore might Sir Thomas More be favour'd with a License to read Heretical Books when he was to be at the fatigue of answering them Sir Thomas in his Answer to it makes a just exception to Mr. Fish's estimate of the number of Parishes in the Realm But admitting there were then Ten Thousand Parishes in England and about Forty Houses in one Parish with another in the Country beside what were in great Towns and Cities he might modestly Calculate 520000 Housholds in all Nor is it to be much wondered at That a private Gentleman should err in the excess of the number of the Parishes when we are told in Cotton's Collections That in the 45 of E. 3. The Lords and Commons in Parliament granting the King a Subsidy of 50000 l. at the rate of 22 s. 4 d. for each Parish they estimated the Parishes then near that number but were afterward inform'd by the Lord Chancellour that by returns made into the Chancery on Commissions of Enquiry it was found there were not so many Parishes in the Realm It had been very acceptable to those who in this Age take their Political measures of the power and growth of Kingdoms from Numbers if either Mr. Fish or Sir Thomas More who answered his Golden little Book as I may call it for his endeavours therein to fix matters relating to the Oeconomy of the Kingdom by Calculation and for his being a Columbus to discover rich Mines without going to America nor yet further then home or if any of our Monkish Historians or even our Polish'd and Ingenious ones and particularly My Lord Bacon and my Lord Herbert had given the World Rational estimates of the Numbers of the people of England in the times they writ of or particularly of the Numbers of the Males then between the Years of 16 and 60 for if they had done that as on the publick Musters made by occasion of Warlike preparations they might perhaps well have performed we might now easily by the help we have had from the Observator on the Bills of Mortality conclude what the entire Number of the People then was and might likewise have better agreed on a stated Rule of the Period of Nations doubling a Curiosity in knowledge not unworthy the Genius of an Inquisitive or Philosophical States-man and which presents to his View as in a Glass the Anatocisme of the faetus populi resembling the Interest upon Interest of Money as for Example when we see that one pound in Seventy years the Age of a Man is at 10 per cent encreased to a Thousand But it is our misfortune that through the aforesaid omission of our Historians we are not so much illuminated about the encrease of the English Nation as we are about the gradual multiplication of the People of Rome so many hundred years ago And indeed by the help of the Writers of other European Countries we are
of Cattle by pasture hindred that encrease of Men that the advancement of Tillage would have produced and the furnishing the Crown with more Subsidy Men and Soldiers But this supineness of our Kings was not only caused by Superstition and a vitiated fancy in Religion an Idol to which Philip the Second sacrificed his Son and therefore might be well supposed prevalent with others to wish the generation of their Children or Subjects restrained but our Kings were not then stimulated by necessity to promote the populousness of their Realm for that their riches and strength depending on comparison the same Religious Orders did by Celibate and Depopulation equally obstruct the Wealth and Power of the neighbouring Kingdoms as well as this and by that means they were not our over-match But the course of encreasing Generations having operated so far as to awaken the World and Men for not having so much Elbow-room as they had jostling one another by the violence of War the politics of Statutes against Depopulation were forced and reinforced on this Realm And like as Men so too will such Statutes beget one another as I may say to the end of the Chapter Nor is the power of the Kingdom ever likely again to be really emasculated by such as pretended To make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake and honoured not the Founder of Christianity of whom since he for the good of Mankind made his first Disciples fishers of Men it may seem unworthy that he should intend the hurt of States and Kingdoms by making the following Doctors of his Church Pastors of Sheep Sir Thomas Moor in the first Book of his Vtopia doth with a sharpness worthy his excellent wit tell us That certain Abbots holy Men God wot not profiting but much damnifying the Common Wealth leave no ground for Tillage they enclose all in pastures they throw down Houses they pull down Towns and leave nothing standing but only the Church to make of it a Sheep-house And afterward saith That one Shepherd is enough to eat up that ground with Cattle to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite And he in that Book calls the Fryers errones maximos and desires they might be treated like Vagabonds and sturdy Beggars And in the Second Book contrives a Model of the Priesthood so as not to make it such a Nusance to the Civil Government as the Papal one was accordingly as has been before discoursed For one of his fundamentals there is That the Priests should be very few and that they should be chosen by the people like other Magistrates and with secret voices and enjoyns to his Priests marriage and makes them to be promoted to no power but only to honour Sir Thomas More it seems was far then from Writing at the Pope's Feet the Character that was afterward given to Bellarmine's style and there was as little occasion for a peace-maker's interposal between him and Fish as is between two wrangling Lawyers at a Bar. But the matter is well mended with our English World since the time of the Supplication of Beggars as appears by the multitudes of the healthy and robust Plebs of our Nation that Till the Earth and Plough the Sea and who by the proportion of the Mony Current coming to their hands having fortify'd their Vital Spirits with good diet there is finis litium and an end of such Lamentations as the beginning of that Supplication to the King in part before referred mentions viz. Most lamentably complaineth of their woful misery to your Highness your poor daily Beads-men the wretched hideous Monsters on whom scarcely for horrour any eye dare look the foul unhappy sort of Lepers and other sore people needy impotent blind lame and sick c. How that their Number is daily so sore encreased that all the Alms of all the well disposed people of this your Realm is not half enough to sustain them There is no doubt but their indigence was extream when they were to glean not only after the Reaping of the Monks but after the Ecclesiastick Beggars the Fratres Mendicantes or as they were then called Manducantes had been satiated in diebus illis and when Holy Church almost engrossed not only the wealth but the begging in the Kingdom And he who now looks on our English infantry when they turn their Plough-shares into Swords will see nothing of the horrour of starvelings in their faces and the Writ de leproso amovendo is in effect obsolete in nature as that too de haeretico comburendo is abrogated And within the Term of about twenty years that the Observator of the Bills of Mortality refers his Calculations to he mentions but six of 229150 dying of the Leprosie What the Bills of Mortality in France may contain about deaths by the Leprosie happening there in late years I know not but do suppose that the general Scurâ—e appearing in the skins of the Pesantry there condemned to Sell their Birth-right of nature for no Pottage and to eat little of the Corn they Sow and to drink as little of the Vines they Plant and to taste little of Flesh save what they have in Alms from the Baskets of the Abbies and who are Dieted only for Vassalage may be an indication of the Leprosie having still its former effects among them But our English Husband-men are both better fed and taught and the poorest people here have so much of brown Bread and the Gospel that by the Calculations on our Bills of Mortality it appears that for so many years past but One of Four Thousand is starved 'T is therefore I think by instinct of Nature That our Yeomanry in the Country though not addicted to mind niceness of Controversie in Religion nor to be dealers in the Protestant Faith by Retaile are great Whole-sale Traders in it and will as soon suffer their Ploughs to be took out of their Hands as their Bibles from under their Arms And they have been generally observed since the Plot and some years before to manifest in common discourse their robust abhorrences of Popery as supposing that under that Religion they could neither save their Souls nor their Bacon Doleman alias Parsons in the Second part of his Book of the Succession speaking of the Numbers of the Papists here makes it very considerable In that the most part of the Country people that live out of Cities and great Towns in which the greatest part of the English forces are wont to consist are much affected ordinarily to their Religion meaning the Popish Religion by reason the Preachers of the contrary Religion are not so frequent with them as in Towns c. But were he now alive he would find the Scene of things changed in our Country Churches since Queen Elizabeth's time in whose Reign a Book was printed Anno 1585 called A lamentable complaint of the Commonalty by way of Supplication to the High Court of Parliament for a learned Ministry He would find
