in p. 702 and in the following Pages viz. Whether the Turk or the Pope is the greater Antichrist and at last saith p. 710. In comparing the Turk with the Pope if a Question be asked whether of them is the truer or greater Antichrist it were easie to see and judge that the Turk is the more open and manifest Enemy against Christ and the Church But if it be asked whether of them two hath been the more bloody and pernicious Adversary to Christ and his Members or whether of them hath Consumed and Spilt more Christian Blood he with Sword or this with Fire and Sword together neitheer is it a light matter to discern neither is it my part here to discuss who do only write the History and Acts of them both And I then telling the Nonconformist that the Iews for many obvious reasons did prefer the Doctrine of Mahumetanisme to that of Popery some Papists beforemention'd had prefer'd it to Protestancy and as he the Nonconformist had preferred it to Popery he mention'd his fears that a sort of Enthusiasts among us called Seekers might hereby be in great danger of stumbling on the Religion of Mahumetanisme accordingly as of old when one went to demand of the Philosophers of the several Sects which was the best of them every one named his own Sect or Party in the first place but all of them in the second place granted Plato to be the most eminent that is the next best whereupon those Seekers preferred Plato because setting aside prejudicate Affection and Self-Love Plato's Philosophy had thus carried the Garland I then took occasion to tell the Company that I thought 't was extremely unjust to prefer Mahumetanisme with the many ridiculous and senseless things it comprehends to Christianity in Papists blended with many erroneous Tenets which yet are capable of the name of Religion and such as those great pious Papists beforementioned viz. Father Paul Thuanus D'Ossat Erasmus Peiresk perhaps own'd the belief of as many thousands of others may still likewise do but frankly interposed my opinion that I thought that Popery complicated with the real belief of the Iesuites Morals and their vile Casuistical Tenets branded by the present Pope was as unworthy of God and Humane Nature as any Hypothesis of Religion could be and I as frankly told the Nonconformist whom I looked on as one who would not outrage the Law of the Land to advance the Gospel that tho some erroneous points relating to Nonconformity might without absurdity assume the name of Religion yet among whomsoever those Tenets should be incorporated with the real belief and practice of the lawfulness of the Doctrine of Resistance and of any persons Reforming the World by Arms without Warrant from the Municipal Laws so to do yet such a Faith would be Faction and such a Nominal Religion would be a real Rebellion and much worse then Mahumetanisme I farther acquainted the Company that according to the discreet Motto of the House of Ormond Commâ— je trouve and the Mode of the Age to take the measures of knowledge by experiment the usage that the better sort of Christians have found under Turcisme hath been by very many degrees milder then under Popery Erasmus indeed was of a contrary opinion for in his Vtilissima Consultatio de â—ello Turcis inferendo printed in the Year 1530 he saith that Exaudiuntur interim 〈◊〉 voces abominandae qui jactant esse tolerabilius agere sub imperio Turcâ—â—orâ—â—â— quam sub Christianis Principibus ac sub Pontifice Romano and there he goes on at large to prove the inconvenience of living under the Turkish Government but the order of the Iesuites was not then invented and after a hundred years observation since Protestants have judged as they did in Erasmus his time And in a Popish Book called the Right of the Prelate and the Prince I find Luther de soecul potestat cited p. 55. for saying that the Turk is decies probior prudentiorque nostris principibus And I think it may seem greater wisdom in him to sell such Heterodox People for slaves that he takes by force than to burn them But in the Year before that Book of Erasmus was printed I find in Magerus his Advocatia Armata Laurent Surius in Comment rer in orbe gestar ad annum 1529 cited for the Hungarians throwing themselves on the protection of the Turk rather then they would be deprived of their Right to chuse their King and it seems under Popery in that Kingdom they had a greater kindness for the Turk then the Emperor of Germany And the great Observer Thuanus on the Year 1597 in his 3 d Tome discoursing how the Germans being under apprehensions of the Power of the Turk and of Spain at the same time were thoughtfully weighing their danger Et Comparatione Alchorani cum inquiâ—itione Hispaniensi factâ an potius cum Orientali quam occidentali Turco sibi rem esse velint thereupon saith si quidem res merito suo ac semoto omni affectu privato aestimetur haud dubium esse quin optione datâ— orientalem eligant quippe ut viribus praepollentem sic victis tolerabiliorem faturum c. Dr. Heylin likewise seems to favour that opinion for in his Geoghraphy in Folio he saith The Turks compel no man to abjure the faith in which he was born I have heard many say that 't is better for a man that would enjoy Liberty of Conscience to live in the Countries professing Mahumetanism than Papistry And I think I have read it in the Author of the Zealanders Choice that if he were to lay the Scene of his life any where with respect chiefly to the freedom of owning any Religious Sentiments it should be either in Amsterdam or Constantinople As I was reading the other day in an old Canonists Tractate of Heresy I found this Position asserted there that 't is unlawful for a Master of Requests to deliver a Petition for Mercy to be shown to a Heretic but then I occasionally thought of a more manly and god-like temper shining in part of the Alcoran as Mr. Gregory relates it in his Opusc. where he saith The Mahumetans have another Lords Prayer called by them the Prayer of Jesus the Son of Mary and that endeth thus And let not such an one bear rule over me that will have no mercy on me for thy mercies sake O thou most merciful He who separates Mercy from Justice is unjust to the very name of Justice and robbeth it of the better half of its signification leaving its Teeth and Claws and taking away its Heart and Bowels Iarchas the Indian and chief of the Brachmans in Philostratus is brought in finding fault with Apollonius Tyaneus and others of the Greeks for that they confined and applied the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to those only who do no wrong to one another and telling them that they were in an error for saith he among the chiefest Offices of Iustice 〈◊〉
to the Persons of the Papists and likewise of the Divines of our Church but was afterwards sufficiently sensible of their intolerable rancour and animosities against both and of the infamous use and application they made of the Iesuits Doctrine of Calumny and of the Weapons they borrowed from Parson's of the Succession to promote the detestable Exclusion and of their borrowing from Athens and old Rome the Thunderbolts of their old REPVBLICAN Curses viz. of ENEMY c. and throwing them at the most Loyal of our Patriots and absurdly calling them Enemies to the King and Kingdom because they asseâ—ted the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy in opposing the Exclusion By that kind of Republican Curses they gave us the omen of what they would have been at And so extravagant was the use of that anathema in the late Conjuncture that when one in a great Assembly moved against Sir G. I. a Person that all the Loyal must own for his steadiness to the Hereditary Monarchy and for his having first kindled that great Zeal for Loyalty which doth now like a wall of Fire defend our Metropolis that he might be voted such an Enemy as aforesaid a Burgess for that City as I was info m'd did Ridiculously and Presumtuously move that he might be voted an Enemy to Mankind But it was easie for such as had took Gods name in vain so to take Mankinds I shall not degenerate from the Moral Offices of Charity to mens Persons if I call the Exâ—lusion that would have broke the Balance of the Monarchy that was the old Balance of the World enmity to Mankind but shall without my here calling any men names leave it to the soft voice of God's Herald called Conscience to suggest it that tho a man who was deluded a while by the error of the Exclusion that would have been so fatal to the Realm might by reason of any good intentions so for a while ill guided not deserve perhaps to be judged to be an enemy to the King and Kingdom formaliter yet that if after Consideration and all thoughts made about his Sworn Allegiance he doth not make a stand but shall at any time again endeavour the going over the Rubicon of the Bloud Royal in its Line of Succession stated by God and Nature and the defending his false-steps beyond it by Association or Arms â—I say I shall leave it to Conscience to tell him or warn him by the indeleble Characters of natural right there so legibly Engraved how much he will deserve the censure of such an enemy as hath been mentioned and shall be glad he may be thereby to better effect warn'd then Caesar was from his Vsurpatioâ— by the great Senatus Consultum which Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law Printed in the year 1530. saith that he saw remaining Engraved on a Marble Pillar by the River Rubicon viz. Iussu mandatúve P. R. Commilito armate quisquis es Manipularisve Centuriove turmaeve legionarie hic sistito vexillumve sinito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa ductum commeatumve traducito Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo adâ—ersus praecepta ierit fueritve adjudicatus esto P. R. H. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit penatesque è sacris penetralibus asportaverit S. P. Q. R. Sanctio Plebisciti Sâ— ve C. He likewise saith that In Portu Arimini alterum est adhuc ejusdem sententiae senatusconsultum and which appearing to be a Noble piece of Curiosity and expressive of the same sense wiâ—h the former tho with some difference of words I shall here entertain the Reader with viz. Imp. Mil. Tiro armate quisquis es hic sistito vexillumve sinito arma deponito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa arma exercitumve traducito Si quis ergo adversus praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto Hostis P. R. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit sacrosve penates è penetralibus asportaverit Sanctio plebisciti senatusconsulti ultra hos fines arma proferre liceat nemini Rivallius having cited these Senatusconsulta saith that Quibus senatusconsultis Caesar fortassis territus cum è Galliâ rediens ad Rubiconem usque pervenisset adversus Pompeium populumque Romanum bellum gesturus esset militibus dixisse fertur et etiam nunc regredi possimus quod si Ponticulum transierimus omnia armis agenda erunt And thus let all members of theâ— true Church Militant in these Realms by what name or title soever known who have been tempted to think the Exclusion lawful thank Heaven that they have lived to repent of the same and that even now they may go back from the sinfullness of such thought and consider that if they had passed over this Rubicon they were to expect beside the fate of their Involving their Country in War the other tremendous one of being found fighters against God to whom they were sworn I have little further to add but to acquaint the Judicious READER that I desire if he findeth any thing here-said that he may reasonably think to be not according to the Theological measures of the Church of England or the Political ones of the State or against the moral Offices of Charity toward the Persons of 〈◊〉 men or against the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians tho I know of no such thing here said it may by him be taken as non dictum There is no keeping of Passion in number weight and measure and particularly of that of Anger The Excellent Bishop of Downe that was Doctor Ieremy Taylor hath often told me That when he was to return an answer to a Friends Letter that had Anger in it he never concern'd himself to return an answer to the angry part of it because he considered that the anger of his Friend was over before the Letters arrival But against all the Irreligionary Principles of the Iesuits and particularly that of the Founding Dominion in Grace I would crave aid from Posterity for the continuance of my Indignation in the known words of O me propè lassum juvate Posteri but that the Pope hath saved me the labour and so I hope those Principles in them are retiring to theâ—r Eternal rest and I desire not to hinder their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that no pious Roman Catholick may labour under the weight of being Censured as one who is necessarily to believe and practice some Principles beforementioned out of the LATERAN Council I have mentioned various things that may be of use to that effect and perhaps more satisfactory than what hath by any of their Church been said who have denyed it to be a General Council Such denyal will not effectually do their work since Cardinal Perron hath as I said shew'd it to be a general one and his reputation for his profound Judgment and Learning being so great and such that the late Learned Lord Faulkland the Secretary of State was wont to say That Baronius and
of the Papal Usurpations to expose himself to the fencing with two enraged Multitudes which would have produced the same effect as would a Iesuit's Preaching a Postilling Sermon here against the Yearly burning of the Pope to the Populace employed in that Solemnity My Lord I find my self her engulfed in writing a long Letter and the truth is having a great concern for your Lordship's Honour I am willing to take pains to satisfie my self exactly by thus tracing your Lordship's steps on the Stage of the World that I may satisfie others so about your being as averse as any one can be from supporting any Papal Power to invade the rights of Conscience or those of Princes The Roman Historian speaking of Nero saith Tyrannum hunc per quatuordecem annos passus est terrarum orbis And it may truly be said That England formerly has endured the Popes Tyranny and the Artifices of its Favourers for some Ages But the Patience of Man has bounds and the Propagators of such Usurpation who had so long maintain'd a separate Soveraignty here the which is like an Animal living within an Animal did find that as the lesser creature is evacuated by the greater or destroyed therein or doth else destroy the greater Animal it was so held to be in the case of such Power among us and as no doubt it always will be by your Lordship When your Travels were ended and you had with the help of the Education your Father gave you saved him by your knowledge of the Lex terroe from falling as a prey to Arbitrary Power and thereby shewed your self both a good Son and great Patriot the first Scene of publick Employment wherein your Lordship appeared with Eminency was as Governour of Vlster by Authority under the Great Seal of England a Charge of difficulty when the Forces from Scotland under the Command of Major General Munro had so long ruled absolutely there that the English Interest had suffered a great eclipse and diminution How you managed Affairs during your Government there and how by your Councils the most pernitious and potent Rebel Owen Roe O Neil was opposed and his design to swallow up that Province and the Province of Connaught disappointed and the Protestant Interest in both united and encouraged and under your Conduct and Command the Titular Popish Archbishop of Tuam taken and by the seisure of his Cabinet and Papers the Popish design upon Ireland discovered and broken in due time I doubt not you will more particularly inform the World. From that Service your Lordship was upon the ill success of those Commissioners who were first sent to the then Marquess of Ormond employed to make the Capitulation with the said Marquess then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of the City of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands for securing them from the Irish Rebels who had invested and streightned the same Which happy work was effectually accomplished by the Articles made with the said Marquess already published to the World And so the Protestants Interest in that Kingdom made entire and so considerable that they daily gained ground of the Confederate Rebels till at length they were wholly subdued and vanquished After those Articles concluded and reception of the said City and Garrisons your Lordship was called back into England where being a Member of the House of Commons you shewed your self no less useful to this Kingdom And have since in Parliament and Council and other great Imployments in both Kingdoms shewed your self an Eminent Instrument both in his Majesties happy Restoration who entirely trusted you with the Management thereof and in other great Affairs of State and Government to general satisfaction being never by those that knew you so much as suspected for Evil Council or want of Zeal and Faithfulness to your King or Countrey but every day gaining more the Love and Esteem of Protestants and Patriots as you had incurred the implacable hatred of the Popish and Arbitrary Factions I cannot here but observe That a little before the Kings Restoration the spirit of the people universally shewing its resentments so strong and vehement against Lambert and his Committee of Safety and against all the propounders of projects of Government that nothing but his Majesties return to the Throne of his Ancestors could quiet the people and your Lordship then as President of the Council by your great Wisdom Contributing highly to the dispatch of many arduous and intricate Affairs requisite to make that great Revolution without bloudshed when things near their Center were moving so fast it may well be reckon'd among impossible things that your Lordship should now espouse the Papal interest when the Vogue the Humour the Sense and Reason and Spirit of the People are bent against it with as keen and strong and general an antipathy as can be imagined And when I consider that great real power you had in the Kingdom at that time testify'd not so much by your signing all the great Commissions then for Military and Civil Employments as by both the King and the best and wisest of the people in the Three Kingdoms putting themselves in your hands and having their eyes chiefly upon you as to the management of the Political part of that mighty concern I cannot but thinking of your Lordship whom thus the King and Kingdom delighted to honour apply to you these words in Valerius Maximus where he speaks of Agrippa Menenius whom the Senate and People chose Arbitrator of their differences and to â—ompose matters between them Quantus scilicet esse debuit arbiter publicae salutis Yet as great as this Man was he could have no Funeral unless the people had by a pole given the sixth part of a penny to defray his Funeral Charges But your Lordships case in one particular seems harder then his for they who unjustly go to take away your good Name and to make a Papist of you go about to bury you alive Had your Lordship after the King's Restoration aspired after the power of a chief Minister or suffered any such to be committed to you you must have took it with the concomitance of universal envy that hath always in England been fatal to such power England having always thought such power fatal to it 'T is the power it self of such a Minister that is look't on as a popular Nusance and t is impossible for such a great Man by raising his power only to what he thinks a moderate height to keep it secure and lasting For tho a Steeple be built with firm Stone great Art and but with a moderate height yet are there Clouds charged with Lightning and Thunder and moving in the Ayr sometimes not higher than the top of such a Steeple and the Pryamid or sharpness of such a Steeple then as I may say tapping or broaching such a Cloud that comes that way is instantly Burnt and Thundered down And the Multitude of the
least one World of hereticks the author of the Compendium needed not by his Rhetorick to reflect on my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Candour gentleness in saying yet if it be a breach of Christianity to crush the bruised reed and of generosity also to trample upon the oppressed I wish his Lordship may be found guilty of neither c. for behold any single Jesuite according to Campian tho but like a reed shaken with the wind is able to bruise all Protestant Scepters and any little toe of that Order can trample all Heretical crowned heads to dirt and the Number of the Papists in England if reduced to the least of Numbers is not according to Campian to be slighted if one of them be a Iesuite for that that one Jesuite will carry the advantage of odds against all Protestant Kings and Princes that one may say my Name is legion for we are many but as that legion-spirit could not without the Divine permission ruin a herd of Swine off from a Steep place so neither can all the legions of Iesuited evil Spirits in the World drive a King Kingdom from Precipices at their pleasure And Queen Elizabeth in spight of all the arts and power of Rome outlived eight Popes and lived to change all her Counsellors but one all her great officers twice or thrice some Bishops four times and died full of years and did see and leave peace upon Israel And now I shall Entertain your Lordship with a further Reason of my charging the present Popes declaration aforesaid about some opinions of the Casuists as carry with it a face of some thing like shamme and my reason is grounded on what was said in a publick Sermon before an honourable Audience namely that the propositions of the Casuists therein were not Condemned by the Pope in the Consistory which would have made the Censure more authoritative but by the Pope and Cardinals of the Court of the Inquisition upon which a remarkable thing follow'd the Iefuites in France who were much provoked at this Censure moved the Procureur de Roy or Attorney general at Paris to put in a Complaint against the publishing that Decree since it came from the Court of the Inquisition which not being acknowledg'd in France nothing Flowing from that authority could be received in that Kingdom upon which the decree was prohibited and suppress'd And may not the English Popish Priests say the same thing the Inquisition was never received in England and therefore that declaration of the Popes obligeth us not here and we will prohibit and suppress it as much as we can No doubt but the present Pope fearing that the Noysome and Infectious smell of those Opinions of the Casuists being more offensive to the minds of Men then any snuff of a Candle can be to their Nostrils they were ready to cry for the removing of the Candlestick of his Church out of its place went about to extinguish them in the most Summary Manner that he could and therefore attempted to do it by the Court of the Inquisition well knowing that in the Consistory of Cardinals all proceedings are so dilatory and the old magi there so used to do every thing pian piano that they would consume many pounds of new Candles in debating whether or no and how the old snuff should be removed and perhaps would have thought to have contented the World in the mean time with giving it some perfumes but the Pope being afraid of the Iesuites perhaps as sometimes the Grand Signior is of his Ianisaries doth not for fear himself should be extinguished by them so far as I may say follow the light within him as to throw away or tread out that snuff of those opinions as containing a malum in se or declare any of them to be ill as contrary to the principles of the law of nature in which case neither he nor God himself indeed could have dispens'd with them tho yet any honest and ingenious Heathen would on the least occasion given have declared them so As Cicero and Seneca and many others have done and which had the Pope done and the Iesuites or any Papists persevered in the making those principles the Rules of practice his Kingdom had thereby been ipso facto divided against it self and a diffinitive sentence had been thereby given by the Pope that all who had dy'd owning those principles and practices had been sunk for ever into the burning lake Therefore as I said before I hope this declaration of the Popes such as it is will give an alarm to our English Papists to deal seriously with their Souls and to consider as if it were for their eternities these and other Principles of their Religion and that if they will not be thereby perswaded to be almost Protestant Christians yet to be altogether Masters of as good Moral Principles as the Heathens I named and If any of them can but give us a Moral certainty of their Principles being but such I shall never repine at any favour that any new Law may afford to such of them If therefore any of our Lay Country men Papists not guilty of the late Plot shall desire to be heard and to say any thing toward this effect some of us have heard of these principles before mention'd as own'd by our Casuists and Priests and Confessors that are now thus condemned by the Pope and we did not believe that those our spiritual guides did own such Principles but now our Eye seeth by the condemnation thereof that they were before own'd and made rules of Practice Wherefore we hope that who ever do own them will abhor themselves and repent in dust and ashes and others of us did formerly think them Consistent with the Christian faith and the peace of Kingdoms and with humane Society but we now abhor those principles and repent in dust and ashes We are ready to let the King and Kingdom and the World have a moral certainty that we desire no power to change the Religion in England by Law establish'd and we are willing to receive Instruction from any that shall be appointed by publick Authority to give it to us concerning what other principles beside these Condemned by the Pope are inconsistent with Religion or the publick Peace and in case any shall offer to give us dispensations either for principles or practices contrary to those we renounce as inconsistent with the publick peace we shall be so far from accepting of such dispensation that we shall detect the offerer thereof before a Magistrate as much as we would an enemy to His Majesty We are ready to give active or passive obedience as to all the Laws in being We believe not the Bishop of Rome to have more power in His Majesties Realms by Gods word then any other forraign Bishop as was by Acts of Parliament and publick Recognitions declared in the Reign of Henry the 8 th We are willing to render the Kingdom as secure from
the Basilisc of the Papal Supremacy and notify'd it to the Nations of the Earth that England is an Empire that being the Style of the Statute of the 24 th of H. 8. c. 12. Viz. That this Realm is an Empire and that the Crown thereof is an Imperial one And the words of Kings and Emperours of this Realm being then attribued in our Statutes to the Monarchs of England and as the great expression in the Prophesie of Ezekiel c. 16. v. 13. is applyed by God to the Iewish state And thou didst prosper into a Kingdom it may be justly said that Harry the Eighth's defying the Popes Usurpation made England prosper into an Empire 'T was his doing that made him hors de page and 't is only the doing it that will make the French King truly so too For 't is only Air that any feed a Monarch's fancy with who would amuse him with an Vniversal Empire abroad till he hath obtain'd one first at home as no Man is to expect to govern his Neighbours Family who is Control'd in his own And like a Master who imagines himself great while he is feared by none but some of his own Servants so how little terrour did Queen Mary's Reign give to any parcel of Mankind but a few of her own Subjects of which the number that she burnt and made to languish in Prisons and such as left her Kingdom by migration to forreign parts would easily have kept Callais for her and prevented the ignominy of her Politics in losing the Real Key of France while she was finding the Imaginary Keys of the Church But 't is a truth not contestable That Queen Mary's Reign in which her persecution of her Subjects was so barbarous and such a scandal to Government That Dr. Heylin himself applyes to it in the Title Page of his History of Queen Mary that passage in Paterculus Hujus temporis fortunam ne deflere quidem quispiam satis digne potuit nemo verbis exprimere potest served only as a foile to the lustre of Queen Elizabeth whom all Generations since have called blessed and who was not more lov'd by the English then she was feared by the French and was offered Calice if she would but have connived at the continuing of the French forces in Scotland and who sent to the great Henry the Fourth a Mandamus to build no more Ships and had more money offered her by her Subjects then she would accept and yet as is said in Towsend's Historical Collections had spent a Million of Money in her Wars with Spain and laid out 100000 l. to support the King of France against the Leaguers and 150000 l. in defence of the Low Countries and discharged a debt of Four Millions she found the Crown indebted in Nay our Historians tell us that She payed the very Pensions that were in arrear in her Father's and Sister's time to divers of the Religious persons ejected out of Abbeys It was Queen Elizabeth who by all her Alliances and especially her Offensive and Defensive one with the States of the Vnited Provinces in the Year 1578. laid such a deep and sure foundation for a vast trade of the English Nation to be built on that it 's overbalance is said to have brought to be Coined in the Tower of London from the first of October 1599 in the 41 st Year of her Reign to March 31st 1619 being 19 years 4,779 314 l. 13 s. 4 d And from March 31st 1619 to March 31st 1638 being 19 years 6,900,042 l. 11 s. 1 d And from March 1638 before May 1657 being 19 years 7,733,521 l. 13 s. 4 d England alone by verture of that her Alliance having till the Peace of Munster 1648 enjoyed almost the whole Manufacture and best part of the Trade of Europe And it was but just for Heaven to punish in England the greatest villany that could be wrought on Earth I mean the murder of the best of Kings by suffering the Trade of England to have its fatal decay in that year 1648. For then I count our over-balance of Trade for the last mentioned Nineteen years had its Period and 't was by the effect of that Peace that both Holland and France and Spain cantonized the power of our Trade and the most Soveraign of our Manufactures Till that black year 't was to be ascribed to the result of Queen Elizabeth's politics and not to the conduct of the Long Parliament that England did as to Trade both do its business and play and as to its Commanding the Trade of the World did Sail with a Trade-wind and during that Wind it could not happen that any should meet us or overtake us in our motion whatever mean Pilots were at the Helm It was for the completing the last ternary of the Coinage that I mentioned the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or nineteen years ending in 1657. For I believe that both Astrea and Trade left our Land in that fatal Crisis of 48 of which the Mâ—nth of Ianuary produced the Signing of that Peace at Munster and the horrid Arraignment and Martyrdom of that matchless Prince 'T is therefore not to be admired That Queen Elizabeth's provident Ensuring such a plenty of Traffick and Riches to her Kingdom both for her own and future time she had what praemium of Taxes from her Parliaments she pleased accordingly as King Iames tells the Parliament Anno 1620 That Queen Elizabeth had one year with another above 100000 l. in Subsidies and in all my time I have had but four Subsidies and six Fifteenths and he said his Parliament had not given him any thing for Eight or Nine years England did thrive apparently while it was to Queen Elizabeth a Puteus inexhaustus But while it was such an one to the Pope was in a miserable and consumptive state as any one must necessarily conclude who considers that the nutritive juyce of the wealth of the Kingdom was diverted from cherishing its own Head to pamper the Bellies of Forreigners Deplorable then was the condition of the English Crown when as we are told by the Antiquitates Britan. f. 178. in the Reign of Hen. 3d. Repertus est Annuus reditus Papae talis quem ne Regius quidem attigit And when according to Matthew Paris f. 549 in the Reign of that King Anno 1240 it was complained of That there remained not so much Treasure in the Kingdom as was in three years extorted from it by the Pope But what is more strange we are told in Cotton's Collections p. 129 of the times of Edward the Third That the Taxes paid to the Pope for Ecclesiastical dignities did amount to five times as much as the People paid the King per annum One would wonder that so martial a Prince the Scene of whose Reign lay almost in continual War should be so careless of the Sinews of it as to permit so much of the wealth of the Kingdom to be mis-applyed and that too while all manner
