us and recover us into a firm Peace and Union by just and necessary provisions for their support Whilst the Government is preserved the Church is safe and secure for no man can fear that the King and the States of the Realm will ever give place to wild Fanaticism and suffer so excellent an Ecclesiastical constitution as we enjoy to be subverted for any Extravagancies that shall deserve the name of Fanaticism But the pretences of our Neuters for their Neutrality are not more groundless than their reasonings are absurd by which they oppose the only remedies to the Evils that now beset us and the greater we fear That absurd Opinion Dominium fundatur in gratiâ is charg'd upon those that are for the Exclusion of the Duke and they think by pronouncing this piece of absurd Latine they have at once put to silence and shame all the reasons of Nature Religion and State that urge it and require it That there is nothing can be more absurd than that Dogma will appear for that almost whole Dutch Systems of false and paltry Theology go to the making of it in the most tolerable sense it can have and for that it hath been improv'd into a most villainous sense to give countenance to the vilest Outrages of the German Anabaptists But Dominium signify'd Property not Government and Rule until our admirably accomplished young Divines of this last Age out of their great skill in the Latine Tongue would have it so for the service of the great Defender of the Protestant Religion and of the Church of England All Rights as well Natural as Civil are forfeitable by Crimes in such measure and degree as Laws appoint and as good Government requires Notwithstanding Grace be not admitted a good Title to any thing that the Saint will desire though of the Roman stamp I confess Natural Rights but they are very few are not controlable by Laws but are by Laws to be defended and the free use of them to be justifyed and allowed most certainly not to be condemned by any Civil Authority A right in Nature every man hath to live until he hath forfeited his Life Whatever he doth that is necessary for his preservation is and ought to be justifyed by all Laws though he kills though he breaks the Civil Inclosure of Property which cannot and was never intended to shut out the Natural Right that every man hath in the last extreamities Every man hath a right to his plank in a Wreck though the owner of the Ship perish by him for want of it All the Authority of all the Legislators in the world united cannot make unlawful any Act that is done in self-preservation Sub moderamine inculpatae tutelae where the man is innocent But Civil Rights are without iniquity alterable and controleable by Laws and by acts of Government ordainable to the publick good Nothing is so intirely perfectly and abstractly Civil as Government the perfect Creature of men in society made by pact and consent and not otherwise most certainly not otherwise and therefore most certainly ordainable by the whole Community for the safety and preservation of the whole to which it is in the reason and nature of it intirely design'd But we are told by some that will not contest the lawfulness of Exclusion That we trouble our selves with the fears of an imaginary danger That we are endeavouring a remedy against the Evil that may never happen That we impertinently trouble our selves about providing that which we may never want or need That the Duke may dye before the King And if the Duke should survive he neither can nor will change our Religion That it is not lawful for any man Occupare facinus quod timet and to destroy the person whom he fears I wish it were considered on the other side That if the Duke dye before the King there is no wrong done to the Duke by Excluding him It is onely his hopes and expectations that are cut off for the preventing our fears a possibility of hurt provided against by shutting out the possibility of effecting it and that not by any hurt to his Person but meerly by disabling it a Remedy proportioned and suited to the disease we desire to be eased of our fears by a just security against them But if the Duke should certainly survive the King and could and would change our Religion they who thus discourse seem to allow it lawful to exclude him But for that they say the Duke if King will not or cannot change our Religion let every man consider his present Will and Power and how far he hath proceeded towards it before he is entred into his Kingdom These silly dreamers dishonour him whilst they pretend to serve him His Princely Virtues make him the more dreadful to a Protestant Kingdom They who thus talk make him a bad man of that bad Religion weak in his conduct and feeble in his power But how can this be when they have instructed the Nation into absolute obedience and have measured the duty of obedience by the Kings pleasure and not by Laws That the pleasure of a King is irresistable some of them will not allow passive obedience to be at all obedience Besides all caution is proportioned to the greatness of the Evils feared No wise man ever left the sum of his Affairs to Chance Where the Evils are not to be remedied or resisted when they happen the caution is just that prevents them If there be no remedy against the Evil we fear but the Exclusion the Exclusion is not onely lawful but commendable And for this we have the Authority of the Illustrious Grotius under his general Doctrine and determination Lib. 2. Cap. 1. De Jure belli ac pacis It is Engraven in Capital Letters upon the Foundation-Stones of all the Governments in the world That any person unfit for Government shall be Excluded from Governing Though Fools cannot read it until the foundations be removed and the Government subverted That his Royal Highness hath rendred himself unfit for the Government hath been declared more than once by the unanimous consent of all the States of the Realm and how far the King hath been of the same opinion may be conjectured by those Expedients that have been offered in several Parliaments by Privy-Councellors and Ministers of State and the Dukes greatest Friends Onely such were those of the late Parliaments that opposed the Bill of Exclusion but even these were for sequestring the Royal and Soveraign Powers and Authorities during the Life of a Popish Successor and to leave him content with the Name of a King onely An Indignity this both to the Name and Office a thing repugnant to the Fundamental Constitutions This tends to destroy the Monarchy it self It points directly to the Evils of the late times and would make the Parliament Sequestrators of the Crown But such absurdities those that appeared most his Friends would run us upon rather than a Popish
King and Estates of Parliament is as antient as any thing can be remembred of the Nation The attempt of altering it in all Ages accounted Treason and the punishment thereof reserved to the Parliament by 25 Edw. 3. The conservancy of the Government being not safely to be lodg'd any where but with the Government it self Offences of this kind not pardonable by the King because it is not in his power to change it This is our Government and thus it is established and for Ages and immemorial time hath thus continued a long Succession of Kings have recognized it to be such And just now when we are under the dread of a Popish Successor some of our Clergy are illuminated into a mystery that hath been concealed from the beginning of Governments to this day from the wisdom of all Princes and Ministers of State That any authority in the Government not derived from the King and that is not to yeild to his absolute Will was rebellious and against the Divine Right and Authority of Kings in the Establishment against which no usuage or prescription to the contrary or in abatement of it is to be allowed That all Rights are ambulatory and depend for their continuance upon his pleasure So that though the Reformation was made here by the Government established by Law and hath acquired civil Rights not to be altered but by the King and the three Estates These men yet speak say you as if they envied the Rights of their own Religion and had a mind to reduce the Church back again into a state and condition of being persecuted and designed she should be stripped of her Legal Immunities and Defensatives and brought back to the deplorable helpless condition of Prayers and Tears do utterly abandon and neglect all the Provisions that God's providence hath made for her protection Nay by this their new Hypothesis they put it by Divine Right into the power of a Popish Successor when he pleaseth at once by a single indisputable and irresistable Edict to destroy our Religion and Government And these opinions you say they are the more inclined to entertain for that they believe no Plot but a Presbyterian Plot for of them they believe all ill and call whom they please by that hated name and boldly avow that Popery is more eligible than Presbytery for by that they shall have greater Revenues and more Authority and Rule over the Lay-men This is a heavy Charge if true but it is imputable I am sure but to a few and not so generally as some malevolent men of the Popish Faction are industriously busie to have it For if it were I confess it might choque the constancy Resolution and Zeal of the most addicted to the service of the Church-men and make them at least very indifferent in their Concerns For these mistakes are so gross and inexcusable that they ought if they could perish by themselves to be permitted to suffer the smart of their own follies and to be corrected by the evils they are drawing down upon themselves with their own hands They deserve to suffer as betrayers of their own Country To be prosecuted with greater shame and ignominy by all of the Reformed Religion than the Traditores were by the Antient Christians These their deserting of the true Christian Faith being much less excusable than their fault that deserved that name and of greater mischief as of deeper malignity How many of the Clergy-men are thus misled we know not but they seem many more than they are because they are most in view and come often under observation frequent publick houses and talk loud because they want the Complement of their Preferments But certainly Sir what you say to be the declared Opinions of some Clergy-men is the business now of the Papists to propagate Hoc Ithacus velit magno mercantur Atridae These are agreeable to and indeed make up the most modern Project and Scheme of the Popish Plot. Since the discovery of their first Design of killing the King and massacring of the Protestants they have taken such courage by observing how little power we have to prevent their Design that they have us in scorn and in the vilest contempt They now think that we are not worth destroying but by our own hands that we are not worthy of their trouble or the charge of Executioners of their providing How entertaining is it to his Holiness to find the Church of England the impregnable Bulwark of the Reformed Religion easily fall into his hands by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons without the trouble of attacking her either by Force or Argument which have hitherto wanted success and such attempts always attended with dishonour and mischief to his See How pleasant will it be to him to see us perish and our destruction to be from our selves With this he will answer all the irrefragable Apologies of the Church of England for her departure from the Communion of the Romish Church Then he will say with triumph our Church destroyed her self and perished by a Divine Fate for her unwarrantable and Sacrilegious Schism for so he will call our Follies and impute them to Divine infatuations The manner of our destruction will be a better Argument and of more force against the Doctrine of the Reformation than all the Arguments of all the Doctors of that Church to this day For this purpose since the Discovery of the Popish Plot it is that Sir Robert Filmers Books were Re-printed together and recommended by the Title-page and the Publick Gazet to our reading Since the Discovery of the Plot we have had variety of Books Printed to the same purpose viz To prove that all Kings as Kings are absolute by Divine Right Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have had men imployed to search all our antient Records and Histories to find out something more antient than our Parliaments as now constituted that it may serve as a pretence to take them away Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have the memory of our late calamitous War revived to raise a Panick fear of another and to make the King believe that the genius of the Nation is Rebellious and that the Protestant Religion it self is to be apprehended by Kings It is difficult to tell how that late unhappy War began or how it came to issue so Tragically in the Death of the late King though we know how it ended viz. The Nation recovered within twelve years after the most deplorable Death of that excellent King into a renowned Loyalty and in spight of a great Armed Power never before foil'd ever victorious then kept on foot for the Interest of a very few men restored our present King may his Reign be long and happy to the Government of his Kingdoms without the least assistance of any of the Cavalier-party and oblig'd a wary General in the head of a factious and republican Army to Loyalty Nay within that time also