their Guardian and account it a very preposterous thing that since our Saviour refused to divide an Inheritance his pretended Vicar should do nothing else Moreover Holy Churches resuming all its Lands out of Lay hands would appear the more strange in England when we see as my Lord Primate Bramhal saith in his vindication of the Church of England p. 212 that the very Kings of Spain impose Pensions usually on Ecclesiastical preferments to the 4th part of the value and particularly one Pension on the Arch-Bishoprick of Sivile in favour of an Infant of Castile of greater value then all the Pensions there imposed by the Pope and when we know that the French King doth for the behoof of so great a number of Lay-men impose so many and great Pensions on the Abbeys without saying to the Abbots more then Car tel est nostre plaisir Sir Edwyn Sands in his Europae Speculum writ in the Year 1599 and in the time of Harry the 4 th of France speaking of that Kingdom saith That there the Church Prelacies and other Governments of Souls are made the Fees and Charges of meer Courtiers and Soldiers and our excellent Animadverter on Monsieur Sorbier reflecting on that Country Intimates in effect how there the chiefest spiritual dignities are entailed upon Families and possest by Children They who unjustly cry out of the Constitution of the Church of England for interrupting the Trade of the Kingdom would be loud enough in their Complaints of Omnia comesta à Belo under Popery He who knows not that the Revenue of the King now depends in a manner solely upon Trade and that Trade depends on populousness and that the encouragement of people to live under any Government is that great thing call'd Property in their Estates Religion and Laws and that therefore any thing that calls it self Religion that goes to exterminate above a hundred and fifty persons for every one it leaves for so the Proportion between Non-Papists and Papists by the Bishops survey made about the Year 1676 was return'd to be and to call them Hereticks and which makes their Goods and life ipso facto a forfeit of the Law will not ipso facto exterminate Trade is fitter for the Galleys or a Trading Voyage to the Anticyrae then for any discourse of Trade and Commerce Your Lordship hath in your Travels sufficiently seen it long since exemplified that the Protestant Countries for the quantity of Ground exceed the Popish in Trade and numbers of People and that thus the Protestant Hanse Towns have eclipsed their Roman Catholick Neighbours and Amsterdam Antwerp and the Vnited Provinces Flanders and that in Flanders where the Ecclesiasticks are Proprietors of seven parts of ten of the whole Country Levies of Men and Money for the defence thereof have been made with so much slowness and difficulty and been so inconsiderable as not to have secured themselves against Invaders Nor did the Ecclesiasticks there think it worth their while to strain themselves in Contributions to resist an Invader who is of their own Religion the which made the French Kings Victories there flie like Lightning more then our over-rich English Regulars did to oppose William the Conqueror when he came here under the Popes Banner And thus were they here and in Flanders are like Wenns in the Body which draw to themselves much nourishment and are of great trouble and no use and thus ridiculous is it that so over great a part of the property of the Land should be linked to persons who are no way linked to the interest of the Country more then professed Gamesters and Empyrics and Soldiers of Fortune and are no more damnified by Popish Invaders then Fishes of the Sea are by Earth-Quakes But on the other hand in the United-Provinces how easily and soon are vast Taxes raised when their All is at Stake to what a prodigious encrease of the numbers of their People have they attain'd since the Reformation insomuch that the Author of a Political discourse of the Interest of Holland Printed in Dutch in the Year 1669 and Licensed by Iohn de Witt and by Van Beaumont makes the People in the Province of Holland to be 2 Millions and 400 thousand and so likewise doth Pellerus in his Learned Notes on Klockius de Aerario p. 300. and there cites that Book of the interest of Holland when as Gerard Malynes in his Lex mercatoria makes the People in Flanders in the Year 1622 to have consisted of a hundred and forty thousand Families and he reckoning each of them one with an other at 5 persons makes the Total of the people in Flanders to have then amounted but to seven hundred thousand Souls And yet as that Author of the interest of Holland saith the Province of Holland can hardly make 400 thousand profitable Acres or Morgens of Land Down and Heath not put in and that the 8 th part of the Inhabitants of Holland cannot be nourished with what is growing there but tells us what prodigious Granaries they there have and that Amsterdam that in the Year 1571 was about 200 Morgens or Acres of Land was in the year 1650 enlarged to 600 Morgens or Acres of Land in Circumference and to have in it three hundred thousand Souls And the defence of the Zelanders Choice Printed in the Year 1673 mentions Aitsmas Liere to have reckon'd the publick Incomes of Holland alone in the Year 1643 to have amounted to 1100 thousand pound Sterling and the Author of the Interest of Holland saith that in one Year in a time of Peace viz. In the Year 1664 the Inhabitants of Holland did over and above the Customes and other Domains of the Earls or States of Holland pay towards the publick Charge as follows viz. To the States of Holland 11 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Maze 472 898 Gilders To the Admiralty of Amsterdam 2 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter 200 thousand Guilders Which comes to in all about 14 hundred 87 thousand Pounds Sterling How meanly do the Atchievements of Venice and their Efforts to aggrandize their Republick compared with Hollands shew in story for the quantity of years many times doubled since the Dutch threw off the Yoke of the Papacy History hath recorded the longevity of the Venetian Government as it has of Methusalem of whom we read not 〈◊〉 great thing he said or did or attempted but a few days of the short life of Alexander in the Ballance of same weighs down the 999 years of the other The very Religion of Popery makes the Venetians more narrow in their principles and even in their Rules of Traffick then are the Inhabitants of Protestant Countries The Popish Religion doth hamper its devout Professors as to Trading with Hereticks and holding Communication with such as are ipso jure ipso facto excommunicated and giving any Quarentine to men said to be infected with Heresie insomuch that we are told in D'
