Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n
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A60808
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Some necessary disquisitions and close expostulations with the clergy and people of the Church of England, touching their present loyalty written by a Protestant.
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Protestant.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing S4528; ESTC R2319
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38,028
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44
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to His Majesty as far as Honest and Dutiful Words can express assuring him of their Loyalty and Prayers for his long and prosperous Reign They humbly tell Him also that to his Three Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland he hath now established to himself a fourth Kingdom in the Hearts of those his formerly oppressed Subjects which as I believe to be true so was it modestly spoken inasmuch as the Dissenters are known to be far exceeding the quantity of a fourth part of the People of the three Kingdoms Several others testify their joy in that so good an opportunity is given them to express the truth of their Loyalty which the Church of England had hitherto presumed to have been entailed wholly on themselves A great many engage to Live and Die with him to the utmost of their lives and fortunes But passing by all others I would especially mark those who in the Capacity of a Grand Jury thank the King for his Declaration as it has prevented honest Neighbours from indicting one another in the things of Religion which to many Consciencious Men was a very great burthen and to the whole Kingdom a greater vexation then I can now stand to speak of begiting ill will and irreconsitable differences between one and the other of his Majesties Subjects which being by this means now taken away it is hoped their old Correspondency will be henceforth renewed in a true love of each Man to his Neighbour In the midst of this happy Union between His Majesty and his Dissenting Protestant Subjects the Church of England like the Churlish Elder Brother mentioned by our Saviour in the Parable of the Prodigal stand at a distance and Grumble They will neither thank their Princely Parent for the Favour He vouchsafeth to themselves nor will they come in to rejoyce with their Younger Brethren upon their Dutiful return and the Kings kind reception of them a thing so much the more culpable since none of the fatted Calfs I mean the Church Revenues are in the least killed for them but are as they were before wholly in the Church of Englands own Possession 'T is almost beyond rehearsals the dislike they shew of this Vnion as if they delighted to keep up the same or raise other and worse Confusions during his present Majesties Reign as they begot in the time of his four last Predecessors The bond of this Vnion which I may say is His Majesties Gracious Declaration many of them can scarce hear named but they are ready to fly back like Men that had trod on a Serpent One shakes the Head another bites the Lip a third Scouls and Frowns with as many other Evidences of their dislike as Bodily Gestures can shew And it would have been well could they have contented themselves within the Bounds of those tacite Intimations of their displeasure but this they could not do they must also break into Words and open Censures such as I have named before I do not charge all with this but I must say I daily find and meet with an abundance too many that are so doing insomuch as I think it highly necessary for every Man in his place to put a Stop as far as he can to the further progress of it For my self I know no better way that I can take then to mind them of the Inconsistency of such deportment with their boasted of Loyalty a thing of which they have seemed to be as tender as of the Aple of their Eye And if they are still so serious therein as they would be esteemed they should as I conceive judge themselves not a little concerned in a Question I have here to propose to them and the rather because I undertake to maintain the Negative The question is plainly this viz. Whether it be Consistent with that high degree of Loyalty so much boasted of by the Church of England for their Preachers in the manner they have done to Preach against their Kings Religion and both them and their Church Members to speak as they too frequently do against His Proceeding by his late Declaration This question is the bottom of all my following Expostulations wherein that I may proceed with the more perspecuity I shall do no more then make inquiry into two things First I shall examine wherein the highest degree of Loyalty according to the sence of the Scriptures may be said to consist Secondly I shall inquire how the present Behaviour of many of the Church of England both Clergy and Layety agrees with that Loyalty which I shall discribe In the first I am guided by two Texts of Scripture from whence I may argue as much as I shall need to my purpose the one is that of Rom. 13 1 2. Let every Soul be Subject to the higher Power where Subjection is required to be given for Conscience sake which makes it become a Religious Act. To give Subjection only because we cannot avoid it or because we are compelled is the Subjection of an Infidel or a Turk rather than a Christian The opposite to this is Resistance which is twofold First That which is by open Violence to the Person of him that is our Soveraign or to his Subordinate Ministers The second is when we Disobey or Speak against His Precepts Edicts or the Declaration of His Will which be sends forth in the Execution of His Government for not to Submit or to Speak against what he Directs is to resist So Luke 21.15 To gain-say and resist are made the same thing a Man may make resistance as well by his Tongue as his Sword from whence I infer that one part of the highest degree of Loyalty is a cheerful and willing compliance with the declared will of the King in all things without gain-saying not contrary to the Law of God The other Passage is that of St. Peter where we are bid to Honour the King This is a degree much higher than a bare forbaring of Resistance or disputing his Commands for a Man may give Obedience and be outwardly Silent towards Him who in his Heart he Slighteth To Honour the King contains in it many Acts both Internal and External our Internal Honouring Him lyeth chiefly in that reverential Esteem we have of His Person as he hath the stamp of Gods Authority on him the valuation we give to His Vertues The Faith we have in his Words and Promises the Acquiessence of out Minds in the Administrations of His Government and judging the Best of His Actions the contrary to these are Jealousies Prejudices all bad wishes and evil surmisings and judging of His Actions in the worst sence The External way of Honouring Him consists likewise of several parts as when we are in his Presence to use those bodily Gestures as may best and most decently express our inward reverence and sence of his Dignity the giving him his Honourable Titles To speak Reverently of him in the hearing and presence of others and prevent what we can all others