Revenue of the demolished Monasteries was as my Lord Herbert in his Harry the 8 th makes it 1 hundred 61 thousand pound per Annum and the Revenue of the whole Church about Triple to that Sum viz. About 450000 l. per Annum and the Revenue of the whole Nation between triple and quadruple to the Revenue of the Church viz. one Million 6 Hundred Thousand Pound per Annum but careful Calculators in these times have computed the same to be about 8 Millions per Annum which is quintuple to the said 1 Million 6 Hundred Thousand Pound above mentioned And as to the proportion of the Trade and Traffick of England encreaseing since the Reformation little more need be added to what I have before discoursed then that the Customes which when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown made but 36000 l. per Annum were since 1660 farm'd at 4 hundred thousand Pound per Annum and have since that time made about double that Sum. And because She foresaw that that Branch of the Revenue would both support the Crown and the Walls of the Kingdom I mean its Ships and Sea-men she wisely provided for the encrease of the Customs and Navigation in her own and future times by the Planting of Virginia and was the Foundress of our Trade in the American Plantations that is at this day so beneficial to the King and Kingdom and where no Forraigners can Trade without his Majesties leave and therefore the Freight both outwards and homewards is restrain'd to our own Shipping and where the Scene of entercourse is agreeable to the Genius of so many of our Protestant Traders of England and not troubling them with the sight of the Religion or with the Study of the Language of Popish Countries And as in any great important undertakings the first projectors or undertakers do usually but lay the Foundation of Gain for the next comers thus too did providence order it to be in the Case of the Spanish Acquests of America which were so fatal to the diminution of the strength of Spain and fortunate to the encrease of that of England And it was by the means of the advancement of the Protestant Religion that she was so prosperous in her mighty Attempts of advancing Trade and Navigation 'T is notorious how by making her Realm and Asylum to Forraign oppressed Protestants She enriched it with the Manufactures they introduced in her great Towns and Cities and where the value of House-Rent being by that means raised the Manufacturers were enforced to work harder and the encreasing of their corporal hard labour did tend to the encrease of their Generations and Populacy as it did among the Israelites in Egypt and it had a greater tending to that effect in regard that our People in their Towns were their own Task-masters and could console themselves with the thoughts not of going but being gone out of Egypt and they were rendred the more industrious by the knowing that they were secure from having the fruit of their labours swept away from themselves and their Children by Arbitrary Confessors and Priests a thing that was practised by those who formerly made England in effect but a Province to Rome and when more Money was exported hence by Appeals and Applications to the Court of Rome then is here imported from Ireland and when as in Turky men are dicouraged from enriching themselves thorow industry and improvement by the Grand Signiors being the general Heir our Fore-fathers too were by the Popes being so much here in the same capacity In fine the value of the Benefices of the Divines in those great Towns being partly encreas'd by the growing Numbers of the People and their riches and partly by their liberal contributions did invite thither such men of Learning to the Pastorage of Souls as did by their fame invite more inhabitants and did keep up those Towns by the Cement of Religion in such a state that they were Seminaries of Knowledge to the Adjacent Countries and even Magazines of War for the Princes occasions as well as Store-houses of Manufacture to be exported and for this purpose Arch-Bishop Grindal in his Letter to Queen Elizabeth Anno Domini 1580 Printed in Fullers Church History speaking of able Ministers being placed in all Parishes and of the benefit thereof redounding to Princes by their Subjects obedience to them saith No Prince ever had mâ—re lively experience hereof then your Majesty hath had in your time and may have daily and if your Majesty comes to the City of London never so often what gratulation what joy what concourse of people is there to be seen yea what Acclamations and Prayers to God for your long Life and other manifest significations are there to be heard of inward and unfeigned love with most humble and hearty obedience whereof cometh this Madam but of the continual Preaching of Gods word in that City whereby the people hath been plentifully instructed in their Duty toward God and your Majesty On the contrary what bred the Rebellion in the North was it not Papistry and Ignorance of Gods word through want of often Preaching in the time of the Rebellion Were not all Men of all States that make profession of the Gospel most ready to offer their lives for your defence insomuch that one Parish of Yorkshire which by continual Preaching hath been better instructed then the rest Halifax I mean was ready to bring 3 or 4000 able Men into the Field to serve you against the said Rebels c. As I before observed That the Reformation brought us at the first step out of a blind Chaos into a Paradice of knowledge so I may add that at the next it conducted us to that blessing of Paradice Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth and subdue it and have dominion over the Fish of the Sea. No sooner had the Reformation under that Great Queen cleared the heads of her Subjects but it enlarged their hearts and substituted in Men a new brave and generous spirit in lieu of that dull and formal and lethargic one that possessed them under the Captivity of their blind Guides and they accounted their All and even the Worlds too little for their Prince and they made her Exchequer as spacious as her Kingdom and the English Commerce as wide as the World. Navigation and Navigators were her Favourites and her great States man Walsingham by her Command animated Frobisher to attempt the discovery of a nearer passage to Cathay and China without going so far about as by the Cape of good hope and he gave not over that design till after three Voyages and the death of Walsingham and the success of her Politics and of the Reformation have in despight of all the power of Rome and Spain terminated in such a multiplying of the Subjects of the Realm of England as probably renders them more numerous then the people of the Kingdom of Spain which Heylin in his Geography makes to have only Eight
here and of their strenuous endeavours to free the Kingdom from it had nothing in their Famous 19 Propositions to bar the right of any Heir to the Crown for the being a Papist The exact Collections afford many instances of their declaring That they would provide for the greatness of his Majesty and his Royal Posterity in future times and in which there was no Proviso respecting any Religionary Tenets they should profess It appears in Mr. Pryns memorable Speech in that House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the Kings answers to the Propositions of both Houses whether they were satisfactory or not in the Isle of Wight Treaty that that Parliament that was concern'd for the saving of their own Credit as well as the Souls of the People to make that Treaty to end with the extermination of Popery from England did not in the application of the most proper means for that purpose judge the debarring any Popish Prince here from his Inheritance of the Crown any proper or necessary one For in p. 58. of that Speech ' t is said As to any danger to our Church from Religion there is as good Security and Provision granted us by the King as we did or could desire even in our own terms First He hath fully consented to pass an Act for the more effectual disabling of Iesuites Papists and Popish Recusants from disturbing the State and deluding the Laws and for the prescribing of a new Oath for the more speedy discovery and Conviction of Recusants Secondly To an Act of Parliament for the Education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion Thirdly To an Act for the due Levying the Penalties against Recusants and disposing of them as both Houses shall appoint Fourthly To an Act whereby the practices of the Papists against the State may be prevented the Laws against them duely executed and a stricter Course taken to prevent the saying or hearing of Mass in the Court or any other part of the Kingdom whereby it is made Treason for any Priests to say Mass in the Court or Queens own Chappel Fifthly To an Act for abolishing all Innovations Popish Superstitions Ceremonies Altars Rayles Crucifixes Images Pictures Copes Crosses Surplices Vestments bowings at the name of Jesus or toward the Altar c. By all which Acts added to our former Laws against Recusants I dare affirm we have far better Provision and Security against Papists Iesuites Popish Recusants c for our Churches and Religions Safety and States too then any Protestant Church State and Kingdom whatsoever so as we need not fear any future danger from Papists or Popery if we be careful to see those Concessions duely put in Execution when turned into Acts and our former Laws And afterward in that Speech p. 110. he shews how dear the Kings consenting to pass five such Acts cost him for saith he The Iesuites understanding that the King beyond and contrary to their expectation hath granted all or most of our propositions in the Isle of Wight and fully condescended to five new Bills for the Extirpation of Mass Popery and Popish Innovations â—ut of his Dominions and putting all Laws in Execution against them and for a speedier Discovery and Conviction of them then formerly c are so inraged with the King and so inexorably incensed against him as I am credibly informed that now they are mad against him and thirst for nothing but his Blood. Mr. Pryn had mentioned in that Speech before that some Jesuites and Jesuited Agitators had engaged the Army to dissolve that Treaty with the King and 't is no wonder if that prying Order who knew the Kings Aversion to Popery as well as the most stupid of his Enemies did when they saw him consenting to pass five such Bills was the more brisk in executing its Designs against him and that as Mr. Pryn saith in his perfect Narrative a Priest present at the Kings death flourished his Sword with an exclamation That now the greatest Enemy we had in the World was gone But this by the way I had not mentioned how dear the consenting to those Bills that would have been so fatal to Popery and have prevented the Phrase of its growth from being used at this time of day but that some persons not vers'd in the passages of those evil days seem to think that there was nothing of Religion to support that Kings Title to Martyrdom but what concern'd his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue In the very solemn League and Covenant its takers declared they had before their Eyes the honour and happiness of the Kings Majesty and his Posterity And I have seen a printed paper of the Presbyterian Divines of one of the Associations in the late times wherein they do expresly affirm and argue it that any of the Royal Posterity here ought not to be debarr'd from their Hereditary Right to the Crown by being either Papists or Idolaters If we look so far back as the great Conjuncture in the beginning of King Iames ' s Reign namely in the year 1605. we shall find that there was then a Paper before mentioned published in Print called a Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by the Nonconforming Ministers which were suspended or deprived that year and that the first Paragraph or Tenet in that Protestation is this We hold and maintain the same Authority and Supremacy in all Causes and over all Persons Civil and Ecclesiastical granted by Statute to Queen Elizabeth and expressed and declared in the Book of Advertisements and Injunctions and in Master Bilson against the Iesuites to be due in full and ample manner without any limitation or qualification to the King and his Heirs and Successors for ever c. And the 4 th Paragraph in that Protestation part whereof I have before recited is viz. We hold that though the Kings of this Realm were no Members of the Church but very Infidels yea and Persecutors of the Truth that yet those Churches that shall be gathered together within these Dominions ought to acknowledge and yield the same Supremacy to them And that the same is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it And in the 18 th Paragraph they say That if the King subjecting himself to Spiritual Guides and Governors shall afterward refuse to be governed and guided by them according to the Word of God and living in notorious sin without repentance shall willfully contemn and despise all their Holy and Religious Censures that then these Governors are to refuse to Administer the Holy Things of God to him and to leave him to himself ond to the secret Iudgment of God and wholy to resign and give over that spiritual Charge and Tuition over him which by calling from God and the King they did undertake And more then this they may not do And after all this we
it saith Concessimus Deo hac praesenti charta confirmavimus pro nobis HAEREDIBVS nostris in perpetuum quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit habeat omnia jura sua integra libertates suas illaesas and whereby the British Churches are secured under a Prince of any Religion from Foreign Arbitrary impositions But indeed the Style current in Magna Charta is that our Kings for themselves and their Heirs forever did grant the Customs and Liberties contained in that Charter to our Ancestors and their Heirs for ever Our Ancestors had no occasion to spend time in seeking Knots in a Bull-rush or hidden Sense in the words HEIRS and the King's HEIRS when so anciently as by the Oath of Fealty which every Person above fourteen years old and every Tythingman was obliged to take publickly at the Court-Leet within which he lived they were sworn to the King and his HEIRS and that Oath was taken a fresh every year by all the Subjects under Edward the Confessor and William the first and is thus set down by Pryn in his Concordia Discors viz. I A. B. do swear that FROM THIS DAY FORWARDS I will be Faithful and Loyal to our Lord the King AND HIS HEIRS c. The instances are innumerable of Allegiance anciently Sworn to our Kings and their Heirs and this one for example occureth to me as Sworn in the time of Edward the 4th viz. Sovereign Lord I Henry Percy become your Subject and Leige-man and promit to God and you that hereafter I Faith and Troth shall bear to you as to my Sovereign Leige-Lord and to your Heirs Kings of England of Life and Limb and of Earthly Worship to Live and Die against all Earthly People and to you and to your Commandments I shall be Obeysant as God me help and his Holy Evangâ—lists 27. Oct. 9. Ed. 4. Claus. 9. Ed. 4. m. 13. in dorso Mr. Pryn likewise in that Book of his beforemention'd saith that there was an ancient Oath of Fealty and Allegiance both by the Subjects of England and Kings Bishops Nobles and Subjects of Scotland made to the Kings of England and Their Heirs as Supreme Lords of Scotland in these words viz. Ero fidelis legalis fidemque legalitatem servabo Henrico Regi Angliae haeredibus suis de vitâ membris terreno honore contra omnes qui possunt vivere mori nunquam pro aliquo portabo arma nec ero in consilio vel auxilio contra eum vel Haeredes suos c. which Oath he saith William King of Scots and all his Nobles Swore to King Henry the second haeredibus suis sicut ligio Domino suo and John Balliol John Comyn with all the Nobles of Scotland to King Edward the first and his Heirs He there likewise gives an account how the Nobles of England Swore Fealty to Richard King of England and to his Heirs against all men and how the Citizens of London Swore the like Oath and That if King Richard should die without Issue they would receive Earl John his Brother for their King and Lord juraverunt ei fidelitatem Contra omnes homines salva fidelitate Richardi Regis fratris sui as Hoveden relates And he moreover cites the Record of the Writ issued to all the Sheriffs of England soon after the Birth of Edward the 1 st Son and Heir to King Henry the 3 d. To Summon all Persons above 12 years old to Swear Fealty to him as Heir to the King and to submit themselves faithfully to him as their Liege Lord after his Death This form of the Oath in the Writ is there mention'd to that effect viz. Quod ipsi salvo homagio fidelitate nostrâ quâ nobis tenentur cui in vitâ nostrâ nullo modo renunciare volumus fideles eritis Edwardo filio nostro primogenito ita quod si de nobis humanitus Contigerit eidem tanquam Haeredi nostro domino suo ligio erunt fideliter intendentes eum pro domino suo ligio habentes And he there shews how they were Summon'd and Sworn accordingly and further how in the Parliament of H. 4. The Lords Spiritual and Tempâ—ral and Commons were Sworn to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King to the Prince and his Issue and to every one of his Sons severally succeeding to the Crown of England And he there mentions more Oaths taken to our Kings and their Heirs of the like Nature The Consideration hereof would make any one wonder at the Confidence of a late Learned Lawyer and positive pretender to Omniscience in our English Antiquities and Records who in his Detestable Book called The Rights of the Kingdom and which contains a farrago of Impious Anti-monarchical Principles and Printed in London 1649. and there to the Scandal of the English and Protestant Name lately Re-printed by some Factious Anti-Papists hath averred That our Allegiance was of old tyed to the Kings Person not unto his Heirs and for the Kings Heirs saith he there I find them not in our Allegiance And he mentions the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance as enjoyn'd in Queen Elizabeth's and King Iames's time respectively to be the first that were made to the Kings Person and his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS But to return to the Cause in hand 'T is sufficient for the Obligation I press that HEIRS and SUCCESORS are so clearly expressed in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy And tho the Statute of 1 â— Elizabethae in the Clause of the Annexing Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction to the Crown useth the style of Your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm shall have full Power c. as the Statue of the Supremacy 26o. Henry 8th runs in the Style of our Sovereign Lord his Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realms shall be taken accepted and reputed the only Supreme Head and tho the Oath in the 35 th H. the 8 th Cap. 1. that relates to the bearing Faith Truth and true Allegiance to the Kings Majesty and to his Heirs and Successors c. be further thus expressed viz. And that I shall accept repute and take the Kings Majesty his Heirs and Successors when they or any of them shall enjoy his place to be the only Supreme Head c. and tho' the old Oath of the Mayor of London and other Cities and Towns throughout England and of Bayliffs or other chief Officers where there are no Mayors runs in the style of Swearing That they shall well and Loyally Serve the King in the Office of Mayor in the City of L. and the same City shall keep surely and safely to the use of our Lord the King of England and of his Heirs Kings of England might give occasion for that great empty and big-sounding Sophism of Sir W. I. in his famous Speech wherein he said That we are Sworn to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors but not Obliged to any during
of the House of Commons on the 20 th of October 1680. and printed by Order of that House and in which Affidavit and Information he was Charged with Endeavours to stifle some Evidence of the Popish Plot and to promote the belief of a Presbyterian one and with encouraging Dugdale to recant what he had sworn and promising to harbour him in his House and that his Lordships Priest should there be his Companion and likewise watch him his Lordship being thereupon desirous that right should be done him by a printed Vindication was pleased to Command my Pen therein and I was the less unwilling to disobey his Commands because in that Conjuncture wherein so many Loyal and Noble Persons were sufferes by the humour of Accusation then regnant I held it a Patriotly thing to withstand its Arbitrariness Sir W. P. in an Excellent Manuscript of his called The Political Anatomy of Ireland hath one Chapter there Of the Government of Ireland apparent or external and the Government internal and he describes the apparent Government there to be by the King and Three Estates and with the Conduct of Courts of Iustice but makes the internal Government there to depend much on the Potent Influence of the many Secular Priests and Fryars on the numerous Irish Roman Catholicks and on those Priests and Fryars being governed by their Bishops and Superiors and on the Ministers of Foreign States governing and directing such Superiors and thus while England was blest with the best external Government namely of Monarchy and with the best Monarch and a Loyal Nobility and Commons yet after the detection of a Popish Plot several Persons under the Notion of Witnesses about the same made so great a Figure in the Government and were so Enthroned in the Minds of the Populace that the Office of the King's Witnesses was as powerful as ever was that of the high Constable of England and the internal Government of the Kingdom was then very much as I may say a Martyrocracy and by that hard name the Noisy part of Protestants Endeavoured to gain Ground as much as ever any peaceable ones did by the old known Name of Martyrology But as all external Forms of Government have some peculiar defects as well as Conveniences so did this internal Government appear to have and those too so dreadful that the Air of Testimony having sometimes got into the wrong place was likely to have made Earth-Quakes in the external Government and as the Militia that after the Epoche of 41 was called the Parliaments Army did before the fatal time of 48 produce the Revolution of the Army's Parliament so were we endangered after the Plot-Epoche of 78 to have heard of the Office of the King's Witnesses changed into another namely of the Witnesses Kings And whoever shall write the English History of that part of time wherein that Martyrocracy was so powerful and domineering will if he shall think fit to give a denomination to that Interval of Time and to found the same on most of the Narratives he shall read or the Sham-Papers that many Papists and Protestants after the Plot Attaqued each other with be thought not absurd if he gives the old Style of Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incertum or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulosum It was in the time of the most Triumphant State of this Internal Government that I undertook to weigh its Empire as I have done in p. 33 34 35. discussing the points of Infamous Witnesses and their Infamy and of their Credibility after pardon of Perjury or Crimes and Infany incurred and a bolder man than my self would hardly have dared in that Conjuncture to have sifted their Prerogative and as I may say to have put hungry Wolves into Scales and to have taken the dimensions of the Paws of Lions or to have handled the stings of Serpents without expressing against some of the Romanists Principles he thought Irreligionary all the zeal he thought consistent with Charity and Candour to the Persons of Papists which is so much done in the Body of this Discourse and without the expressing of which my Vindicating a Noble Person from being a Papist had been an absurdity However I have been careful in any Moot-points of Witnesses not to disturb in the least the Measures of the External Government about them and out of the tender regard due to the safety of Monarchs from all Subjects have in p. 205 asserted the Obligation of doing every thing that is fairly to be done to support the Credits of Witnesses produced in the Case of Treason and have there given a particular reason for it and have in p. 36. with a Competent respect mentioned Dugdale on the occasion of the Shamm sworn against the Earl of Anglesy as if his Lordship had undertook to have unjustly patronized him and have shewed my self inclined enough to belief credible Witnesses by the Concurrence of my thoughts with the Iustice of the Nation in Godfrey's Case and the fate of which Person and the Casuistical Principles that allowed it I had perhaps not mentioned but out of a just indignation against the infamous Shamms about it spread by some ill Papists to the dishonour of that Excellent Lord the Earl of Danby But there was another consideration that induced me to write with such a Zeal as aforesaid against such Romanists Principles and their effects and but for which the following Discourse had not swollen to a large Volume I observed that since the late Fermentation in England such a Panique Fear of the Growth of Popery and the numbers of Papists had been by Knaves propagated among Fools that made the English Nation appear somewhat ridiculous abroad and that during its Course many considerable Protestants were so far mis-led as to think the State of the Nation could never be restored to it self but by disturbing the Succession of the Crown in its lawful Course of Descent and therefore resolving to do my utmost to free the Land from the Burthen of another guess Perjury by the general Violence done to our Oaths Promissory I mean to those of Allegiance and Supremacy then that of any Witnesses in their Oaths Assertory I thought fit at large to shew the Vanity of any Mens fearing that Popery can ever humanly speaking be the National Religion of England and to direct them that they may not by the imaginary danger of Popery to come run with all their swelling Sails on the Rock of it at present by founding Dominion in Grace and out-rage those Oaths that do at present bind us without reserve to pay Allegiance to the King's Heirs after his demise And for any one who being concerned to see so many of his Country-men lying as it were on the Ground and dejected with unaccountable fears of the extermination of their Religion and themselves and besmearing themselves with the dreadful guilt of their great Oaths was resolved to endeavour to help them up and by perswasion gently to lead them
fewer according to the Rule of the Observator on those Bills That the more sickly the year is it is the less fertile of Births All who have been in the least conversant with those Observations of his know that the Births in ordinary years are equal to the Burials or rather more and I have observed the same from the Paris Bills where the Christenings do generally much exceed the Burials and as particularly appeared by the Total of the Burials in the year 1683 being 17764 and the Total of the Christenings being 19717 but by the Christenings among us registred and reckoned in our Bills we know thence when the disposition of the People to baptize their Children in the way of the Church began to encrease and Dissentership consequently to decrease and accordingly the ground gained by the Church of England and lost by Dissentership within the Compass of those Bills after the year 81 hath been by me sufficiently proved Quod erat demonstrandum I have in this Discourse given somewhat like a little Historical Account of the Numbers of the Papists since the Reformation to our late Conjuâ—ctures and have with honour mentioned the Vigilance of his Majesty's late Minister the Earl of Danby in directing a Survey of the Numbers of the People of several Religionary Perswasions in the Province of Canterbury and which was returned in the year 76 and whereby the Comparative Paucity of the number of Papists there is apparent as it is by themselves agreed on so to be as I have cited out of the Compendium But tho the Copy of that Survey is in the hands of so many Persons I would not have mentioned any thing thereof as to the Number of the Papists but that Dr. Glanvill had first published the same and whose Book I have referred to for the same Nor shall I therefore give any particular account of the numbers of the Non-Conformists resulting from the same But tho I think that the Number of the Non-Conformists was not returned perhaps in that Survey so justly and near the matter as was that of the Papists yet I am fully of opinion that if the number of Non-Conformists were thrice as great as that returned which I believe no man will reckon it to be their proportion with that of the Total of this great Populous Nation would be very inconsiderable But as to all the Writers or Discoursers of their proportion to that Total that I have conversed with and who have rendered the Quota of the Dissenters so vast with much positiveness I am able to say That I have easily perswaded them to desist from any positive magisterial determination therein by shewing them that their measures of the Total of the People of England have been but conjectural and depending perhaps on some Calculations too fine and subtle or others too course and gross and that no man can be a competent Judge of this Total who hath not seen the Returns on the Bishops Survey and likewise the Returns on the late Pole-Bills and of which latter under the Patronage of a powerful Minister of the Kings I obtained Copies and have thence in the following Discourse shewed the Total of the People of England and Wales to be probably much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it and some whereof made the Total to be 5 others 6 others 7 Millions I thought the doing of this an acceptable service to my Prince and Country and the rather for that several Authors among the Magna nomina have published it in Print that the People of England and Wales are but 2 Millions and which number if they did not exceed we might allow our Dissenters a considerable proportion therein tho yet nothing near so great even as to such a Total as some would have it But the Ebb of their Numbers is at this time so apparent if we respect the State of them in the whole Kingdom that their Out-cry of Implevimus omnia and The Nation and its Trade cannot subsist without us is very ridiculous and they are not in my opinion their friends who writing for them do so customarily magnify their Numbers and as if they were half the People of England as some have done and I believe the Gentleman whom I have cited for saying in a late Parliament that he observed That in the Choice of Knights of the Shire for the County he lived in that they could not bring one in twenty to the Field would if he had been at Elections in some other Counties have found they could not there bring in so great a number And tho the Puritans of old were very numerous in the House of Commons and our Dissenters in the King 's long Parliament made so great a Figure as to be able by their weight to crush the Declaration for Indulgence yet in the succeeding Houses of Commons the Dissenters were far from valuing themselves an their weight or numbers but of the Dissenters in that Loyal Long Parliament I believe there were not any who wished for the Yoke of Presbytery or thought its Platform practicable in this Realm I have in this Discourse mentioned one thing that made the most Eminent Presbyterian Divines after 41 think their bringing of the Yoke of Presbytery upon the English Necks practicable and that is their accounting according to the Pacta conventa between Them and the Parliament they should have the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands settled on their Church whereby their Discipline how defective soever in weight as to Principles of Divinity and Humanity would have made it self â—ormidable by its Balance of Land and 't is probable that in Scotland the Livings of the inferiour Clergy weighing more in value than the Estates or Livelihoods of the ordinary inferiour Layety hath supported that Clergy there in their pretences to expect somewhat of Power and which they yet enjoy in the Figure of the Church Government there Established under Bishops and altho King Iames in his planting so many Benefices throughout that Kingdom worth 30 l. per Annum with a House and some Glebe Land belonging to them never intended any advantage to Presbytery thereby he yet occasioned some by making so many Divines there more considerable in wealth but our Presbyterian Divines here having been so fatally disappointed about the Bishops Lands promised them all ingenious men must necessarily thereby be made apprehensive that they are never to hope to bring the terror of that Church Government upon us by that means It is moreover observable that most of the Race of our old Presbyterian and Independant Divines having been extinct some few of whom were Learned Men and gave some Ornament to their Tenets by their Learning scarce any new ones and who appeared not in the Church before the King's Restoration have since by the publication of any Theological or DevotionalWritings propp'd up the Credit of their Party and that of the Ecclesiasticks of those perswasions none have published any thing valuable against