of Enemies a name that the Impotent passion of Subjects makes them so familiarly vex one another with and thereby shews them not such fit depositaries of Heavens Artillary as Soveraigns are so is it extremely unbecoming the Glorious height to which the Doctrine of the Cross hath exalted humane Nature for men as I may say to deâ—cend from Heaven to Earth for Dirt and to Hell for Fire-brands to throw at one another and petulantly to call those that were sometime Aliens and Enemies in their mind c. always such after the Divine reconciliation or even to manage the most lawful and just War Sine quadam bene volentiâ as St. Austines words are or to think that they can justly assume the great Name first used at Antioch and yet retain a Constant and Stated enmity against any Person whatsoever For according to the Excellent saying of Tertullian Christianus nullius est hostis But the Bosome of that wise Princess was no resting place for Anger and all the Popes Thunder could not discompose her and as in all Games they who in their play retain a Constant Equabillity of mind are generally most Successful so was she in the great Political Game she play'd by being Semper eadem and the Papal Excommunications seem'd to her as despicable as the Curses of loosing Gamesters and I doubt not but by her Prudent and just Administration of the Government of Church and State she hath laid the Foundation of the English Nations being Semper eadem in the Royal Line and of the Protestant Religions being so too and that no delendam fore can Issue out against either humanly Speaking and that any Popish Successor that can come here will find it his interest to use the Politicks of Queen Mary as a Sea Mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land Mark to go by and it being clear accordingly as Sir W. P. in his Manuscript discourse called Verbum Sapienti demonstrates it Cap. 2. of the Value of the People that each Head of Man-kind is as certainly valuable as Land that the many Strangers who have Transplanted themselves hither need never fear that they will be so undervalued as in the Marian days The Families of French Protestants that have lately come here have filled 800. of the Empty New Built Houses of London and have given us too an occasion of entertaining Angels in those untenanted Houses whose Ruinous appearance before made them seem to the vulgar such as they call haunted but from which no Prince can ever think of exorcising the inhabitants without Conjuring away his own Revenue of which about one moity depends on that City and where the Rents tho fallen as I say would yet have been much lower but for the Tenancy of these Forreigners and the expectation of others There is a very great President in our English Story and that is of a Prince of the Popish perswasion and yet one who was a sharp persecuter of the Extravagances of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and one who by the Introducing of Forreignors here to Manufacture our Wooll saved the Life or Being of the Nations Trade which his Predecessors had left in a Gasping Condition and one who by his Patronizing of Wiclif sufficiently shew'd that if those Forreigners had been Wiclifists he would yet have been a Fautor of those Hereticks and one who more disoblig'd the Pope by seizing on the Lands of the Alien Oâ—thodox Clerical Idlers then he could have done by the entertainment of many Heterodox lay Alien Manufacturers 'T is needless to say that I here mean our great Edward the third of whom and of Queen Elizabeth the prudence was as memorable as of any Princes that ever Sate on the English Throne And I will never despaire of any Heroick Prince here of the Roman Catholick perswasion with his Scepter upholding the trade of the Kingdom as those two great Names did and that too by the same methods if ever he shall come to find it in the tottering Conditon that they did and it may be well supposed that the experience the Kingdom hath since gained under King Iames and the Royal Martyr and His Present Majesty of the publick benefit that hath arisen from the reception of Forraign Artists who have been Heterodox in some ritual points about our Religion will make their expulsion seem a Solecisme And every Sagacious Person will I believe accord with me that the Spider hath done much more good to humane kind by furnishing it with the Invention of Weaving then harm by any thing of Poyson I shall be glad to know from your Lordship whether on your search among the Records of State either in the Exchequer or Paper-Office you can find Foot-steps of any thing like those returns of the Numbers of the People in London mentioned out of Howel and Cotton I am sure that the knowledge of the Numbers of our People ought by Statesmen to be accounted their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in this conjuncture as the opus diei and to pass no longer for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that those of them who take their measures either of the publick Strength or Revenue without respect to this are but State-Eâ—thusiasts and such who in their reckonings do according to our Common Phrase reckon without their Host and do not govern their Politicks by the Arithmetick the Scripture suggests in the question of What King goeth to make War against another King sitteth not down first and Consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand Bodin in his de Republicâ speaking of the Numbering of the People saith That the benefit that redounds to the Publick thereby is infinite and that thereby Princes and States know what Souldiers they may have and what Numbers they may send abroad to Collonys I have been informed by a Person belonging to the Custom-house that near 10000. Persons have had their Names entred as gone out of the Ports of London and Bristol for our Plantations in a years time And no doubt but the Number was great that then went away thither from other Ports and likewise of such that went from London and the out-Ports whose Names were not entred But I was not a little surprised of late when I read it in a Book newly Printed called The Negros and Indians Advocate and Dedicated to the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury where the Author pag. 171. Speaking of the Kidnappirs trade or mistery saith A Trade that t is thought Carrys off and Consumes not so little as 10000. out of this Kingdome yearly which might have been a Defence to their Mother Country c. 'T is certainly a sign that we are very rich in the number of our People when we can endure such a quantity of them to be yearly stolen without the pursuit of a Hue and Cry. Yet in this point Scotland is reported to be somewhat more unhappy then England for those who
countenanced and maintained by the same And I believe none will imagine that those Nonconforming Divines would take any Oath but in the imposers sence or Casuistically advise others so to do 'T is therefore no marvel if our later Presbytery being so unconformable to the Law of the Land and to the Tenets of the former Nonconformists soon grew weary of it self and did with its horrid Visage only face us and march off Your Lordship found that in another thing it resembled Popery namely in that it would be all or nothing and you helped it to the latter part of the Alternative Mr. Nye who made a great Figure in the Assembly of Divines hath in that Book of his forementioned p. 98 helped this Age to know how Arbitrary they would have been in delivering men to Satan for saith he there the exercise of Discipline in our Congregations was ordered by the Parliament but limited likewise to an enumeration of the Sins for which we might excommunicate exempting other Sinners that were as much under our charge This was looked on by the Assembly as a great Abridgment of their Ministerial Liberty and so great as they professed it could not with a good Conscience be submitted to as not being able to perform their trust which they receiv'd from Iesus Christ and must give an account of to him resolving to stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free So ridiculous were those Divines that tho no Pope ever arrogated a power to Excommunicate one but for the Crimes nominated in his Canon-Law and tho our Church of England never claim'd a power of excommunicating but for a Crime express'd in the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws yet those froward Disciplinarians would have been allow'd to shoot their Thunderbolts of Excommunication upon a Capricio But not only the Parliament but the whole Nation in a manner pronounced them Contumacious the people saw how Arbitrarily they would have interdicted the whole Land from the use of the Cup and Bread too in the Sacrament and have rail'd in the Communion-Table with fantastick Qualifications and they soon judged those Clergy-men guilty of Irregularity and the rather for that they had engaged so far in Causâ sanguinis and the same Sun of Reason and Knowledge that with the strength of its Beams had here put out the Popes Kitching Fire of Purgatory did soon without noise and insensibly confound their Dominions in the Kingdom of Darkness and those Divines themselves found that their destroying Episcopacy here had in effect by the Parliaments being their Superintendants enthroned Erastianisme that which indeed their Principles led them to hate more then Episcopacy it self Mr. Baxter in the Preface to his second part of the Nonconformists Plea speaking of Presbytery saith I do not hear of many out of London and Lancashire that did ever set up this Government and I know not of one Congregation now in London of Englishmen that exerciseth the Presbyterian Government nor ever did since the King came home c. And saith they have no National Assembly no Classes no Coalition of many Churches to make a Presbytery and I hear of none unless perhaps some Independants that I know not that have so much