in that concern What the discourses of the Church of England People have been and still are upon this Subject I have mentioned already I am not so in love with repeating ill Languages as to name it over again It is no wonder the People should talk at the rate they have done while they hear and see what has been said and done by their Leaders in the Clergy The Declaration was no sooner dispersed about the Kingdom but Doctor Stillingfleet Re-prints his Sermon called the Mischief of Separation Preacht before the Lord Mayor of London against the Dissenters Worship in as sharp a manner as his wonted Oratory useth to do towards those he hath a mind to lash of which he may hear more at another time What he intended by the new setting it out himself best knows I inquire not after it I shall only inform him that this Act of his is looked upon by many as a direct affront to the Declaration as if he would have the People to believe that His Majesty had tollerated a Mischievous thing The Oxford Clergy do as good as call it by the opprobrious Name of a Suspected Artifice for when their Liocesan moved them to make some publick Testimony as a few others of their Church had done of their thankful sense of what the King had declared touching their being protected in their present Station and Worship they excuse themselves by making it one Reason of their refusal that by doing so they should forfeit their Reputation with the Nobility Gentry and Commonalty of their Cummunion and that it may tempt those Persons to disgust them for their rash Compliance with suspected Artifices Language I should have scarce expected from the greatest Clown in the Country however I perceive they resolved to speak their thoughts Freely by which we may a little know their Minds From the Preaching I spoke of before the People were taught how to form their Jealousies against the King as that he would alter their Religion and these Men now tell them the Declaration is the Artifice they suspect for the bringing it about If they say I strain this too far and put upon it a sense they intend not I must then pray them to explain their own sense more fully and tell us what it is that in that Expression they do intend for until they do I cannot understand them otherwise than I now Write there being such a near Relation between the Peoples Addressing to the King and the Declaration it self from whence they take the occasion as none can hardly say the one is a Suspected Artifice but they must say the other is so too But there are other strains not inferiour to this I have last named They will not thank the King by an Address because forsooth it will make the Exercise of their Established Religion to be Precarious As if when a Father shall say to any Son at his coming to Age SON Care was taken upon the Marriage of your Mother to setle an Estate upon you which now you shall injoy so far from any interuption from me as I promise to give you the best protection I can in your possession of it The Son shall say Sir I must not thank you for any thing of this least I make my Title to what I have too Precarious I wish they come not at last to say we must not thank Almighty God for the Spiritual Blessings he bestows upon us by his Covenant of Grace since that Covenant was made and Established with our fore Fathers long before we had a being and that in a firmer manner than all our humane Establishments can pretend to be I cannot believe otherwise but that all subordinate relations stand bound upon every signal Testimony of Special Favour they receive from their Superiors to make their acknowledgements of thanks whatsoever Obligation they may conceive their superiors might have before-hand put themselves under while it was in their Power to have done otherwise with us if they had pleased nor do I see any thing in all these Doctors Arguments that is like to alter my Opinion Had all the People in England told me four or five years ago that I should have seen and heard such things as these and others I have lately met with from divers of our Church Men towards the King I do professedly declare I should never have believed them I hear also they have Question'd or Disobey'd rather his Orders in disposing of some Places which his Majesty would fill up or where he thinks it convenient to make an Alteration Ay! is it come to this alreeady will they thus dispute it with their King if they begin thus I know not where they will make an end as Men when once but of the way of their Duty no body knows where they will Stop There is one thing more in these Oxford Mens Reasons for their Non-Addressing with their thanks to the King which I cannot pass by without some Remark They say they do not offer those Reasons as the sense of their own Minds only but undertake to affirm them to be the Opinion also of the best part of the Clergy of the Kingdom by the best I presume they mean the greatest part but how they came so soon to know each others Minds in so great a Kingdom as this is unto many no small wonder I hope they are not hatching another Association for securing the Protestant Religion as that which they so much exploded in one of the late Parliaments if they are much good may do them I intend not to be of the Fraternity but supposing them to have this intelligence one from another more then I am aware of I may still wonder how they undertake so far for the Nobility and Gentry as to know their thoughts so much in the case while they seem to fear that thanking the King for his promised Favours will forfeit their Reputation with them as Men that had too rashly complyed with suspected Artifices I think by the Carriage of many both of the Nobility and Gentry towards the Kings Person and his afairs in the Court and Country I may reasonably conclude they give them no grounds for such a Conjecture In my apprehension therefore this looks too much like a Substile insinuating their own dislikes into those that are in that honourable Station that thereby they may be pre-ingaged against his Majesties proceedings than any real ground they had to fear their displeasure if they should have returned the Kings thanks for the assurance he hath given of his protecting and Supporting their Church To say no worse of the matter it is no fair dealing towards persons so much their betters nor hath it so much as one spark of Loyalty in it towards the King How the people should avoid the being ensnared in their Loyalty by such bad Examples as these I no waies apprehend my fears I must profess are not a few and I shall crave so much leave as to