convellere and it may well be supposed that I having partly grounded my Conjectures of the happy Future State of England on the former fashion of Polemical Writing being passed away could not be much tempted to Controversy The Iesuites and Casuists may still hold the 23d Tenet branded in the Pope's â—ecree as long as they will without any disturbance from my Pen viz. Faith in its large sense only from the Evidence of the Creation or some such Motive is sufficient for Iustification and so likewise the 46th Tenet there viz. frequent Confession and Communion even in those that live as Heathens is a Mark of Predestination and many other Tenets there relating to Religion and which the Pope with so great a Pastoral Sollicitude hath damned as at least scandalous and pernicious in Practice and hath prohibited to be defended by any under the pain of Excommunication ipso facto But there are other Tenets by him in that Decree condemned that I have in this Discourse dilated on as Convulsive of Humane Society which the Pietas in patriam occasioned in me such transports of passion against that I wished he had signalized with sharper words of Censure than those beforementioned and that I thought the Excommunicatio Major with the Ceremony of lighted Torches too little for and even an ordinary Anathema in their case to be a Complement or a kind of sham censuring them as abominable and not good or somewhat like the Censure pro formâ shot off against the Munster Peace and I supposed that if he had Sentenced them to be absolutely in themselves evil he would have satisfied every one that he had put the World out of their Gun-shot by his putting it out of his power to dispense with them However finding that Decree of great moment to Christendom and yet by the generality of Papists or Protestants to have been not much more regarded than are the Copies of the Dialogues between Pasquin and Marphorio that come here I have deliberately Surveyed it and done it what right I could And by occasion hereof do here call to mind a Remark on the Papacy I met with in a Pamphlet of one of our Dissenters viz. That if the Pope were a good man he might do a great deal of good Tho for sometime after I had begun this Discourse I was somewhat a Stranger to the great Character of the present Pope and so continued till reading the Preface of Dr. Burnet's very learned Book of the Regale I sound he there Celebrated him in these words viz. That he is a man of great probity and that on his advancement to the Papacy he conceived a very ill opinion of the whole Order of the Iesuites I since found cause from the Universal Concurrence of all Impartial men about the same to have the firmer opinion of the quiet of England and do expect from the influences of such a Pope on the Loyalty and Religion of the Roman Catholicks of England some advance of its happiness Tho most men may have only little Ideas of the Deity as of somewhat above the Clouds that as a great Cypher only surrounds the World yet the wiser few who have particularly observed the watchful Eye of Providence over the Critical passages and windings and turnings in their own lifes cannot but be sensible that in the designation of persons at stated times to be at the Helm of the Church of Rome and who are necessarily to have so great a share in the External and a much greater in the Internal Government of the World the great Governor of it and preserver of men is no unconcerned Spectator It is I think most highly probable that at a time when the World being filled with the Jesuites Principles and Casuistick distinctions Vertue it self was grown an empty Name and the Casuists Project of finishing Transgression and making an end of Sin in a subtle way and contrary to the plain Method intended by our Saviour had in a great part of the World almost finished the most Vital part of Christian Religion I mean plain and downright Morality and at a time when some Virtuosi in Italy and elsewhere half-witted and half Atheists taking it for granted that in what hearts soever the Jesuites and Casuists Religionary Model had prevailed the simplicity of the Gospel was extinguished were observed to talk of Albumazar's fond prediction of the Christian Religion lasting but about 1460 years and Criticising of the time from whence its promulgation and likewise the promulgation of those Casuistical Tenets bore date did prophanely insinuate their Miscreant-Conceptions of the Christian Religion not lasting till the time assigned in the Scripture for Christs surrendring his Mediatory Kingdom to his Father I say it is most highly probable that at such a time and when the Jesuites Interest too had so much Prosperity as to tempt them to think that the Mountain of their Religion should never be moved that nothing less than the great Vertue and Courage of this Pope appearing by his said Decree could secure Vertue it self and the true Christian Morality and give the World occasion to say with some Alteration of the Question put to Esther viz. Who knoweth not that he is come to Rome ' s See for such a time as this is The Mountainous heap of Rubbish in the Iesuites and other Casuists Principles and even in the Canon Law appears very stupendious to the World but considering the Christian Heroical Acts of this Pope and who for his severity against the abuses of Indulgences hath been by some Papists called the Lutheran Pope as I said and for his anger against the Jesuites Principles been called the Iansenist Pope by others I think another great Question in the Prophet Zechary may be here not improperly applied viz. Who art thou O great Mountain before Zerubbabel Little did the Iesuites think that when they Crowned the Papacy with a double Crown I mean of its infallibility in Law and likewise in Fact a Crown much more glorious than its Triple one any Pope would ever uncrown their Principles and expose their baldness to the World and little do they who fear that ever this Pope will occasionally dispense with any mens practising these Principles think of the security they have against the same from his inflexible Virtue and perfect Antipathy to injustice and which are judged to be so inherent in his Nature that I shall here occasionally say that as I was somewhat a Stranger formerly to the Character of this Pope so I believe some of the Plot-witnesses were that reflected on him so ignominiously for undoubtedly had it been understood by them they would never have thought their Credibility could have out-lived their first attacquing it It may possibly be here objected by some Critical Inspectors into the late Papal Transactions that Alexander the 7th as this Pope observes in the beginning of his said Decree did first damn some of the Iesuites Principles viz. in the year 1665 and that
well come under the account of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to those Opiners hath for the honour of the Church of England's Principles in his 8th Lecture and there de lege paenali well taught us in what Cases Penal Laws oblige in Conscience and shewed that they may so bind where the Legislator did intend to oblige the Subject Ad culpam etiam non solum ad paenam and in that Case saith he Certum est eos teneri ad observandum id quod lege praecipitur nec satisfacere officio si parati sint poenam lege constitutam subire and where he further saith That the mind and intention of the Legislator is chiefly seen in the Proeme of his Law in quo saith he there ut acceptior sit populo lex solet Legislator Consilii sui de eà lege ferendâ causas rationes expoâ—eâ—e quà m sit lex iusta quam fuerit tollendis incommodis abusibus necessaria quà m futura sit Reip. utilis There is a particular Principle of moment worthy of the Magistrates Survey that relates to the Gathered Churches and that is a Principle made a necessary ingredient in the Constitution of of those Churches by a Divine of the same Authority among them as Bishop Saâ—â—erson is in the Church of England and whom I occasionally beforementioned and that is Mr. Iohn Cotton B. D. who in a Pamphlet of his printed at London in the year 1642 Entâ—tuled The true Constitution of a particular visible Church proved by Scripture wherein is briefly demonstrated by Questions and Answers what Officers Worship and Government Christ hath ordained in his Church and in the Title-page whereof is this place of Scripture viz. Jer. 50. 5. They shall ask the way to Sion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual COVENANT that shall not be forgotten in p. 1st makes his first Question what is a Church And the Answer is The Church is a mystical Body whereof Christ is the head the Members and Saints called out of the World and united together in one Congregation by an holy COVENANT to Worship the Lord and to Edifie one another in all his holy Ordinances And in another Book of his printed at London in the year 1645 called The way of the Churches of Christ in New England his third Proposition is this viz. For the joyning of faithful Christians into the Fellowship and Estate of a Church we find not in Scripture that God hath done it any other way than by entring of them all together as one man into an holy COVENANT with himself to take the Lord as the head of the Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People which implies their submitting of themselves to him and one to another in his fear and their walking in professed subjection to all his Ordinances their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness unto Mutual Edification He there partly props up the Obligation of this Church Covenant on the Iewish Oeconomy mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy and other places of the Old Testament The reasonableness of Subjects not entring into Religionary Covenants without the Consent of the Pater patriae may be inferred from the old Testament where in Numbers c. 30 the Parent hath a power given for the controuling of the Childrens Vows not enter'd into by his consent but since these Principles of a new Church Covenant may seem to introduce a new Ecclesiastical Law without the King's privity and consent a thing that if our very Convocation should presume to do would bring them within a Praemunire and since the whole power of reforming and ordering of all matters Ecclesiastical is by the Laws in express words annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and particularly by the 1st of Elizabeth and since that it hath been said that even without an Act of Parliament a new Oath or Covenant cannot be introduced among the King's Subjects and moreover since all the famous Religionary Confessions of the Protestant Churches abroad assert nothing of any such Church Covenant and since Covenants and Associations have lately heard so ill in the Kingdom I think the nature and terms of this Independent Covenant ought to be laid as plain before the Eye of the Government as was the Scotch Presbyterian one Those words of Mr. Cotton of the entring them all together as one man into an holy Covenant carry some thing like the same sound of one and all and tho their thus entring into it to take the Lord as the head of his Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People may be a plausible beginning of this new Church Covenant in nomine Domini yet the following words of submitting themselves to him and to one another in his fear and their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness are words that I think the Magistracy ought to watch and to see that Dissenters have a very sound form of words prescribed to them in this Case if it shall think fit to have the same continued I have found the Assertion of a Church Covenant as Essential to the Form of a true Independent Church in many other of their Books and do suppose that this Covenant being laid as Corner-stone in the building of their Churches by Divine Right it must last as long as Independency it self and of its lasting still I met with an Indication from a Loyal and Learned Official of the Court-Christian who told me that tho several of the Dissenters called Presbyterians have been easily perswaded to repair to the Divines of the Church of England that they were admonished to confer with and had upon Conference with them come to Church and took the Sacrament yet he thought that some of another Class of Dissenters were possessed with a Spirit of incurable Contumacy by reason of their Principles having tied them together to one another by a Covenant And if it shall therefore appear to the Magistrates that they are thus Conference-proof and as I may say Reason-proof by vertue of their Covenant it will then be found that no one Mâ—mber of a gathered Church can turn to ours without the whole Hyena-like turning and perhaps some of the Lords the Bishops may think it hereupon proper humbly to advise his Majesty to null by a Declaration the Obligation of this Covenant as his Royal Father did that of the Presbyterian Covenant In the mean time the Consideration of the Principles of Independecy thus seeming to have cramp'd the Consciences of its followers with a Covenant that is at least unnecessary and must naturally be a troublesom imposition to men of thought and generous Education who love to perform Moral Offices without entring into Covenant or giving Bond so to do may serve to
his Iovian and that Preface he directed so many in the Obligation of their great Oaths I will so far prefer his Labours to all that writ before of the Succession as to say of him in those words of the Apostle He hath laboured more abundantly than they all That which I have writ thereof was finished some years before what the Doctor published about the same as several of my friends know to whom I gave Copies of the same and with an injunction of printing it in Case of my death and I have since added nothing to what I writ nor shall till I proceed to the Review of the Discourse but had otherwise for the honour of my judgment therein concurring with so learned a mans respectfully cited somewhat thereof in my Discussion No doubt but there were many loyal and judicious and learned men that in the late Conjuncture had the same sense with the Doctor concerning the Obligation of those Oaths tho they had not time to publish the same by the Press and I have in p. 269 referred to what a very learned and honourable Person urged from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in his Speech against the Exclusion-Bill in the House of Commons and to which I have mentioned somewhat of a reply there made by Sir W. I. in that House and of the prodigious Applause that Reply found from many Persons there But in that Speech of Sir W. I. there was another thing said and which being spread about the Kingdom had the effect of Thunder from an Oracle and kept thousands from daring so much as to deliberate of the Obligations resulting from the Oath of Allegiance to oppose the Exclusion His words I refer to for this were to this purpose viz. It is urged also that we are sworn to the King his Heirs and lawful Successors It is true we are so but not obliged to any during the Kings life but to himself For it were Treason if it were otherwise It was in vain at that time for any Discourser to hope by fair and gentle Principles of Reason to open the Wards in the Locks of Mens Consciences and to let in there a true Sense of the Allegiance sworn to the Kings Heirs and Successors when so great a Pick-lock of the Law had made it Treason Yet never was I mortified with a greater Example of Humane Frailty than by the Sense of so great a number of knowing Persons in that Loyal Parliament being so suddenly infected with the Error of that Insinuation from a single Demagogue who had never been bred up to Logic which yet caught the understandings of the Majority of the Representatives of the Commons of England in the Trap of a little Sophism and when an ordinary Lease drawn by a Lawyer 's Clerk might shew one that the Lessee at the time of the perfecting it actually enters into a present Obligation both in Law Equity and Conscience to pay his Rent to the Lessor his Heirs and Assigns as it shall become due to each respectively and which when the Lessor dies or assigns his interest is to be paid to the Heir and Assign then and not till then But as Tully who had as great a Veneration for the Constitution of the Roman Government as I have for that of our English one said in his Oration pro L. Murena that Nihil est fallacius Ratione totâ Comitiorum the same thing may happen to our great Loyal Body of Men assembled while under a ferment of Passion and then every mans anger influencing another Fallacy it self may pass for Reason and as we see when many Workmen are at once altogether crying and pulling a great piece of Timber forward to them with a Rope if that doth not hold but break they all fall backwards together so when any Caetus or Body of Men are drawing with all their strength to bring any matter of weight in the Government to them if the Principle of Reason they use for that purpose will not hold but proves a poor weak Sophism they naturally fall down together I have in this Discourse usually mentioned those Parliaments with the prefixt name of Loyal wherein I yet thought so many Persons were so dreadfully mistaken in so great a point and for which Charity if extravagant no Iesuited Papists can blame me knowing how great an Exclusioner of old their infallible head hath been but which I was the rather inclined to do as any one may guess by the Current of the Discourse because I knew not but his Majesty's calling a New Parliament at such time as he should think convenient for the same might give many of the mistaken Persons such an advantage of recollected thoughts as would shew them the Errors of their former measures and render them afterwards averse from putting at once both their own Consciences and the very words of the Oath of Allegiance on the Rack and from such a squeezing of Blood out of that contrary to the Grammatical Sense that might occasion the flowing of blood through the Kingdom in after times and the sharpest expression I was naturally led to use whereupon fell from me without any Reproach of the Persons erring when I said in p. 209 viz. Thus just is it for Heaven sometimes to blind and confound good men in their Counsels when they abandon plain Principles and Dictates of Reason and when they will not do what they know to suffer them not to know what they do c. I have somewhere read of one who writing of the Constitution of and Rule for the Franciscans saith That for the firmer observance of that Rule Christ himself was heard in the Air saying to St. Francis This Rule is mine and not thine and I will have it observed Ad literam ad literam sine glossâ sine glossâ and let any men be attentive to the voice behind them viz. That of Conscience about the Rule of the observing of their Oaths they will hear God there speaking much to the same purpose Nor have I heard of the understandings of men of great Abilities made Spectacles of shame to the World through the Divine Dereliction in any particular point more than in that relating to their natural Allegiance and their Oath to confirm it Let any one consider somewhat in the Speech of Sir H. V. printed in the year 1662 As what he intended to speak on the Scaffold where having mentioned by what steps he became satisfied with the Parliaments Cause he was engaged in and did pursue the same and that the Parliaments Cause did first shew it self in the Remonstrance and Secondly in the Solemn League and Covenant he addeth That it shewed it self Thirdly in the more refined pursuit of it by the Commons House in their Actings single and saith afterward referring to my Lord of Arguile viz. That Noble Person whose Memory I honour was with my self at the beginning and making of the Solemn League and Covenant the matter of which and the holy
ends therein contained I fully assent unto and have been as desirous to observe but the rigid way of prosecuting it and the oppressing uniformity that have been endeavoured by it I never approved This were sufficient to vindicate me from the false Aspersions and Calumnies which have been laid upon me of Iesuitism and Popery c. And recollect whether tho that Covenant was contrary to the Oath of Allegiance any thing yet could be more contrary to that Covenant than that House of Coâ—â—ons acting single or any thing could be more contrary to the plain literal Sense of the Covenant than that refined pursuit of the Cause owned by a person of such refined and real great Abilities and within the Prospect of Eternity and whether the owning of the same then contrary to the literal Sense of the Covenant was a proper Medium for him to use then whereby to clear himself from the aspersion of Iesuitism There was another person of great Theological Learning and strong natural parts who lived about that time I mean Mr. Iohn Goodwin the Divine I before mentioned and who in two Books of his the one called Redemption Redeem'd and the other of The Divine Authority of the Scripture hath signaliz'd his great Abilities but in the very Pamphlet where he presumes to vindicate the very Sentence against the Royal Martyr and to make the same Coherent with the Scotch Covenant he in p. 51 saith Evident it is that those Words in the Covenant in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdom import a Condition on the Kings part without the performance whereof the Covenant obligeth no man to the preservation or defence of his Person or Authority and yet allowing the Words to speak for themselves they do not say in HIS Preservation and Defence c. but in THE Preservation and Defence c. plainly referring to the same Preservation and Defence of Religion and Liberties which is before promised and sworn to in this and the preceding Articles as evidently referring to the same Persons Preservation and Defence of them here who are to preserve and defend them in the former Clauses and who are to preserve and defend the Kings Majesty's Person and Authority in this namely the Covenanters If the Covenant had intended to ground the Preservation and Defence in this Clause upon another Person or Persons as the performers beside those to whom the same Actions are referred immediately before it would have pointed them out distinctly but when it expresseth no other the plain ordinary Grammatical construction will attribute them to the Parties before nominated and cannot put them on any other And the Premisses notwithstanding Mr. Goodwin concludes that if that his Anti-Grammatical Paraphrase were not the true meaning of those words beforementioned in the Covenant it was unintelligible by him and his Words are these If this be not the clear meaning and importance of them the Covenant is a Barbarian to me I understand not the English of it Thus naturally is it even for the learned and unstable to wrest not only the Scriptures but even their own subscribed Covenants where the words have no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to their own destruction and the destroying of common Sense when they recede from the common Principles of Loyalty and Allegiance There was likewise another Person reputed one of first-rate Parts and great Learning in the late times who published a Book called The lawfulness of obeying the present Government and in his 11th Page there directs the World to make this Enquiry viz. Whether there be any Clause in any Oath or Covenant which in a fair and common sense forbids obedience to the Commands of the present Government and Authority and referreth particularly to the Clause of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in the former of which 't is said I shall bear faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and in the latter I shall bear faith and true Allegiance to the Kings Highness his Heirs and Successors He there goeth on very Childishly to sell the World a Bargain by trying to puzzle it with Questions viz. If it be said that in the Oath of Allegiance Allegiance is sworn to the King his Heirs and Successors if his Heirs be not his Successors how doth that Oath bind Either the Word Successors saith he must be superfluous or it must bind to Successors as well as to Heirs And if it bind not to a Successor as well as to an Heir how can it bind to an Heir that is not a Successor And if you will know the common and usual sense which should be the meaning of an Oath of the word Successors you need not so much ask of Lawyers and Learned Persons as of men of ordinary knowledge and demand of them who was the Successor of William the Conqueror and see whether they will not say W. Rufus and who succeeded Richard the Third and whether they will not say Harry the 7th and yet neither of them was Heir so in ordinary acception the word Successor is taken for him that actually succeeds in the Government and not for him that is actually excluded May we not to this Questionist who was as I may say such a Mountebank of a Casuist put the Question of Tertullian Rideam vanitatem an exprobrem caecitatem And may we not properly bring in St. Austin's Casuistical Decision as to things of this Nature Haec tolerabilius vel ridentur vel flentur i. e. A man is at liberty either to laugh at or lament them I have in p. 41 of this Discourse mentioned D' Ossat's Observation of Father Parson 's often contradicting himself and that very grossly in his Book of the Succession as it happens to all Persons in passion as able as they are who are not guided by truth and reason but transported by interest and passion and I shall here further remark out of the same Letter of D' Ossat by me there cited that to those words last mentioned he there adds this viz. I will here name two of his Contradictions He opposeth to the King of Scots among other things to exclude him from the Succession of England That he was born out of England of Parents not subject to the Crown of England He likewise opposeth to Arabella among other impediments That she is a Woman and that it is not expedient for the Kingdom of England to have three Women Queens successively and that often the Children of Kings have been excluded for being Women and yet not withstanding he adjudgeth the said Kingdom to the Infanta of Spain by preference even to the King of Spain her Brother as if the said Infanta were not a Woman as well as the said Arabella I had almost forgot to observe how the Author of The lawfulness of obeying the present Government that useth such thick paint of Equivocation in his sense of the word Successors having pushed on his Question
whom any one hath spoken of killing the King will dare to reveal it to any one for fear of being put in Prison and punished for that he was willing to save the life of the King and preserve the whole Kingdom whereas in Cases of such Consequence it ought to be free to any man to Accuse another not only without fearing any thing but further with hopes of great Recompence having a respect never the less not to believe too lightly nor to Condemn any Person upon the bare Affirmation of another without good Indications and Proofs I believe that the King advertised of this matter will at least take care of the Deliverance and Safety of him that could not endure to hear any speak of murdering him I am apt to think that the horror of the Fact of such an Out-rage to the Persons of Kings so much astonishing the imaginations of the Loyal and the very Idea of it being so ghastly as to affright them from Contemplating it hath partly contributed to some Omissions in the Worlds providing against it and it hath been so incident to Writers to mention it without thinking of its horror that a late useful voluminous Collector we had began the first Edition of the first Part of his Works with a very inauspicious Sentence telling us of King Iames his declaring his being so much disinclined to Popery because it holds Regicide and other grosser Errors as if it were possible for any man of Sense to call such an execrable outragious Treasonable practice an Error or to range it in the Class of Errors or as if even any damnable Error or Heresy either could be more gross than that In the next Edition he a little mended the matter by saying and other gross Errors but he afterward mended the Book to better purpose by causing that Sentence to be quite left out My intended Review of this Discourse that I lately acquainted the Reader with is mentioned particularly at the end of it where I observe the Customariness of Authors of large Discourses bestowing on them a short Review and do think that the Corroborating some of the various important Calculations therein relating to matters Political may perhaps be of publick use I shall not trouble my self with Corroborating any thing of the Plot which hath so much weakened the Nation nor with strengthening any sayings of Witnesses that have weakened the Plot. Let about 2 or 3 Lines that I think in this large Discourse may have referred to the propping up any little matter by citing for it the Plot-Witnesses in general take their Fate to be either remembred or forgot by others as much as they are almost by me and but one of whom is on the Account of Testimony so much as named and whose name hath been mentioned in this Preface Nor shall I have occasion to choque any Party or as I may rather say all Parties with any thing of Controversy that may be called Religionary or matters that refer not to numbers But the fixing of Political Observations on numbers in some things so great as I have attempted is a Task very difficult for a person much Superior to me in intellectual endowments to do so clearly and satisfactorily as the matter will bear and is not possible to be done by any without the Expence of that time in consulting Records and Registries and Offices of Accounts and many particular Persons which I hitherto could not spare but hope to be shortly able to do for my Readers satisfaction as well as my own and having so done I shall publish a Review of this Work by it self making such Additions or other Alterations as to what I have here observed as I shall see cause And as I have shewed that Reverence to the Age as not to expose my thoughts Magisterially of matters relating to Numbers but have therein either cited Authors of Note about the same that so their Credit may vouch for the thing asserted and not mine or have fairly my self Calculated the things or if I have omitted either to cite Authors or to make Calculation when I have asserted any thing relating to Numbers I have still endeavoured to keep within Compass and Bounds in my reckoning and not to favour my assertion by exceeding them so I shall most readily on occasion acknowledge my mistake in any point however or from whomsoever arising nor can any man I think be tempted to do other in a matter of this Nature and wherein his mistake amouâ—ts not to any thing like the making of false Money or the designed putting it off in Exchange but only to the false telling of true and which I desire the Reader to tell after me as often as he pleaseth and do wish him if ever he hopes that men would receive the belief of matters of moment upon his Authority that he would first satisfie them that he hath implicitly believed no man and for which purpose I once writ my mind by a poor plain Verse in the Album of a German on his importuning me there to write my name with some saying or other viz. Is nulli credat credi qui vellet ab omni Meaning it as to matters that may be reduced ad firmam by Calculation I remember not that I have cited any Authors extravagant Calculation or Error without somewhat of a fair Remark on it and do suppose any one to labour under a Disease of Credulity who doth otherwise and do account that Cicero himself was therewith infected when as to the Error in a Childish Report he saith so gravely in his 2d Book De divinatione Tages quidam dicitur in agro Tarquiniensi cum terra araretur sulcus altius esset impressus extitisse repente eum affatus esse qui arabat c. For Ovid in his Metamorphosis to tell us this of Tages that Famous Hetruvian Sooth-sayer was not so much to be wondered at Our Excellent Historian therefore of Harry the 8th when he mentions that Harry the 7th left in his Coffers a Million and 8 hundred thousand Pounds Sterling to Harry the 8th and such as might be thought effectively quadruple to so much in this age did but right to his own Credit by inserting the Clause of if we may believe Authors I have in p. 109 mentioned that when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown which was in the year 1558 the Customs made not above 36000 l. per Annum and which I was induced to believe partly on the relation of some whose Ancestors were Officers of the Customs in her Reign and whose Papers and Accounts they now have But I found after the printing of that Sheet that I had made sure of being within the Compass of Truth and likewise Modesty as to my Estimate and looking into my Notes out of Cambden about it I found that about the year 1590 and after all her Glories of 88 her Customs were farmed but for 14 thousand Pounds Sterling a year One would wonder that our