when it is made apparent that these mistakes are made serviceable to the Popish Plot and the means which the Popish party prosecute to compass and bring about the ruine of our Church But that nothing may be wanting that lies in my poor power for pulling their Foot out of the Snare I shall more distinctly consider them First I shall desire them to consider what our Government is and where the true knowledge of it is to be found And where can it be found but in our Statute-Books the Commentaries of our Law the Histories of our Government and of the Kingdom Search them if you be at leisure if you are not consult those that have read them and whose business and employment it is to understand them and you cannot fail to be informed That the King hath no power to make Laws that both Houses of Parliament must joyn with the King in making a Law It can with no more reason be concluded that the King hath the Legislative Power because his Assent makes the Bills in Parliament Laws than it can because the third Unit added to two makes a Triad that the other two do not go to the making of that number When a matter 's moved from the King in Parliament to pass into a Law the Commons consent last The Letters Patents of Ed. 3. for making the Eldest Son of a King in Succession Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal Sir E. Cook 8. R. was confirmed as they must have been otherwise they would have been void by the House of Commons And yet we will not say that the House of Commons can make a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cornwal And yet upon no better reason than this some men will talk as if they believed themselves that the Legislative power is in the King when no King of England yet ever pretended to it but by their process of Law have punished such officious and mischievous Knaves They also will tell you that the Laws are the measures of our Allegiance and the Kings Prerogative and declare the terms of Obedience and Government That a Legislative authority is necessary to every Government and therefore we ought not to want it and therefore Parliaments in which our Government hath placed the making of Laws cannot be long discontinued nor their Conventions rendred illusory and in vain which is all one as to want them That to Govern by Laws implieth that great fundamental Law that new Laws shall be made upon new emergencies and for avoiding unsufferable mischiefs to the State By the Statutes of 4 Ed. 3. c. 14. 36 Ed. 3. c. 10. it is provided that Parliaments be holden once every year The Statute of this King required a Parliament every three years which being an affirmatory Law doth not derogate from those of Ed the 3. But if the King doth not call a Parliament once in a year he neglects these Laws and if he delays calling a Parliament three years he neglects the other Law of his own time too And for that he is by the Law intrusted with the calling of Parliaments he is at liberty to call them within the times appointed And that Laws ought to be made for Redress of mischiefs that may ensue appears by the Statute of provisors 25 E. 3 cap. 23. In which we have these words Whereupon the Commons have prayed our said Soveraign Lord the King that sith the right of the Crown of England and the Law of the said Realm is such that upon the mischiefs Dammage which happeneth to this Realm be ought and is bound of the Accord of his said People in his Parliament thereof to make Remedy and Law in avoiding the mischief and damage which thereof cometh which that King agreed to by his Royal Assent thereto given I dare be bold to say that never any Bill in Parliament was lost and wanted the Royal Assent that was promoted by the general desires of the people If Popery therefore which is the greatest mischief that ever threatned this Kingdom can be kept out by a Law we ought to have such a Law and nothing can hinder such a Law to be past for that purpose but want of an universal desire to have it I desire these Gentlemen to consider how they will answer it to our Saviour at the last day if they suffer his true Religion and the professors of it to be destroyed and persecuted when nothing but their desires of a thing lawful to be had and of right due was requisite to prevent it Their sufferings will be just and righteous from God if their sin occasioneth it and very uncomfortable to themselves The extent of the Legislative Authority is nowhere to be understood but by our Acts of Parliament in which it hath been exercised and used and by such Acts that declare the extent of its power By the 13 Eliz. cap. 1. it is made Treason during that Queens Life and forfeiture of Goods and Chattels afterwards To hold maintain affirm that the Queen by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the Crown of this Realm and the descent limitation inheritance and Government thereof And this authority was exercised by Entailing the Crown in Parliament in the times of Richard the 2d Henry the 4th Henry the 6th Edward the 4th Richard the 3d Henry the 7th thrice in the time of Henry 8th and upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of England and Spain were Entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low-Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament Those that are truly Loyal to our present Soveraign have reason to recognize with high satisfaction that such a power of altering and limiting the descent of the Crown is duly lodged in the King and States of the Realm For under the Authority of an Act of Parliament of the Kingdom of Scotland we derive our selves to the happiness of his Government and He his Title to the Crown of Scotland which drew to him the Imperial Crown of England For Robert Stewart first King of Scotland of that Family lived in concubinate with Elizabeth Mure and by her had three Sons John Robert and Alexander afterwards he Married Eufame Daughter to the Earl of Ross and after was Crowned King of Scotland He had by her Walter Earl of Athol and David Earl of Straherne When Eufame his wife died he Married Elizabeth Mure. After that by one Act of Parliament he made his natural Children first Noble that is to say John Earl of Carrick Robert Earl of Menteith and Alexander Earl of Buchquhane And shortly after by another Parliament he limited the Crown in Tail Successively to John Robert and Alexander his Children by Elizabeth Mure
patience declared it self to be of Heaven and of a divine Original according to the Prophesies on that behalf it took possession of the Empire Crowns and Scepters became submitted to the Cross The Christians acquired a civil right of Protection and Immunity which they ought not they cannot relinquish and abandon no more than they can destroy themselves or suffer Violence and Cruelty to destroy the Innocent Such as thus perish shall never wear a Martyrs Crown but perish in the next world for perishing in this This will be interpretatively Crucifying Christ afresh after he is received up into Glory i. e. after his Religion is exalted into Dignity and Honour and civil Authority If the Senate of Rome had been Christians they would never have given up the Government to a Pagan Augustus with a power to him and his Successors to make Laws for extirpating the Christian Faith What is said of the Christian Religion and Paganism holds between the Reformed Religion and Popery If any man is so vain as to say that an unalterable course of Succession to the Crown is established amongst us by Divine Right I say he is a man fitted to believe Transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope he is deeply lapsed into Fanaticism he dreams when he is awake and his Dreams are Dreams of phrensie There are some things so false that they cannot be disproved as some things are so evidently true that they cannot be proved This Proposition hath no colour to ground it self upon no medium to prove it no argument for it which is to be answered nor is there any thing more absurd than it self to reduce it to But if any shall adde that this Doctrine is the Doctrine of the Reformation and adventure to tell the people so they are the most impudent falsaries that ever any Age produced when there is scarce a Child but hath heard what was done said and maintained by the Clergie of England in the Case of Mary Queen of Scots a Popish Successor in the earliest time of our Reformation here in England Our Age is blessed with a Clergie renownedly Learned and Prudent By the Providence of God and the Piety of our Ancestors they possess good though not to be envyed Revenues and Honours It is scarce possible they should have many among them that can countenance a proposition so wickedly impious and sacrilegious That we cannot have new Laws for the preservation of our Religion but must lose the old at the pleasure of a Popish Successor against not their own interest and the Rights of the Church but against the Rights and Liberty of Religion it self For she is capable of Franchises and Immunities which ought above all things to be most zealously asserted and defended by her Ministers Can they themselves with their own hands ever pull down her Hedg and destroy her Defensatives and expose her helpless to the rage of her implacable Enemies and suspend all the Legal security she hath for her preservation upon the Life of our present King whom God long preserve If Kings be admitted to have a power to make Laws one Proclamation may establish the Popish Religion amongst us which the Papal Bulls so long as that See continues will never be able to effect Next to Religion her self the Revenues of the Church challenge their faithful care for they are at best but Usu-fructuary Trustees of her Endowments for the Succession which they will wretchedly betray to an Arbitrary Successor if they do not repress such Opinions that pretend to change the Government into an absolute jure Divinity Monarchy which will leave nothing jure divino but it self and the Popedom Kings for their so doing have the authority of Sir Robert Filmer who affirms in his Treatise called the Power of Kings Fol. 1. That the Laws Ordinances Letters Patents Priviledges and Grants of Princes have no force but during their Life if they be not ratified by the express consent or at least by the sufferance of the Prince following who had a knowledge thereof This is but the necessary consequence and result from the Doctrine of the absolute power of a Prince for in such Government the Concessions of a Predecessor can no more oblige the Successor than he can Govern when he is dead and the Successor must be absolute in his time as the Predecessors were in theirs But in vain is the Net spread in the sight of any Bird this deceit is of so gross a thread that it cannot pass with the common people much less upon our Clergy But I will not dissemble what may be the true reason of the seduction of some young good-natured Gentlemen of the Clergy It is thus they perswade themselves that if these principles and opinions of the Vnlimited Power of Kings had been received the late Wars had been prevented Not rightly considering that if such opinions had never been broached or Universally rejected that War could never have ensued and we should together with peace have enjoyed our ancient Government which our Ancestors transmitted to us without that miserable inter-regnum I would not be perversely understood by any man as if I went about to justify our late War This is all I say that every Government once established will continue for ever if all the parts of it would unalterably consent to preserve it to which their natural Allegiance doth oblige them And never any Prince endeavored to change the Government but where part of the people were first willing or content to have it so Those false flatterers that go about to remove the boundaries of power and change the Government are the greatest enemies to the quiet and happy Reigns of Kings and the peace and prosperity of Kingdoms And if they do adventure to call their fellow-Subjects by any opprobrious names of disloyalty because they will not joyn with them in such change they are as absurdly impious and insolent as any Prince or State would be who should challenge another as free and absolute as himself for his Tributary and Vassal and traduce him for a troubler of the World because he would not Compose the Quarrel thus injuriously sought with the surrender of his Crown and Dignity I desire these Gentlemen to consider that the happiness of a Nation is best supported with Truth and Justice This new Doctrine is not true and whosoever entertains a belief of it is not onely barely mistaken but will be led by the mistake into the most mischievous impious and sacrilegious injustice and treachery It is very agreeable to a good man to embrace a proposition with an easie belief that offers the least seeming probability of a security against the miseries of War by all means to be avoided But this Doctrine of the Divinity of Kings is most dangerous to the Peace of Kingdoms for it is pregnant with Wars Besides that it will give bad Princes which sometime hereafter may be Born into the World for such there have been now and then power to
make their Reigns worse than War and Plague and Famine to boot The Panick fear of a change of the Government that this Doctrine occasioned and the Divisions it made among us was the principal cause of the late War It is not without reason that together with these new principles revived since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have a perpetual din and noise of Forty one Then that fatal War began which proceeded to the destruction of the Prince and ruin of the Church and State The remembrance of it is the principal matter that stuffs our weekly Pamphlets and it is brought into common discourse and grown so trival that it is mentioned and heard without abhorrence and regret And what Service this can be to His Majesty I do not understand much better it were that the memory of it were utterly extinct and abolished for ever except onely in the Anniversary of that great Prince that so fell Then I say and then onely is it fit to be remembred when we are on our Knees to God Almighty and in his presence affecting our selves with sorrow and remorse deprecating the like Judgments and bewailing the National Sins that occasioned those For notwithstanding the Glories of that Great Prince his unhappy death and the admired Devotions of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The story of the Calamities of his people all his three Kingdoms involved in War during his Reign and the remembrance of them will be with some Men not very Loyal a stain and diminution to the Glories of the Royal Family In Princes their Calamities are reckoned amongst the abatements of their Honor and meer misfortunes are disgraces and have the same influence upon the minds of the common people as real faults and male administrations How then can this tend to the peace of the Nation or the Honor of the King what satisfaction is it to have our almost-healed wounds thus perpetually rub'd and kept green Quis sua vulnera victus commemorare velit Why should any of our Nation insult over the miseries of his own and neighbour Kingdoms when he must be the most barbarous villain and have devested himself of all humanity that is not deeply empassioned at the remembrance of them If a Thuanus or a Philip de Comines were to pass a Judgment of the condition of our late times upon the consideration of our late Tragedies and the Preludium's to it in the Reigns of King James and the late King it would be formed and pronounced in these words of Tully upon another occasion Mihi quidem si proprium verum nomen vestri mali quoeratur fatalis quoedam calamitas incidisse videtur improvidas hominum mentes occupavisse ut nemo mirari debeat humana consilia divina necessitate esse superata But this is not all Nec Dum finitur Orestes We are affrighted by the weekly Pamphlets with the expectation of another Parliamentary War and this is the true reason of the mention of the late War that we may forgo our Parliaments for fear of another So it is written in our publick Prints which are published under permission as if Parliaments are designed to be rendered hateful and to be feared as Plagues Famines or Inundations of the Sea But who is to begin who designs this War the Pamphleteers or those that set them on work best know We had never heard of any such thing if the Mercenary writers of the Popish Faction had not told us of it as they do weekly and hitherto we cannot find any Colour for this affrightful Lye they are impudent so to talk of it as if they believed it and have brought some as weak men as they are false Knaves to a belief of it But to do them no wrong those may best know what is to come to pass who have the power of contriving and designing Qui pavet vanos metus veros fatetur The vilest Traitors cannot contrive a greater prejudice to the King and his Family than by advancing such a dismal thing into credit and belief for fears though but upon imaginary and false grounds produce real effects as well as they are in themselves really afflictive and that almost equally if of continuance to the evils feared Do these men speak like true Loyalists that are mentioning perpetually the Calamitous War in the time of our Kings Father and fright us with another now ensuing after those Universal Solemn and hearty Joys of the whole Nation for his Restauration after so many Millions of Money most dutifully issued out of the affections of his people from time to time at His Majesties Royal pleasure and nothing complain'd of but that they have not opportunities of issuing ten times more to the service of His Majesties Glory Nay they speak of this ensuing War as if the Royal Standard was already displayed and the Rebels had made their Musters which must certainly affect the Royal Family with the greatest danger If there were twenty Trajans derived from one stock that had Reigned in an uninterrupted Succession Two immediate Successours that should have their Reigns successively attended with civil Wars were enough to efface their own and the glories and merits of such Ancestors But base Caitiffs you can no more truly believe the last Parliaments designed upon his Majesties Crown and Dignity to make War and change the Government than you can believe that every Mothers Child of them before they came up to the last Parliaments set his House on fire and burnt his Wife and Children But these impudent Forgeries against the House of Commons are contrived to make the people afraid of Parliaments that this new model of Government in process of time when we have an enterprising Successor may take place for the service of the Popish Religion For upon the strength of Dr. B s performance who hath with great labour found out which is hard for any man acquainted with our English History to be ignorant of that our Parliaments were not always such as now constituted This blessed change of our Government will never be atchieved The Nation will never be perswaded by any thing that he hath found out in his diligent research that the House of Commons is an overgrown Wen an unnatural Accrescency to the Government and fit to be cut off if that which is offered in the Argument to consideration be duly weighed Neither can the most insolent Paradox of Sir Robert Filmers Patriarcha contribute much to this purpose But for that I have in my Argument too forwardly despised it considering that many have conceived a favourable opinion of it that it may be able to deceive but a very few for the time to come for the sake of such Gentlemen who have not chosen their side are glad of the least Colour or dream of a Shadow a single opinion of any body it matters not whom to relieve their modesty in their notorious defections from Truth Justice and the Government I shall here consider his