as ruling Lay-Elders Alluding to some expressions before applyed to Papists and Popery I may say that the Cato's of Presbytery came here on the Stage tantum ut exirent and that Government soon had its period here per simplicem desinentiam 'T was obvious that Presbytery as well as Popery directed men where to stand in a place divided from the Civil Government and so to shake the Earth and it appear'd very inauspicious to the Model of the Covenant that in its first Paragraph it should stumble upon implicit Faith by swearing to a Government and Reformation that shall be and to the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government the particulars whereof the Lay-Covenanters of England if not the Clerical also were far from understanding And tho in that Paragraph the Covenant binds its takers to endeavour to advance the Reformation of Religion according to the word of God a Clause that Sir Harry Vane declared to a very worthy Gentleman now living that he caus'd to be inserted into the Covenant after much debate about the same and opposition from the Scotch Commissioners with whom he was interested in the making of it and thereupon said That â—e was three days in getting the word of God into the Covenant yet that Covenant having almost extirpated Root and Branch those spiritual Guides from whom the people might expect a more Rational and Learned Interpretation of the Sense of the word of God then from the Presbyterian Divines they were soon sensible of their danger both as to the perverting of the Scripture and subverting of the Church from the new Correctors of Magnificat and found that such an Inundation of Vile Religionary Tenets was got into the Church that the Houses of Parliament ordered the 10 th of March 1646. To be set apart as a solemn day of humiliation to seek Gods Assistance for the suppressing and preventing of the growth and spreading of Errors Heresies and Blasphemies and that Mr. Vines on that day Preaching before the Commons p. the 4 th of his Sermon printed acknowledged That that day was the first that ever was in England on that sad occasion and p. 67 of that Sermon mentioned a most detestable thing then broach'd by the Press though yet in the way of Query namely what is meant by the word Scripture when it is asserted that the denying of the Scriptures to be the word of God should be holden worthy of death for saith the Author either the English Scriptures or Scriptures in English are meant by the word Scriptures or the Hebrew and Greek Copies or Originals the former cannot be meant with reason because God did not speak to his Prophets and Apostles in the English Tongue nor the latter for the greatest part of men in the Kingdom do not understand or know them Mr. Vines declared his just Abhorrence of that insinuation and saith If this dilemma be good what is become of the certain foundation of our hope or faith or comfort how can we search the Scriptures without going first to School to learn Hebrew and Greek And 't was obvious to every one to consider that if the English Scriptures are not the word of God there was an end not only of the Reformation according to it mentioned in the Covenant but the substantial one promoted by the Protestant Religion that help'd us to the Treasure of our English Bibles and that we should soon be stranded on the Shore of Implicit Faith. Nor could it long be hid from common observation that those Divines who exclaim'd so much against the Ceremonies of the Church of England as an oppressive Yoke would have imposed on us such a rigid observation of the Sabbath the great Scene
the Invention of the double bottom'd Vessel and a rude Description of it being sent me for News into the Country I easily guessed that such a Ship bearing much more Sail then other Ships must needs go a great deal faster before the Wind but I was not inform'd of the Provision that the excellent Artist had made against the danger of Divulsion it being obvious that in some Tempests 't is as much as one entire body can do to preserve it self against the â—ury of the Sea. This hath been the condition of Popery with its double bottom of Principles namely to bear a great wide spreading Sail and it has heretofore in a quiet World sail'd apace before the Wind and in fair weather but the Tempestuous Debates its Principles have raised here and abroad in the Sea of the People have made this old double bottom'd Ship of St. Peter in such danger of Divulsion that especially with such Pauls Marriners as it employs it can hardly escape I doubt not but the Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturb'd worshiping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the Blood of Christ for Religion being Mens Priviledge as well as Duty just as the Romans did account that they endowed any place with a Priviledge when they gave them their Laws they may thank their great Redeemer for being restored to it By the vertue of his Blood the Papists stand seiz'd of a good and indefeisable estate of Christian Liberty and they are bought with a Price and are therefore not to be the Servants of Men and one is their Master even Christ who is the Lord that bought them and they are therefore to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free Socinus saith he went on his Knees to God to find out the meaning of the 58th V. of the 8 th of St. Iohn And should I chance to over hear any one Member of Mankind at his Private Devotions and importuning Heaven to illuminate his mind with the knowledge of some point in Religion that he conceived necessary to his Salvation and acknowledging it to the praise of the Divine Goodness that excited him to the use of all means whereby to discover it that he had so far through the Efficacy of assisting Grace practised the Truths his understanding was possest with as to satisfie his mind that he was a serious Supplicant for its being the depositary of more I should be so far from wishing this man delivered over to Satan from differing for me in any controverted Point of Religion that I should think that if the truth he was in quest of imported his Salvation God would send an Angel to explain it to him But as to one part of the double bottom of Popery tho we should grant it laden with fundamental truths yet 't is notorious that the other is overladen with Fundamental Errors and such as are apt to undermine the Foundations of States and Kingdoms and there is no need of an extraordinary Messenger from Heaven to tell one embarked therein that the Pope is not to absolve Subjects from the obedience of their Princes nor to cause an eternal fermentation and inquiâ—tude in the World through his Kingdom that should not be of it at all yet being unbutted and unbounded by him in all the parts of it I will likewise tell any Soeinian that his great Master Socinus made such a double bottom of his Systeme of Notions that it hath forfeited its right to the Name of Religion by one Tenet complicated therewith and that he ought to throw that off and simplificare se ipsum Let any one if he pleaseth call the Socinians denying of the Trinity in Unity and Original Sin and the Baptism of Infants or the Divine Prescience and many other of their Notions by the Name of Religion but there is own of their Tenets that their Master needed no long wrestling with Heaven as a Supplicant to find out the truth of and which Notion when really believed is as pernicious to Crown'd Heads and their Subjects as the lawfulness of any ones sometime killing the next man he meets and that is that my Prince and I may not defend our lives against the next Invader who comes to take them away for as to that great Question An bellum offensivum vel defensivum fit licitum the Socinians answer is negatur which any one may see who pleaseth to consult the Themata F. Socini de officio Christi p. 7. Inter breves tractatus F. Socini and likewise his Epistle to Christopher Morstias p. 498. among his Epistles And thus let the well-willers to Presbytery call that erroneous opinion of their Church Government being founded on that Divine Right and the immediate Command of Christ and his Apostles a Tenet of Religion but to confront the Laws of Kingdoms in the settling it and to eradicate any part of those and especially to root the inheritable Monarchs Power in popular Election or Approbation and to make him but the Peoples Attorny and his Authority as revocable by them as a Letter of Attorney is abusively call'd Religion and is only properly to be term'd Sedition or Rebellion I have been so copious in insisting on the necessary separation of all Tenets that are denominable as Religious from those that are really Irreligious and Seditious under the gross name of the