Author's opinion that they can never recover the wounds given them by the publication of the les Provinciales c. ib. and that much less those given them by the Popes said Decree p. 50 51. Observations on that Notion of Moasieur Descartes and Mr. Hobbs That the faculties of the mind are equally dispensed and on the natural effects of that Notion p. 58. The Author remarks some Shamms and Calumnies used by some Protestants and their contending with Papists therein p. 59. An Antidote mentioned for Papists and Protestants to carry about with them in this Pestilential time of Shamms ib. A vile Shamm or Calumny used against Papists as if they intended to burn the Town of Stafford and other great Towns is referred to in one of Janeway's printed Intelligences p. 60. Animadversions on Parsons his Book of the Succession p. 60 61. 'T is for the honour of the Roman Catholick Religion observed that Harry the 4th of France after he turned Papist continued kind and just to his Protestant Subjects notwithstanding the Popes endeavours to the contrary p. 62. The Authors grand Assertion viz. That whatever alterations time can cause yet humanly speaking while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Foreign Conquest the Protestant Religion can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom p. 64. Mr. Hooker's Propliecy of the hazard of Religion and the service of God in England being an ill State after the Year 1677 p. 65. The defections of the ten Tribes from the time of David punished by a Succession of 10 ill Kings p. 66. The words in Hosea I gave thee a King in mine anger falsly made by Antimonarchical Scriblers to refer to Saul ib. Dr. Stillingfleet's Sermon cited about the uncertainty of what the fermentations among us may end in ib. Dr. Sprat's opinion cited That whatever vicissitude shall happen about Religion in our time will neither be to the advantage of Implicit Faith or Enthusiasm p. 67. Historical Oâ—servations relating to the Papacy from p. 67 to p. 77. The Papal Power formerly pernicious to the external Polity and Grandeur of England p. 77 78. Queen Elizabeth said by Townsend to have spent a Million of Money in her Wars with Spain and laid out 100000 l. to support the King of France and 150000 l. in defence of the Low Country and to have discharged a Debt of 4 Millions She found the Crown indebted in ib. How by her Alliances She laid the Foundation of the vast ensuing Trade of England whose over-balance brought in afterward so much Silver to be Coyn'd in the Tower of London p. 78. The Sums Coyn'd there from the 41 st year of her Reign to May 1657 ib. England alone till the Peace of Munster in the year 1648 enjoyed almost the whole Manufacture and best part of the Trade of Europe by virtue of her Alliances ib. The same Month of January in the year 48 produced the signing of that Peace and the Martyrdom of the best of Kings and the fatal diminution of our Trade ib. Queen Elizabeth had what praemium of Taxes from Parliaments She pleased ib. King James told the Parliament Anno 1620 that She had one year with another 100,000 l. in Subsidies and that he had in all his time but 4 Subsidies and 6 Fifteenths and that his Parliament had not given him any thing for 8 or 9 years ib. In Harry the 3 d's time the Pope's Revenue in England was greater than the Kings and in 3 years time the Pope extorted more Money from England than was left remaining in it ib. In Edward the 3 d's time the Taxes paâ—d to the Pope for Ecclesiastical Dignities amounted to five times as much as the People payed to the King p. 79. By a Balance of Trade then in the Exchecquer it appeared that the Sum of the over-plus of the Exports above the Imports amounted to 255214 l. 13 s. 8d ib. Wolsey's Revenue generally held equal to Harry the 8 th's ib. Why the Pope never sent Emissaries to Denmark and Sweden and some other Northern Countries for Money and why probably in no course of time that can happen he will send any to England on that Errand ib. and p. 80. In the 4 th year of Richard the 2 d the Clergy confessed they had a 3 d part of the Revenue of the Kingdom and therefore then consented to pay a 3 d of the Taxes ib. Bishop Sanderson mentions the Monastick Revenue to be half the Revenue of the Kingdom ib. The not providing for the augmentations of the poorer livings in England observed to be a Scandal to the Reformation p. 81. Of 8000 and odd Parish Churches in Queen Elizabeth's time but 600 were observed to afford a competent maintenance to a Minister and four thousand five hundred Livings then not worth above 10 l. a year in the Kings Books ib. During the late Vsurpation the Impropriate Tithes saved the other ib. A Million of Pounds Sterling commonly observed to accrue to the Popes per Annum from Indulgencies p. 87. An account of the Compact between some of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and the long Parliament by which the Parliament was obliged to settle on the Ministry all the Church Lands and those Divines engaged to promote the Parliaments Cause and of the result thereof p. 88. Observations on the Calculations of the Monastick Revenue made in the year 1527 by Mr. Simon Fish in his Book called The supplication of Beggars and which Calculations were much valued by Harry the 8 th p. 90 91. Not only none of our Monkish Historians but even of our polished and ingenious ones made any Estimates of the Numbers of the People in the times they writ of ib. A Calculation of the Number of Religious Persons or Regulars in England at the time of the Dissolution of Monasteries p. 92. A Calculation of the Numbers of Seculars as well as Regulars that then lived in Celebacy ib. The Author's Calculation of the Number of the Levites and of their Quota of the Profits of the Land p. 93. A Calculation of the Ebb of the Coynage of England from May 1657 to November 1675 p. 102. A particular Account of Cromwel the Vsurpers depressing the Trade of the European World p. 103. The Kings of Spain impose Pensions on Ecclesâ—astical Preferments to the 4th part of the value p. 104. The proportion of Papists and Non-Papists by the Bishops Survey in the Year 1676 is 150 Non-Papists for one Papist ib. The People in the Province of Holland reckoned to be 2 Millions 4 hundred thousand ib. The People in Flanders in the Year 1622 reckoned to be 700,000 p. 105. Amsterdam in the Year 1650 reckoned to have in it 300000 Souls ib. An Account of what the Inhabitants of Holland in the Year 1664 did over and above the Customs and other Demesnes of the Earls and States of Holland pay toward the publick Charge namely to the States of Holland to the Admiralty of the Maze to the Admiralty of
Amsterdam to the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter ib. The number of the Inhabitants of Venice in the year 1555 ib. An Account of the Political Energy of the Reformation in England p. 107. The Revenue of the Kingdom of England quintuple in the year 1660 to what it was at the time of the Reformation p. 108. A Calculation of the Revenue of the Church holding in the year 1660 the same proportion of encrease ib. The Customs of England when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown made but 36000 l. per Annum and were since 1660 farmed at 400000 l. per Annum and have since then made about double that Sum p. 109. The yearly Revenue of the whole Kingdom of England computed ib. Queen Elizabeth wisely provided for the enlargement of the Trade and Customs of England ib. The Numbers of the People of Spain p. 111. The knowledge of the Numbers of People in a Kingdom is the Substratum of all Political measures ib. An Animadversion on the Author of la Politique Françoise ib. There were about 600,000 Souls in Paris shortly after the year 1660 p. 113. An Animadversion on the Calculation of Malynes in his Lex mercatoria ib. Animadversions on the Calculations of Campanella as to the numbers of the People of France p. 114. Lord Chief Iustice Hales his Observations of the gradual encrease of the People in Glocester shire corroborated by the Author p. 115. The Author believes the Total of the People of England to be very much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it p. 116. Observations on the Numbers of the People of England resulting from the returns on the late Pole-Bills and the Bishops Survey ib. and p. 117 118 119. An account of a Tax of Poll-Money in Holland in the year 1622 p. 117. Some illegal Proceedings in Queen Mary's Reign remarked p. 119 120. The Authors opinion that any Roman Catholick Prince that may come to inherit the Crown will use the Politics of Queen Mary as a Sea mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land-mark to go by p. 122. Eight hundred of the empty new built Houses of London have been filled with French Protestants ib. A high character given of Edward the 3 d a sharp Persecutor of the excesses of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and who saved the being of the Kingdoms Trade and Manufacture and patronized Wickliffe and the Authors opinion that any lawful Prince of the Roman Catholick Religion that can come here will uphold the falling Trade of the Kingdom as he did ib. Occasional Remarks on the Numbers of the People in the old Roman Empire p. 124. The vanity of the fear of any ones erecting another Universal Monarchy p. 125. Campanellas Courting Spain and afterwards France with that Monarchy remarked ib. Observations on the fate of the Spanish Armada in 88 and of the Numbers of its Ships and Seamen and likewise of the Numbers of the Ships and Seamen then in Queen Elizabeth's Fleet p. 127. She claimed no Empire of the Ocean either before 88 or afterward ib. The Shipping and Numbers of our Seamen in 12 years after 88 were decayed about a 3 d part p. 128. An account of the French Monarch's Receipts and Expences in the year 1673 ib. The Authors conjecture of the result of the Fermentation about the Regalia in France p. 129. The things predicted in the Apocalyps are with reference to exactness of number and measure p. 130. The Origine of the name Fanatick ib. The Author asserts this as a Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World as well as of a mans own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the Municipal Laws of their Countries ib. The Author gives his Iudgment of the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of Presbytery here being come p. 133. Of the illegality of the Scotch Covenant p. 134. The Assembly of Divines here would have been Arbitrary in Excommunication ib. The first Paragraph of the Covenant introduced Implicit Faith p. 135. The Author of the Book called The true English Interest computes that 300,000 were slain in the late Civil War in England p. 138. Observations on his Majesty's and Royal Brothers Exile into Popish Countries caused by our Presbyterians and even out of Holland into France and out of France into Spain p. 138 139. Presbyterians are obliged of all men to speak softly of the danger of Popery p 139. An account of the present Numbers of the Papists in England and some Historical Glances about the gradual decrease thereof in this Realm in several Conjunctures since the Reformation from p. 139 to p. 154. The late Earl of Clarendon occasionally mentioned with honour p. 147. The Authors judgment that the growth of Popery and of the fears thereof will abate under any Conjuncture of time here that can come from p. 153 to p. 157. In December 1672 the Protestants in Paris mere but as one to 65 p. 157. Observations on the late Conversions in France ib. The Author explains what he means by the expression of Religion-Trade ib. The Author's Assertion that the World can never be quiet and orderly till its State be such that men can neither get nor lose by Religion from p. 158 to 160. Animadversions on a Pamphlet aiming at the overthrow of the Clerical Revenue of England and called The great Question to be considered c. p. 160 161. The Author asserts the present Clerical Revenue of England to be reasonable and necessary and very far from excess in its proportion from p. 161 to p. 167. The Author's reason why he doth usually in this Discourse call Popery an Hypothesis or Supposition and not it or our former Presbytery in gross by the name of Religion from p. 168 to p. 170 and after The Author's Assertion That Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturbed worshipping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the blood of Christ p. 170. The Author distinguisheth Principles of Papists Socinians and Presbyterians into Religionary and Non-religionary and shews to what Principles the name of Religion is absurdly applied from p. 168 to p. 172. The Author observes it in many Papists who have deserted the Church of England that the rational Religion they were first educated in hath had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholly over-power p. 174. An Observation of three of the Nobility that went off from the Church of England to that of Rome but receded not from the Candour of their tempers and that neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and that the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and make great Figures in the State ib. Turen after his being a Papist as kind to his Protestant Friends as
formerly ib. The Author shews that none need be afraid of any Roman Catholick Prince who was formerly a Protestant from p. 174 to 177. Non-Conformist Divines not scrupling the lawfulness of what the Conformists do but were ashamed to confess their error p. 175. 'T is a shame for such Divines to censure the belief of Religionary Notions in a high born Prince p. 176. By the falsity of such Divines Principles as many hundreds of thousands were here stain as were bare hundreds put to death in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary ib. A Confutation of one Argument brought for London's being desigâ—edly fired by many Popish Persons p. 181. The Author's Iudgment that the fermentation that hath been in the Kingdom will not prove destructive but perfective to it p. 183. The Author's Iudgment that all Policy Civil or Ecclesiastical will be accounted but Pedantry that Postpones the Consideration of the building Capital Ships and their Maintenance and Equipage p. 184. That Religion-Traders are really of the Trade of Beggars p. 184. More concerning the breaking of the Trade of Beggars and of Court-Beggars ib. The reason why our English Mininisters of State have not writ their Memoires as those of France have done p. 185. The Author of the present State of England observed to say in Part 2d that the yearly Charge of his Majesty's Navy in times of Peace is so well regulated that it scarce amounts to 70,000 l. per Annum p. 185. What the Lord Keeper Bridgman in his Speech to the Parliament in the year 1670 saith that from the year 1660 to the late Dutch War the ordinary Charge of the Fleet communibus annis came to 500,000 l. per Annum and that it cannot be supported with less ib. The Author believes that the ordinary Naval Charge hath in no years since amounted to less than 200,000 l. per Annum besides the vast Charge in building new Ships and rebuilding old and the Charge of Summer and Winter Guards and of Convoys and Ships against Argier p. 186. Since the year 1669 the King hath enriched the Kingdom with a more valuable Fleet than it had before ib. The manifold payments to the Vsurpers amounted to one entire Subsidy in each Week of the Year and what the Kingdom paid before exceeded not usually one Subsidy or 15 th in two or three years space ib. The nature of our old gentle way of Assessments called Subsidies ib. Instead of the demanding of 5 Members from the Parliament above 400 were forcibly secluded from it ib. Taxes afterward levied in the name of a House of Commons when there were no Knights of the Shire for 26 English and 11 Welch Counties and but one Knight of the Shire in other 9 Counties and only the full number of Knights of the Shire for 4 Counties and when York Westminister Bristol Canterbury Chester Exeter Oxford Lincoln Worcester Chichester Carlisle Rochester Wells Coventry had no Citizens and London 1 instead of 4 and Glocester and Salisbury alone had there full number and when by a parcel of about 89 permitted to fit the whole Clergy as well as Layety of England was taxed ib. and p. 187. The Vsurper by his own Authority only laid a Tax of 600,000 l. per Month on the Nation p. 187. He afterward had a giving Parliament that Calculating the Charge of the Nation found 400,000 l. per Annum necessary for the Navy and Ports and settled on him in all 1,300,000 l. per Annum ib. Their helping him into the Power to break the Balance of Christendom as he did hath entailed on the Nation for ever a necessity of labouring hard to support the publick Government ib. A Descant on the saying of Dulce bellum inexpertis from p. 187 to p. 189. A Calculation of the number of the People now living who are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War and a Calculation of what numbers of those who lived in 1641 are now dead and what proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War and of the number of such inexperts in Ireland and Scotland p. 188 189 190. The Vsurpers seized into their hands about a Moiety of the Revenue of the Kingdom p. 190. 'T is observed that presently after the discovery of the Gun-Powder Treason the Parliament gave King James 3 Subsidies 7 Fifthteenths and 10 ths of the Layety and 4 Subsidies of the Clergy and what they amounted to The Author shews how just and natural it was for the Parliament believing that Plot so to do p. 191 194. An intimation of the reason of so much hatred in France against the Earl of Danby p. 192. The Authors belief that the future Warlike State of Christendom will necessarily prompt all Patriots instead of studying to make men unwilling to promote publick supplies to bend their Brains in the way of Calculation to shew what the Kingdom is able to contribute to its defence and how to do it with equality ib. The judgment of Sir W. P. that if a Million were to be raised in England what quota of the same should be raised on Land Cattle personal Estate housing ib. The Iudgment of the same Author cited for the second Conclusion in his Political Arithmetick viz. that some kind of Taxes and publick Levies may rather encrease than diminish the Common-wealth p. 193. An account of the exact Roman Prudence in the equality of Taxes under the Ministry of the Censors appearing from the Civil Law ib. The great care and exactness of the leading men in Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments to Calculate the Levies and to render the same equal ib. The disproportionate Taxes laid by the Vsurpers on the Associated Counties and others have caused the weight thereby to aggrieve many of those places ever since ib. Lilly the Astrologer complaining that whereas he was Taxed to pay about 20 s. to the Ship money he was in the year 1651 rated to pay about 20 l. annually to the Souldiery ib. The Author's belief and reason about Republican Models necessarily growing more and more out of fashion p. 194 195. Observations on the great Clause of proponentibus legatis in the Council of Trent p. 195. The preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and the Priest and with respect to number weight and measure under the times of the Gospel agreed on by Divines to be referred to by Ezekiel in Vision from the 40th Chapter to the end of his Prophecy p. 196. How Augustus his great Tax or Pole helped to confirm the Christian Religion p. 197. The Author's opinion that future legal and equal Taxes will have the effect of strengthening the Protestant Religion ib. Observed that the Parliament may be justly said to be indebted to the Crown for that great
part of its Patrimony Queen Elizabeth alienated to secure the Protestant Religion ib. The fears of Popery further Censured p. 198. Ridly and Latimer Prophesied at the Stake that Protestancy would never be extinguished in England p. 198. Roger Holland prophesied at the Stake at Smithfield that he should be the last that should there suffer Martyrdom ib. Observations on the Natural Prophesying of dying men and its effects p. 199. The Vanity of Mens troubling the World by Suppositions ib. and p. 200. 'T is a degree of madness to trouble it by putting wanton impossible cases p. 200. The Author without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only by the light of reason presageth that the excessive fear of Popery as weâ—l as its danger will here be exterminated ib. The justice of the Claim of King Charles the first to the Title of Martyr asserted p. 201 202 203. The Author judgeth that some vile Nominal Protestants by the publication of many Seditious Pamphlets have given the Government a just Alarm of their designs against it p. 203. Of Papists and Protestants being Antagonists in Shamms p. 204. Mr. Nye cited for representing the Dissenters acted by the Jesuites in thinking it unlawful to hear the Sermons of the Divines of the Church of England p. 204. False Witnesses among the Jews allowed against false Prophets p. 205. The Earl of Anglesy's Courage and Iustice asserted in the professing in the House of Lords his disbelief of such an Irish Plot as was sworn by the Witnesses tho the belief of the reallity of such a Plot had obtained the Vote of every one else in both Houses ib. Above 2000 Irish Papists in the Barony of Enishoan demean'd themselves civilly to the English during the whole Course of the Rebellion ib. Several eminent ingenious Papists in England and Foreign parts celebrated for their avowed Candour to Protestants p. 206 207 208 c. D' Ossat's acquainting the Pope That if his Holyness were King of France he would show the same kindness to the Huguenots that Harry the 4th did p. 208. Cromwel being necessitated to keep the Interest of the Kingdom divided was likewise necessitated to keep up all Religions according to the Politicks of Julian p. 211. Of the Papists calling King James Julian ib. The Author inveigheth against the Calumny of any Protestants who call any one Apostate for the alteration of his Iudgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants ib. The Author's Reason why 't is foolish to fear that any Rightful Prince of the Roman Catholick perswasion that can come here will follow the Politicks of Julian ib. 'T is shewn that any Protestant Vsurper here must act à la Julian ib. The Vsurper Cromwel shewn to be a Fautor of Priests and Jesuites by the Attestations of Mr. Prynn and the Lord Hollis p. 212 213. The danger of Popery that would have ensued Lambert's Vsurpation p. 213 214. How true soever any Vsurpers Religion is he must be false to the Interest of the Kingdom p. 214. Observed that the Kings long Parliament by the Act for the Test did enjoyn the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to be taken ib. Those Oaths lay on the Takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors ib. Mr. Prynn's Book called Concordia discors printed Anno 1659 to prove the Obligation by those Oâ—hs to the King's Heirs and Successors commended ib. The Author mentions the Reasons that induced him to write Casuistically concerning such Obligation and promiseth to send that his Writing to his Lordship ib. The Author judgeth that he ought not to be severe to any Papist before he hath a Moral certainty of such Papists having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Pâ—pery that is unmoral or inhumane ib. The Author observes that few or no Writers of the Church of Rome have lately thought fit by their Pens to assert the Inheritable Right of Princes without respect to any Religionary Tenets they may hold p. 215. The Author thinks that for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Roman Catholick Prince of his Property and Right of Succession when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope employ their Pens for the preservation of such his property and right without respect to to any Religionary Tenets he may hold is like drawing against a naked man ib. D' Ossat affirms That the Pope and the whole Court of Rome hold it lawful to deprive a Prince of any Country to preserve it from Heresie ib. An Animadversion on a late Pamphlet concerning the Succession ib. Reflections on the House of Commons Proceedings in the Exclusion Bill ib. and p. 216. The Author gives an explanatory account of the tempus acceptabile he in p. 25 mentions p. 216. His Majesty's constant contending for the Protestant Faith celebrated and likewise his Iustice in preserving the property of the Succession in the Legal Course by all his Messages to the Parliament p. 217. The unhappy State of that Prince who shall for fear of the Populace do any Act of the Iustice whereof he doubts and much more of the injustice whereof he is fully convinced p. 217. at large The Caution to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia applied to such a Prince viz. Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take away thy Crown ib. at large 'T is not only Popery but Atheism in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion p. 218. King James disavowed the Act of his Son-in Laws accepting the Title of King of Bohemia ib. An Observation that in the Common-Prayer in King Charles the 1 sts time relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runneth for Frederick Prince Palatâ—ine Elector of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife ib. The Author observes that in the Assembly's Directory the Lady Elizabeth is styled Queen of Bohemia p. 219. An Account of the Governments avowed sence in King James's time that any of the Princes of England ought not by becoming Roman Catholick to be prejudiced in their Right of Succession to the Crown ib. The same sense of the Government in the time of King Charles the 1 st ib. The Parliament during the Civil War projected not any prejudice to the right of Succession on the account of any Religionary Tenets p. 220. Mention of somewhat more to confirm the claim of King Charles the 1 st to the Title of Martyr beside his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue ib. An account of the Protestation of the Nonconforming Ministers in the year 1605 relating to the King's Supremacy wherein they assert the Royal Authority inseparably fixt to the true Line whatever Religion any Prince thereof may profess p. 221. The Author peâ—stringeth the Protestant would be 's and new Statists of the Age that would for Religionary Tenets barr any of the
settlement of the same proving Abortive in several Parliaments ib. The French King in the last War did forbid the Importation of Sail-Cloath to England ib. A presage of the future happy State of England and the Authors Idea thereof at large ib. and p. 252. An account of the Rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-cloth and all other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax yearly brought into England and from what Countries deduced out of the Custom-house Books p. 254. All the Hemp and Flax sown in England is observed to be bought up by the years end p. 257. Almost as much Hemp and Flax yearly brought into Amsterdam as into the whole Kingdom of England ib. The Authors judgment of the effects of the necessity that will drive us on to the Linen Manufacture ib. An Account of the fine Linen lately made by the French Protestants at Ipswich and of the Flax by them sown ib. The Author's Censure of the excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery ib. His belief that the future State of England will make men ashamed of their pass'd fears of Popery ib. The Vote of the House of Commons for the recalling the Declaration of Indulgence carried by the Party of the Nonconformists p. 258. Most of the Papists of England in the Year 1610 computed to be under the guidance of the Jesuites p. 260. Many Popish Writers have inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decrets of the Canon Law ib. That Law never in gross received in England ib. Binds not English Papists in the Court of Conscience ib. A Tenet ridiculously and falsly in the Canon Law founded on Cyprian ib. Gratian's founding it on Cyprian gives it only the weight it could have in Cyprian's Works p. 261. Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith cited for Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claiming nothing of Faith and Bellarmine's acknowledging errors therein ib. One definition in the Canon Law and gloss held by all Papists ridiculous ib. The Author thinks he has said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope's Canon Law as they would wish said ib. He thinks himself morally obliged in any Theological Enquiry to say all that the matter will fairly bear on both sides ib. Heylin and Maimbourg cited about the firing of Heretical Villages in France p. 262. Parsons and Bellarmine cited by Donne for rendring some things obligatory that are said by Gratian p. 263. The Author expects that the growing populousness of England will have the effect of rendriâ—g men less censorious of any supposed Political Errors in the Ministers of our Princes p. 265. Mr. Fox cited for his Observation of many Excellent men falsly accused and judged in Parliament and his advice to Parliaments to be more circumspect ib. The Author minded by that passage out of Fox to reflect on the severity in a late Parliament in their Votes against the King's Ministers ib. The injustice of the Vote against the Earl of Hallifax p. 266. The Earl of Radnor occasionally mentioned with honour ib. The Constancy of the Earl of Anglesy to the Protestant Religion further asserted p. 267. Mention of his Lordships being injuriously reflected on in a Speech of Sir W. J. ib. The unreasonableness of the Reflections on the Lord Chief Justice North for advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions ib. The great deserved Character of that Lord Chief Justice p. 268. throughout A reflection on the popularity of Sir W. J. and on the â—â—â—essive Applause he had from the House of Commons after his Speech for the Exclusion-Bill p. 269. Sir Leolin Jenkins mentioned with honour ib. The Cabal of Sir W. J. observed to be full of fears of the Exclusion-Bill passing and their not knowing what steps in Politicks to make next ib. The Earl of Peterborough at large mentioned with honour ib. and p. 270. A further Account of the Authors prediction of England's future happy State ib. and p. 271. The Author observes that the most remarkable late Seditious Writers have published it in Print That they feared the next Heir to the Crown only as Chief Favourite to his Prince and that they judged that the Laws would sufficiently secure them from fears of his power if he should come to the Crown p. 271. An Assertion of his never having advised his Prince to incommode any one illegally and of his not having used his own power to any such purpose ib. The Author judgeth such Persons to write but in jest who amuse the People about being Lachrymists by that Princes Succession ib. The Author reflects on our Counterfeit Lachrymists for not affecting as quick a prevention of any future growth of Popery as was 〈◊〉 care of in Scotland p. 272. He observes that few or none in Scotland fear that Popery can ever in any Course of time there gain much ground ib. The Papists in that Kingdom estimated to be but 1000 ib. The Author believes that the fears of Poperies growth will be daily abated in England and in time be extinguished ib. More Popish Ecclesiasticks observed to be in Holland then Ministers in France and that yet none in Holland pretend to fear the Papists ib. The Authors judgment of the Dissenters Sayings being usefully published ib. Some Notes on the Geneva Bible seditious ib. The same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Popes Canon Law founded on the 13 th of Deuteronomy is chargeable on our late Presbyterians ib. The Assemblies Annotations cited to that purpose ib. The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine p. 274. Bishop Sanderson cited for that purpose ib. Calvin as to this point did blunder as shamefully as our Assembly-men p. 274. Several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines imbibed the error of Hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians ib. The Presbyterians here fired the Church and State with a Civil War ib. The Authors belief that there will never be any new Presbyterian Synod in England nor General Council beyond Sea ib. The Popes Pensions in the Council of Trent that sate for 18 years came to 750 l. Sterling per Month â—b The Author predicts the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty in England ib. The reason of such his Prediction p. 275. The Lord Hyde first Commissioner of the Treasury mentioned with honour ib. What the new Heaven and the new Earth is that the Author expects in England ib. The reason that induced false Prophets to foretel evil rather than good to States and Kingdoms p. 276. at large The same applied to our Augurs who by enlarging our fears and jealousies and their own fortunes thereby rendred the Genius of England less august ib. The Authors measures of the future State of England are taken only from Natural Causes and Natures Constancy to it self p. 277. A short account of several great Religionary Doctrines having naturally pierced through the sides and roots of one another p. 279. The