pretends onely to foreclose him doth truly depose him It is insufferable that this man should impute to the House of Commons and the best People of England Diabolical Fiction the worst of all Jesuitical Equivocations and of endeavouring to make a colour to their perfidious and perjurious dealings for these reasons onely because we will not believe or take our selves to have sworn Allegiance to the Duke of York when we swore it to the King Because we will not allow that a Parliament of England which is the King Lords and Commons have no more to do with our Government than the Pope of Rome or that the Pope hath as much power to depose one of the Kings as the Parliament hath to punish a most obnoxious Subject This he dares address to the King and publish to the World He proceeds to presume and tell us that this at least must be granted that whosoever is by Bloud next Heir to the Crown we are by our Oath obliged before God to bear him Faith and true Allegiance nay to defend him against all attempts until he is disinherited by Act of Parliament and therefore says he whatsoever we do against him before this Act be fully established is a violation of our Oath and therefore the very attempt of voting and passing this Bill makes the actors and abettors Perjurers before God and the World Sure it will be allowed that this Gentleman is mistaken sure he doth not intend to speak Treason but hath a way of speaking which he will use by himself and will make Words stand for what he hath a mind to which Will and Pleasure of his this peremptory absolute man thinks himself not bound to explain though to save his Neck if he should be Indicted therefore of Treason which I desire he may and Arraigned too for the better clearing the matter if it be possible how we are now bound to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the Duke But he will sooner be Hanged than make out how a thing may be done Lawfully which is not Lawful to go about That the Duke of York may be Lawfully Dis-inherited but the Voting and Passing of the Bill must be Perjury May not he that is bound by an Oath to pay money desire a release from the Debt without Perjury Cannot all Civil Debts Duties and Contracts though confirmed by Oath be discharged by the Interested Person to whom the Duty is to be performed and for whose Benefit the Contract is made May not Kings by renouncing their Governments make the Oath of Allegiance cease to all effects of Obligation And cannot an Act of Parliament that shall disable a Successour equally prevent it from passing any Obligation upon us But shortly to explain of what Import and for what reason the words Heirs and Successors are put into the Oath of Allegiance and it is this That in case of the Demise of the King and the Devolving and vesting of the Crown upon the Heir and Successor the Oath that we took to the Predecessor by virtue of those Words laies hold upon our Consciences and obligeth us to him from the first minute of his Reign but not before and so we are not one minute free from the Bonds of our Allegiance This being the scope of the Law that requires it and of the Oath it self it must likewise be by that interpreted for finis discendi est ratio dictorum and an Oath doth not oblige as this or that man would interpret neither according to the vulgar or technical use of the Word but in such a sense as is adaequate and agreeable to the Intent and End of the proposing and requiring it But by what is said before it appears that we are not yet under the Obligation of that Oath to the Duke and that it is in the Pleasure and Power of the Parliament whether we ever shall be our Comfort is whatever he thinks that there is a great difference between Hopes and Enjoyment And further it appears that the Heir Apparent is but equivocally and in a less proper sense so and yet this Considerer who if he be not a perfect Atheist and serves a turn in this Paper must be a Papist in his heart according to the Modesty of the Gentleman chargeth us with Jesuitical Equivocations in the Oath of Allegiance while in the mean time he is equivocating the King out of his Throne shifting the Duke into his place by an aequivocal Abuse of the word the coursest slight that ever was used by any Hocus Pocus or any Pretender to Legerdemain And yet upon the Confidence of these weak and mistaken Reasonings he presumes to arraign the House of Commons of the greatest Injustice and Iniquity and would have us apprehend Slavery the Arbitrary and Despotical Power of Parliaments The loss of all Security either of Property or Liberty by a prevailing Faction of Parliament which he will be able to effect at the same time when he can perswade us to dissolve the Polity and exchange the best and safest Government into an Anarchy To be without Judges for fear of unrighteous Sentences and without a Power of Legislation for fear of Laws of Iniquity But it is not a new thing for obnoxious Criminals and Out-laws to turn Rebels against Government What this man is and what the Cause is he Espouses is declared sufficiently in that he hath no better ways of Advocation and Defence than by Opposing and Reviling the Government it self and he that dares revile the Government would if he had Power Destroy it In that he calls the major part of the House of Commons a Prevailing Faction I challenge him Guilty of the Highest Treason of a Treason not onely against this Government but of a transcendent Treason of a Treason virtually against all mankind for that we cannot subsist without Polities and no Polities can subsist but by deference to the results of the Governing Power which is Interpretatively in the resolves of the major part But he proceeds to question whether by the Constitutions of this Government the Parliament can extend their power to shut out the Duke from succeeding to the Crown for admitting he means That it is Just which we will not accept of as a voluntary concession of this Considerer for that it doth appear not onely Just but highly necessary to exclude the Duke by Bill he will then draw it into question Whether there be any competent power in the Government for doing a thing not onely just but absolutely necessary for the preservation of the King and Kingdom Whether there be any Subject too great for Justice or any private Right that is not governable and may not be ordered as to the Legislature shall seem necessary to the preservation of the whole Whether that which is properly the Right of the Community for so is the Succession may receive no alteration in a single instance for the Weightiest Reasons and whether he that declares that he will not Govern but Destroy
and doth virtually renounce the Government may not be left out of the Succession This is the true state of the Question and the Question thus stated gives its own solution And who except those of the Conspiracy do not so state it and allow it As to his Question Whence the Parliament derives their Power let him know that the Parliament derive their Power and Authority from the same Original the King derives His The King hath not His Power from them nor they theirs from the King They both derive their Authority from the Consent of the People in the first Constitution of the Government either tacit or express or by their express or tacit Consent in the insensible and little or great and more remarkable alterations that the Government hath suffered in the course of Time The King can make the Parliaments Power no greater than it is nor they His. Though true it is he may put an unlimited Trust reposed in Him into Stated Laws and Govern by Counsels established into Laws which is not to alter or lessen His Power but to make it more Safe and Wise and impeccable in the exercise of it He may ascertain the indefinitness of his Power that it may not be abus'd And that King doth best provide for a happy and wise Administration of his Government who leaves the fewest things to fortuitous resolves who reduceth his Prerogative to the measures of Common Right and makes the Kingdom secure and safe by leaving the Succession less Capacity and Scope to do mischief It is mostly incumbent upon his Sacred Majesty to secure the Government committed to his Care and keep it upright and steady upon its own Basis and to preserve all things in a due and Legal Course To watch to prevent all machinations against it and such as would destroy and subvert it and by his executive power of the Laws obtain to us the ends of Government that we may live quiet and peaceable Lives in all Godliness and Honesty For the sake of this High Trust and the Dignity of this Office his Person is most Sacred and Inviolable The King and his great Council providing for the establishment and security of the Government in their proceedings are not tyed up to forms of Judicial proceedings but are to act upon such inducements and in such methods whereby the Wisest men govern their affairs in which they are at perfect Liberty and not under the restraint of Laws They cannot do unjustly whatever methods or means they use that are prudentially and morally necessary to this End This power can be no more wanting in Governments than we can be without Government That which establisheth the one which is the Law of God declared in the Make and Frame of Humane Nature affirms and allows the other By the Authority of this Law of God so declared and promulgated as I have told you do Kings Reign and Senators or Princes Decree Justice By virtue of this Law and in Obedience to it is this Bill fram'd against which this Considerer declaims like a speaking Brute From this Law of God the said Bill when it passeth into a Law will have its Approbation Sanction and Establishment But against this Bill with his accustomed Truth Candor and Modesty he doth object That if such an Authority shall belong to the Parliament as to disable one successor upon such inducements as are sufficiently known a Parliament some time or other may be corrupted by a King and by mercenariness comply with him to sell the Succession of the Crown to a Foreigner We all well enough know that this Bill is designed to keep out the Tyranny of France or at least the French Tyranny But for this I leave the King to reckon with him and the Pensioners of the late long Parliament The Gentleman continues to add the story of Ahab contriving to possess himself of Naboth's Vineyard by causing him to be falsly accused of Blaspheming God and the King by which if true by the Jewish Laws Ahab had been Justly entitled to it as a Royal Escheat But if he had not been as stupid as a Block he had not mentioned this story which is a president and an adjudg'd case against himself who but a Line before had so vilely Blasphemed so great a King a far greater King than Ahab though the Parliament divide some Authority with the King in the Government But what were the Constitutions of the Jewish Monarchy this Writer of Considerations I am sure knows no more than his Foot-boy But let him know that the Romish Religion is a Blaspheming God and to bring the Kings Life in danger is worse than to Blaspheme him See what wise Work this Considerer makes when forsooth he would argue That the Duke of York cannot be shut out of the Succession no more than Ahab could take Naboth's Vineyard from him The man of Weighty Considerations tells us in the next Paragraph That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right and therefore the Duke must not lose his contrary to his Will and all Justice by a prevailing Faction of his Inferiours Who ever told him That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right Did not God purpose the Birth-right to Jacob before the Brothers were born and before they had done Good or Evil Could God be angry with him for agreeing and executing his own Purpose and Decree Did not Isaac and Rebekah both know and understand the Oracle and in Obedience to it Jacob was effectively Blessed by his Father Isaac's confirming the Blessing first gotten by surprize and by the Solemnity of that Blessing his Father Isaac transferred the right of the Promise made to Abraham to be fulfilled in the Line of Jacob Indeed the place he quotes in Heb. 12.17 is this Let no Whoremonger or Prophane Person be amongst you like Esau that would prefer a Sensual pleasure before the great things that were promised by our Lord to them that obey him Wherein the mention of Esau's Story is only to illustrate and set off what they fell short of the Grace of God and the designs of his Holy Institution Indeed if he could prove to us that his Royal Highness being the younger Brother had any such thing transmitted to him in his Generation as the Jews called the Segulah by which they mean some peculiarity which did appropriate the Right of the Promises made to Abraham which Jacob had and Esau wanted they say If he had any Divine mark upon him besides the Contingency of his Birth that design'd him mark'd him for a King besides Roman Zeal there would be some Consequence in his Discourse and this would be the best Argument that he hath yet us'd though the King would be little beholden to him for it But where God doth not interpose by express Revelation Humane Affairs Concerns and Interests of all sorts must be Governed and Ruled by the Laws Orders and Decrees of the respective Governments I would not have been