Religion in any Party as a thing perfectly just in it self and necessary for the quiet of the World and do hope that the Age that is so much addicted here to the improvement and polishing of our Language will incline it to do it self that right as not to give false Names to Things and Names of a contrary signification We know that the Standard of England in the Mint refers both to weight and fineness and tho a piece of Money may have the Royal Stamp on it engraven with all possible curiosity yet if it be not standard 't is so far from being allow'd the Name of any Species of the Kings Coyn that 't is instantly to be broken in pieces and as this is but just so is it but necessary for the quiet of the People who else detecting it would suspect the whole credit of the Mint as well as of that Species of Money and would either not take it or else with a Clamour raise the price of their Commodities for it And thus it is too a thing unreasonable and troublesome to the World for Men to Coyn false words or false denominations for any Tenet in Religion intrinsecally defective what curious stamp of the artifice of any Party soever it may bear its reprobate Silver is not to be call'd Religion and it makes Religion it self lyable to suspicion among the inquisitive it will trouble every hand it passeth to and from and in giving a value to it the People will raise the price of their tolerating it and
we are told it in townsend's Collections very great masterly skill was shewn in Debates as to the proportioning the Taxes and particularly by those great Masters Sir Walter Raleigh Secretary Cecil Mr. Francis Bacon and when Cecil accurately Calculated in the house how much a Levy came to wherein the Respective Quota's laid on Land and Goods were mentioned by him and more skill was really shewn in Proportions and Estimates of the Publick Money to be raised then has by some Parliaments in this Age been endeavoured after or perhaps so much as pretended to The long Parliament of 1640. seem to me in their Taxes in London and the Associated Counties to have provided only that their concern in the Kingdom might vivere in diem but hath occasioned the disproportionate and immoderate weight of the Taxes in some places of those Counties to be perpetual And the prodigious Taxes laid on the Inhabitants of London during the War after 41 did not end with it insomuch that Lilly the Astrologer in his vile Book of Monarchy or no Monarchy in England Printed in the Year 1651. saith in p. 92. My proportion in the Ship-money was 22 s. and no more but now my Annual Payments to the Souldiery are very near or more than 20 l my Estate being no way greater than formerly In the Parliament in Anno Domini 1605. and Anno Reg. Iac. 3. there was passed an Act for the granting 3 entire Subsidies and six fifteenths and tenths granted by the Temporalty to his Majesty with the Reasons why granted and the great advantages his Majesty hath been to the Kingdom And in the Act it is inter alia said A first and principal Reason is that late and monstrous Attemps of that cursed Crew of desperate Papists to have destroyed your Excellent Majesty the Queen and your Royal Progeny together with the Reverend Prelates Nobility and Commons of this Land assembled in Parliament to the great Confusion and Subversion of this Kingdom The barbarous Malice in some unnatural Subjects we have thought fit to check and encounter with the certain demonstration of the universal and undoubted love of your Loyal and Faithful Subjects not only for the present to breed in your Majesty a more confident assurance of our uttermost Aids in proceeding with a Princely Resolution to repress them and to furnish your Majesty against Hostile Attempts both by Sea and Land but also for the future times to give their Patrons and Partakers to understand that your Majesty can never want in this Kingdom means of defence of your Rights Revenge of your Wrongs and support of your Estate They had immediately before said We do further think fit to add and express these reasons special and extraordinary which have moved us hereunto lest the same our doing may be brought into precedent to the prejudice of the State of our Country and our Posterity As hidebound as King Iames found Parliaments afterward for as I said he in his Speech in Parliament Anno 1620 mentioned That in all his Reign he had but 4 Subsidies and six Fifteenths yet their Belief of that Popish Gun-powder Plot fired the Zeal of their Supplyes and as I may say too made their Money burn in their Pockets and pass with speed into the Exchequer and with a Salvo to the Caution about not drawing that Act into a President c. Had I been in the Parliament that sate after the Discovery of the last Popish Plot I should have moved that the belief of that Plot might have shewn it self by works of supply to the King especially considering that the Protestant Interest was then abroad inter sacrum saxum and do hope that the belief thereof will so shew it self in any Parliament his Majesty shall call that we shall that way Expostulate with the quare fremuerunt Gentes abroad against the Protestant Religion And such a golden Age do I expect for the Crown from future Parliaments that I believe that nothing of Prerogative that safeguards the Kingdom will be ask'd as the price of any Supplyes and that as I thought it very absurd in a Country Fellow when he called for a quantity of an Opiate Medicine his Doctor had prescribed to ask angrily shall I have no more for my Money when as if he had had more it would have poysoned him it will generally appear as absurd on any Supplies to swallow up so much of the executive part of the Regal Power as would prove in effect destructive to the Body Politick We shall have so much occasion to come for shelter under the Branches of Regal Power that we shall not be tempted by any leisure to lay its roots bare And considering that even in Republicks both Ancient and Modern there hath been a Parenthesis of Dictatorian or Monarchic Power in times of War and that all the times that all the living now in Christendom are to be fencing with all the way in their March to the Grave may perhaps be times of War I may well account that the Sir Politics will every where appear ridiculous who shall trouble the World with Models of Republicks Agrarian Laws and Rotations and spending time in the contrivance of Ballotting Boxes and raise a dust in mens eyes with the Ballance of Land at home when we shall be forced still to look out sharp to keep the ballance of Power exact in the whole World abroad and shall think time better imployed in notions of the building great Capital Ships to defend our Interest in and by the Ocean then in furnishing such little wooden ware for a Fantastick Oceana and shall essay from an Oceana or Vtopia to introduce an Establishment of one Assembly only to propose and another only to Enact such things as the other shall propose a thing that an English House of Commons would naturally as much loath as to be tyed from eating any meat but what a House of Lords should chew for them and yet is this divided or double-bottom Supream Power of the two Assemblies by our Airy Dreamers made essential for the preventing the Divulsion of their Government I lately mentioned the proponentibus legatis to be the thred of Controversie that ran through the whole Council of Trent and he who reads all Father Pauls History of it will find that question to animate the whole and to be there tota in toto and as it were all in every part of it The chiefest of the Cardinals were the Popes Legates in that Council and they were by their Interest tied sufficiently to propound nothing but what should promote the Papal Power but in Book 6th 't is said That the Pope had advice from his Nuntio in Spain that the most Catholick King was much displeased with the Style of Proponentibus legatis allowed in the first Session and that the Pope excused it as introduced without his privity but that however he would not quit it nor have it permitted that every turbulent person there might propound what