Primier Ministres adorers who are always pleasing or troubling him with their sacrifices do all with sudden confusion leave him when he begins thus to fall as if Thunder-struck from Heaven We find in Rushworth that Iune the 13 th 4 Caroli it was ordered upon the Question That the excessive power of the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of the Evils and Dangers to the King and Kingdom And we may well suppose that if a Parliament doth still as one man set themselves against a Monopolist but of one little pedling commodity that they will look on a Chief Minister as one that would or in effect doth monopolize the Beams of the Sun I mean the Kings Eye and as one that alone hath the Kings Ear and as one that is the great forestaller of the Court-market of preferments And happy it is for a Chief Minister that the way of Parliamentary Impeachment hath been in such antient usage for that rids the people of the outrage of that Minister and that Minister of the outrage of the people Our Stories speak How barbarously Cruel the brutish Rabble was to Dr. Lamb called the Duke's Conjurer and the reason why the people hate those they call Conjurers so much is because they think such have a power to hurt their Children or Cattel and the same reason makes them hate one that they look on as a Kings Conjurer who they think can hurt their Property and one who on occasion can raise up Domestick and Foraign Devils to molest them and especially if he cannot lay those Devils when he has raised them and who can if he will put the People to charge and to the danger of starving to feed his familiar spirits When once the people find by any mans power the fence of the Law begun to be broken down they will go in at the gap and 't is nothing but the Law that secures a chief Minister and them against one another St. Austin therefore doth rationally in his De Civitate Dei charge the miserable condition of the Romans on the contempt and breach of their Laws and saith he people were promiscuously put to death not by Judgment of Magistrates but by Tumults Neque enim Legibus ordine potestatum sed turbis animorumque Conflictibus Nobiles ignobilesque necabantur Your Lordship therefore when you had been a repairer of the breaches of the Nation and of the Law therein and in the Scripture expression a restorer of paths to dwell in as easily and unconcern'd gave up the great depositâ—m of power the King and Kingdom entrusted you with as ever you restored the least to a private person and have ever since among the Councellors of your Prince both endeavoured to make your Country safe by giving Counsel against any Neighbour Nations being too powerful and to make your self secure by your not grasping more power than you saw in the hands of each of your honourable Colleagues as well knowing that any single Minister that shall here set up to be a Dispenser of the Soveraign Power had need either still wear a Coat of Male and an Iron Brest-plate or bind the whole Kingdom to the Peace Your Lordship can hardly look into antient History without meeting Examples of the People like the Leviathan playing in the Ocean of their power and spouting out their censures both with fury and wantonness when they are dooming the great You know the Lacedemonians did reprimand their Lycâ—rgus because he went with his head stooping the Thebans accused their Paniculus for his much spitting and the Athenians Simonides because he spoke too loud the Carthaginians Hannibal because he went loose in his garments the Romans Scipio because he did snore in his sleep the Vticenses Cato for his eating with both Jawes the Syllani Iulius Caesar for wearing his girdle carelessly the Romans were angry with Pompey for scratching himself but with one finger and likewise for wearing a garter wrought with Silver and Gold on one leg saying that he wore such a Diadem about his foot as Kings do on their heads though yet it seems the only cause of his wearing it was to hide a Sore place there And in these above-mentioned cases we are not to think that those Ancient and wise people who thought the rest of the world barbarous could censure those persons so barbarously for those sensless reasons but out of a hatred to the persons Censured were resolved to strike at the first thing they met how innocent soever in it self in persons they thought they had reason to represent odious A late Great Man who in a Public Speech in Parliament render'd the English tongue as having the Monopoly of the term good Nature found that they had not engrost the thing when they imagined that his Ministry Monopolized much of the Regal power And another eminent person afterward a Minister to His Majesty Suffered as a favourer of the French at whose imprisonment I have heard that the Lovâ—re rang with as much joy and triumph as if they had carried the point in a great fight at Land or Sea and he likewise suffered obloquy as if concern'd in the infamous murder of Sr. Edmond Godfrey from which he was certainly as free as from having killed Iulius Caesar And how far the embroider'd garter about his leg made him like Pompey Envyed I know not But as I said 't is a chief Ministers power the people of England strike at who may not be unfitly resembled to Alexanders Bucephalus that would let none but Alexander ride him nor could Alexander himselfe do it till by holding him against the Sun he kept him from being frighted with the sight of his Shadow And when one Subject seems to be the representative Shadow of the body of the whole people the Sight of him frights them so as to make them uneasie to be ruled And therefore I think his Majesty did rationally provide for the public Security when he signified His pleasure in a Speech in a late Parliament about not Ruling us by a single Ministry I should not wonder if your Lordship were called a Papist if you had been the possessor of any such power that name being now the angriest the people can throw at any one as it was before the late Warres when Archbishop Laud who had writ so well and so much against the Papists fell under the weight of that name But really by the power of that chief Ministry he had in the State of England after the death of the Duke of Buckingham And at that time the currant definitions of a Papist and of one who enjoyed Arbitrary Power were the same And the things made conveâ—â—â—ble or Devils dancing in the same Circle And so likewise the Vouge at this time obtains among the populace who cannot see through the hard words and things in definitions and if you ask them what is a Papist they will tell you he is one that is for Arbitrary Power and asking them what is one that
I think that an eximious man impeacht in Parliament and there acquitted will need no Herald to proclaim his worth nor his deserving to be restored in integrum to the Royal Protection and Favour when that his own works have praised him in the gates that is in the Jurisdiction where they were so strictly scann'd My Lord if any could prove your Lordship to be a Papist he need not call that accumulative Treason in you nor need he go about by torturing the Law to make it confess many Felonies to be one Treason many Rapes to be one false coming But Popery in you would be plain down-right palpable and rank Treason by vertue of the Statute of 23 of Elizabeth Ch. 1. which makes it High Treason for any person in the Dominions of the Crown of England to be withdrawn from the Religion then established to the Romish Religion That your Lordship hath been bred a Protestant and been so as it were ex traduce there needs no other evidence then the contents of this Letter and that you have not been withdrawn to the Romish Religion you have declared by the Series of your actings against it that shew your Mind beyond the power of words and 't is by the help of that great Wisdom God has given you that our English World expects that a way may be found how to make it more clearly appear to the eye of the Law when any others have been or are withdrawn to the Romish Religion a thing perhaps at present of somewhat difficult proof For without supposing that the Pope can or will give them dispensations to take all Oaths and Tests that can be devised doth not a reserving some fantastic sense to themselves make nonsense of all Oaths and that one word Equivocation make them proof against all other words Doth not that with them sanctify or at least justify all other words they can use May they not on these terms safely swear there is neither God nor Man nor Hell nor Devil that is meaning not in a Mathematical point or in Vtopia and that they saw not such a Man such a day that is not with the eyes of a Whale And have not the late dying Speeches of some of these Imposters and particularly Father Irelands shewn us that in the points of mental reservation and equivocation they persevere in the impudent owning of that which would unhinge the World and turn humane Society into a dissolute multitude And do we not believe many to be Papists who we know have taken the Oaths and Tests Hath not a Papist some Years since writ of the lawfulness of the taking of the Oath of Supremacy I speak not this my Lord to derogate from the Wisdom of our Ancestors that appointed these discriminations nations and do think that when we have used all the lawful means we can to know who among us are Papists as certainly as we do what is Popery and to keep Papists from hurting us and themselves we ought to acquiesce in the Results of the Providence of God. But what all those means are tho I know not yet I am apt to believe that your Lordships comprehensive knowledg of men and things and of the true interest of the Kingdom hath qualified you to tell your Royal Master and His Houses of Parliament nor do I believe that the difficulty of either finding out such means and making practicable things be practised will blunt but rather whet the edg of your Industry in this case as being of Quintilians mind who Judged that there was Turpitude in despairing of any thing that could be done I think his words are Turpiter desperatur quicquid fieri potest â—Tis certainly the interest of the King and Kingdom that the numbers of the Papists here and especially of those withdrawn from Protestancy to the Church of Rome should be known in the case of which Apostates tho it be impossible without seizing on the Papers and Archives of one certain Priest to see the Original Acts of their Recantation of Protestancy yet is it most certain and on all hands confessedly true that Eminent Overt-Acts of abhorrency of Protestantisme are alwayes required at the admitting one who was of that Religion into the bosome of the Roman Catholic Church which any one will be convinced of who reads the Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Villeroy of the 20 th of Octob. 1603. from Rome where he gives his Opinion against the Queen of England being made Godmother at the Baptism of Madam That Cardinal who had incomparable skill in the Canon Law and the knowledg of all the Customs of the Papal See and who had lived at Rome above 20 Years saith in that Letter I account it my duty to write to you freely that that cannot be done without very great Scandal to good Catholicks nor without the extream displeasure and offence of the Pope You presuppose that the Queen of England is a Catholic but Here we know the contrary tho some believe that she is not of the worser sort of Heretics and that she has some inclination to the Catholic Religion And I will tell you moreover that tho she were in her heart of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion as much as the Pope himself so it is that she having been bred up in Heresie and outwardly persisting in it as she doth she cannot according to the Canons be held for a Catholic in public acts of Religion till she hath first both viva voce and by writing under her hand abjured all Heresie and made profession of the Catholic Faith. Nor was it ever known that in the case of any Protestants Apostacy to the Church of Rome any Pope ever dispensed with those Canons and therefore it may well hence be inferr'd That if evidence just so much as the Law requires as to such Apostacy be given that no superpondium or proof of overt-acts more then necessary ought to be expected for that overt Acts almost impossible to be proved may yet necessarily be presumed but this by the way And therefore now further my Lord if fas est ab hoste doceri be adviseable in the case as strict Circumstances may be required in the conversion of Papists to our Church as are in the withdrawing of any from our Church to theirs Indeed if I were a Member of Parliament and any one there should be so happy as to invent a way and propound it whereby the present Lay-Papists in England might let us have a Moral Certainty that they neither consented to nor concealed the late Plot and likewise that they did really detest all those desperate Popish Principles that are fundamentally destructive to the Safety of the King and Kingdom and that they would harbour no Priests born in the Kings Dominions nor send any of their Children to be bred in Forrain Seminaries and on the contrary that on occasion they would discover to a Magistrate any such Priest or one who sent his Children to such Seminary
defensive arms to hurtful animals by whom they often Suffered and sometimes by their very Shepherds who in Sheering them would cut their Skins Apollo told them that no Beasts were so much the Favorites of him and of men as they for that whereas others with great anxiety were forced in the Night the time of rest and sleep to seek their Food that they could not do with safety in the day Men the Lords of the Earth bought at dear rates pasture grounds for Sheep and that tho men did make Nets feed Dogs and lay snares for hurtful Beasts they employed Shepherds and Dogs to guard Sheep and that no Shepherds could deal ill with their Flocks without being chiefly cruel to themselves and that therefore their security lay in not being able to fright their Shepherds Thus every one is naturally abhorr'd who attacks a Naked man and from such a one Lions themselves either through fear or generosity have made their Retreat The holy Writ affords us a memorable Instance of the Divine displeasure in the 38 th of Ezekiels Prophesie against Gog and Magog who are there branded as the Invaders of a defensless City 'T is there mention'd in v. 10 th and 11 th Thus saith the Lord God it shall also come to pass that at the same time shall things come into thy mind and thou shalt think an evil thought and v. 11 th And thou shalt say I will go up to the Land of unwalled Villages I will go to them that are at rest that dwell safely all of them dwelling without walls and having neither Bars nor Gates and in v. 12 th to take a spoil and to take a prey to turn thy hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited and upon the people that are gather'd out of the Nations which have gotten Cattel and goods that dwell in the MIDST or navel of the land But it then follows v. 14. Therefore Son of man Prophecy and say unto Gog Thus saith the Lord God in that day when my people of Israel dwells safely shalt thou not know it that is thou shalt know it to thy sorrow and by thy bitter experience of my wrath what it is to disturb my harmless and quiet people in the World. The Comparing of the following 16 th and 18 th v. shew this to be the meaning of v. 14 th And I believe if any of the people of Gog and Magog were allowed by the Law to live apart by themselves they might in any defenceless City be as secure from danger or fear of the Protestant Israel as they pleased It hath been well observed by a great Enquirer into humane Nature That a restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death is a general inclination of all mankind and the cause of this is not alwaies that a man hopes for a more intensive delight then he has already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present without the acquisition of more And from hence it is that Kings whose power is greatest turn their endeavours to the Assuring it at home by Laws or abroad by Warrs But as much as it is the inclination of the unthinking or brutish part of Mankind that power should be like the Crocodile alwaies growing the soberer few do know that power will destroy it self if it shall be still ascending and hath not a Center wherein to rest and be quiet just as fire would perish in nature and destroy it self if there were not an Element allow'd it wherein to leave burning And that therefore Augustus wisely designed a Law de cohibendis imperii finibus And that the experience of Antient and Modern times hath taught the teachable part of mankind That great Empires have sunk under their weight and have lost the length of their power by the widening it and that Kings whose power is greatest as was said sometimes turn their endeavours to the Assureing it at home by Laws which by giving it some bound are like letters about the edges of our coyn Decus tutamen to it the which makes it so Sacred that 't would be both Treasonable and Ridiculous to clip it and that as the Bees by their King have given the world an instance in Nature of Kingly power so they have likewise another of Kings governing by the power of Laws 'T is a common observation That tho Bees are little angry fighting Creatures upon occasion and leave their stings in the wounds they make Rex tamen apum sine aculeo est the King of the Bees is without any sting and the curious work of the Hive goes on with a great deal of Geometry and idle Drones are thence as it were legally expel'd who would there invade property Nor need the King of the Bees say the Naturalists have a sting for the whole Hive defends and guards him as thinking that they are all to perish if their King be destroyed And this would be the case of the Papists if they would be content so to part with the sting of their Power that it could not hurt either King or Kingdom and might not come to lose it self by so doing they would have the Posse of every County to defend them they would have the Laws and the whole Hive of English men to guard them the very Anger of the Protestants would be a defensive Wall of Fire round about them 'T is true that wild Animals are by their constant fears of danger habituated to more cunning then Tame ones of the same species but all their little cunning renders them not so safe as the great wisdom protection of the Law doth the other and ranging and out-lying Deer thrive not so well as those that are in the Forrests And here it falls in my way to observe that the Kings cautioning by the Law of the Forrests that the Mastiffs shall have the Power took from them of hurting the Deer may well insinuate into us the reason and equity of all our Laws that hinder its being in the power of a man to be a Wolf to another and of the Power inherent by the Law of Nature in all Soveraign Princes to restrain any undue Power of Subjects from violating the Public peace As the Law of God and Nature command both Iustice and Mercy to be shewn to Beasts so doth the Law of England provide that any mans person and Estate should be seized into the Kings hands in case of some wild cruelty to his Beasts for he would appear in the eye of the Law an Idiot or a Lunatic that should put his Horses or Asses to the Sword. That which I mention'd of the Laws providing that the Mastiffs of any Inhabitants in Forrests shall not have Power to hurt the Deer is called by the Forrest Law Lawing of Mastiffs or the Expeditating them that is the three Claws of their Fore-foot to the Skin
are to be cut off and thus they are to be law'd every three years for the preserving the Kings Game and the peace of his wild Beasts The Regarders of the Forrest are to make a TRIENNIAL enquiry about it tunc fiat per visum testimonium legalium hominum non aliter that is not Arbitrarily there must be legal Judgment upon legal Testimony and no Dog law'd without Judicial proceeding This Forrest Law made in the time of our Popish Ancestors did suppose that the Kings Game could not be preserved nor the Peace of his Wild Beasts by the Dogs being then either exorcised or their lapping a little holy water or any expedient as I may say without expeditation which did ipso facto destroy their Power of destroying the Kings Game and the Peace of his wild Beasts and therefore that 's the only valuable Garranty we can have from those who without Law and against Law would hunt down the King himself and his Tame Subjects that the excrescence of their power should be hambled or expeditated but the modus of this I do again say ought by them to be tendered to the Consideration of his Majesty and the Triennial Regardors of the Kingdom I am sure 't is worthy the consideration of us English what the Learned Frenchman Monsieur Bodin tells us in his Book de Republica Lib. 5. Cap. 6. Vna est tenuium adversus potentiores securitatis ratio ut scilicet si nocere velint non possent cum nocendi voluntas ambitiosis hominibus imperandi cupidis nunquam sit defutura And now my Lord to give your Lordship a home Instance of Jealousie taking Fire in some meerly from the power of another to do them hurt I will instance in your self at this conjuncture of time The nature of Iealousie renders it to be a troublesom weed and yet such an one that growes in the Richest Soil of Love my meaning is that 't is a fear of Love not being mutual when one doth love intensely with desire of being so loved My Lord in the picture of your mind that I have already drawn in this Letter I have only done you a little right and not at all favour'd you and 't is but Justice to you to acknowledge that the Protestant part of your Country hath a singular love for you with a desire of being so loved by you and 't is in this Critical conjuncture of time that your power makes them fear the love not to be mutual Your Lordship knows that fear in people is an aversion with an opinion of hurt from any object and they soon hate those things or persons for which they have aversion and fear of hurt by power disposeth men naturally to anticipate and not to stay for the first blow or else to crave aid from Society and from others especially whose concern may be the same or greater then theirs and who are their representatives and to wish ill to those who make them sleep in armour or to stand in the posture of Gladiators with their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on another and to be still in procinctu and all those passions sprung from the Root of Jealousie as far as they exceed the bounds of reason are degrees of madness And tho mans life be a constant motion and for the most part in both a Rugged way and near Precipices yet during that madness men are still by their own Scorpions scourging it to make it move faster then the regular and intended pace of Nature and injuring themselves with their passions are content too to wound another through their own sides And thus my Lord give me leave to tell you That 't is a kind of a Complement from people to a great good man of whose power and of whom they are jealous when that it may be said of them that they are occasionally faln mad for love of him One part of your Power namely that wherein you are a Conduit-Pipe to convey the grants of Honour and profit from your Royal Master the Fountain of Honour 't is possible for you to quit and that with pleasure too that you may have time to quench your great thirst after knowledge in that great collection of waters into which so many Streams of learning have met from all ages and Nations I mean your vast and choice Library And I may well suppose that your Lordship hath now that sense of Greatness and of power by publick Employment that Cardinal Granvel expressed at his retirement from the same That a great Man is like a great River where many sorts of Creatures are still quenching their thirst but are likewise still muddying and troubling the Stream Your Lordship knows who said thâ—â— actio est conversatio cum stultis lectio cum sapientibus In the Scene of the busie World you are necessarily troubled with the affaires of men whose being born was unnecessary to the world and there you are usually put to play at hard games well with ill gamesters the jest that fortune playing in humane affâ—ires commonly puts on the wise to spoil their busie sport there you are sometimes deafen'd with Complaints of Mimick Apes and grave Asses of airy fools and formal fops one against another but in your noble Library you have the advantage of the still Musick of the Tomb you have the weight of many dead Authors making no noise you have Socinus and Calvin standing quietly by each other and some Authors content with the dust of your Library who thought one Christian world not enough to trouble 't is there you will avoid any trouble by Authors of gilded outsides intruding nor be molested as now by nonsense in fine clothes You cannot now quietly enquire after the fountain of Nile for the noise of its Cataracts nor appease your thirst after knowledge otherwise then tanquam canis ad Nilum for fear of the Crocodiles of the World devouring you nor have a view of the tree of knowledge without a Serpent of envy circled about it nor have time to look on the pieces painted for eternity nor to mind the Eclipses in the Heavens while you are preventing your own being eclipsed in the Earth But my Lord there is another kind of power inherent in you and that you cannot part with such a power as King Charles the first in his Eikon Basil. affixes to the Character of his favorite when he sayes he looked on the Earl of Strafford as a Gentleman whose great abilities might make a Prince rather afraid then ashamed to employ him in the greatest affaires of State. Your very Reputation for power is power for that engageth those to adhere to you who want protection Your Success in your past conduct of publick affaires is power for it makes men promise to themselves good fortune while they follow you Your eloquence that fastens mens ears to your lips is power Your great knowledge in the Law whereby you possess that Engine by which you can be
only attacked and whereby you have that fastness where one-a-brest can keep down a Multitude is power Your affability and good Nature that endear you to so many is power and makes the hearts of men to be your Pyramids And all these sorts of power in you which make every party wish you to be theirs make up so bright a beauty in your mind as may well cause jealousie in that party that by loving you think they have Right to be again beloved by you I mean the English Protestants who court you and to whom you have so long engaged your self and especially when they shall find their Rivals boast of the kindness you have for them and that too at such a time as this when the Protestants seem to have the concern of one that is playing his last stake and which only can make him fetch back all he has lost a time when any one who pretends to a cold harmless neutrality doth really intend an exulcerated hatred a time wherein he that is not with us is against us however it may have hapned that in some lazy conjunctures when Papists and Protestants were half asleep both here and in the Neighbouring Continent that then he that was not against us was with us a time cum non de terminis sed de totâ possessione agitur A time wherein as in that of the tempest that happen'd to the Ship that carried Iona among the heathen Mariners we see almost all namely the Papists calling on their God and the Church of England likewise and the dissenters in the several persuasions on theirs with this difference that no man is now asleep but all in it are waking some at work to save the Ship and others to bore holes in it as if they were concerned to have it cast away as being not owners in it and as if they had secured their own merchandize in it which they purchased by the money they took up at Bottomry from Rome or its agents and knew how to secure themselves in the Cock-boat We have had dull and lazy conjunctures of timeâ—heretofore insomuch that many years ago a Divine seemed to begin a Sermon on the Gun-powder Treason day before a great Academick audience as it were yawning and in his sleep with these words Conspiracies if not prevented are rather dangerous then otherwise And thus the ingenious Comedy tells us of a Hero that as he was in the height of his passion with the greatest zeal making Love instantly dropt down into a deep sleep but 't is no time for yawning when the Earth begins to yawn under us And tho times have been heretofore influencing the Protestant cause like the Sun in March that could only raise the vapors of Popery in the body of the Nation and not dissipate them 't is now supposed to be otherwise and as I have heard that the Earl of Hallifax in his Speech in the house of Lords having spoken of his hatred to Popery excellently well added somewhat to this effect And we may now exterminate it if we will. And therefore with that now I think the ecce nunc tempus acceptabile festina salvare may be applyed to the Kingdom And if as the School-men tell us Angels may dance upon the point of a Needle we may imagine many both good and bad ones dancing on this point of time 't is on this moment the Nations eternity depends Every one now is as good a Conjurer as Friar Bacon and can make a Brazen head say time is by which words I believe the learned Roger Bacon meant only that in the vessel of Brass wherein the exquisite chymical preparations for the birth of gold were laboured the nick of opportunity was to be watched under pain of the loss of all the fire and Materials and art and labour according to that of Petrus Bongus Ibi est operis perfectio aut annihilatio quoniam ipsa die immò horâ oriuntur elementa simplicia depurata quae egent statim compositione antequam volent abigne as I find him cited by Brown for it in his vulgar errors where he further saith Now letting slip this critical opportunity he missed the intended Treasure which had he obtained he might have made out the tradition of making a brazen wall about England that is the most powerful defence and strongest fortification which Gold could have effected My Lord my opinion was askt in a letter from a very honest Gentleman and much your Lordships Servant Whether you should not do your self and your Religion a greatdeal of Right by printing in this juncture some of the excellent and large discourses you have formerly writ against Popery and the substance of the answer I gave him was to this effect That tho I would not diswade your Lordships now publishing any thing relating to the tenets of that pretended Religion that might import Protestants to understand more cleerly then they did in which way they have been advantaged by the Bishop of Lincoln's Book against Popery yet that I thought the great bulk of Popery could no more be destroyed by notions and arguments then a capital Ship could be sunk with bullets for that supposing they did all light between wind and water the Papists have thousands of Plugs ready to be clapt in there and thousands of men in that great vessel ready to apply them and tho I thought there was a time for writing of Books it was when there was a time for reading them that is when people had time to read them but that now the most curious works of Whiteakers and Iewels and Rainoldses would be no more regarded then attempts of shewing the longitude would be to Navigators while under the attack of a Fire-ship as I said or while they were making their way through the body of an Enemies Fleet. I know that 't is said to be an old Sybilline Prophecy that Antichrist shall be destroyed by paper viz. Antichristum lino periturum but alas that way is now as insignificant in the case as to think that the dominion of the Sea can be built up by Seldens Mare Clausum or destroyed by Grotius his Mare Liberum or any way but by thundring Legions in powerful fleers Indeed our paper pellets that the press since its licence hath shot against Popery I mean the innumerable little sheet-pamphlets that have come out against it may find time to be read and to give us diversion but the Papists looking on their Church as a great First-Rate Mann'd with Popes and Emperors and Princes and Fathers and Councels and innumerable Souls there embarqued in the Sea of time for the great Voyage of Eternity do account our little Protestant honest Sheet-authors firing at them daily to be only like the Yacht-Fan Fan's attacking De Ruyter But my Lord there is another Reason why a person of your Lordships great Power and Abilities should not at this time embarrase your self with writing No not those defences of your