themselves and some there are so false and unjust as to suggest That the Argument for the Bishops Right was written to set off the Postscipt with some advantage and that the Author design'd to gain from the Argument a more pardonable liberty of inveighing against the Church-men in the Postscript If this had been the conceit of men of the Popish Faction only and not also of many Gentlemen whom I principally designed to serve and in them the Church of England thereby I should not have thought it worthy my notice For every man understands it is their business and design to divide the Church-men from the Interest of the Church to set the Church against her self To rob the sheep of their shepherds and the pastors of their flocks They know and true it is that no good and useful Constitution can ever be destroyed but by it self i. e. by ceasing to be so And that the people will never part from any thing wherein they find their benefit and advantage except they can deprave our Church they can never hope to destroy her They have corrupted some of our Church-men with Principles that subvert our Government and betray the Rights of our People They have debauched the Manners of our Church-men and lessened their Authority and Esteem with the people The Order is enslav'd by Collation of Preferments upon less worthy men Qui beneficium accepit libertatem vendidit They have raised a bitter zeal against that Separation that they themselves have contriv'd fomented and promoted And it is brought to pass that those are accounted Church-Fanaticks though Conformists that cannot contentedly see and endure the near approaches of ruine both of Church and State These are their fear and their hate The Sons of Anak the Giants of the Land that they they imagine so insuperable that they are for making themselves a Captain and returning back into Egypt Against these they exercise the keenness of their Wit and to supply themselves with matter of Raillery against them they lick up the Vomit of the Popish Priests and whatever is malitiously said by them against the first Reformers is daily repeated by our young Clerks out of the Pulpit with advantages of immodesty and indiscretion for the disservice and dishonour of their Order with the impudent Lies that the Papists have forg'd against Luther Beza and Calvin and other renowned instruments in the Reformation they disparage the Reformation of great service this to the Church of England and the Protestant Religion These young men like Dotterels Apes and Parrots who have no more understanding than those Animals are perpetually repeating any thing though never so destructive to Church and State that is suggested by any Popish Mercenary Writer if he hath but the cunning to bestow an idle Complement upon the Church or calls Rogue and Villain seemingly or in pretence for their sake especially if he can furnish to their young invention any Topicks of Raillery against an imaginary Presbytery and against Parliaments an essential part of our Government and the security of our Liberty A very fair capacity and recommendation this as they imagine to Preferment These are the Men I confess for whose sake I writ the Postscript And if it can conduce any thing either to reform them from their Errors or else to make them of no regard with the People That they be not hereafter taken to speak the sense of the Church of England and we ty'd down to certain ruine by her pretended Authority And especially that she may not hereafter suffer under the scandal of such forward and precocious youths I say if I can obtain by my endeavours any of these effects in any degree I reckon I have performed an agreeable service to the King and Kingdom We have a sort of young men that have left nothing behind them in the University but the taint of a bad example and brought no more Learning with them thence than what serves to make them more assured and more remarkable Coxcombs who will undertake to discourse continually of the Interest of Religion of which they have no manner of sense and of the Constitution of our Government of which they are utterly ignorant These take our degenerate Gentlemen to be the great Supporters of our Religion and Government whose Loyalty consists principally in Rounds of Brimmers and Huzzahs who have not so much leisure from their repeated Excesses and Debauches as to consider that they are not the wiser for their Cups In these Loyal Debauches too many of the young Clergy do most scandalously assist for the service of the Church and for maintaining the honour of their Order This if the Superiour Clergy do not in time redress they will betray our Religion and ruine the Government both in Church and State These degenerate Levites are magnifying perpetually the Priviledges of their Tribe extolling their Order yet in terms that disgrace it but by their Lives they vilifie it The most degenerate off-springs of Noble Families are the greatest Braggadocio's of their Discent Those boast most of their Ancestors who dishonour them by their Relation The Jews did not boast more of their Temple the Templum Domini the Templum Domini at that time when they had filled up the measure of their iniquity and the destruction both of their Temple and Nation was at the door their Temple had not one stone left upon another and they carried into Captivity than these Gentlemen do of the Church of England when Popery is like to be let in upon her by their wicked follies and indiscretions Popery I say which by some Doctrines undermines the very foundation and by others unroofs the Edifice and defaces the Walls of Christian Faith and leaves nothing thereof but Altar-stones for their Idolatrous Sacrifices what ever the fates will be that they are pulling down upon the Nation The Apostolicalness of their Order will not secure it if they do not fill up the duty of their Office no more than the Templum Domini did priviledge the Jewish Church and Nation from destruction A Temple without a Numen and an Undedicated Church are things common and profane They may remember there are Churches of Christ that do make a shift without their Order and Religion need not perish though the Order fail but may subsist much easier than Nations under Change of Governments which yet generally last longer than any one form Nothing can subsist longer or at least to any good purpose than it answers the ends of its Institution and if it do not it is much better that it should not continue than that it should subsist Grotius in his Book De Jure Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra assigns these Reasons for the Discontinuance of Episcopacy in some Churches viz. Longa atque inveterata jam plane Officii Episcopalis depravatio Nomen Eminentia Episcopalis eorum culpâ quibus obtigerat omnem sui reverentiam perdiderat in odium venerat plebis Non debent saith he
res bonae damnari quia sunt qui iis abutuntur sed verso in morem abusu intermitti res ipsas non est infrequens The young men of the Church of England have their Heads filled with the Imagination of a numerous Sect of Presbyterians amongst us and have form'd a frightful Idea and Character of this Imaginary Sect as sworn Enemies to the Episcopal Government Whereas our old Puritans and late Dissenters I speak of the gross of them for they are not answerable for the Fools and Rogues sent amongst them or at least spirited by the Roman Priests no more than any other Party or Division of men are for the Rogues that pass under their numbers or respective denominations have not disliked the Episcopal Government though by their senseless and unaccountable scruples they have depriv'd themselves of the benefit of the Communion of our Church and thereby give so much scandal to the Government and make the Popish Plot considerable which can no longer subsist than they are pleased to continue obstinate in their conceited follies They beg to be re-admitted to have the terms of our Communion made easie by relaxation of a Ceremony or two and a few matters of Scruple To be received again under the Governance and Guidance of our Church and are ready to acknowledge the benefit of the Episcopal Order in the Church of Christ Let this be askt by any man who doubts the truth thereof of any man that is considerable amongst our unhappy Dissenters Dr. Durel in his Book called Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae tells what a high opinion the Reformed Churches abroad have of our English Episcopacy and that the Bishops were deposed by them because they would not assist but oppos'd the Reformation not of dislike to their Order Mr. Calvin in his Opusc de Necessitate Reformandae Ecclesiae hath declared himself to be of the same mind Talem saith he there nobis Hierarchiam exhibeant in quâ sic emineant Episcopi ut Christo subesse non recusent ut ab illo tanquam vinco capite pendeant ad ipsum referantur in quâ sic inter se fraternam Societatem colant ut non alio modo quam ejus veritati sint colligati Tum vero nullo non anathemate dignos fatear si quis erunt quos non eam revereantur summâque obedientiâ observent His very good liking and great approbation of the Order appears plainly by the earnestness and vehemency of his stile whereby he expresseth himself in the matter Beza de Minist Evangel Gradibus Cap. 23. affirms Essentiale fuit quod ex Dei ordinatione perpetua necesse fuit est erit ut Presbyterio quispiam loco dignitate primus Actioni Gubernandae praesit cum eo quod ipsi divinitus attributum est jure Peter de Moulin Part. 2. Thes 33. Episcopos Angliae inquit post conversionem ad fidem Ejuratum Papismum asserrimus fuisse fideles Dei Servos ne debuisse deserere munus vel Titulum Episcopi Monsieur Drelincourt in his Letters from Geneva upon the happy Restoration of our King 1660 saith Quandoquidem Germania Helvetia suos habent inspectores superintendentes Dania vero ac Suecia suos Episcopos non video cur quis offendi debeat quod Angliae sui etiam sint Episcopi Quod si eadem Regminis forma apud hujus Regni Ecclesias non obtineat id ideo fit quod non convenit cum rerum nostrarum statu cui nihil aptius excogitari potest quam pastorum aequalitas verum si Deus apud quem omnia possibilia in cujus manu sunt Corda Regum ac populorum Monarchae nostro omnibus illius subditis aut saltem maximae eorum parti eam gratiam indulgerent ut reformationem Evangelicam amplecterentur meo quidem judicio impossibile esset inter tantum pastorum numerum aequalitatem retinere compelleret que necessitas ad instituendos quosdam qui aliqua praeeminentiâ gauderent prae caeterîs quique eorum moribus invigilarent The great men of the French Protestant Church though under the state of a severe Persecution who follow the Institutions of Mr. Calvin do at this time applaud the Constitution of our Church and speak of it in terms of high esteem and honour as may be seen in the Letters of Monsieur Moyne Monsieur de l'Angle and Monsieur Claude written to my Lord of London Published by the Dean of Pauls in his Book called the Vnreasonableness of Separation Dr. Durel after he hath in the aforementioned Book shewed that Geneva was a Free City of the Empire of most ancient time That the Soveraign Authority was in the Senate of that City That the Bishop was Chosen by the Canons and Citizens and Swore Allegiance to the Government before he entred the City and that the Consuls of the City did take his Oath That Petrus de Baulme their last Bishop Anno Dom. 1533. being detected of a design to betray the City to the Duke of Savoy fled from the City and at that time the City was and for two years after continued Roman Catholick so that what wrong if any was done to the Bishop was done by the Papists That two years after the Bishop fled from the punishment of his Crimes the Authority of the Senate attempted the Reformation of Religion After this I say Dr. Durel thus concludes Confidenter dicam Genevenses cum Religionem emendarunt Episcopalis regiminis ab Ecclesiâ Eliminatiomem reformationis partem necessariam haud duxisse Besides all amongst us that have the name of Presbyterian called upon them at the pleasure of the Popish Faction subscribe to the Nine and Thirty Articles in what they declare of the Doctrine of the Church of England about Obedience to our King and Governours and are therefore in profession as Loyal as any of those that boast themselves True Sons of the Church of England Indeed Scotland hath been disgrac'd by a vile sort of Presbyterians the onely true Presbyterian Sectaries in the world in any considerable body or union These men have deservedly put that name under eternal infamy by their turbulent and contumacious carriage against the Kingly Authority But to speak the truth this is not imputable so much to Presbytery as to the barbarous Manners and rough Genius of that Nation Though it hath afforded some men in all Ages of great Excellency in all sorts of the most commendable Qualities That Nation was infamous for Disloyalty and a barbarous Treatment of their Kings before Buchanan and Knox were born The Scots boast of One hundred and fifty Kings in Succession in that Kingdom how many Names they have feigned to make out the boast of the Auncientry of their Kingdom we do not know but certain it is they really Imprisoned Deposed and Murdered Fifty of their Kings at least before the time of Mary Queen of Scots whose prosecution was promoted and assisted by the English Bishops A fine Kingdom
that to make Experiments and try Conclusions upon There is little reason to charge the Guilt of the unexpiable Murder of our late Excellent King for which at this day we are doing most severe penances upon Presbytery which was not thought of here in England till the War was begun The heats that produced that unhappy War were from other Causes and Reasons as every body may know But when that War was once begun as no War can be managed by fore-established Rules and Measures it did not stand within the reasons and first designs thereof but was prosecuted and managed by such means and measures as were necessary and possible This will always happen more especially in a Civil War wherein though both parties share in the Causes yet the Guilt to be sure belongs to the Rebels side The Parliament in the Course of the War in their distress prayed Aid of the Scotch Nation who was shortly before entered into the Covenant They refused them any Assistance except they would enter into that Covenant which they had passed upon their own people By this accident that part of the Nation that was engaged in that unnatural War of the Parliaments side were imposed upon by the Scotch Presbytery But after the Covenant was thus imposed they still retained the English Loyalty filled the Town with Protestations and Remonstrances against the Kings feared Murther declared out of their Pulpits against the Actors of that detestable Tragedy were continually contriving to restore our present King to the Government of his Kingdoms and of their instrumentality in his Restoration the King himself is very sensible I wish the Church too were made sensible of the extinction of that prejudice the Scotch Covenant created against her for though God be thanked she hath survived almost all of those deluded Covenanters yet the apprehension of the danger or the remembrance of the evil at least will return with the mention of that name and render it very displeasing I wish I say that prejudice was removed by their frank Declaration of their good liking of her Order in general and by their humble desires to be spared in the matters whereof they yet remain in doubt by the indulgence of the Church That we may not incur the danger of loosing our Religion and Government by the scandal that is given to the Church-men at the old remembrance of what hath been done here by some that were of the Presbyterian Name For this matter of Offence they of the Popish Faction do with mighty advantage to their Villainous design cultivate and improve They stigmatize all that oppose the Popish Plot with the Name of Presbyterians and thereby would denote them Enemies of our Church-Order By this means they have brought many too many Eminent men of our Church to at least a dead Neutrality as if things were come to this pass that they must perish either by that or the Popish Faction and had nothing left them to do but to chuse which way our Church shall be destroyed A cold comfort this would be that whatever