employed to feed perhaps about 20 pair of the hurtful Carnivorous Beasts nay which is more that Heaven should permit such great slaughters of its little Flock to feed the very vitiated fancies of the worst of men as was before insinuated But who can without shame for depraved Mankind and a heart inwardly bleeding think of the result of the Popes Gift of America to the King of Spain where so many Millions of the poor Natives having had no promulgation of the Law of Christianity and were accountable to God only for the violation of the Law of Nature were so unnaturally murthered by the Spaniards that it would seem incredible that God having made of one blood all Nations as 't is said in the Scripture and there being a natural Cognation between all Humane kind as the expression is in the Digests they should depopulate that part of the World of a greater number of Souls than is now living in the flourishing Kingdom of France if that Famous Spanish Bishop Bartholomaeus de las Casas hath made a true Estimate of the Spanish Cruelty in the West-Indies namely that in about 45 years the Spaniards by several monstrous Cruelties put to death 20 Millions of Indians At this rate of murderous Mankinds thus outraging one another the World would seem to be likely to end before it was as I may say to purpose begun I mean the purpose of God Almighty But the thought of the shame of being outwitted by our Neighbour Nations and the fear of being outdone by them in strength populousness and riches and our certain knowledge as was partly before hinted that toward the latter end of the World by the growing populousness of Mankind we must naturally and without any eye on prediction in Scripture more and more hear of Wars and rumours of Wars and the shame of our encouraging a few Traders in Contraband Religions to hope they can ever destroy the Peace and Trade of the Kingdom again must supposing Heretics to be men naturally make the former Mode of killing them appear not more barbarous then ridiculous Sir W. P. having in his excellent Manuscript called Verbum sapienti made excellent Computations of the wealth of the Kingdom and of the value of the People and of the several expences of the Kingdom and of its Revenues and in his last Chapter there considered how to employ the People and with what great industry doth like a Noble Philosopher conclude it with these two Queries and their Answers viz. But when should we rest from this great industry I answer when we have certainly more Money than any of our Neighbour States tho never so little both in Arithmetical and Geometrical Proportion i. e. when we have more years Provision aforehand and more present Effects What then should we busie our selves about I answer in ratiocinations upon the Works and Will of God to be supported not only by the indolency but also by the pleasure of the body and not only by the tranquility but serenity of the mind and this exercise is the natural end of man in this World and that which best disposeth him for his Spiritual Happiness in that other which is to come The motions of the mind being the quickest of all others afford most variety wherein is the very form and being of pleasure and by how much the more we have of this pleasure by so much the more we are capable of it ad infinitum And thanks be to Heaven we have no Isthmus in Nature to dig through which yet by our many hands might be done 'T is but the removal of the broken Fence and bowing Wall of a Religion-Trade which we can well look over and easily see through as now broken and bowing and which is the more loath'd for having so long and so much debarred us from real Trade and real Knowledge and too from real Religion and this flowry Coast will be as free to the feet of us Northern Heretics so called as 't is now to our Eyes and we through the effects of our populousness and being necessitated to industry be secured from any fear of sharing in a Prophetick Calculation that might be called The Burthen of the North made by a late Author of a Discourse of Trade That the French without the use of their Iron will command all the Silver of the North and sweep it away thence by the over-balance of Trade But after all the Souths raillery on the North they will find that the Northern half of the World hath more Earth more Men more Ships and Sea-men more Stars more day and more light of the Gospel and I may add more good nature and frankness more bodily strength and fewer Plagues and Earth-quakes then the Southern And where most people are 't is no Heresy nor Enthusiastic Prophecy to say that there will in time be most Trade which appeared by England's not being afraid to throw the Die of War against both France and Spain in the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr As the over-balance of Trade is insensibly lost in any Country it is likewise so regained and in time will appear regain'd and like health in the body of a man of a strong Vitals after his being seized by and recovered from a Chronical Disease and of the time of the beginning and ending of which by unforeseen Accidents no shadow of a Dial or sound of a Clock could give the indication I shall assign an instance of this in our own Kingdom The Author of Britannia languens calculates 2,50000 l. per Annum to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years brought into England by the balance of its whole Trade in the World. Committees of Parliament have worthily laboured in several Sessions to model and draw Bills for the making us wear our own Woollen Manufactures and many who have writ Books and Proposals about Trade have very honestly endeavoured to perswade us so to do But as the saying is accidit in puncto c. an Accident too low for our States-mens consideration hath for several years caused England to gain more then it did by the aforesaid Balance of Trade viz. the said 2,50000 l. at a Medium for 76 years and this Accident is the general fashion of Womens wearing Crape And because I have conversed with none who has observed the effect of this Accident and which tho seeming small is very momentous and appears as many things in Trade do like great Weights hanging sometimes on small Wires I shall divert your Lordship by Calculating en passant what England gains thereby in such a way as the Nature of the thing will bear and may passable serve to have it done in A pound of Wooll makes 15 yards of Crape Each Female one with another may be supposed to wear about 10 yards of Crape in her Apparel There are in London probably about 100,000 Females that wear Crape It may be supposed that in all England and Wales there being
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
as formerly I will not despair of many of our Dissenters improving hereafter in Principles of Loyalty as likewise of Conformity but hope they will really deserve to be thought as Loyal as they were so de facto by many greater Judges than my self at the time of the beginning of this Discourse and when so many in our Loyal Parliaments were so extravagant in their Charity to Dissenters as to think that St. Peters Ship was the only Fire-Ship and Non-Conformity a quiet trading Merchant-man and being hared with fears and jealousies of Popery were so eager to have the very Laws against Protestant Recusants Repealed But as I hinted the distinguishing between Popish and Protestant Mathematâ—cks to be absurd and as a gross Error about Proportion or Numbers would appear more ridiculous in Archimedes than in an ordinary Mathematician so true Protestants Non-sense or true Protestants Rebellion is to be no favourable Case and the Name of Protestants must not more than that of the Society of Iesus be allowed as a Charm to raise the Devil of Rebellion When Luther and those who of old deserved the Name of True Protestants abroad as great Co-workers with Nature in introducing the Reformation of Religion were almost deafen'd by their Papal Adversaries Out-cryes of the tunica inconsutulis and when particularly as Sleidan tells us in his Commentarys Granvill the Emperors Deputy in an harangue he made to the Citizens of Wormes did so passionately conjure them That they would not tear Christ's seamless Coat the Protestant Populace was so far from being aw'd out of their way by those words as that they gave their Adversaries the Name of Inconsutulistae or the seamless men and as little will any of our false and jesuited Rebellious Dissenters effect any thing but the abuse of the name and thing of Protestancy and the ridiculing themselves by their usurping on a pretence to be TRVE PROTESTANTS It comes here in my way to observe that some of our Dissenters and other Nominal Protestants who are so apt without sense or reason to call others Enemies to the King and Kingdom have really appeared such to both by their having so much encreased Divisions in our State as well as Church and by their having been the Aggressors in the dividing the Populace here by spightful calling of Names which yet I have not thought fit to mention in this Discourse and whereby the Loyal have been forced some way to retaliate not only out of a generous scorn but that they might speak intelligibly such Aggressors have likewise notoriously contributed to the Divisions in the Kingdom by their too much encouraging the Plot-Witnesses and particularly that Recorded