heard your Lordship reproacht for having any interest contrary to that of your Country or indeed to the repose of Christendom And as in Nature we see all heavy bodies tend by their own Center to the Center of the Universe so have I still thought that your Lordship alwaies endeavoured by the pursuing your own good to pursue that of the Kingdom and that your endeavours of promoting the good of your own Country have tended to the good of the World And that in every Scheme of your Politicks whether Civil or Ecclesiastical pollicy you have took your Model from the Great Architect of Nature doing things fortiter and suaviter and with regard to his works of which 't is said in the 8 th of Wisdom Mightily and Sweetly doth she order all things And he that builds so is a Workman that need not be ashamed either of himself or of his work that is both strong and fair such a Councellor need not be aâ—hamed of his Councel 'T is one of the worst sort of Reproaches to which a Councellor at Law can be exposed to be called a crafty Counsel that is one who secretly gives advice for the perverting of Justice and the law and to do that vile thing is more odious in a Counsellor of State And of this subject when I formerly discoursed to your Lordship I remember you were pleased to say it of your self to me That you had a great aversion from giving whispering Councel to your Royal Master and that it hath been your humble motion to him to command his Councel to give him their advice in writing Your Lordship is by one particular accident a necessary subject for the Worlds compassion namely by your having out-lived most of the eye witnesses of the many memorable things you have done for the World. If the people of England your Contemporaries were six Millions at the time of your birth five of those Millions are now lodged in graves persons above the Age of Sixty making but a sixth part of Mankind I reading lately in Tully de Senectute was pleased with what he saith of old men both de facto de jure praising themselves he saith there videtisne ut apud Homerum saepissimè Nestor de virtutibns suis praedicet Tertiam enim jam aetatem hominum vixerat he had lived almost 300 years when he went with the other Grecians to the Trojan War and where he gave such weighty advice that Agamemnon said he should make quick work of the taking of Troy if he had ten such Councellors as Nestor was Quod si acciderit non dubitat quin brevi Troja sit peritura He never wish'd saith Tully to have ten Ajaxes It seems the General thought that an old Commander would be weighed down with a tenth part of an old wise Councellor But Nestor had bury'd all those thrice over who were born with him and he lived to see his Country-men doubled once and a half 200 years being the space judged for a Nations doubling and if he would have his Atchievments in his first Century Celebrated and witnessed he must be his own Herald and witness in his own cause I will not apply Nestors case to your Lordships as to your doing right to your self by praise for you have no more occasion to do that then Tully had who saith there Nihil necesse est mihi de meipso dicere quanquam est id quidem senile aetatique nostrae Conceditur But do think that any Protestant Prince who can say he hath ten such Councellors and resembling your Lordship in the experience of near fifty years spent in the affairs of State in critical times and with success and equal to you in all â—orts of Learning and in the knowledge of the Law and publick Records and in Eloquence and Courage as well as in the hatred of Popery he may add Quòd non dubitat quin brevi Roma sit peritura i. e. without such dilatory Troy Sieges as have been formerly laid to it He saith elsewhere Apex senectutis est autoritas Quanta fuit in L. Caecilio Metelio quanta in Attilio Calatino in quem illud elogium unicum Vno ore plurimae consentiunt Gentes populi primarium fuisse virum And this Authority or Reverence of old age is so weighty that it seems reasonable that in the criminating one that hath this badge of Nature there should be what Tully calls authoritas testimonii and any single witness had need to have an allowance se primarium fuisse virum that would convict such a man for diamonds are not to be cut but with the dust of diamonds 'T is not for nothing that the Scripture cautions the not receiving an accusation against an Elder but by two or three witnesses and I am told that the Canon-Law requires seventy two Witnesses to convict a Cardinal who is a Bishop accused of any crime but heresie and forty four in the conviction of a Cardinal Presbyter and twenty six to convict a Cardinal Deacon and seven to convict any Clerk. And therefore I think that it was a commendable tenderness and worthy of English Judges in a Trial at the Kings-Bench to acquaint the Jury that they are to weigh and consider the credibility of witnesses pardon'd for perjury and both the Judges of the Kings-Bench and Common-Pleas resolved it That the credit of such a person was left to the breast of a Jury The Bishop of Rome who claims that Monarchiall power which is potestas restituendi in integrum Sententiam passos quandoque absolvendi paenam non infamiam quandoque poenam infaniam abolendi and who as Aquinas saith 2. 2 ae q. 68. ar 4. potest infamiam Ecclesiasticam remittere yet allows the School-men to apply distinctions to that priviledge of his and to interpret it of infamia Iuris not Facti for labem illam quae turpi facto annexa est nemo delere potest as Soto concludes De Iustit Iure l. 5. q. 5. ar 4. No man who ever he be can wash out that stain of infamy which by Nature is inherent in a foul wicked Act because saith he ad praeteritum non est potentia when the infamy is inherent by the Nature of the fact and not positive by Law. But still our merciful Laws of England allow a person after a pardon for the infamy of perjury to be a witness reserving his credibility to the Jury and who may after the former crime obtain to be belived by them when they shall have found that he hath acquired an habit of virtue by the series of many actions in his following Life no man being supposed able in a desultory way to leap out of a rooted habit of Vice into an heroical habit of Vertue and so è contra for that nature doth not pass from one extreme to another but per medium 'T is true indeed in case of Treason where the life of both the King and Kingdom is struck at and
the head-ake the Pen-knife and Books of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a piece of his Shirt much reverenc'd by great belly'd women the coals that roasted St. Laurence two or three heads of St. Ursula Malchus his Ear and the paring of St. Edmund ' s Nails and likewise the trumperies of the Rood of Grace at Boxly in Kent and in Hales in Glocestershire things name◠as trumperies in p. 495 and 496 by Herbert in that History and as adjudged to be such by H. the 8 th And no doubt but the Number of such would be very great who having great Summs of Money given them would be content to offer small ones in Devotion to such Images and many Candidates for preferment among some that now look big for and among Dissenters that look big against the Church of England would produce Certificates of their Constant good affection and Zeal for the Roman Catholic Church and any Legate that came to reconcile us to the Church of Rome would be thought by many to have brought the Holy-Ghost in his Sumpters thô we know what the Inside of Campegius his was made of It is moreover possible that Protestant writers may come not to have that freedom of the Press that Popish now have and all the luxury and wantonness and humor of the Press in sending forth innumerable Pamphlets against Popery in this Conjuncture may perhaps prove but like the jollity of a Carnival to usher in a long melancholly Lent. I will grant that 't is possible the Writ de haeretico Comburendo being now Abolished that destroyed so many Protestants by retail certain bloody men may find some Invention to destroy them by wholesale and to something of that nature Bishop Vshers Prophecy referred of the Raging Persecution of Protestants yet to come and not lasting and when their enemies will ipsam saevitiam fatigare and in the violence of such predicted cruelty not being long lasting that great Prelate erred not from the Nature of things more then he did when he Prophecy'd of an Irish Rebellion Forty years before it hapned for that usually happens once in so many years through the force and numbers of the Irish within that time outgrowing the English and their allowing themselves the repossession of their Estates by that time as a Iubile I will further grant that the discipline of our Church of which I think the Constitution is the best that the world can shew may be Crusht as I said before and our Dissenters then in vain wish that they had the tolerabiles ineptiae as your Lordship knows who imperiously call'd them in the Room of the intollerable abominations of the Mass and 't is possible that divine Iustice and Power may permit the doctrine as well as discipline of our Church to be supprest totally and finally in this Realm and that the prediction of that Great Man of God whô since his death has been as generally styl'd the Iudicious as Lewis the Iust was elsewhere so vogued I mean Mr. Hooker may impress a deep horror and a too late repentance on us who in his 5th Book of Ecclesiastical Polity in the end of the 79th Paragraph p. 432. of the old Edition speaking of the ill affected to our Church saith By these or the like suggestions receiv'd with all Ioy and with all sedulity practiced in Certain parts of the Christian World they have brought to pass that as David doth say of Man so it is in hazard to be verify'd concerning the whole Religion and Service of God the time thereof peradventure may fall out to be Threescore and Ten years or if strength do serve unto Fourscore what follows is likely to be small joy to them whatsoever they shall be that behold it Mr. Hooker did first print his 5th Book in the year 1597. the first four of his Polity being before printed in the year 1594 and so the period of Fourscore Years in his prediction was in the Year 1677. Thô that good man pretended not to be a Prophet yet according to the old saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. he is the best Prophet who can guess well both our Church of England and the Dissenters and Papists too have found that Mr. Hookers prudence had so much divination and his divination so much prudence that the small joy with which they have beheld the external face of Religion here since 1677. hath shew'd us that he guess'd shrewdly I have only affirm'd that humanly speaking and according to the common course of nature Popery cannot be the overgrown National Religion of England but am not ignorant that the sacred Code hath given us instances of Omnipotent power punishing even Heavens peculiar people by the Course of Political and Ecclesiastical Power running out of the common Channel of the Nature of things and particularly by a succession of Ten evil Kings one after another For thô humane Nature is so inconstant and men generally so apt to reel from one extream to another that the World growes as weary of the prevalence of Vice as of Virtue and after a long age of Dissoluteness and Luxury a Contrary humour reigns as long in the World again a humour that then excludes all Voluptuaries from Public Trusts for an Age together and a humour of which I think we now see the Tide Coming in and thus ordinarily scarce any Kingdom hath more than two or three good or bad Princes successively for any considerable space of time Yet after the Ten Tribes had made their defection from the Line of the House of David they were punish't by a Succession of Ten Kings and not one good one in the whole number thô some of them were less ill than others so that no Marvel if the weight of the impiety of so many successive ill Princes sunk them into the power of the Assyrians and to this their doom that passage in the Prophecy of Hosea refers which the vulgus of the Scriblers against Monarchy so Miserably detort and wracke as I may say to their own destruction namely I gave thee a King in mine anger and took him away in my wrath for the Prophet there had not his Eye on Saul or on a particular Person but on the whole succession of Kings after their Rent from Iuda from Ieroboam to the Last under whom the Catastrophe of their Captivity was Such Kings were given them by Heaven as were proper Instruments of Divine wrath and when they were took away from the Stage 't was that other worse might enter and make their Condition more Tragical But secret things belonging to God I pry not into the Book of Fate but Confine my sentiments alone to the Book of Nature In an Excellent Sermon of the Dean of St. Pauls 't is with great Piety and Prudence said We have liv'd in an Age that has beheld strange Revolutions astonishing Iudgments and wonderful Deliverances What all the Fermentations that are still among us may end in God alone knowes I
Capite usque ad Calcem retexuerunt ex divina Sophisticam fecerunt aut Aristotelicam saith he in vitâ Hier. praefixâ ipsius operibus And Doctor Colet the Dean of St. Paules whom Erasmus often in his Epistles calls praeceptorem unicum optimum did as Erasmus saith in his life account the Scotists dull Fellows and any thing rather then ingenious and yet he had a worse opinion of Aquinas then of Scotus And tho Luther had angred Harry the 8th by speaking contemptibly of Thomas Aquinas whom that King so highly magnifyed that he was call'd Rex Thomisticus Collet was not afraid to Pronounce in that case as Luther did And here it may not by the way be unworthy of your Lordships observation as to the concert that is between the Genius of one great Witt and another that Erasmus and Mr. Hobbs had the same sense of School-Divinity and School-Divines For Mr. Hobbs in his Behemoth or History of the Civil-Wars speaking of Peter Lombard and Scotus saith That any ingenious Reader not knowing what was the designe of School-Divinity which he had before siad was with unintelligible distinctions to blind Men's eyes while it encroach'd on the Rights of Kings would judge them to have been two the most egregious blockheads in the World so obscure and sensless are their Writings The New Testament was no sooner open'd and read then in Erasmus his translation and in the English Tongue but the Popes Cards were by the Clergy that playd his game thrown up as to all claim of more Power here by the word of God then every other forreign Bishop had and both our Universities sent their judgments about the same to the King which methinks might make our Papists approach a little nearer to us without fear of infection for we allow the Bishop of Rome to have as much Power by the Word of God as any other Bishop and 't is pitty but that Judgment of our Universities were shewn the World in Print and sent to the French King and particularly the Rescript or Iudgment of the University of Oxford as not being any where in Print that I know of but in an old Book of Dr. Iames's against Popery Cromwel the Vicegerent to H. the 8th had as Fuller saith in his Church-history got the whole New-Testament of Erasmus his translation by heart but the sore Eyes of many of the Clergy were so offended with the glaring-Light the New-Testament in Print brought every where that instead of Studying it as that great Primier Ministre did they only study'd to suppress it and thus Buchanan in his Scotch History saith that in H. the 8 ths time â—antaque erat caecitas ut sacerdotum plerique novitatis nomine offensi eum librum a Martino Luthero nuper fuisse Scriptum affirmarent ac vetus testamentum reposcerent i. e. They look'd on the New-Testament as writ by Martin Luther and call'd for the Old Testament again And the truth is if Luther had then set himself to have invented and writ a model of Doctrines against Iustification by works and redeeming our vexation from wrath divine by Summs of Mony and against implicit Faith and many gross Papal Errors he could not possibly have writ against them in terminis terminantibus more expresly then the Writers of the New-Testament did But the New Testament was then newly opened and the legatees permitted to read the whole Will over translated into a language they understood after they had been long by fraud and force kept out of their legacies by the Bishops Court of Rome whose Artifice had formerly in effect suppressed that Will and that inestimable legacy of liberty from all impositions humane being particularly shewn to Mankind there was no taking their Eyes off from this Will nor taking it out of their hands nor suppressing the study of the Greek language it was originally writ in King Harry the 8 th had received his Legacy thereby who before was but a Royal Slave to the Pope and the triumph of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was eccho'd round his Kingdom like that of Archimedes when he had detected the Imposture that had mingled so much dross in the Sicilian Crown 'T is true he retained the profession of several Papal Errors and such as he being vers'd in School-Divinity knew would still keep themselves in play in the World with a videtur quod sic probatur quod non accordingly as the learned Dr. Iones has observ'd in his Book call'd the Heart and its Right Sovereign that Image-Worship Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended on each side to the World's end Harry the 8 th therefore did in his Contest with the Papacy Ferire faciem and did fight neither against small and great but the King of Rome as I may say He attaqued the Pope in his claim of authority over all Christians the authority that Bellâ—rmin calls Caput fidei the head of the Catholic Faith. ' T is therefore very well said in a Book call'd Considerations touching the true way to suppress Popery in England Printed for Mr. Broome in the Year 1677 Whatever notions we have of Popery in other things the Pope himself is not so fond of them but that to gain the point of authority he can either connive or abate or part with them wholy though no doubt he never doth it but insidiously as well knowing that whatever consession he makes for the establishing his authority he may afterward revoke c. And so the Author saith p. 12. That Harry the 8 th for having cast of his obedience to Rome was therefore judged a heretic and that was look't on by Rome as worse than if he had rejected all its errors together He was a thorough Papist in all points but only that of obedience in comparison of which all the rest are but talk I account therefore in Harry the 8 ths time Poperies most sensible and vital part viz. the Popes supremacy did end in England per simplicem desinentiam The radical heat and moisture it long before had was gone like a senex depontanus it was held useless in a wise Senate He establish't the doctrine of his own supremacy without a Battel fought nor did any Rebellion rise thereupon but what he confounded with a general Pardon Many of the Scholars of the University of Oxford did mutinously oppose the introducing the knowledge of the Greek Tongue there and were thereupon call'd Trojans and others of the Schollars were as rohust and loud for that Language who were therefore called Graecians but by a Letter wâ—it by Sir Thomas More to that University and by the Kings Command which Letter is extant in the Archives of the public Library there the Schollars being admonished to lay by those names of distinction and likewise all animosity against the Greek Tongue and to encourage the learning of the same it was there at last peaceably receiv'd The day-break of learning
business of England and in case of a Prohibition to any mans little Court of Conscience in that cause he will certainly give himself a consultation The very humour of the English Nation long hath and still doth run against what they think but like Popery or makes for it and that with such a rapid current of Antipathy as is never likely to be stem'd and nothing is more out of fashion then a kind of Sir-positive or Dictatorian humour in common discourse much less then will a dogmatical Popes infallibility ever be digested here while he makes himself a St. Positive The gentile humour of the Age here that abhorrs hard words as loathsom pedantry will never be reconcil'd to one certain long hard word in Popery namely Transubstantiation nor to another namely Incineration or burning men for not understanding the former word according to the style of the Historian Imperator aegrè tulit incinerationem Johannis Husse and people will account their Protestant Bibles more agreeable to them then the English one published by the Colledge of Doway where the Translator studied for hard words in the room of plain ones as for the Passeover phase for foreskin praepuce for unleaven'd bread azyms for high places excelses and other such words we have in the English Rhemish Testament viz. exinanite parasceue didragmes neophyt spiritualness of wickedness in the Celestials In our Busy English world while men are most yary after profit and pleasure and the study of things if very few or none can be brought to learn the universal real character and which would tend to the propagating Real Knowledge among the Nations of the World accordingâ—y as the excellent propounder of it in Print with great modesty saith in his Epistle dedicatory that he had slender expectation if its coming into common use our Ingeniosi or Witts which all men pretend to be now as they did in the Late times to be Saints tho yet as few are Witts now as were Saints then will not care for troubling their brains with the studying of the Religion whose pretended universality appears but a kind of universal character and not real and tending to obscure the knowledge of things in the World. If they should see here a Religion that was full of pageantry and seem'd to be wholly theatrical they would think it was as much their birthright to censure it as 't is to be eternal talking Critics in the Pit to damn Playes and would think two Supremes in a Kingdome to be of the low nature of two Kings of Branford and rather then part with their money and stake down their Souls for seing such a Moral Representation of an absolute spiritual and absolute temporal power on the stage of the Kingdom they would be too apt with Mr. Hobs to thrust the whole Nation of Spiritual Beings out of the world I mean rather then they would be to their faces cheated and harras'd by a spiritual power and our people inspir'd with witt as well as those with the zealous spirit of Religion would cry out conclusum est contra Manichaeos I and against the Schoolmen too I mean our Romanist Manichaei who make two summa Principia in every State. In this age where the lower or Sixth rate Witts do so over-value themselves on turning every thing into ridicule the Mass would have here a Reception according to what the gloss in the Canon Law observes that when a place had layen long under an interdict the people laughed at the Priests when they came to say Mass again Nor would any Papal interdiction unless it could interdict us from the use of Fire and Water be of any moment The World would now laugh at any Prize that should be play'd between the Two Swords the very glossator on the Clementines saying occasionly that resipiscente mundo the World being grown wiser there must be no longer striving for both Swords And any one that would obtrude on us gross exploded errors in Church or State will appear as ridiculous as St. Henry the Dane who as the Martyrology mentions when worms craul'd out of a corrupted Vlcer in his Knee put them in again My Lord I will further offer it to your Lordships consideration That if it be found so hard to keep up the external polity of the Church of England thô in it self so rational and so meriting the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the Twenty years discontinuance of it insomuch that Dr. Glanvile in the first page of his Book call'd the Zealous and impartial Protestant hath these words the first occasion of our further danger that I shall mention is the present diminution not to say extinction of Reverence to the authority of the Church of England c. and he p. 4. writes largely to that Effect what quarter can Popery expect here from an Age of sense and reason when it should break in upon both after the forementioned Hundred years discontinuance According to the foresaid Argument of the Bees for the Popes spiritual Monarchy we see it improbable for him ever to bring us to a Rendevouz in his Church again for the sad experience we have had of the Sects here that left the Hive of the Church of England not gathering together into any one new Hive but dividing into several swarms and hives and never returning to the old may shew the Hive of holy Church how little of our Company 't is to expect Having said all this about the mists of Popery being to contend with knowledge in its meridian I think I shall comply with the measures taken by our Philosophers in this Critical Age in founding their observations upon Experiments if I further add that the former Experiments England hath had of Poperies being pernicious to its external Polity and Grandeur will perpetuate and heighten the fermentation in the minds of our angry people against it All our Monkish Historians do attest the experience our Kings had in being bereav'd of great Sums of Money while they enrich'd the Pope here by giving him the Office to keep the Theological Thistle which he Rail'd in with so many censures and distinctions and non obstantes that our Kings could not pass to their Palaces but by his leave and on his terms An English King then was but the Popes Primier Ministre and yet paid great wages too for the being a Servant to the Servus Servorum King Iohn used to say That all his affairs in the World were unprosperous and went cross and untowardly after he had once subjected himself and his Kingdom to the Church of Rome His words were Postquam me mea Regna Romanae subjecâ— Ecclesiae nulla mihi prospera omnia contraria advenerunt And 't is obvious to consider on the other hand what a great figure Henry the Eighth made in the World after he had manumitted himself and his Kingdoms from the Papal Usurpation And how he held the Balance of the World in his hand and trod on
of Experiments of Taxes were tryed on his Subjects who payed him toward his charge of the War with France Wool and Grain as not having Mony enough to supply him wholly therewith and when as it is said in Cotton's Collections A long Bill was brought in by the Commons against the Usurpation of the Pope as being the Cause of All the Plagues Murrains Famine and Poverty of the Realm so as thereby was not left the third Person or Commodities within the Realm as lately were and the Commons did desire that it might be enacted That no Mony might be carried forth of the Realm by Letters of Lombardy or otherwise on pain of forfeiture and imprisonment But the Pope knew it seems there was mony to be had out of England though the Commons grudged it him and that a complaint of the Commons of the decay of Trade was no proof of it but rather in his case an indication of the contrary for that 't is Proverbial with Rich Men when they have no mind to part with their mony to say they have none and it appears out of a balance of Trade on Record in the Exchequer that in the 28 th year of Edward the Third the Sum of the over-plus of the Exports above the Imports amounted to 255214 l. 13 s. 8 d. This however shews sufficiently the Indignation of a Popish House of Commons at the Pope and his Lombard-street Bankers who convey'd his mony for him hence by Bills of Exchange and if our late Parliaments have not thought fit to comply with the demands for satisfaction of Protestant Bankers there much less will future ones favour any of the Popes Lombards That the Pope formerly had as much mony here from the publick as the King we may well believe possible since 't is generally held that Wolsey's Revenue equalled Harry the Eighth's Matthew Paris tells us Anno 1240 Misit Papa Pater noster sanctus quendam exactorem in Angliam Petrum Rubeum qui excogitata muscipulatione infinitam pecuniam a miseris Anglis edoctus erat emungere i. e. Our holy Father the Pope sent an exactor Peter Rubeus into England who with a kind of Mouse-trap trick â—â—ped the poor English of infinite Sums of Money And the expression of Wiping the English of infinite Sums of Mony was in fashion among all eminent later Writers of ours against the Papal Usurpation and 't is particularly used by Parker in his Antiq. Britan. where he saith Praeterea indulgentiarum dispensationum similiumque fraudum immensâ copiâ— infinitis pecuniis Anglos emunxerunt Nothing less then infinity of Treasure out of one Island could supply the great exacter of Rome who it seems resembled him that Cicero brands by saying infinitum genus invenerat ad innumerabilem pecuniam Corripiendam But there is now no catching a Nation in Mouse-traps As the Pope has never thought it worth his while to send Emissaries to Denmark and Sweden and some other Northern Countreys to spunge Mony out of them which he knows that great spendor called War that so generally infests them makes them have none to spare for the Popes use and Curia Romana non vult ovem sine lana so will the future vast charge too likely to be for ever incumbent on England and other parts of the World in providing and maintaining Capital Ships effectually provide against the profusion of any on the Projector of Religion at Rome and against Romes being to us as Matthew Paris called it of old barathrum proventuum And any who considers that his Majesty hath not without difficulty obtain'd Supplies of Mony from late Parliaments and that they have been all appropriated to certain publick uses may well give the Pope City-security that he shall have no Mony from England and no Man I think now supposeth that any thing that time can cause can make the Pope get much Mony out of the Exchequer of England but one who as Charoâ— says was born in a Bottle and never saw the World but out of a little hole But if according to the Calculations that have been by some made the currant Coin of the Nation doth not now exceed Six Millions and the publick Revenue in times of Peace has amounted to somewhat near one Third of that and if the Pope should be allow'd here to have a spiritual income equal to the King 's and the restored Abbots and Monks and the other Clergy be allow'd another Third for so the accounts of their proportion were totted by some Critical Calculators the whole Laity would be nichil'd as the Exchequer word is King Edward the First as the Antiq. Britan. mention sent some of his Courtiers to treat with the Clergy about the Quota of their supplying him viz Misit ex aula suâ Nuntios qui suo nomine agerent cum clero quoniam eorum tranquillitas Major fructus atque reditus annui tunc essent longe uberiores quam populi ut ad Regem in his bellicis angustiis adjuvandum se ostenderent promptiores And it appears out of Cotton's Collections That in the fourth Year of Richard the Second The Clergy confess'd they had a Third part of the Revenue of the Kingdom and therefore then consented to pay a Third part of the Taxes But in those ancient times of Popery beside the Clergies share in the Ballance of Land it might be justly added to the Inventory of their Wealth That they generally engrossed the highest and chiefest Offices in the Kingdom and that from the Office of Lord High Chancellor to that of the very Clerks in Chancery and other Clerks places whence to this day the officiating Registers of Courts are called Clerici or Clerks whereby they caught in a manner the whole Kingdom in a Purse-net 'T is therefore no wonder that the great affluence of the Riches of the Clergy drew to them that Popular esteem that as the Antiquaries observe the English word Sir was affixed to the Christian Names of Clergy-men from King Iohn's time down to the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and which was also express'd in Latine by the word Dominus as for example in the witnessing of a Deed Testibus Domino Willielmo de Massy persona de Bowden Matheo Hale c. And of the people calling their Parish Priests by the name of Sir William Massy and the like as in ordinary Communication we call Knights we have the instance of the first Christian on whom here for his Religion incineration was practised viz. Sir William Sautre Parish Priest of the Church of St. Scythe c. in London in Henry the Fourths time for so he is Styled in the Acts and Monuments Bishop Sanderson who in his profession of Divinity was greater then any praise was likewise so accurate an observer of the weight of what he affirmed in the Pulpit though it was not of a point of Theology that every thing he there said has a Title to be regarded And he in his Sermons in fol. ad
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