way they should take they must assist to the destruction of their Order Upon this rock we are like to be split this makes our deliverance to stick in the birth and upon this hinge the fate of our Religion and Nation will turn Lord what a prodigious thing is this that is come to pass in our age Religion it self must be the devoted thing to the rage and folly of the Priests of that Religion Let them in the Name of God consider what iniquity it is to declame against the faults of others and not endure to hear of their own Crimes To hate one-another for those very proceedings that their own faults occasion where the fault is in both sides the fault is in neither so as they may justly accuse one another and yet they will both fall under a most severe Condemnation to be sure in the next world if they do not both miss their aims and be confounded with guilt and disappointment in this I wish it were considered that scarce any Nation ever yet perished that was so blinded in her own concerns that she had not discerning men enough to have preserved her from the destroying Evil if many good and wise men did not perswade themselves it was better to suffer it than to endeavour to prevent it and from the fears of one Party and the dislike they have conceived against the other determine with themselves to stand Neuters whilst they want Resolution to oppose the dangers that one side threatens and think the disorders of the discontents incorrigible It was a wise Law of Solon That if the Common-wealth at any time should be divided into Factions that the Neuters should be noted with infamy by which every man was obliged to take a side or Party and all the virtuous peaceable and modest were engaged to appear openly in the concernments of the Government he concluded assuredly that by this means Peace would be more easily restored and terms of an accommodation more readily invented and entertained the Factious Knaves of both sides turned out of Office their Evil Designs disappointed and the ruine of the Nation by the Extremities of wicked men prevented For the worst men are most forward in Factions and the greatest beautefeus most honoured by their respective contending Parties before the wise and good interpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Causes of the Differences would be better understood be rendred clear and conspicuous when the honest men such as can have no interest but the publick good whose Authority is more prevalent with the people than the clearest Reason do declare them and those that are mis-led and abused into Extreams would then unite and conspire against those who gave the first occasion to the Divisions and promote them As did the Factions of the Colonnois and the Vrsins who having discovered that Pope Alexander the Sixth set them still at discord and variance amongst themselves so by their Calamities and Falls to encrease the strength and power of his Son Borgia they fell to agreement among themselves and made head against him their common Enemy If all that are true Protestants and true lovers of our Government would declare themselves on the behalf of our Religion and Government in such terms as befit honest men and as the Exigency of our present state shall require we shall find the numbers of Addressers reduced to the Dukes Pensioners Creatures The number of Phanaticks made so few that the Papists would again become the Fautors and Defenders of Fanaticism as they were about ten years since lest the numbers of Fanaticks should not be big enough to make a Scare-crow for the Church of England or the Schism not considerable enough to disgrace her All discerning men see that the late Addresses have been obtain'd by application That the design therein was to make Voices for the discontinuance of Parliaments and for a Popish Succession If the people
are pleased with these things there is no wrong done them and if we affect a change of our Religion and Government it may be easily obtain'd The King hath no reason to consent to disinherit his Brother if the People rejoyce in the hopes of such a Successor or at least will acquiesce under that fate but if we would avoid it we must deprecate it in such applications to his Majesty as consists with true Loyalty and with such earnestness as the matter requires and at the same time represent the smalness of the numbers of Addressers and the inconsiderableness of their quality Thus his Majesty would understand better the Sense of his People especially when most of the Addressers themselves shall by joyning in such Applications shew what they meant by Lawful Successors in their Addresses And that when in the same Addresses they did engage to serve the King with their Lives and Fortunes they did not intend to subject themselves and all that they have to his Majesties absolute pleasure In that they thank his Majesty for his Promise of frequent Parliaments they desire them and when they thanked him for his promise to maintain the Protestant Religion they desired the continuance of it and such a Law as is absolutely necessary for its preservation Then it may appear that the Abhorrers themselves did not understand that the name of the Earl of Shaftsbury in the business of Abhorrence is but like the name of John a Styles and John an Oaks of Titius and Sempronius in putting a fictitious Case And that the onely Question askt was Who are the most damnable Plotters at this time the Protestants or Papists And that this was the Question intended to be put to the People in the Sollicitation of Addresses of Abhorrence is evident If we did dutifully represent to his Majesty these Proceedings as the Arts of our Enemies for dividing us and the Methods of our designed Ruine we should not be undone and there is nothing more than this necessary for the preventing of our Ruine since we have so gracious a King Our King is duly stiled Pater Patriae he will not suffer his People to be calamitous as no good Prince can suffer his to be from any cause whatsoever that is to be removed no not from their own Fears and Jealousies if they are innocent reasonable and probable The Affections of a Prince to his People supersede his Affection towards any private Relation So strong is the Tye of Duty upon him from his Office to prevent publick Calamities as no respect whatsoever no not of the Right Line can discharge nor will he himself ever think if duly addressed that it can By the Kingly Office he is taken up from amongst men and is made a God to us he is not to suffer the passions of a private man so as to be swayed by them In this high capacity In the matters of the Government nothing ought to determine him but the Common weal to which purpose all Governments are instituted Besides the excellent humanity of our King which hath made his Reign so clement doth dispose him to a tender Affection towards his People committed to his care and must powerfully incline and perswade him to do any thing that is necessary for preventing such Evils which as they are greater than can be supported by his People so if they come upon us we shall never be able to emerge or recover from under their pressures There wants nothing but a universal desire of being happy to make us so and nothing but a declaring our steady abhorrence of the Evils we cannot sustain is further necessary for preventing them Our Enemies will be destroyed meerly by our uniting they have no direct Strengths of their own all their hopes and confidence is in our Divisions We may evacuate their designe by making it impossible without a Conflict with any of the Evils fear'd We shall have no Enemies from that time we are at peace with our selves if we have courage enough to say we are not content to perish we are immediately safe Our Traytors would disappear if we had no Neuters and we cannot lose either our Religion or Government if we have a just concern for them If the Protestants would in time understand that the single Art and Stratagem they have to undo us is by dividing us we should not assist it by receiving false and hated Characters of the several Sects that are amongst us from the Popish Writers and represent them to our selves as more detestable than the Popish Traytors and alike Enemies to the Government It is no more agreeable to a scrupulous man about a Ceremony of the Church to depose and murder his lawful Prince than to a man of a nice Conscience to be impiously wicked Too true it is all Nations and Religions have been sometime or other stain'd with the horrid guilts of Deposing and Murdering Kings under a pretence of destroying Tyrants and vindicating their Country from Oppression The Bishops concur'd with the Temporal Lords in deposing the second Richard In an Address to that King they justifi'd themselves therein Ex Antiquo Statuto from the Constitutions of the Kingdom and Ex facto nuperrimè dolendo by which they meant the deposing of Edward the Second Knighton one of the Decem Scriptores published by Mr. Selden gives us the Address in terminis Until the Collectors of Dissenters Sayings can justifie the Bishops in this matter let them not trouble the world any more with the farrago of some of their wicked Sayings thereof to make a Character of a Dissenter for it belongs no more to him as such to be a Traytor or Rebel than it doth to the Character of the English Bishops to depose their King and cause his most Sacred Bloud to be shed and profan'd as a common thing But for removing the fears that our cautious Church-men have of Dissenters which hath cast them into a cold indifferency and inert neutrality at this time when if ever the Applications of an active Prudence are required from all honest men and lovers of their King Country and Religion I wish they would weigh and consider the mischiefs on either hand What the Popish Party designes and what the Dissenters would have What powers the Popish Party have what endeavours they use to force their Superstitions upon us and to change our Government That the Dissenters have neither Power nor Will to destroy our Religion or Government They are already of our Church and it is expected that they should be Petitioners to the Bishops for their intercession towards obtaining some Indulgence in some little matters that may bring them into an entire Communion with us It may easily be known who are for the preservation of our Government or dissolution of it by their Desires or Abhorrences of Parliaments and who desires Parliaments more than Dissenters which would preserve our ancient Government in Church and State and the true Religion establish'd among
Prince should become our King Such an abhorrence they themselves had against the mischiefs that would thereupon ensue to the Nation Is it fit after this that the lawful endeavours to Exclude him should be accounted a Protestant Plot and those that desire it for that reason onely accounted Enemies to the Government and Designers to change it What madness is it that his arrival amongst us should be welcomed with any tokens of joy That Addresses should be made in his favour That we should court that mischief that the wisdom of all our Estates in several late Parliaments have consulted how to avoid To turn so fond of a Popish Successor as to be content to quit our Parliamentary Constitution our Government for his sake for his sake we have had Parliaments Dissolved and his presence will not give us leave to hope for a Parliament But let no honest man be affrighted and put out of Countenance with any Imputations or Reproaches of Sedition whilst he adheres to the Sense of all the Estates in Parliament and that which hath been in some sort the Kings Sense too They are the Seditious that propound deceitful Expedients which tend to change the Government and to Embroil His Majesties Kingdoms who are contrary to the Sense of the States of the Realm oppose the voice of Nature and the common Sense of the whole Rational world That are contrary to the Government and do as much as in them lies go about to dissolve it by lessening the Powers of Parliament exercised and declar'd in their Acts and more especially in the Act of Parliament 13 Eliz. Cap. 1. for that purpose was that declaratory Law made to prevent our relapse into Popery and the return of the Popish Superstition and the Roman yoak upon us These therefore are the only Murmurers amongst us against Moses and Aaron our Civil and Ecclesiastical Reformers who brought us out of the Land of Egypt and out of the house of Bondage who though dead yet speak and their Authority yet lives in our Laws and is to be obey'd by us we have no rules of Obedience to our Prince but the Laws and the Authoritative Declarations of the Government which are called the Kings Laws and the Kings Will and Pleasure whensoever they were first made in all succession of time These Murmurers are saying one to another Let us make a Captain and let us return into Egypt and yet they rub their foreheads and say that they are clear of the gain-saying of Korah and Dathan and are not of the company of Abiram Though if they will consider the story they will find themselves in that company for those that were for a Captain to return into Egypt Numb Cap. 14. did continue their Murmurings upon what ensued thereupon against Moses and Aaron headed by Korah Dathan and Abiram Numb Cap. 16. and both are remembred as one offence Psalm 106. So miserably do these men abuse their Consciences first and then abuse the Scripture to serve their turn The unstable more than the unlearned wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction These men against all congruity and analogy do object the story of Korah and his Accomplices against the Adherers to Moses and Aaron and reproach them with the Names of those Evil and unfortunate men who do what they can to hinder our return into Egypt and are not for this Captain of theirs Quis tulerit Graccos de Seditione querentes These are the most dangerous Schismaticks a most mischievous sort of Puritans The malignity of Puritanism is to pretend to be more righteous than Laws Where no Divine Law interposeth but the matters are left by God to the prudence of Governments and to their appointments and directions to pretend Religion for their Schismatical Separations to disobey their Governours when they have no command of God against their injunctions though they have no Law of God for the matter injoyn'd But the Church-Puritans have some pretence for their Disobedience because Religion is certainly of Divine Institution in the Substance and Essentials thereof they pretend they keep close to the Divine Institution and they at the worst do but preposterously prefer Sacrifice to Obedience But this Civil Puritanism which we complain of is neither Obedience to God or man nor yet Sacrifice Sacrifice it cannot be where Religion it self must be the Victim not Obedience but an enormous and monstrous sort of Disobedience they disobey not to please themselves but for meer mischief to themselves these are sinners against their own Souls with a witness By departing from the Rules of Government they are about to betray Gods true Religion and the Government and they must become either Rebels or Slaves either Apostates or Martyrs But Martyrs if they be it will be rather of their folly than of Religion and God will take no pleasure in the Sacrifice of Fools The wickedness and folly of these men seems peculiar to this present age it seems prepared by the Divine Nemesis to punish our prevarications from the rules and obligations of that Religion which we have dishonoured by our professing to believe it that so it and we should perish and be extinct together that we should then pretend to be conformable to the Institutions of his Holy Religion when we are in a course of utterly subverting it What impudent hypocrisie is this to pretend to obey our Governours for Gods sake when they really are contrary to the Fundamental Constitutions of State and by being so assist to the Extirpation of Gods true Religion Establisht amongst us by Law Laws cannot be controul'd by the Princes pleasure they oblige when his Personal Commands do not Kings cannot make their Governments other than an universal consent hath made them and such we are obliged to continue them A man may neglect his own private right without fault for in that he is onely accountable to himself But the Rights of the Government the Rights of the Community can never be lessened or neglected in their use when the condition of the Nation requires their Exercise Where we have a liberty or right to do an act a supervenient necessity makes that act our duty When the case occurs wherein that right is to be used and for which that Authority was created then they that have that right and that authority are as much obliged to use it as if there had been an express Law to injoyn them To be short I wish the haters of Puritans would consider for themselves as well as others that there is an obedience of Faith as well as of Manners due both to God and our Governours That our judgments are to be form'd by the rules of right Established by Law as well as our actions to be governed in obedience to Laws commanding and enjoyning them By that Faith that every man owes to the Government he is obliged to defend the Constitutions thereof they are more properly Covenants than Laws which yet Aristotle calls so they are the Communes