Profligate who so desperately perjured himself in the Case of your Lordship and the Earl of Peterborough and a High-born Prince and by extreme acerbity and rancour relating to the Persons of Papists But their most fatal injury to their Country hath been their weakning its Reputation a thing which Kingdoms must necessarily subsist by as well as private Persons through their studied Artifice of making a Popish Plot to be thought so long lifed and when England's reputation for its strength or which is all one for its being united within it self was much more necessary for its well being than in any Conjuncture of time that perhaps ever happen'd Considering therefore that the present State of England doth and that the probable Future State of it will call so peremptorily on all his Majesty's Subjects to preserve their Country by the Exterminium of all Divisions as I think I have not brought any disreputation to my own Judgment by adventuring to predict the necessary growth of Lâ—yalty making all England to become in time one Sober Party so I am sure I have provided for the Reputation of my Country thereby as well as I could I am not so angry as to think that many of our Religionary Recusants will either on the account of the Divine Prayer of the holy Iesus for the uniting his Flock or of any Scripture-predictions of the more pacific temper that Christians shall at last be blest with be thus inclined to endeavour to shew themselves as I may say honest Inconsutulists and to forbear dividing our Realm as formerly but by their Interest so visibly and palpably concerned in the strengthening the Kingdom I suppose necessity of Nature may be instrumental in the accomplishment of such Scripture-predictions and just as the Interest and Concern of the Souldiers in the Gospel who hoped to have Christ's seamless Coat come to their share inclined them not to rend it and to cast Lots for the same and whereby the Scripture was fulfilled as is said in the Gospel I have mentioned it out of the Scripture that the Stork knoweth her appointed times and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming and I may thinking of a great Prince abroad add that the sight of a numberless Flock of Stares making somewhat like a Cloud in the Air and safely flying close together while there is a Falcon towering above them will direct the Populace of several parts of Christendom to Loyalty and to the natural Garranty of Vnion at home under their respective Governors whereby they will be effectually preserved As I have in this Discourse entertained your Lordship with somewhat like a short Historical Account of the accidental encrease and natural decrease of the Numbers of the Papists in several Conjunctures since the Reformation so I shall in my intended Review with the like of those of the Non-Conformists and impartially take notice of the respective Conjunctures of their petulant insolence and whereby I shall shew to what strange Principles of Out-raging our Municipal Laws they were gradually abandoned As a Specimen hereof I shall observe That Ames a Learned Dissenter of the former Age in the Preface of his Puritanismus Anglicanus printed in the year 1610 speaking of the sufferings of the Clerical Dissenters saith That the Crime they were adjudged guilty of in England was Quod obstinaverunt sese contra leges and then goeth on to ask Sed quae tandem illae quarum gratiâ vi tot fideles alià s inculpati Ministri sunt bonis omnibus sedibusque pulsi nam ex altari vivebant dignitatibus functionibus suis exuti faedati etiam existimatione Sunt autem ne nescias non fundamentales Regni leges non vetera Majorum scita aut consulta quorum summam brevem in Magnâ ut appellant Charta conscriptam habemus haec illi Religiosissime colunt horum fidem implorant sed Canones nescio qui in legum fraudem dolo malo confecti à Parliamentario senatu damnati vere sontici quos denique adversus ministros inviti non sine pudore in alios culpae trajectione exercent Authores ipsi c. But we may with horror ask what kind of Laws is it that those have Outraged since 41 and some of them since the year 60 and since a
it saith Concessimus Deo hac praesenti charta confirmavimus pro nobis HAEREDIBVS nostris in perpetuum quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit habeat omnia jura sua integra libertates suas illaesas and whereby the British Churches are secured under a Prince of any Religion from Foreign Arbitrary impositions But indeed the Style current in Magna Charta is that our Kings for themselves and their Heirs forever did grant the Customs and Liberties contained in that Charter to our Ancestors and their Heirs for ever Our Ancestors had no occasion to spend time in seeking Knots in a Bull-rush or hidden Sense in the words HEIRS and the King's HEIRS when so anciently as by the Oath of Fealty which every Person above fourteen years old and every Tythingman was obliged to take publickly at the Court-Leet within which he lived they were sworn to the King and his HEIRS and that Oath was taken a fresh every year by all the Subjects under Edward the Confessor and William the first and is thus set down by Pryn in his Concordia Discors viz. I A. B. do swear that FROM THIS DAY FORWARDS I will be Faithful and Loyal to our Lord the King AND HIS HEIRS c. The instances are innumerable of Allegiance anciently Sworn to our Kings and their Heirs and this one for example occureth to me as Sworn in the time of Edward the 4th viz. Sovereign Lord I Henry Percy become your Subject and Leige-man and promit to God and you that hereafter I Faith and Troth shall bear to you as to my Sovereign Leige-Lord and to your Heirs Kings of England of Life and Limb and of Earthly Worship to Live and Die against all Earthly People and to you and to your Commandments I shall be Obeysant as God me help and his Holy Evangâ—lists 27. Oct. 9. Ed. 4. Claus. 9. Ed. 4. m. 13. in dorso Mr. Pryn likewise in that Book of his beforemention'd saith that there was an ancient Oath of Fealty and Allegiance both by the Subjects of England and Kings Bishops Nobles and Subjects of Scotland made to the Kings of England and Their Heirs as Supreme Lords of Scotland in these words viz. Ero fidelis legalis fidemque legalitatem servabo Henrico Regi Angliae haeredibus suis de vitâ membris terreno honore contra omnes qui possunt vivere mori nunquam pro aliquo portabo arma nec ero in consilio vel auxilio contra eum vel Haeredes suos c. which Oath he saith William King of Scots and all his Nobles Swore to King Henry the second haeredibus suis sicut ligio Domino suo and John Balliol John Comyn with all the Nobles of Scotland to King Edward the first and his Heirs He there likewise gives an account how the Nobles of England Swore Fealty to Richard King of England and to his Heirs against all men and how the Citizens of London Swore the like Oath and That if King Richard should die without Issue they would receive Earl John his Brother for their King and Lord juraverunt ei fidelitatem Contra omnes homines salva fidelitate Richardi Regis fratris sui as Hoveden relates And he moreover cites the Record of the Writ issued to all the Sheriffs of England soon after the Birth of Edward the 1 st Son and Heir to King Henry the 3 d. To Summon all Persons above 12 years old to Swear Fealty to him as Heir to the King and to submit themselves faithfully to him as their Liege Lord after his Death This form of the Oath in the Writ is there mention'd to that effect viz. Quod ipsi salvo homagio fidelitate nostrâ quâ nobis tenentur cui in vitâ nostrâ nullo modo renunciare volumus fideles eritis Edwardo filio nostro primogenito ita quod si de nobis humanitus Contigerit eidem tanquam Haeredi nostro domino suo ligio erunt fideliter intendentes eum pro domino suo ligio habentes And he there shews how they were Summon'd and Sworn accordingly and further how in the Parliament of H. 4. The Lords Spiritual and Tempâ—ral and Commons were Sworn to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King to the Prince and his Issue and to every one of his Sons severally succeeding to the Crown of England And he there mentions more Oaths taken to our Kings and their Heirs of the like Nature The Consideration hereof would make any one wonder at the Confidence of a late Learned Lawyer and positive pretender to Omniscience in our English Antiquities and Records who in his Detestable Book called The Rights of the Kingdom and which contains a farrago of Impious Anti-monarchical Principles and Printed in London 1649. and there to the Scandal of the English and Protestant Name lately Re-printed by some Factious Anti-Papists hath averred That our Allegiance was of old tyed to the Kings Person not unto