confesseth and that by God's own appointment three times the Annual Revenue of the greatest of the twelve Tribes Doctor Covel in his Modest and Reasonable examination of some things in use in the Church of England Printed Anno 1604 saith in Chapter the Eleventh Thatâ—the Levites were not the Thirteenth part of the Jews and yet had the Tenth Wherein that Doctor agreed with the sense of the Fathers of the Council of Trent who as 't is mention'd in the latter end of the History of that Council said That in the Mosaical Law God gave the Tenth to the Levites who were the Thirteenth part of the people prohibiting that any more should be given them But the Clergy now which is not the Fiftieth part hath gotten already not a Tenth only but a Fourth part But by exacter Calculations 't is apparent that the Levites though a small Tribe if a Tribe there being twelve beside scarce the sixtieth part of the House of Iacob had perhaps a Sixth of the whole profits of the Land They had the Tenth or Tith of the Land together with its Culture they had in Iudaea a small Country 48 Cities with their Suburbs 2000 Cubits from the Wall on every side and their first-fruits and a great part of the manifold Sacrifices and free-will-offerings of the Male Children of Israel which were to appear thrice yearly before the Lord with some Offering and whatsoever House Field Person Beast c. was by a singular Vow given to God which was to be valued by the Priest himself and all these duties were brought in to the Priest without charge or trouble and those Cities and Lands descended from them to their posterity from generation to generation as also did their Tithes and Offerings I shall here observe that that which hath probably induced so many to err in making the number of the Levites so great as aforesaid was their not considering what yet is really true in Nature namely That the number of people of any Nation from a month old and upwards for so the Levites were counted Numb 3. 39. is more then double their number from Twenty years old and upward and so the rest of the Tribes were numbred Exod. 33. 26. Numb 26. 62. And therefore I infer that the Levites were but about a sixtieth of the number of the other Tribes But during the Theocracy that the Iews sometimes lived under or while God was their King it being worthy of the Divine Empire to design and promote the wealth of its Subjects and consequently that they should encrease and multiply for that alone is real wealth there was no Celibate among the Levites or any degree of Ecclesiasticks to hinder the same Having thus in the way of Calculation glanced on the Ecclesiastical Polity of God's peculiar People or Subjects I suppose the rectitude of that Rule will shew the obliquity or warping of the practice of the Papal Clergy For if we do admit as I believe we well may that there are seven Millions of people in England of which 120000 is a sixtieth part this old Church Polity of the Popes Clergy doth Toto Caelo differ from that of the Israelites in that they spend double the proportion of the wealth of the Kingdom and yet live in Celibate or without multiplying And as Mr Fish in effect said in that his Book do hinder procreation by promiscuous coupling with other Mens Wives But 't is a known great truth that the great business of the Monks and the Ratio studiorum of the Papal Clergy was not to make the Kingdom populous but to depopulate We have for this the testimony of Walter Mappe Arch-deacon of Oxford who was bred up with Henry the Second that the Abbots and Monks in that time were very Criminous in the point of depopulation whence that Proverb arose Monachi desertum aut inveniunt aut faciunt wherever they seated themselves they either found the place a Desart or made it one 'T is said of them That they laid more places waste then ever William the Conqueror or his Son Ruâ—us did when they demolished and destroyed many Parishes to enlarge the bounds of the new Forrest In that Fleet of depopulators there was one first-rate one namely The Abbot of Osney who was for his Talent of depopulating so remarkable that 't was observed that he made all paupers that dwelt within the purlieus of his Possessions And of this Henry the Second took such notice that one day when he had not poor people enough for his Alms on some great Festival he said in a fit of anger That rather then his bounty should be unemployed he would make as many beggars as the Abbot of Osney had done One would think that the Monks should have been well willers to the encrease of the populousness of the Kingdom for that thereby the values of their Lands would have been encreased a thing no doubt that appeared visible to the Reasons of the more Sagacious among them But there was another thing they found palpable that is they found themselves well at ease even to envy in their vast share of the wealth of the Nation whereby they Lorded it over both God's inheritance and the Laity and therefore they did not fancy the sight of the Sea of the people increase by the coming in of the Tide of new generations that would have produced much more persons to maligne and perhaps contest with them they naturally therefore wished the sweet absence of such company from the World just as in Ireland and other thin peopled Countries the Natives living at their ease have sharp regrets against the accession of strangers though they know it would raise the value of their Lands and as in America the Natives wish no improvement to their Country from the Spaniards The Monks had got the Monopoly of Religion and near half the Land by it and not having any certain Issue to endear posterity to them and consequently to oblige them to promote the wealth of the Kingdom in general and to consult thereby the good of surviving parts of themselves for that figure Children make as to Parents they and the Abbots and Popish Bishops cared for no more then being warm in the Pyes Nest while they lived and 't was as natural to them to repel the thoughts of Colonies of people advancing the wealth of the Kingdom by new generations as 't is natural to present Trading persons to prevent the publick good of an Act of Naturalization And as this advancement of depopulation was therefore the interest of the present Monks and Priests so was it of the present Popes who knew they were sure of receiving Aids and Contributions from them as long as numbers of other fresh comers did not drive them off the Stage One would rather wonder that our Popish Monarchs saw it not sooner their Interest to crush the Politics of these holy Depopulators and Pastors that turned the Kingdom into Sheep-walks and who minding chiefly the encrease
of Cattle by pasture hindred that encrease of Men that the advancement of Tillage would have produced and the furnishing the Crown with more Subsidy Men and Soldiers But this supineness of our Kings was not only caused by Superstition and a vitiated fancy in Religion an Idol to which Philip the Second sacrificed his Son and therefore might be well supposed prevalent with others to wish the generation of their Children or Subjects restrained but our Kings were not then stimulated by necessity to promote the populousness of their Realm for that their riches and strength depending on comparison the same Religious Orders did by Celibate and Depopulation equally obstruct the Wealth and Power of the neighbouring Kingdoms as well as this and by that means they were not our over-match But the course of encreasing Generations having operated so far as to awaken the World and Men for not having so much Elbow-room as they had jostling one another by the violence of War the politics of Statutes against Depopulation were forced and reinforced on this Realm And like as Men so too will such Statutes beget one another as I may say to the end of the Chapter Nor is the power of the Kingdom ever likely again to be really emasculated by such as pretended To make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake and honoured not the Founder of Christianity of whom since he for the good of Mankind made his first Disciples fishers of Men it may seem unworthy that he should intend the hurt of States and Kingdoms by making the following Doctors of his Church Pastors of Sheep Sir Thomas Moor in the first Book of his Vtopia doth with a sharpness worthy his excellent wit tell us That certain Abbots holy Men God wot not profiting but much damnifying the Common Wealth leave no ground for Tillage they enclose all in pastures they throw down Houses they pull down Towns and leave nothing standing but only the Church to make of it a Sheep-house And afterward saith That one Shepherd is enough to eat up that ground with Cattle to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite And he in that Book calls the Fryers errones maximos and desires they might be treated like Vagabonds and sturdy Beggars And in the Second Book contrives a Model of the Priesthood so as not to make it such a Nusance to the Civil Government as the Papal one was accordingly as has been before discoursed For one of his fundamentals there is That the Priests should be very few and that they should be chosen by the people like other Magistrates and with secret voices and enjoyns to his Priests marriage and makes them to be promoted to no power but only to honour Sir Thomas More it seems was far then from Writing at the Pope's Feet the Character that was afterward given to Bellarmine's style and there was as little occasion for a peace-maker's interposal between him and Fish as is between two wrangling Lawyers at a Bar. But the matter is well mended with our English World since the time of the Supplication of Beggars as appears by the multitudes of the healthy and robust Plebs of our Nation that Till the Earth and Plough the Sea and who by the proportion of the Mony Current coming to their hands having fortify'd their Vital Spirits with good diet there is finis litium and an end of such Lamentations as the beginning of that Supplication to the King in part before referred mentions viz. Most lamentably complaineth of their woful misery to your Highness your poor daily Beads-men the wretched hideous Monsters on whom scarcely for horrour any eye dare look the foul unhappy sort of Lepers and other sore people needy impotent blind lame and sick c. How that their Number is daily so sore encreased that all the Alms of all the well disposed people of this your Realm is not half enough to sustain them There is no doubt but their indigence was extream when they were to glean not only after the Reaping of the Monks but after the Ecclesiastick Beggars the Fratres Mendicantes or as they were then called Manducantes had been satiated in diebus illis and when Holy Church almost engrossed not only the wealth but the begging in the Kingdom And he who now looks on our English infantry when they turn their Plough-shares into Swords will see nothing of the horrour of starvelings in their faces and the Writ de leproso amovendo is in effect obsolete in nature as that too de haeretico comburendo is abrogated And within the Term of about twenty years that the Observator of the Bills of Mortality refers his Calculations to he mentions but six of 229150 dying of the Leprosie What the Bills of Mortality in France may contain about deaths by the Leprosie happening there in late years I know not but do suppose that the general Scurâ—e appearing in the skins of the Pesantry there condemned to Sell their Birth-right of nature for no Pottage and to eat little of the Corn they Sow and to drink as little of the Vines they Plant and to taste little of Flesh save what they have in Alms from the Baskets of the Abbies and who are Dieted only for Vassalage may be an indication of the Leprosie having still its former effects among them But our English Husband-men are both better fed and taught and the poorest people here have so much of brown Bread and the Gospel that by the Calculations on our Bills of Mortality it appears that for so many years past but One of Four Thousand is starved 'T is therefore I think by instinct of Nature That our Yeomanry in the Country though not addicted to mind niceness of Controversie in Religion nor to be dealers in the Protestant Faith by Retaile are great Whole-sale Traders in it and will as soon suffer their Ploughs to be took out of their Hands as their Bibles from under their Arms And they have been generally observed since the Plot and some years before to manifest in common discourse their robust abhorrences of Popery as supposing that under that Religion they could neither save their Souls nor their Bacon Doleman alias Parsons in the Second part of his Book of the Succession speaking of the Numbers of the Papists here makes it very considerable In that the most part of the Country people that live out of Cities and great Towns in which the greatest part of the English forces are wont to consist are much affected ordinarily to their Religion meaning the Popish Religion by reason the Preachers of the contrary Religion are not so frequent with them as in Towns c. But were he now alive he would find the Scene of things changed in our Country Churches since Queen Elizabeth's time in whose Reign a Book was printed Anno 1585 called A lamentable complaint of the Commonalty by way of Supplication to the High Court of Parliament for a learned Ministry He would find
Scene of Merchandizing was not open'd in Europe till about 6 or 7 hundred years ago and till then none were there worthy the names of Merchants except some few in the Republicks of Italy who lived in the Mediterranean parts trading with the Indian Caravans in the Levant or driving some inland Trade and then and some hundreds of years afterward the Nations in the worst Soil of Europe being the greatest breeders and having superfluity of nothing but people had no invention for living but by being Murderers and by the boysterous Trade of Fighting their way into better Quarters and during that dark and Iron Age that produced Herds of Men void of knowledge there was nothing in humane Conversation or discourse valuable and in our European World it was scarce worth Men a few steps to gain one anothers acquaintance but on the gradual encrease of knowledge there Men found a readier way at once with delight and profit to exchange Notions and Commodities of Traffick and the Protestant Religion at last drawing up the Curtain that kept all things obscure on that Stage of the World Men being better taught the knowledge of the God of Nature and of Nature it self were grown worth one anothers knowledge and were for the surprizing brightness of their intellectual Talents gazed on by the wondring World like in Machines Gods coming down out of Clouds and it was worthy of the bounty of Heaven then to spread on the Earth the Commerce of Men and the Medium of Commerce too and to allow them to converse together with more splendor by the Donative of the American Mines when the dawn of the knowledge a little before that of the Reformation had rendred them conversable Creatures and fit for the interviews of one another and shortly afterwards by a mighty encrease of Navigation many did pass to and fro and knowledge was more and more encreased Thus as I have some where read of a saying of one of the Fathers Deus ambit nos donis formâ suâ the Divine Goodness provided that the World should Espouse the beauty of the Reformation with a great Dowry and that it should appear particularly in England with the great Figure that Wisdom makes in the Proverbs Length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour And the truth is conspicuous in our English History that former intervals of some Efforts of Trade and of some of withstanding the Papal Encroachments were alway contemporary and liv'd and dy'd together and they were no sooner risen out of the Grave where the barbarity of former times depressed them but they were again found in one anothers Embraces That the Stock and Wealth of the Kingdom is vastly encreased since Harry the 8ths time is visible to any one who considers what Stow saith in his Annals on the Year 1523 the 15th Year of his Reign That when in a Parliament held at Black-Fryers and where Sir Thomas More was Speaker 800000 l. was required to be raised of the fifth part of every mans Goods and Lands that is 4 s of every Pound to be paid in 4 years but it was denyed and it was proved manifestly that if the fifth part of the substance of the Realm were but 800000 l and if Men should pay to the King the fifth part of their Goods in Money or Plate that there was not so much Money out of the Kings hands in all the Realm for the fifth part of every Mans Goods is not in Money or Plate c. And then consequently if all the Money were brought to the Kings hands then Men must barter Cloath for Victuals c. And there it was further Argued that the King had by way of Loan 2 s. in the Pound which is 400000 l. and if he had 4 s. more in the Pound 't would amount to 1200000 l which is almost the 3 d part of every Mans Goods which in Coyn cannot be had within the Realm That the Merchandizing Trade of England was before the Reformation and sometime after managed chiefly by Forraigners we Learn out of Heylin's Edward the 6 th p. 108 where he saith that Edward the 6 th Supprest the Corporation of Merchant Strangers the Merchants of the Stilyard concerning which we are to know that the English in the times foregoing being neither strong in Shipping nor much accustomed to the Sea received all such Commodities as were not of the growth of their own Country from the hands of Strangers resorting hither from all parts to upbraid our laziness namely Merchants known by the name of Easterlings who brought hither Wheat and Rye and Grain c. for their encouragement wherein they were amply priviledged and exempted from many impositions I shall here deduce a proof of the growth of the Revenue of the Nation from the growth of that of the Church and to prove that the Revenue of the Church Nation of England were in the year 1660 about Quintuple to what they were at the time of the Reformation I shall say first that Godwin in his Catalogue of Bishops makes the Revenue of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops to be valued at the time of the Reformation near 22000 l. per Annum and if we admit the Revenue of the Deans and Chapters to be double the Sum viz. 44000 l. then will the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy appear to have been then 66000 l. per Annum But Dr. Cornelius Burgess a Man vers'd in the speculative and practick part of Sacriledge doth in his Book concerning Sacriledge call'd Two Replies and Printed Anno 1660 affirm that the Bishops Deans and Chapters Lands were at the end of the late Civil War sold for two Million three hundred thousand pounds and he saith there was offer'd since his Majesties Restoration seven hundred thousand pounds more to confirm that Sale whereby the value of the said Land is made to be in the year 1660 3 Millions And Mr. Prynne in his Printed Speech in the House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the satisfactoriness of the Kings Answers to the Propositions of both Houses doth in Page 68 there affirm That near one half of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops Possessions and Revenues consists in Impropriations Tithes Pensions and the like and if we may suppose the like as to the Revenues of the Deans and Chapters then according to that Estimate will the value of the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy of our Church be about 6 Millions the twentieth part whereof viz. at twenty years Purchase is 300,000 l. per Annum and the 12 th part of the same viz. at 12 years purchase is 500,000 l. per Annum so that what at the time of the Reformation was worth but 66000 l. per Annum was in the Year 1660 worth between 300 and 500000 l. as aforesaid In the next place I shall prove the Remainder of my Position that the Revenue of the whole Nation is about Quintupled also for that the
after his manner with the fewness of our people and saith How insolent soever the English are they must confess that all the Brittish Islands laid together do not equal the half of our Continent either in extent c. or number of Men in Wealth in Valour Industry and Vnderstanding Mr. Iames Howel in his Londinopolis Printed Anno 1657 saith That in the Year 1636 King Charles sending to the Lord Major of London to make a Scrutiny of what Roman Catholicks there were in London he took occasion thereby to make a Cense of all the people and that there were of Men Women and Children above 7 hundred thousand that lived within the Barrs of his Iurisdiction alone and this being 21 years ago 't is thought by all probable computation that London hath more now by a third part then it had then In his Parallel of London there with other great Cities in the World he observes that the weekly Bills of Mortality in Amsterdam come but to about 60 a week whence saith he It may be inferr'd that London is about 5 times as populous more dying in a week commonly in London then 300. And as to the quantity of the people in London there is no doubt to be made but that if in the year 1636 there lived 700,000 within the Barrs of the Lord Majors Iurisdiction there lived then so many more in the other Parishes within the Bills of Mortality and that there live in this year within the Bills of Mortality more then double the number that did in the year 1636 and at that Rate their number would now amount to near two Millions But I am to suspect that there was no such return of any Cense of the people within the Barrs of the Lords Majors Iurisdiction in the year 1636 as is before mentioned and do suppose that Mr. Howel did in that point mistake partly for that I think him mistaken in his Allegation before as to the people of Paris being returned as above a Million of Souls at the last Câ—nse made there and do as to their number give more credit to the Bishop of Rhodes who in his History of Harry the 4 th written since the year 1660 saith in part 2d That there were in Paris when 't was block'd up only 200000 persons and that there were then retired thence 100000 of the Inhabitants so that in those times there were no more then 300,000 Souls in Paris whereas 't is now believed there are twice as many and partly because I find it mentioned by the curious Observator on the Bills of Mortality p. 113 and 114. That Anno 1631 Ann. 7. Caroli 1. The number of Men Women and Children in the several Wards of London and Liberties taken in August 1631. by special Command of the Lords of his Majesties Privy-Council came in all but to 130178 and finally because the said curious Observator for that name I give that Author after my Lord Chief Iustice Hales hath given or adjudged it to him in his Origination of Mankind having by rational Calculations proved that their dyes within the Bills of Mortality a thirtieth part or one in thirty yearly and that there dyes ordinarily there 22000 per Annum that if there were there according to Howel a Million and an half of people it would follow that there must dye but 1 out of 70 per Annum and that they must live one with another 70 years There is an ingenious Author and that is the Author of the present State of England who tells us in his 2 d part That in 1588 there went forth from the Queen Commissions to Muster in all parts of England all Men that were of perfect Sence and Limbs from the Age of 16 to 60 except Noblemen Clergy-men Vniversity Students Lawyers Officers and such as had any publick charges leaving only in every Parish so many Husbandmen as were sufficient to Till the Ground In all those Musters there were then numbred three Millions but of those fit for War about 600,000 I would scarce desire better Evidence for an Opinion that the people of England were in all 12 Millions then that 3 Millions of Males between 16 and 60 were then returned for the said Observator having by Calculation assured us that there are about as many Females as Males and about as many people under the Age of 16 as are above it the said opinion would stand firm and unshaken There is too another Author who much enlargeth the number of the people of England and that is Gerard Matynes in his Lex Mercatoria first Printed in the year 1622 and there in Cap. 46. he makes them to be 16 Millions and 800,000 but any one will hardly take his word for it who considers that he there makes the people of Scotland to be 9 Millions who are but about one Million and reckons 5500 Parishes in Ireland where there were never more then 2 thousand 2 hundred Parishes But 't is the fate of Nations to have their numbers sometimes inconsiderately Assigned by considerable Authors and thus it happened particularly to France from an error of Campanella who in his discourse of the Spanish Mochy C. 24. saith that France hath in it 27000 Parishes and 100 and 50 Millions of Souls At this rate there would be in the Parishes in France one with another 5555 Souls whereas Sir W. P. in a Manuscript discourse of his saith That a substantial Author in his Treatise concerning France sets it down as an extraordinary Case if a Parish in France hath in it 600 Souls We have too an Author of great Vogue for the Politicks Sir Robert Cotton who in his Abstract of the Records of the Tower touching the Kings Revenue hath these words viz. That London which is not the 24th part in people of the Kingdom had in it found above 800,000 by a late enquiry by the Order of the late Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth But so far have we been from enabling our Political Writers to satisfie themselves in the Numbers of our People that we have not done it yet as to the very Numbers of Parishes wherein Blunt tells us in his Law Lexicon that our Authors differ and we generally reckon them as they were before many new ones have been built One late writer has accounted the Parishes in England and Wales to be 10260 and Mr. Adams sayes in his Villare Anglicum p. 408. That he is of opinion that there are about 1500 Parishes in England and Wales not valued in the Kings Books and of which he can get no account so as to make the same perfect and 't will be difficult for him to do it unless the several persons concern'd in the particulars give an account of it Cambden in his Britannia Printed Anno 1607 when he reckons the Parish Churches in the Bishoprick of Durham and in Northumberland to be 118 adds praeter sacella plurima and saith in Yorkshire Parishes besides Chappels and Parishes to which many Chappels are
of Ceremonies among the Iews as would have made it forgot that it was ever made for man. The thinking sort of men found that tho the Principles of those Divines did not like the Jesuits make Calumny no mortal Sin that yet as the Adherents to Presbytery did calumniate the Constitution of the Church of England for bordring on Popery and the Royal Martyr for being a Fautor to it so they did by their Censorious tempers transfuse such an acid humour among the people that very much loosned the Nerves of the English good nature and distorted the English hospitality and therefore 't is but by a natural instinct that that old Pharisaical Leven is now so nauseous that probably any one suspected of an inclination to replant the old Presbytery here and its Arbitrary Power to excommunicate would too be staked down to a narrower tedder in Conversation and be it as it were excommunicated from Gentlemens Company as much as Make-bates or common Informers upon Penal Statutes The people heretofore found out that as Popery endangers men by the Priests not intending to make the Sacrament of the Eucharist when he administers it So that these as I said intended it should not be at all administred but to their own Sect and that the gesture of sitting at the Communion that they invited men to and thereby to their being rescued from the Popish Posture of Kneeling was but a sort of Sham in its way for that kneeling was the gesture used in the ancient times of the Church and the first that was ever observ'd to sit then was the Pope to express his State. The observing sort of Men then judged that as Sibthorpe and Manwaring had been exploded for going beyond their Credentials from Heaven as God's Ambassadors in straining the Prerogative of Princes these deserv'd to be so too for scruing the Power of Parliaments above Law and for thrusting down the King into the Class of The Three Estates and that as Sibthorpe was exposed to severe Animadversions from the Age for his Sermon of Apostolic Obedience shewing the Duty of Subjects to pay Tribute and Taxes to their Princes c. And p. 21. of that Sermon applying the words of Curse ye Meroz yea curse them bitterly c. to the promoting his illegal purpose they deserved to be censur'd for going on too with the Alarm of Curse ye Meroz thousands of times over when the Subjects were slack in paying Tribute to one another to dethrone their Prince They saw that those Divines in trying to salve the Phaenomena of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Covenant that they had taken were in the Course of their Theology continually put to it to deliberate of Rebellion and that their very deliberation of it was ipso facto one and a thing that included the horror of a mans deliberating to kill his Father and 't was but natural for the people representative and diffusive to fancy it lawful for them silently to resume the power given to those Church-men and abused by them who were always in the Pulpit and Press lowdly trumpeting forth the Iesuitical Notion of the lawfulness of the peoples resuming the Power given to Kings and as I shall never fear that the King of Spain will ever be able to take the World in a Ginne by Campanellas advise to him in Chap. 5. of the Spanish Monarchy to employ Divines to set up the Roar of unus Pastor and unum Ovile every where for the Pope so neither shall I that mens vociferating the Clause in the Covenant viz. That the Lord may be One and his Name One and in the three Kingdoms will ever again be able to embroyl them In short any one who shall consider that in Scotland Presbytery's former Kingdom of Darkness the people have been so of late illuminated as to find the way to be Latitudinarians need never have any fears and jealousies of that Governments jus Divinum again Marching hither In the first Session of the second Parliament of this King at Edenburgh November the 16th 1669. There passed an Act wherein 't was declared That his Majesty hath the Supreme Authority over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastical within this his Kingdom and that by vertue thereof the ordering and disposal of the external Government and Policy of the Church doth properly belong to his Majesty and his Successors as an Inherent Right to the Crown and that his Majesty and his Successors may settle Enact and Emit such Constitutions Acts and Orders concerning the Administration of the External Government of the Church and the Persons employed in the same and concerning all Ecclesiastical meeting and matters to be proposed and determined therein as they in their Royal Wisdom shall think fit c. And his Majesty with Advise and Consent aforesaid doth rescind and annual all Laws Acts and Clauses thereof and all Customs and Constitutions Civil or Ecclesiastick which are contrary to or inconsistent with his Majesties Supremacy as it is here asserted and declares the same void and null in all times coming This Act of Parliament is the more observable for that it declared the extent of the Regal Power in Ecclesiasticks after that in the Year 1663 An Act passed there for a National Synod under the Government of Bishops and for that Presbytery which was before like Hame the only body in Nature that doth not content it self to take in any other body but would either overcome and turn another body into it self as by victory or it self to dye and go out was then grown so amenable to the Course of Nature in all other bodies of which one is a glue to another that not satisfied with its own former consistence it did as suddenly and easily and quietly receive in the body of Episcopacy as I may say as Air takes in light and as readily as Metals themselves receive in strong waters and then it was that Episcopacy which in the Forms of Church Government seems by its weight as Gold among Metals and indeed all bodies to be the most close and solid did there greedily drink in the Quicksilver of Presbytery But tho Presbytery then was and now is considerable in the Internal part of the Government of the Church of Scotland and is likely so to be till Christ's second coming humanly speaking with a non obstante to any thing that time can cause and will be preserved in perpetuity by the means of what my Lord Bacon calls the drowning of Metals namely when the baser Metal is incorporated with the more rich as Silver with Gold yet so willing were they in Scotland to give to Caesar the real Supremacy that was Caesars that knowing the Protestant Religion can be no more there destroyed under any external form of Church Polity then as I said Gold can be destroyed in Nature they thought it more prudent to trust the Crown with a Power of melting down that on emergent occasions and altering the Superscription of its