believe it I am sure not much longer than they are reading it I will not grudge my pains in furnishing a short Demonstration of the Popish Plot since it is of such importance to the saving of these men and the whole Nation which possibly may fix their minds notwithstanding so vain they be into a belief of it which I have made short that it may be the better remembred which I do in kindness to them since it was lately and may be so again shortly a criminal matter to bring the truth of it into question and they are by all honest men reckoned as Plotters themselves who doubt it The Plot has been declared by the Kings Proclamation and four Parliaments one of them consisting of Pensioners and Dependents on the Court which for eighteen years together were giving Demonstrations of their Loyalty to their Prince almost forgetting the publick Weal A solemn National Fast has been Indicted by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Authority of the Kingdom for averting the mischiefs thereby designed and solemnly Celebrated by the whole Nation in which certainly they did not mock God and deride his Providence Many unparallel'd Villanies have been committed for the stifling concealing and suppressing the discovery of it which however wicked the Papistical Sect of base false and degenerate Christians are we cannot without breach of Charity towards them think they would commit cheaply and without cause and to no purpose They have murdered a Minister of Justice because he had the knowledge of it and left nothing undone that they thought necessary to Assasinate another for strenuously opposing it They have attempted upon the Lives of our Witnesses By perjuries and forgeries they have endeavoured to charge them with the most infamous crimes to destroy them in their Lives and Reputations too in a form of Justice They have attempted by fears and rewards upon the integrity of all our Witnesses to draw them to retract their Testimony against the Plot for which some of their Agents have been judicially censured One Gentleman to the Pillory Fin'd 1000 l. and Condemned to a years imprisonment so evident and notorious was his offence and by the Court thought so heinous that it provoked the passion of the Court and they seemed to exceed the ordinary Rules of Justice for that they judged the Case to be of an exorbitant and transcendent nature The Plot of the Meal-Tub is a sublimated piece of wickedness the last accomplishment of villany it hath out-done all former and Will never be out-done in after-Ages The Papists by the Discovery of the first Plot became less hopeful in a Massacre and of effecting their purpose by force They dare not now kill the King for that the World would not now believe it to be done by Mr. Claypole and his feigned accomplices which must have born the blame from the Papists and he and they long since Executed as Traitors if that part of the Plot against the Kings Life had not been prevented by being detected I say the first design of the Plot being rendered less feasible by the discovery They keep the King alive with care as well for their avoiding the rage of the Nation as to lessen the credit of the Plot But contrive to destroy as many as they thought fit to be Massacred in form of a legal process and to charge them with a design of raising Rebellion against the King They had made a List of a great number of considerable persons whom they intended to charge principal Nobles and worthy Gentlemen about the Town had prepared witnesses to swear the charge against them and would certainly with more ease after the first Conviction and Execution have sworn all that they had a mind to destroy into the same guilt And thus all the truly Religious the Noble Good and Virtuous of our Nation that had courage enough to own assert and defend the true Christianity and our Government must to the eternal dishonour of our Nation and Religion have suffered the execrable death of Traitors We have reason to think them humane when they onely designed a Gun-powder Treason or a Massacre Our abhorrence of this usage dischargeth in us all reluctancy to Martyrdom Let them bring us to the Stake as Martyrs then we shall bear our Testimony to the truth of the best Religion and our Lives will not be cheaply lost but by this means we must be forced to dishonour this Religion by our deaths By a Massacre or a Gun-powder Plot the vileness cruelty and treachery of that Apostate Church had been declared to all the World and that false Religion as well as the professors of it had been rendered detestable for which end a good man would scarce refuse to dye But by this means they would have forced us to personate their own proper Crimes and Villanies and dishonour our own peaceable and holy Religion A man of Honour prefers his Honour to his Life and would redeem it by his Death But by this means we were though innocent to lose our Lives by dishonour and to fasten a stain upon our Memories by our death The Priests their impudent Lyes at their deaths in denying the matters of the Plot of which they were upon clear evidence Convicted and Sentenced must have past for truths and all our worthy men dying with protestations of their innocence must to the everlasting infamy of our Religion and Nation been accounted false and impious at their last breath There is no reason to be assign'd of the patience of God or Man towards such miscreants but that they may have time to add one impiety to another until an easie vengeance triumphs over them And though this last mentioned Plot is cleared beyond all exception their Faces are hardned and they are not yet ashamed but they have since contrived and suborned Witnesses to swear the very Discovery of the first Plot to be a false contrivance of a Plot against the Papists To this purpose they suborned a Son by perjury to commit parricide against his Father this the greatest Sin against Earth the other the greatest affront against Heaven What a Religion is this that must be thus supported Nay as if they did not fear or care to loose the favour of their most indulgent Prince which they have possest since he used Papists in making his escape at Worcester they have contrived these two last Plots with such Art as to bring them under his Majesties Observation and represented them as things fit for his encouragement Sure if they were not urged with the fears of a real guilt and a restless Conscience of the Plot they would never have adventured thus to have interested the honor of the King and to tempt him to abandon them to the publick Justice of the Nation which begins to grow impatient by the delays of it against this Hellish Plot. For we have had four Parliaments dissolved since the Discovery of it one a darling to the Crown The bringing into question the
submissions which is the sum of the Apostles Doctrine in this matter The Christian Religion instituted no form of Governments but enjoyns us to be obedient to those we have not onely by express command in the case but by its general Rules of a most refined improved and extensive morality But though I said the Scriptures have not prescribed or directed any universal Form of Governments yet the Scripture hath declared the falshood of this new Hypothesis of Kingly Government to be Jure Divino or by Divine Right For St. Peter 1 Peter 2.13 and 14 stiles Kings as well as the Governours under him the ordinance of man which cannot have any other sence but that men make them and give them their powers By St. Paul the power of Governments indeed is called Gods Ordinance Romans 13.2 but that is for this reason because in general God approves of Governments as necessary to the well-being of Mankind for the improvement of humane nature for the punishing of Vice encouragement and security of Virtue without them it being impossible to live honestly and in peace And he hath made them the under-Ministers of his providence and care over Mankind and expects of them that they should promote his true Honour and worship in the world which will be always accompanied with the exercise of all civil virtues These two different places must be so understood that they may be both true and by no other interpretation can they be reconciled and made consistent It is impossible that any thing can be of mans appointment which is of Gods Ordination there can be no such thing as a Co-legislative power of Men with their Maker Government therefore is from God as he hath made Governments necessary in the general order of things but the specification thereof is from men The best definition that can be made of Government is in the words of both the Apostles put together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and such Governments which men make God approves and requires our obedience to them upon all those reasons which make Governments necessary The natural and easie consequence and result of these Scriptures is this which I desire those Gentlemen to observe That whatsoever is not lawfully established by men no Law of God not the Christian Law doth oblige us to obey The Christian Religion doth equally condemn in the reason of its Institutions Usurpation and Contumacy Where the Apostle admonish us that if we be free we should not become Servants he hath by virtue of that Admonition made it commendable not to suffer the encroachments of Power over us Most certainly therefore as the Christian Religion doth not prejudice the Soveraign Rights of Princes such as they are in the several Forms and Models of Monarchical Governments non eripit terrestria qui regna dat coelestia as Sedulius so doth it not enlarge them when by the Gospel God made us free from his own positive Laws to the Jews sure he did not intend thereby de Jure to render us Slaves to the Arbitrary pleasure of men No man intends by any thing in the Scripture that all Mankind is obliged to any one Form of Government and therefore all men are left to their own It hath not therefore altered the terms of Government and Obedience that every Nation hath established for themselves but hath confirmed and strictly obliged the observance of them To Obedience to Government we are obliged by as many ties as there are Christian Virtues and he must disown his Christianity that departs from his due Allegiance And since our Saviour is declared King of Kings and Lord of Lords all Christian Kings are to govern in imitation of his mercy and goodness and in subserviency to the interest of his Religion and Kingdom Regum timendorum in proprios greges Reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis cuncta supercilio moventis Whence then is this absolute Authority of Kings if it come neither from God nor man Give me leave now to inform you that these opinions render you all Traytors guilty of Treason of State perduellionis rei obnoxious to be punished as Traitors by an Authority lodg'd in Parliament in the Constitution of the Government You your selves must needs condemn your selves to have forfeited all your own who hold such Principles that tend to destroy every mans Right by resolving all things into the absolute pleasure of a Monarch in which you mostly disserve the King and are contrary to his Majesties late Declaration The men of these Principles the less of the Government they are intrusted with the better for the less they have to give up and betray I confess if I could believe that this Doctrine was become Orthodox among them and the prevailing opinion of the Clergie I should conclude us to be the most unhappy people under the Sun This is an Hypothesis indeed that will bring on new Heavens and a new Earth but such wherein no Peace or Righteousness can ever dwell But I deem all such as are Defenders and Promoters of it do deserve a civil Excommunication more smarting than their Ecclesiastical and to be condemned to live upon and onely feed themselves with their thin and crude Speculations To be excluded from any share of that Government that they professedly in their Principles betray To be punished as seditious persons and most mischievous Schismaticks far more intolerable in this matter than the scrupulous Brotherhood for their boglings at an indifferent and insignificant Ceremony For that to the ruine of our Religion and destruction of the publick Peace they divide from that Polity to which by drawing here their first breath they made Faith and to which the condition of their birth doth oblige them they falsifie that which Arrian in his Epictetus calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than which nothing is more sacred and inviolable By creating themselves a new Allegiance and obtruding it upon their fellow-Citizens and Members of the same Kingdom they set up a Kingdom within a Kingdom more dangerous and mischievous than the Papal Imperium in Imperio which certainly will be introduced if this Modern and monstrously-extravagant opinion can prevail by a general Credence It is criminal and no less dangerous to the being of any Polity to restrain the Legislative Authority and to entertain Principles that disable it to provide remedy against the greatest mischiefs that can happen to any Community No Government can support it self without an unlimited power in providing for the happiness of the people No Civil establishment but is controulable and alterable to the publick weal. Whatever is not of divine Institution ought to yield and submit to this power and Authority The Succession to the Crown is of a civil nature not established by any Divine Right Several Kingdoms have several Laws of Succession some are Elective others Hereditary under several Limitations All humane Constitutions are made cum sensu humanae imbecillitatis under reasonable exceptions of unforeseen accidents and emergencies