his Heirs and for the Kings Heirs saith he there I find them not in our Allegiance And he mentions the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance as enjoyn'd in Queen Elizabeth's and King Iames's time respectively to be the first that were made to the Kings Person and his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS But to return to the Cause in hand 'T is sufficient for the Obligation I press that HEIRS and SUCCESORS are so clearly expressed in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy And tho the Statute of 1 â— Elizabethae in the Clause of the Annexing Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction to the Crown useth the style of Your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm shall have full Power c. as the Statue of the Supremacy 26o. Henry 8th runs in the Style of our Sovereign Lord his Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realms shall be taken accepted and reputed the only Supreme Head and tho the Oath in the 35 th H. the 8 th Cap. 1. that relates to the bearing Faith Truth and true Allegiance to the Kings Majesty and to his Heirs and Successors c. be further thus expressed viz. And that I shall accept repute and take the Kings Majesty his Heirs and Successors when they or any of them shall enjoy his place to be the only Supreme Head c. and tho' the old Oath of the Mayor of London and other Cities and Towns throughout England and of Bayliffs or other chief Officers where there are no Mayors runs in the style of Swearing That they shall well and Loyally Serve the King in the Office of Mayor in the City of L. and the same City shall keep surely and safely to the use of our Lord the King of England and of his Heirs Kings of England might give occasion for that great empty and big-sounding Sophism of Sir W. I. in his famous Speech wherein he said That we are Sworn to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors but not Obliged to any during
to the Persons of the Papists and likewise of the Divines of our Church but was afterwards sufficiently sensible of their intolerable rancour and animosities against both and of the infamous use and application they made of the Iesuits Doctrine of Calumny and of the Weapons they borrowed from Parson's of the Succession to promote the detestable Exclusion and of their borrowing from Athens and old Rome the Thunderbolts of their old REPVBLICAN Curses viz. of ENEMY c. and throwing them at the most Loyal of our Patriots and absurdly calling them Enemies to the King and Kingdom because they asseâ—ted the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy in opposing the Exclusion By that kind of Republican Curses they gave us the omen of what they would have been at And so extravagant was the use of that anathema in the late Conjuncture that when one in a great Assembly moved against Sir G. I. a Person that all the Loyal must own for his steadiness to the Hereditary Monarchy and for his having first kindled that great Zeal for Loyalty which doth now like a wall of Fire defend our Metropolis that he might be voted such an Enemy as aforesaid a Burgess for that City as I was info m'd did Ridiculously and Presumtuously move that he might be voted an Enemy to Mankind But it was easie for such as had took Gods name in vain so to take Mankinds I shall not degenerate from the Moral Offices of Charity to mens Persons if I call the Exâ—lusion that would have broke the Balance of the Monarchy that was the old Balance of the World enmity to Mankind but shall without my here calling any men names leave it to the soft voice of God's Herald called Conscience to suggest it that tho a man who was deluded a while by the error of the Exclusion that would have been so fatal to the Realm might by reason of any good intentions so for a while ill guided not deserve perhaps to be judged to be an enemy to the King and Kingdom formaliter yet that if after Consideration and all thoughts made about his Sworn Allegiance he doth not make a stand but shall at any time again endeavour the going over the Rubicon of the Bloud Royal in its Line of Succession stated by God and Nature and the defending his false-steps beyond it by Association or Arms â—I say I shall leave it to Conscience to tell him or warn him by the indeleble Characters of natural right there so legibly Engraved how much he will deserve the censure of such an enemy as hath been mentioned and shall be glad he may be thereby to better effect warn'd then Caesar was from his Vsurpatioâ— by the great Senatus Consultum which Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law Printed in the year 1530. saith that he saw remaining Engraved on a Marble Pillar by the River Rubicon viz. Iussu mandatúve P. R. Commilito armate quisquis es Manipularisve Centuriove turmaeve legionarie hic sistito vexillumve sinito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa ductum commeatumve traducito Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo adâ—ersus praecepta ierit fueritve adjudicatus esto P. R. H. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit penatesque è sacris penetralibus asportaverit S. P. Q. R. Sanctio Plebisciti Sâ— ve C. He likewise saith that In Portu Arimini alterum est adhuc ejusdem sententiae senatusconsultum and which appearing to be a Noble piece of Curiosity and expressive of the same sense wiâ—h the former tho with some difference of words I shall here entertain the Reader with viz. Imp. Mil. Tiro armate quisquis es hic sistito vexillumve sinito arma deponito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa arma exercitumve traducito Si quis ergo adversus praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto Hostis P. R. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit sacrosve penates è penetralibus asportaverit Sanctio plebisciti senatusconsulti ultra hos fines arma proferre liceat nemini Rivallius having cited these Senatusconsulta saith that Quibus senatusconsultis Caesar fortassis territus cum è Galliâ rediens ad Rubiconem usque pervenisset adversus Pompeium populumque Romanum bellum gesturus esset militibus dixisse fertur et etiam nunc regredi possimus quod si Ponticulum transierimus omnia armis agenda erunt And thus let all members of theâ— true Church Militant in these Realms by what name or title soever known who have been tempted to think the Exclusion lawful thank Heaven that they have lived to repent of the same and that even now they may go back from the sinfullness of such thought and consider that if they had passed over this Rubicon they were to expect beside the fate of their Involving their Country in War the other tremendous one of being found fighters against God to whom they were sworn I have little further to add but to acquaint the Judicious READER that I desire if he findeth any thing here-said that he may reasonably think to be not according to the Theological measures of the Church of England or the Political ones of the State or against the moral Offices of Charity toward the Persons of 〈◊〉 men or against the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians tho I know of no such thing here said it may by him be taken as non dictum There is no keeping of Passion in number weight and measure and particularly of that of Anger The Excellent Bishop of Downe that was Doctor Ieremy Taylor hath often told me That when he was to return an answer to a Friends Letter that had Anger in it he never concern'd himself to return an answer to the angry part of it because he considered that the anger of his Friend was over before the Letters arrival But against all the Irreligionary Principles of the Iesuits and particularly that of the Founding Dominion in Grace I would crave aid from Posterity for the continuance of my Indignation in the known words of O me propè lassum juvate Posteri but that the Pope hath saved me the labour and so I hope those Principles in them are retiring to theâ—r Eternal rest and I desire not to hinder their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that no pious Roman Catholick may labour under the weight of being Censured as one who is necessarily to believe and practice some Principles beforementioned out of the LATERAN Council I have mentioned various things that may be of use to that effect and perhaps more satisfactory than what hath by any of their Church been said who have denyed it to be a General Council Such denyal will not effectually do their work since Cardinal Perron hath as I said shew'd it to be a general one and his reputation for his profound Judgment and Learning being so great and such that the late Learned Lord Faulkland the Secretary of State was wont to say That Baronius and