that may happen in humane affairs and so they must be intended and so interpreted The several limitations of the descent of the Crown must be made by the people in conferring the Royal Dignity and Power which is more or less in several Kingdoms And the descent of the Crown in particular cases is governed according to the presumed will of the People and the presumption of the Peoples will is made by measuring and considering what is most expedient to the publick good whereas private Estates are directed in their descent according to the presumed will of the Decedents And this is the reason tha◠the descent of the Crown is governed by other rules than private Estates Onely one Daughter and not all as in private Estates shall succeed to the Crown because the strength of the Kingdom is preserved when continued united and the peace and concord of the people better established A son of the second venter shall inherit which is not allowed in private Estates because a son of the second venter is equally of the bloud of the great Ancestor upon whom the Crown was first conferred by the people or after he had got into the Throne obtain'd their Submissions and may equally participate of his virtues If the Royal Family be extinct it belongs to the people to make a new King under what limitations they please or to make none for the Polity is not destroyed if there be no King created and consequently in case of this cesser or discontinuance of the Regnum there may be Treason committed against the people By all which it is evident that the Succession to the Crown is the peoples right And though the Succession to the Crown is Hereditary because the people so appointed it would have it so or consented to have it so yet in a particular case for the saving the Nation the whole Line and Monarchy it self it may be altered by the unlimited power of the Legislative Authority We have been more just to the Royal Succession than the wonderful Sir Robert Filmer for his Hypotheses will not allow at all of Hereditary rightful Succession For he establishing the right of the universal Empire of the World in Adams right Heir since this Illuminato hath enlightned the world in this secret no Successor can according to his Doctrine derive any hereditary right from his Predecessor His title can be only his own possession for no man can claim by descent the Usurpation of his Father but he that is not conscious to the wrong and is bonae fidei possessor under the presumed right and title of his Father I would be understood to speak as the matter can be considered in a free reason not under the prejudice of any positive municipal Law for to such Laws the right of Crowns as the renowned Knight will have it are not submitted So that here in this matter their Knight fails them and can give them no help Their other friend the great Leviathan-maker is so far from establishing an Hereditary Succession that he leaves Kings to be rightfully assaulted deposed and destroyed by any person that can who stands in danger of being destroyed by the King though justly condemned to death Leviathan Part 2. cap. 21. Those saith he that have committed a capital Crime for which they expect death have the liberty to defend themselves by Arms as well as the Innocent But I mention him onely to render him detestable for I take his Books to be the dehonestamenta humani generis But I desire them to regard the sence of all Mankinde in the words of Isiodorus Pelusiota 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This governed the Judicious and Learned Dr. Falkner for when he had carried Christian Loyalty as high as he could to the honour of our Religion and the benefit of the world for which we are all extreamly beholden to him he concludes thus in his excellent Book called Christian Loyalty viz That if any Prince undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or to give it up into the hands of another Soveraign Power or that really acts the Destruction or the Vniversal Calamity of his people Grotius thinks that in his utmost extremity the use of a Defence as a last refuge ultimo necessitatis presidio is not to be condemned provided the care of the Common Good be preserved And if this be true saith he it must be upon this ground that such attempts of ruining do ipso facto include a disclaiming the governing of these persons as Subjects and consequently of being their Prince or King What unreasonableness is there then in shutting the Door upon him and making it fast against him by an Act of State who hath excluded himself by his principles and designs For the truth of the fact I shall onely refer you to his Secretary Coleman his Letters wherein he saith That his Masters interest and the King of France his interest is one and the same and their design their glorious design the same viz the extirpating the Northern Heresie How far the King of France hath complied with the design the cruel Persecution and Exiles of his Protestant Subjects who at the time of that Letter were under the security and protection of the Laws of that Kingdom and the Faith of that Crown do declare to the world And by what secret influences I know not he is made so great his Conquests so easie and expedite that he is like to do the work himself here in England too and go away with all the Glory But if the work must lie upon our hands let no man think with himself that Popery is not to be introduced here because the numbers of Papists are few for that will not render the design impracticable but the execution of it more cruel and barbarous a whole Nation upon the matter must be corrupted from the Faith of the true Religion or destroy'd One single arm of an ordinary strength not resisted may assassinate a whole Nation Let no man betray his Country and Religion by pretending the example of the patience and sufferance of the Primitive Christians for our rule The Reformed Religion hath acquired a civil right and the protection of Laws if we ought not to lose our Lives Liberties and Estates but where forfeited by Law we ought much rather not to lose them for the profession of the best Religion which by Law is made the publick National Religion And it is strange that some men of the same Religion in profession can think that notwithstanding it makes no matter what is done to men if they be Religious but if they be not so the least publick injuries and injustice threatned or done them may be resisted vindicated remedied and by right defended by old Laws or new ones to be made for that purpose The Christian Religion was publish'd when the whole world was Pagan and therefore it was submitted to such usage as the Governments would give it But when the Christian Faith had by miracles of
and Laws design to make them though they do not always answer the good designments of the Government To what purpose then are these new Hypotheses fram'd and published Kings are exempted by their Office and the sacredness of their persons from all fears but the fears of Nature and these can never be discharged Those who do ill will fear ill eternally though their power were made little less than omnipotent for the frame of Humane Nature hath made it necessary to be so Besides God hath made one thing against another There is a divine Nemesis interwoven in the nature of things And God will always govern the World Omne sub regno duriore regnum The great Mogol at his Inauguration swears That his People shall be at peace at home and victorious abroad afflicted neither with Plague nor Famine but enjoy Health and Plenty all his days This seems extraordinary Pompous and Arrogant but it means no more than this that he will govern them so vertuously that Gods Providence shall be always propitious to his People and is no more in plain English than what our Church offers up in her publick Prayers for the King viz. That he may govern us in Wealth Peace and Godliness that he may live long and so govern us ought to be every honest mans Prayers But after all these vain Hypotheses contrived for making Kings Absolute it will be more easie for Kings to make their Reigns unquiet and turn their Kingdoms into Fields of blood But lastly to revive the ancient Zeal of the true Members of the Church of England against Popery To rectify the mistakes of some Gentlemen of the Clergy about the Dissenters And of our late Parliaments and their proceedings in reference to them Let it be considered how unreasonable their apprehensions are of any danger to the Church of England from the desires of the House of Commons of some indulgence or toleration in favour of the Dissenters at this time especially when the Protestant Religion is so shrewdly beset she hath reason now sure to take all such for her Friends that are heartily Enemies to Popery though not so skilful as they should be to ward off its assaults Since the Papists presume to call them Fanaticks though exactly conformable to the Church of England that will not assist to bring on the Popish Plot by dis-believing it and put us in fear of the Fanaticks by taking all the courses imaginable to provoke and exasperate them and to increase their discontents which they maliciously heighten and by falshood and forgeries misrepresent To graft thereupon a Pretence of a Protestant Plot for a pretext to extirpate Protestantism and introduce Popery which they impudently pretend to be of a more firm Allegiance to the Government than the Reformed Religion I pray let it be considered that that which is tolerated is put under disgrace even for that it is tolerated and that which tolerates even for that it tolerates hath the governing Authority and in so much as it indulgeth it obligeth to modesty and reason and if that indulgence should be abused it may and will be retracted It was never intended by the House of Commons that the Church of England should be altered or modelled to an agreeableness to any form or sect of the Separation or prescrib'd to by any of the Dissenters or that she should be made subject to any of their rules or opinions or her Liturgy laid aside for Directories or which is worse undervalued to the prophane way of extemporizing For as generally used and exercised it deserves no milder a stile That the Church should always govern by her own Wisdom in her own Province and in those things that appertain to her can never be deny'd her No man hath reason to say though he hath great cause to dislike the Separation and to have a bad opinion of the Dissenters that he had rather submit to Popery than to any form of the Separation for he need do neither except he pleaseth No man that thus expresseth himself but will be suspected to seek an occasion and pretence to become a Papist and to make a defection from the Church of England But if these Gentlemen have such a displeasure against Schism and Separation which certainly is the worst disease any Church can labour under and at this time threatens the destruction as well of the Protestant Religion it self as it doth to the Professors of all denominations let this sharpen their Zeal against Popery which by its unhallowed arts hath occasioned and exasperated our Schism and put them upon the use of all means to reconcile if possible the Schism that the Papists have already made and by all means endeavour to continue and take away if possible the occasion of it for the time to come And thus defeat the Arts of the Priests and Jesuits for supplanting our Church It is a most deplorable thing that our Church should be kept rent and divided in danger of being lost between Rituality and Scrupulosity Though the Scruples of the Nonconformists which I always thought and do still think groundless and unreasonable have often moved me into some passion against them yet upon consideration I think this their Scrupulosity may be of God and that some men are by him framed to it That he hath provided it as a bar and obstacle in the Natures and Complexions of some devout men against any Innovations whatsoever that dangerous ones may not steal upon the Church for the better maintaining the simplicity and purity of the Christian Religion and Worship But in saying this I have said nothing that is apt to give them a conceit of themselves but rather to humble them For the best men are not govern'd by their Temper and Constitution but correct them by their Reason and determine themselves by a clear and him Judgement What affrightment all this while either to Church or State from this weak and pityable Scrupulosity Where lyes the Treason or Sacriledge nay or so much as contumacy against our Ecclesiastical Governours which is so much upbraided to them The Christian Religion may be prejudiced by addition to as well as substraction from her rule The Church of Rome by her additions hath almost evacuated the Christian Faith Besides there may be a fineness in the outward mode of Religious Worship in it self very justifiable which may be not congenial to men of a course make The Worship of God will always favour of the manners of the people men of dull capacity can scarce admit of any Ceremonies without danger of falling into superstition or hardly escape being vext with endless and incurable scruples about them until for ease of their minds they throw them off But the wisdom of the best Law-makers hath considered in giving Laws what the people would bear and not what is best to be enjoyned and many things have been tolerated by them which they did not approve Ne majoribus malis detur occasio aut etiam
had not maintained the Doctrine that Monarchy was Jure Divino in such a sence that made the King absolute and they and the Church in consequence perished by it But God be thanked we see the Church again restored to her endowments grown wiser than to desire to hold that precariously and at pleasure she doth enjoy by an unmovable legal Right Of the three Estates of this Kingdom for to suspect any such thing of the King would be unpardonable Blasphemy there can be no reasonable suspition Though of the House of Commons it is become now lawful to suspect and say any thing that is evil But no man but the Villains that design by dishonouring them to change the Government hath reason to entertain such a thought The Members of the House of Commons in our latest Parliaments were all upon the matter entirely conformable to the Church of England They were persons of the best Estates Reputation and Honour in their Countries And they or such as they are like to make our succeeding Parliaments I have leave to put them under the imprecation of the severest Curse if ever they do sacrilegiously impair the Church of her Revenues And I desire it may be assisted with the hearty and passionate desires of all good Christians that so the Curse I now pronounce may operate upon them who shall incur it He that designs contrives or consents to spoil the Church of any of her Endowments May a secret Curse waste his Substance Let his Children be Vagabonds and beg their bread in desolate places Besides I know it is meditated and designed by many and the best men that use to be sent to Parliaments to redeem in part that infamous Sacriledge that was committed in the times of H. 8. Then Rectories appropriate to Religious Houses which had by Appropriations the cure of the Parish that ought after the dissolution of the Monasteries to be presented to were vested in the Crown whereby not only the Church was robbed but the People cheated of their Tythes which were theirs to give though not to retain their Proemium for the Priests Ministrations which are now often most slenderly and sometimes scandalously performed As also to disincumber her Revenue of the Charges and Impositions of First-fruits and Tenths which were imposed and exacted by the Pope upon his pretence of being the oecumenical Pastor and High-Priest of the Christian Church and at that time likewise conferred upon the Crown and are as unreasonably continued as any thing can be that hath a Law for a pretext But for this a Compensation may be given to the Crown and some way will be found out for augmentation of Vicaridges and re-indowment of Churches that lost all in that unparallel'd Sacriledge committed by the unsatiable Avarice of that haughty and luxurious Prince These designs employ the care of a great number of our principal Gentlemen to purge the sin and dishonour brought upon the Nation by that extraordinary King But if there were reason for any fear that the Nation could again incur the guilt of Sacriledge What warranty can this give to any of the Clergy of our Church to slack or abate the Zeal that is due for the purity of her Doctrine prudence of her Discipline and her commendable decent and intelligible Devotion Are they worthy to be named of her that are ready to dissert her out of fear of a remote possibility that she may not always have such Largesses to give as she now bestows upon her Sons Will they prefer the gift to the Altar and declare all their Godliness to be Gain To suffer Popery for such a consideration to be induced upon her is a far worse and more detestable Sacriledge than that they pretend to fear This is to make the Anathemata of the Temple to inserve to the dishonour of the Numen To desecrate the Altar for the sake of the gift And will by the just Judgment of God I fear bring the abomination of desolation again into our holy places Let none of her Sons for the obtaining a Dignity or a capacity for a double Benefice betray her by neglecting her interest thinking with themselves that she will otherwise be supported for this their doings is no less than the sin of Judas who took money to betray our Lord imagining that he would by a Miracle rescue himself from the hands of those to whom he sold and betrayed him The honest of our Clergy will have little satisfaction when that day comes When they shall be reduced to Prayers and Tears if they are failing in any thing that they may lawfully do to prevent that miserable state their Tears will be as water spilt upon the ground and their Prayers will never find acceptance with God nor be returned into their own bosom Disce Miser pigris non flecti numina vot is Praesentemque adhibe dum facis ipse Deum But above all those fine men are not to pass unreproved who are preparing pretences for their Revolt to the Roman Church They tell us that the Reformation is depraved and Popery it self is much amended since the Reformation that it is not so grosly superstitious though her Superstitions are still enough to stifle Religion nor so fabulous in her Legends she need make no new ones since she gives authority still to the old nor so imposturous in her cheats for her Priests have not been Hocus-pocusses of late used so many tricks of Legerdemain and presented their Puppet-plays of moving and squeaking Images since the Reformation as before But they may know that the reason why we have not maintained the dignity of the Reformation intire is this for that Popery hath not been utterly extirpated from amongst us though their frequent Treasons and their notorious seductions have deserved it By its continuance amongst us and the resorts of their Priests hither it hath created and fomented Divisions amongst us and corrupted her Children from their obedience to her guidance and instructions But she her self is still the same she was the Reformation of the Church is still intire She hath made good her departure from the Church of Rome her Adversaries have not been able to convict her of any fault therein and by an easie victory she hath triumphed over all their oppositions and contradictions And though Popery appear not altogether so deformed by her Priests artificial Dress and the Representations they make of her to seduce us and entice us to come again under her Yoke yet we know she hath more established her Tyranny by the Council of Trent and more corrupted her Morals by her modern Casuists since the Reformation and thereby hath rendred her self more detestable and for ever to be avoided But though it may be true that the Popish world is beholden to the Reformation and Popery it self is thereby amended in some overt things and reformed in those Countries that have not reformed from her For in the Light of the Reformation they have seen Light and have
understanding to appear and come forth for the undeceiving and rectifying the Judgments of the most deceivable part of Mankind and with just ignominy and scorn to beat down the assumings and presumptions of such Pretenders and Smatterers in Letters especially in such a Weighty Matter as this when the poor people if mistaken must be mistaken to their Ruine and perish by the Deceit if deceived which I hope is scarce possible for very many to be by this frivolous Pretender and Offerer of Considerations which none but he that deserves our pity could think of but for that he dares to offer them publickly to the World and under the stile of Great and Weighty Considerations he most justly deserves our Indignation a private Scorn a publick Censure For that purpose we will now produce him HE begins his Considerations with a Consideration and Recommendation of himself and would fain prove his Honestly for he was with reason conscious that this undertaking would render him more than probably suspected He proves as well as any thing he undertakes and as well as it can be proved That he is an honest man This he would have the World believe because there is such a thing as sincerity in the World and for that there have been some men that have owned an afflictive Righteous Cause against self-interest and the displeasure of a prevailing Faction but we know the Cause that he Patronizes is the most unrighteous Cause that ever any man of Front espoused but that should not trouble us But that which afflicts us and is the heart-aking of all good men is That this Scribler with too much reason we know presumes that the Brave men whom he reviles for adhering to the only means of the saving of three Kingdoms with the Gross of the Nation are designed to be subdued by a party of men whose strength the King in his profound Knowledg and Wisdom best knows how to Calculate but certainly this Addresser imagines very great whatever he pretends and that he is well backed by force Otherwise he could not adventure publickly to despise the Interest of a House of Commons If this Considerer and his Fellow-Conspirators had not some secret reserves of Strength he would not advise the King as he doth to Adhere to and Govern with the House of Lords and his Privy-Council and to lop off the House of Commons from the Government as an unprofitable Branch In the next Paragraph he tells us The Chiefest Principle and Maxim of the true reformed Religion in this Kingdom is fully Epitomized in this excellent Precept Give to every one his due If there can be more nonsense spoken in so many words It is this Patriot must do it and you shall find him often performing what I have undertaken for him And sure after such demonstrations of his Honesty and proof of his Understanding you must take him for a True Patriot and a fit Addresser of GREAT and WEIGHTY Considerations In the next Paragraph he undertakes to commend and allow chide and disapprove our leading Men I believe he means of the House of Commons but we want his Name it 's fit he should discover himself before we can admit him to sit Judge of the Actions of the most excellent Persons of the late House of Commons I perswade my self he would blush however immodest he appears in his Address if he were drawn out and exposed to publick view under such a Character we might spare him the Pillory rotten Eggs and Turnep-tops which is due to infamous Libellers against Governours for he is a man of such fashion I believe that he would suffer too much of Shame and Confusion of Face if he were but known well enough to be pointed at after we have done with him In the fourth Paragraph he allows it is a glorious thing to establish the True Protestant Religion but he would not have it established upon Quick-sands neither would we because it is impossible it should be so established we would not have it depend upon loose accidents expos'd to Chance and Contingencies and expect it should be supported by rare events and morally impossible nor to be left at Six and Sevens a chance that is not upon the Die and hope that things should out of their Course and Nature unite and combine together for its support That which is Glorious is so because it is Excellent in it self and difficult to be atchieved and whatever is difficult is to be obtained by unusual and extraordinary means to deny or condemn the use of them when lawful is to deny us the end and is so far in truth from allowing it to be Glorious that he doth not allow it at all That it is made difficult to support the Protestant Religion we owe to the Popish Conspiracy and the design of this man is to make it impossible to that purpose he requires you to lay aside Humane Policy which is the same as true Prudence which is the onely Guide God hath given us and the onely Oracle he hath left us to consult in our Affairs and is never repugnant as he would have it but always conformable to the Laws of God and Nature lest we should be furnished with a Remedy against the designed mischiefs to us and our Religion To this commendable sort of Policy the design of the Bill will be made agreeable in the following Discourse That we may admit the absurd Doctrins of the Church of Rome we are required to abandon our Reason and that we may more easily again fall unto her we must if we will be ruled by the Considerer renounce our Prudence and those that will not must endure his slanderous Reproaches with which he goes on to revile the Promoters of the Bill of Exclusion whom he calls Hypocrites Factious Spirits of the Fanatical Leven that they make a Cloak of Religion to palliate black Designs fierce Zealots acting like the Rump-Parliament Guilty of Antichristian attempts repugnant to the Ordinance of God and to the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom a few turbulent Zealots assuming to themselves a Soveraign and despotical Power of Deposing the DVKE of YORK and says That they impudently affirm That this hath been the Ancient Custom of Parliaments to Depose Princes and dispose of Kingdoms whereas the Crown hath been always Haereditary and never depended upon the Suffrages of the Subject Since this bad man presumes to say so many bad words falsely of the Excellent Members of the late House of Commons reproches their Zeal for the publick Safety most Heroically exerted in the time of the greatest Need and most threatning Dangers calls their appearance for the support of the Protestant Religion established by Law Hypocrisie And the prosecuting the Discovery of the Hellish Plot and the best means of preventing the Plot from taking effect black Designs Since I say his Immodesty hath given him so much Licence I wonder he had no more Scurrilities especially since he is so impertinent as to call
and Heir to the Duke of York Edward the Fifth succeeded by vertue of the same Act of Entail Richard the Third having got the Crown he was confirmed King by Act of Parliament which likewise Entail'd the Crown which was done upon two reasons pretended First for that by reason of a precontract of Edward the Fourth Edward the Fifth his eldest Son and all his other Children were declared Bastards Secondly for that the Son of the Duke of Clarence second Brother to Edward the Fourth had no right because the Duke was attainted of Treason by a Parliament of Edward the Fourth The Act of Parliament for Bastardizing the Children of Edward the Fourth was in force until repealed in the time of Henry the Seventh after his Marriage with Elizabeth the Daughter of Edward the Fourth Henry the Seventh comes in by no legal Title First because Edw. 4th his Daughter was then living Secondly his own Mother was then living In his first Parliament the Crown was Entail'd upon him and the Heirs of his body And observable it is that after the death of Elizabeth his Queen Daughter and Heir to Ed. 4th there is no notice taken of any right which was pretended to by Hen. 8. during his Fathir's life as being Son and Heir of his Mother who had the legal Right to the Crown by an ordinary right of Succession Henry the Eighth Succeeded who did as all his Laws speak derive his Title to the Crown by the Fathers side and not by the Mothers In his Reign the Crown was Entail'd thrice by Act of Parliament Confirm'd by the general Oaths both of the Spiritualty and the Lasty and it was made High Treason to refuse such Oaths and several Attainders were in his time by particular Acts of parliament of several persons who opposed such limitations of the Crown and the authority of the Laws that made them But the great Law of the three was made in the 35th year of his Reign Cap. 1. whereby power was given him to give and dispose by his Letters Patents or by Will the Imperial Crown of the Realm to remain and come after his death for want of lawful Heirs of Prince Edward the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth to such person or persons in remainder or reversion as should please his Highness In which Act there was a Clause that made it high Treason to speak or write against that Act or to go about to annul or repeal it Besides there is another Proviso in that Act That if the Lady Mary should not keep such conditions which the King should declare by his Letters Patents or last Will the Imperial Crown should come to the Lady Elizabeth And if the Lady Elizabeth should not observe the same then the Crown was to go to such person as the King by his Letters Patents or last Will should limit and appoint By virtue of which limitation in the Act of Parliament afore-mentioned Edward the Sixth succeeded to the Crown and after him Queen Mary in whose Reign in an Act of Parliament for Conformation of the Articles of Marriage between her and Philip of Spain the Crown was again Entail'd but she dying without Issue the Lady Elizabeth became Queen who had been declared a Bastard as well as her Sister Mary in the life of their Father and therefore succeeded to the Crown by force of the Entail made in the 35 H. 8. Cap. 1. Pursuant to these Presidents in fact in the 13. year of the Reign of Q. Eliz. an Act of Parliament was made declaratory of the power of Parliament in the limitation of the Succession which made it highly penal to deny the Authority of an Act of Parliament for the limitation of the Crown Several persons in her time were proceeded against upon that Act and had the Judgement of Traytor and as Traitors executed for being contrary to that Law This Queen dying King James succeeded who was as the Statute of Recognition made in Parliament the first year of his Reign declares lineally rightfully descended of the most excellent Lady Margaret eldest Daughter of the most renowned Henry the 7th and the high and Noble Princess Queen Elizabeth his Wife eldest Daughter of King Edward the 4th the said Lady Margaret being eldest Sister of King Henry the 8th Father of the High and mighty Princes of famous memory Elizabeth late Queen of England It is further observable that upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of Emgland and Spain were entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament and the Pope's Bull. And by that Act of Parliament for confirming the Articles of Marriage Philip was created King and did exercise Soveraign Authority and particularly in making Laws together with the Queen the Stile of the Soveraign Assent to Bills in Parliament in their time being Le Roy la Roigne les veulent And likewise for that it was agreed by the States of both Kingdomes and the Low Countries it is therefore probable that it was the Universal opinion of the great men of that Age That Kings and Soveraign Princes by and with the consent of their States had a power to alter and bind the Succession of the Crown FINIS