you are bold to brag that at this present there are within the Realm more Catholicks and Catholick Priests then there were forty years since Math. Kellison in his Survey in the Epist. dedic almost at the latter end They afterward in their Supplication use the word Catholickly affected to make it comprehensive of both parts of Parsons his distinction of Papists more open and close and therein have the honour of the Invention of the Phrase of Popishly affected that hath so much gall'd them since and at this day continues to do and I shall accord with them that the Number of Papists or of Popishly affected was apparently grown great in the juncture of time after King Iames came here to the Crown but 't is not deniable that after the Epoche of the Gun-powder-Treason it did more sensibly decrease for they cannot say that by the intended blow from the Gun powder they designed to make him Catholick in order to make him continue a King. The Dean of Bangor in his excellent Sermon in Print and Preached at St. Martins on the 5 th of November 1678. Speaking p. 29 of the Conspirators in the Gun-powder-Treason saith judiciously For the Number I believe the design it self was known to few but that there was a design was known to many more King James himself tells us so in his works p. 291. A great number of my Popish Subjects of all Ranks and Sorts both Men and Women as well within as without the Country had a confused Notion and obscure knowledge that some great thing was to be done in that Parliament for the Weal of the Church tho for Secresies sake they were not to be acquainted with the particulars And no doubt but that great Number took occasion to slip their Necks out of the Collar of Misprision of Religion as well as of Treason thereupon and a vast encrease of the Numbers of the Protestants was thereby occasioned But there afterward appeared another Conjuncture of time in which the Catholickly affected did in his Reign multiply in the which however implicit faith could never come so much in fashion but that as Gondomar observed in the Kings Chappel when ever the Preacher quoted Texts of Scripture the Auditors would immediately turn to their Bibles to find them Mr. Pryn saith in his Introduction to the Archbishop of Canterbury ' s Tryal p. 13. That the number of Priests and Popish Recusants enlarged out of Duress by King James if we may believe Gondomars Letter from hence to the King of Spain or the Letter of Serica that Kings Secretary Dated from Madrid July 7 th 1622 to Mr. Cottington was no less then 4000. He had before in p. 10. and 12. set down the Petition and Remonstrance intended to be sent to King James by the House of Commons in December 1621 where among other things 't is said That the Popish Recusants were then dangerously encreas'd in their Numbers and complaint is made of the swarm of Priests and Iesuites dispersed in all parts of the Kingdom 'T is probable that not many Papists except Priests were then imprison'd and it may be conceived that the Number of Priests who escaped the Net of Imprisonment was more then double to that which was took therein and that the Number of Lay-Papists was very growing in that Conjuncture Mr. Iohn Gee's Book of the Foot out of the Snare of 4th Edition Printed in London 1624. mentions the Names of many Romish Priests and Jesuites resident about London in that year and begins with the Bishop of Chalcedon and shortly after him mentions Collington the Titular Arch-Deacon of London and Wright Treasurer for the Iesuites and Smith Vicar-General for the South parts of England and Broughton Vicar-General for the North parts of England and Bennet Vicar-General for the West parts of England and the whole Number of them there named together with the places of their Lodging is two hundred sixty one and the number of the Iesuites out of that Total is 72. Moreover out of that Total he mentions only 3 as having been formerly in Prison in England and but one who was at that time in Prison At the end of the Catalogue of the Priests there he saith These be all the Birds of this feather which have come to my Eye or Knowledge by Name c. yet above four times so many there are that overspread our Thickets through England as appears by the empty Nests beyond Sea from whence they have flown by Shoals of late I mean the Seminary Colledges which have deeply disgorged by several Missions of them as also is gathered by particular Computation of their divided Troâ—ps when as in one Shire where I have abode sometime they are reputed to nestle almost three hundred of this Brood In the following Pages he there Prints a Catalogue of Popish Physitians in and about the City of London and makes the Number of them 27 and no doubt but that in that Conjuncture of time the number of Papists encreasing there were enow Patients of that persuasion to afford Livelyhoods to so many Physitians In that Book immediately after p. 116. he Prints a Catalogue of such English Books that he knew of to have been Printed reprinted or dispers'd by the Priests and their Agents in England within two years last past or thereabout viz. 156. So fortunate was that Conjuncture to the Papists then that the odious Name of Puritan was bestowed on any of the Magistrates that went to put any Laws in execution against Popery as we find it from Sir R. Cotton in his serious Considerations for repressing of the encrease of Iesuites Priests and Papists without shedding of blood p. 33. his words there are There is no small Number that stand doubtful whether it be a gratful work to cross Popery or that it may be done safely without a foul aspersion of Puritanisme or a shrew'd turn for their labour at some times or other c. In the Petition and Remonstrance of the House of Commons in December 1621 before mentioned among the Causes of the growing mischiefs here the fifth Paragraph assignes one what would make Popery very prolific with Proselytes here viz. The strange Confederacy of the Princes of the Popish Religion aiming maiâ—ly at the advancement of theirs and subverting ours c. and another is assigned in the 6 th Paragraph viz. The great and many Armies raised and maintained at the Charge of the King of Spain the chief of that League and another in § 8th The interposing of Forraign Princes and their Agents in the behalf of Popish Recusants for Connivance and Favours to them But in fine in King Iames his Reign the gross of the Number of the Protestants was generally reckoned to be ten times greater then the Papists the which is hinted in the Posthuma of Cotton who then said To what purpose shews it to muster the Names of the Protestants and to vaunt them to be ten for one of the Roman Faction In the
Reign of the Royal Martyr their Numbers decreased faster in many active Conjunctures of time then they encreased in any lazy one The Author of the Regal Apology and supposed to be Doctor Bate the Physitian saith in p. 39. It is well known there are not 24000 Papists Convicted in all England and Wales And if we should suppose the Number of the Papists then not Convicted to be double to that of the Convicted yet would such their number appear considerably dwindled from what it was swoln to in any Conjuncture before in King Iames's Reign And I believe if our Civil Wars had not happen'd one Canon even of the Convacation of 1640 as ill as that Convocation heard among many I mean the third Canon would have effected the extermination of Popery from England in the Reign of the Royal Martyr The Title of the Canon is for Suppressing of the growth of Popery No doubt but a little before that time Popery did again lift up his head as if its Redemption were to draw nigh in Ireland and England and therefore the Convocation then with great conduct and skill did lead up our Ecclesiastical Hierarchy to confront its growth and I do not remember to have found that Phrase of the growth of Popery which has in later days so filled our Mouths used in any Author before the writing of that Canon and do think that all the Committees that have been appointed to prevent the growth of Popery or Books of that Subject have not produced to the World any means or expedient so likely to make Popery have done growing here as is the excellent Scheme for that purpose drawn in that Canon and which when ever it shall be with vigour executed will make our fears grow out of fashion either of the number of the Arguments of the Papists or of the Argument of their Numbers That since that Restoration of our King and Laws and of the discipline of our Church a Conjuncture hap'ned that made the barren Womb of Popery here fruitful of Numbers none will deny who consider how all our great Divines of the Church of England did so lately lift up their voices like a Trumpet against it as I before observed In the account of the Numbers of the perswasions in Religion in the Province of Canterbury that Dr. Glanvile said he had seen and which is contained in a Sheet of Paper among the nine Preliminary Observations the first is That many left the Church upon the late indulgence who before did frequent it I believe by the many there are meant those that veer'd toward Popery and I suppose that few had for several precedent years repaired thither from fear of the Penal Laws We have a Remark given us by that Learned States-man and Noble Confessor of the Church of England the Earl of Clarendon in his judicious Animadversions printed Anno 1673 on Cressy ' s Book against Dr. Stillingfleet That the rude and boisterous behaviour of some of the Roman Catholicks here disturbed the happy Calm they all enjoyed and the vanity and folly of others made that ill use of the Kings bounty and generosity toward them that they endeavoured to make it believ'd that it proceeded not from Charity and Compassion toward their persons but from affection to their Religion and took upon them to reproach the Church of England and all who adhered to it as if they had been in a condition as well as a disposition to oppress it and to affront and discountenance all who would adhere to it and so alienated the affections of those who desired they should not be disquieted and kindled a jealousie in others who had believed that they were willing to attempt it and had more power to compass it then was discerned c. and this mischief the wisest and soberest Catholicks of England have long foreseen would be the effect of that petulant and unruly Spirit that sway'd too much among them and did all they could to restrain it c. And afterward saith As if they could subdue the whole Kingdom and so care not whom they provoke A friend of mine in the Kings Loyal long Parliament wrote to me for News after one of their Sessions that the Speaker of the House of Commons Mr. Seymour opening according to the customary manner in a publick Speech to his Majesty in the House of Lords the nature of the Bills then ready for the Royal Assent spake thus concerning that sharp one that will forever here cut Popery to the quick viz. And for the severity of this Bill to the Papists they may thank their own petulant insolence The word petulant being very significant and importing sawcy malepert impudent reproachful ready to do wrong one would suppose that those two great observing persons would not apply it to any body of men without just occasion It seems the House of Commons at their next Session in an Address to the King October 31. 1673. had this Clause That for another age at the least this Kingdom will be under continual apprehensions of the growth of Popery and the danger of the Protestant Religion and in an Address to his Majesty November the 3 d 1673. Speaking of the Popish Recusants they have these words whose numbers and insolencies are greatly of late encreased c. It was then high time for that Great Minister of the King the Earl of Danby when he saw that of all Dissenters chiefly the Popish ones had sascinated so many with a belief of their Numbers to cause that great enquiry into them to be made and it was his fortune by the very enquiry to strip the Papists of many of their valued number for the very next observation to that I before mentioned is this The sending forth these Enquiries has caused many to frequent the Church Alsted in his Chronology ventures to say p. 112. David ex merâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 numerat populum and the thing perhaps done with an ill intent was punish'd with a Plague from God but the Fact of our Noble and Profound States-man did abate the Plague of the late Conjuncture of pragmatical insolence and too the Plague of the fear of Papists that was then so epidemical among Protestants and did in effect console us as with the words of Elisha viz. Fear not for they that be with us are more then they that be with them and indeed the numbering of people in the Bills of Mortality who dye of the Plague is not more necessary to the State then is the numbring of the Souls infected in any Conjuncture with destructive opinions and the omission thereof in a publick Minister when ever it should be as necessary as at that time it was would appear in him a Lethargy that would be as Penal as a Plague to a Kingdom That useful undertaking of his Lordship as it was worthy of his very great abilities and vigilance for the publick so was it of the great power he had in the Government and
could not have been conducted so far as it was by any private persons the Book called Popery absolutely destructive to Monarchy printed in London in the year 1673. shews the danger of ordinary Magistrates intermedling with the numbers of Papists in particular Parishes by instancing p. 115. how when the long Parliament was first call'd Iustice Howard was ordered to deliver up a Catalogue of all Recusants within the Liberties of Westminster to prevent which Mr. John James a Zealous Popist stabb'd the Iustice in Westminster-hall and Sir George Wharton in his Gesta Britannorum saith Anno 1640. November 21. Iustice Howard assaulted and stabb'd in Westminster-hall It seems that Iustice of Peace as well as Iustice Godfry found what it was to anger St. Peter and so has that Noble Earl done I believe by some Papists murdering his reputation and shamming the Blood of Godfry on him in vallanous Pamphlets of which I hear that 32000 were dispersed in one Week and that it appeared at an Honourable Committee that no inconsiderable quantity of them was dispers'd by Celier 'T is probable that the time that was taken for discovering the number both of Papists and other Dissenters was most proper in regard that the Declaration of Indulgence visiting them as with a Sun-shine after the Rain invited them out of their Recesses to appear abroad visibly and as the words of the Scripture in another sence are To move out of their holes like Worms of the Earth And as if any man would give himself the trouble to essay the numbring of the Worms that are in the Earth the properest time for that his affected Curiosity would be after the Rain making the earth soft and the Sun then warming it had invited those Animals to come out of the Earth the which lye within a few Foot of the Surface of it so for the above reason was the investigation of the numbers of the Papists most properly timed I am therefore of opinion with the aforesaid Dr. That the number of the Papists was near the matter retain'd with truth and that their number is still waining and will be so more and more but in some accidental Conjunctures of time A late Author hath publish't it That in England in these twenty years last past 250 Families of the Gentry and 12 of the Nobility have quitted the profession of Popery And if any one shall affirm as some considerate Papists have done that the number here of secret Papists and who go not to Mass is as great as the number of the professed ones I shall say that the number of the people of England having been in this Discourse represented so much greater then it was in former Estimates the number of secret Papists cast into that of the known ones will perhaps signifie little more then the dust in the Ballance of the Nation Their Numbers that did somewhat encrease in the beginning of the Conjuncture of their petulant Insolence that went before the time of the Popish Plot as the Purples Small-pox and other Malignant Diseases fore-run the Plague did sensibly and suddenly decay by the change of the Air that the Loyal long Parliament and its Act of the Test made just as the Observator of the Bills of Mortality hath let us see that by the reason of the changes and dispositions in the Air the Plague doth by sudden Jumps start back in a very few days time from vast numbers to very small ones insomuch that presently after the breaking out of the Plot they took the advantage of the detection of the paucity of their Numbers that the Earl of Danby's aforesaid Prudence had made as thence to raise an Argument ab impossibili that they should design a Plot to turn the Tide of Nature in the Nation And thus as Men once pass'd the valuing themselves on the Charmes and Vigour of Youth do it for the Reverence of their Old Age and hope to be the better treated as Guests in the World for the shortness of the time they are to stay in it they did resemblingly too look big upon the smallness of their Numâ—eâ—s The Author therefore of the Compendium printed Anno 1679 tells us à propos p. 85 That there are not 50000 of the Roman Catholick Religion in England Men Women and Children and that agrees well enough with the Surveys of the Numbers of those of that Religion in the Province of Canterbury of the Age of Communicants and admitting the Total of such to be doubled on the account of Papists below the Age of Sixteen an account that ought to be admitted the Observator on the Bills of Mortality having taught us as aforesaid that there are in nature about as many under the Age of 16 as above it and with the making the Total of all the Papists in the Province of York according to Fuller equal to that in the Province of Canterbury the number of the Papists throughout England will appear to be probably near what the Author of the Compendium hath estimated That their Numbers did considerably decrease after the fermentation in peoples minds relating to Religion followed the Declaration of Indulgence and after the severity of the Parliament to Papists thereby occasion'd a convincing Argument may be had from the Letters of Mr. Coleman the which did confute several impâ—tations of it in Mr. Marvel's Growth of Popery to the King's Ministers better than any Apologies could have done and has enabled Fame to Trumpet them forth to Posterity as Confessors whom Envy here whisper'd to be Traditors and let the present Age see that their alledged Closing with Popery was but in the way of contending Wrestlers and not of friendly Embracers And no doubt then but the many Dependants and Followers those Ministers had and the Candidates for their favour and expectants of Offices thereby were then Enemies to all implicit Faith but only for what they thought the Religion of their Chiefs In his Letter to le Cheese of September 29 1675 He saith That the Lord Treasurer Lord Keeper and Duke of Lauderdale were become as fierce Apostles and as Zealous for Protestant Religion and against Popery as ever my Lord Arlington was before them and in pursuance thereof perswaded the King to issue out those severe Orders and Proclamations against Catholicks which came out in February last by which they did as much as in them lay to extirpate all Catholicks and Catholick Religion out of the Kingdom And he in his Letter to the Internuntio of the 5th of February 1674 5 tells him That the King had sign'd a Proclamation last Wednesday to banish all the Priests Natives of this Kingdom to forbid all Subjects to hear Mass in the Queens Chappel and at the Houses of Ambassadors to bring home all the Youth that is now out of the Kingdom in any Popish Colledges to prosecute all Persons as to their Estates according to the Laws which are so insupportable that 't is impossible for any that is reach'd by them
to have wherewithal to eat Bread if they be executed according to the said Proclamation It was but about October 1673 that the House of Commons in an Address to the King took occasion to say It is now more then one Age that the Subjects have lived in continual apprehensions of the encrease of Popery and the decay of the Protestant Religion but what Mr. Coleman's apprehensions were of the Growth of Popery on the 5th of February 1674 I have shewn before and am of opinion That though possibly in the following course of time to the birth of the Popish Plot the coming of many Romish Missionaries here might make some accession to the Number of the Papists that however the Laity of them here Inhabitants hath in its Numbers sensibly decreased and will do so more and more till the most timid Protestants shall be no more aggrieved at their Number then of that of the Muggletonians or of the Sweet Singers of Israel That the discovery of the Popish Plot hath had a natural Tendency to the abating the Number of their perswasion must be granted by all who believe there was one and who know that the blustring attempts of the Conspirators to subvert the Protestant Religion and which have therein failed must end in the better settlement of it as all Storms that do not overthrow a Tree confirm its growth Mr. Care in his History of the Popish Plot mentions That the Iesuites and Seminary Priests in England at the time of the Plot were about 1800 a Number far inferior to that in the Conjuncture in King Iames ' s time before mention'd And short of the Number mention'd by Prynne in a Book of his Printed Anno 1659 called A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done spoken by and between Mr. Prynne the old and new forcibly Secluded Members and those now sitting c. where he saith p. 44 That an English Lord return'd from Rome about four years since averr'd that the Provincial of the English Iesuites when he went to see the Colledge in Rome assured him That they had then above 1500 of their Society of Iesuites in England able to work in several Professions and Trades which they had there taken upon them the better to Support and Secure themselves from being discovered and infuse their Principles into the vulgar People Mr. Coleman complains of a Conjuncture as to Popery that he writ in that tho the Harvest was great the Labourers were very few but Mr. Prynne supposeth the Labouring Jesuites who wrought in the Trade of Religion and in other Trades too were here after the year 50 above 1500 and it may therefore be well conceived that there were many Jesuites here beside who could only manage their Tools in the former Trade and perhaps as many Seminary Priests as Jesuites And no doubt without some hint of notification from some one of the Iesuits Provincials their Number in any Protestant State can hardly be conjectured in regard of their Proteus-like varying their Shapes accordingly as a Description of them is given in the Book called The Emperor and the Empire betray'd where 't is said There are in the Society of Iesus Men of several sorts some of which are dispens'd with not only to lay aside the Habit but to marry and bear all sorts of Dignities and he further presumes to say That the Emperor was thus in this Order in his younger days Mr. Prynne in p. 42. of that Book averrs That Oliver Cromwel declared to his Parliament Anno 1654 That the Emissaries of the Iesuites then came over in great swarms and that they had then fixed in England an Episcopal Power with Arch-Deacons and other Persons to pervert the People a thing they never since the Reformation I think attempted in any Conjuncture till Quarto Caroli and then as appears out of Rushworth ' s Collections in a Conference between the Lords and Commons and managed by Secretary Cook he said There was at that time a Popish Hierarchy established in England that they had a Bishop Consecrated by the Pope and that Bishop had his subalternate Officers of all kinds as Vicars General Arch-Deacons Rural Deans Apparitors and that they were not Nominal or Titular Officers only but they all Executed their Iurisdictions and made their ordinary Visitations throughout the Kingdom kept Courts and determin'd Ecclesiastical Causes But it appears not that they had any such Hierarchy here at the time of the Plot or that they have any thing like it at this time in this Realm Mr. Prynne tells us in p. 49. of that Book That in that Conjuncture in Cromwel's time above 30000 Popish Pamphlets were permitted to be Printed and Vended in England and that of this the London Stationers complain'd in Print But 't is very little that they have Printed here since the King's Restauration and the same private Presses which gave Birth to the few Pamphlets they printed would have done it to as many Volumes as ever Tostatus as Mr. Prynne writ if they had pleased The great Number of the Protestants must still be naturally attractive of the lesser to it for the preservation of their Persons tho at the price of the diminution of their Numbers as a drop is best preserved in the Sea tho it be there swallowed up This Notion is well confirm'd by Edmund Spencer in his Observations of the History of Ireland in former times where he shews in what course of time a handful of English planted among the Numerous Irish must of necessity become Irish as indeed his own Family there did as I am told and that Cromwel speaking to the Grand-child of Spencer in English that on the account of the Fame of his Ancestor he should enjoy his Estate was not by him understood And there is no doubt but time will illuminate the Papists as to the Pope's Politicks being inconvenient to them and only convenient to himself For the same Principle in Politicks that makes every lesser State have a regret against being United to a greater namely for fear of its being absorbed thereby a Notion lately in vogue when the Union of England and Scotland was agitated engageth the Pope to keep the Papists from a Coalition with the Protestants here that would drown the visibility of their Numbers and consequently the appearance of the Numbers of his Subjects in this Realm for so in effect they are The true Cause therefore in Nature that made the Pope by his Bull in Queen Elizabeth's time prohibit the Papists from continuing to come to our Churches and to our Common-Prayer a thing they would else still have done was the Pope's being enabled by such Prohibitions to put Marks on his Sheep whereby to know them and their Numbers And which had he forborn there had probably been no Number of them returnable in the Bishops Survey 'T is therefore not to be wondred that our Church got nothing but the destruction of its Hierarchy in the last Age by the Policy
most vital part Sincerity hereby in danger to be exterminated For as 't is a thing well known to Merchants and Goldsmiths and Mint-Masters that if the Par as they call it or exact Proportion between Gold and Silver be not observ'd in any Country either the Gold will carry all the Silver out of it or the Silver all the Gold so it may be affirm'd too That if there be not a Par or Proportion observ'd as to Religion and Profit or Wealth either the Religion of a Country will carry out all the profit or Proventus of it or the profit will carry out or exterminate Religion I will not therefore here Prophecy that the World will never but say that it can never be fixed in a quiet and orderly State and free from the Importunity and Sedition of Hypocrites till its Present State be such that Men can neither get nor lose by Religion And till the World recovers this Golden Age namely that Gold cannot carry out our Religion and People us with Hypocrites or our Religion Gold the World will be but a great disorderly House and scarce worth any Mans being Monarch over it As the Irish call their last Rebellion by the name of the Commotion so some have happen'd to call the Present State of Peoples Minds in England which is so disorderly by the name of a Fermentation and this Fermentation can never be over in our English World till there shall here be neither profit or loss by Religion and that no Man shall be more or less Rich by more or less Combining with any Party to cry up or decry any Religionary Tenets or Propositions One would wonder that since Religion and particularly the Christian with its Credenda doth Crown the reason of Man and likewise annex by the exuberance of the Divine benignity a Crown of Glory hereafter to the Believers that any Men should for their belief of Propositions not contrary to reason and wherein the credit of the propounder was supported by Miracles expect to be rewarded in this World a humour that hath been regnant even among Christians from the time of our Saviour's being on Earth to the present Age and a humour that so poyson'd the Iews of old that they thought it not Tanti to have their minds freed from the slavery to Error unless the Messias would have deliver'd them from the servitude of the Romans and because he did not and did decline the being made an Earthly King when the Iews with their Hosannas were tempting him to it they Accused him Capitally for saying That he was a King whenas it was not he but they that said it and they put him to Death reverà because his Kingdom was not of this World and a humour that would not quit the Stage when the first Christians did but boldly still faced the World as appears by the notion of the Millennium having been so much applauded by all the Fathers of the Church and the Christians before the first Nicene Council But methinks from the Example of the Christians of old who did Ambire Martyrium to such a degree that St. Gregory saith Let God number our Martyrs for to us they are more in number then the Sands as if the work had been too hard for another Archimedes with his Arenarius to Calculate the number of the Martyr'd Christians and one Author accounts that excepting on the first of Ianuary there is no day for which Records do not allow 500 Martyrs at least and that for most days they allow 900 and who did ennoble the Christian Religion by shewing to the World an Example of Contempt of Death and even of Life beyond that of the Ancient Romans I say from the Example of those Christians who did in shoals dye daily for their Religion Ours may if they please be taught the modesty not to expect daily livelihoods from it and to account they have very fair play if they do not lose their livelihoods by it 'T is moreover observable that under the Iewish Theocracy Providence had then so ordered things that no Man should get or lose by Religon The Tribes had then their shares of the good Land by lott and the Levites only had that affluent proportion of the Proventus of the other Tribes that I have before Calculated and which would have tempted many of the other Tribes to have march'd over to the Officium and Beneficium of the Priesthood had not God their Monarch provided against that by the confinement of the Administration of the Priesthood to one Tribe and its descendents by natural generation But as to the notion of getting or losing by Religion I shall recommend to your Lordships reading a small Pamphlet printed in two sheets of Paper in Folio and call'd The great Question to be consider'd by the King and this Parliament c. to wit How far Religion is concern'd in Policy or Civil Government and Policy in Religion c. On the disquisition of which a sufficient Basis is proposed for the firm settlement of these Nations to the most probable satisfaction of the several Parties and Interests therein and subscribed by the name of Philo-Britanicus Who the Author of it was I cannot learn but do easily find by the Book that he is a Man of great Acumen of thought and that Matters of Religion and State especially relating to this Kingdom have been very much thought of by him and that the Author was certainly neither Papist nor Presbyterian and so far from being a favourer of the Church of England that he doth interminis make the publick Maintenance of the Clergy to have been the Bone of Contention in these Nations p. 8. and there saith It will be found to stand on the same foot with Abbies and Nâ—â—neries and their Lands and there further as a propounder would give all the Church-Lands to the Crown and the Tithes to the People and then tells us That all Fears and Iealousies and Animosities on the account of Religion will be pluck'd up by the Roots That Author in p. the 5th doth very acutely observe That Popery hath two Parts the one is that which is meerly Religious that is which relates properly to Religion or Conscience and which is peculiar to them such as the believing of Transubstantiation Purgatory Adoration of Saints and Images yea and the superiority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churchmen all which and those of this kind may be believed and professed without prejudice to Civil Society and as being matters relating to Conscience come not properly under the Magistrates Cognizance the other part is the opinion of the Pope's Power over Princes and States his obsolving the people from their Obedience his giving them dispensations to kill Princes and destroy them and allowing them not to keep faith to Hereticks and such like which as they are destructive to Government are truly no part of Religion but a politick contrivance long hatch'd by the Bishop of Rome and his dependants
and five hundred of Prebends after so many shall have drawn Blanks in the Lottery of Preferment those few that shall draw those Prizes need not be envyed for what they have acquired by the Theological Profession It was both with Justice and Prudence by our Laws caution'd that so great a part of the Clerical Maintenance should arise from Tithes for by that means our Clergy are engaged to make the interest of their Country and its improvement their own and had they not had so much of their maintenance sounded on Tithes but on Money out of the Exchequer as they had before this time lost excessively by Religion so Religion would have lost their Calling for that the price of Silver falling by the plenty of it and the plenty or encrease of our people making all the Products of our Country dearer it hath been advantageous to our Clergy to receive their Tithes in kind as it hath been to Colleges to receive a Quota of their Rent in Corn. But that still the maintenance of the inferior Clergy was too mean will appear even by the late Enemies of our Hierarchy being Judges for Mr. Nye in that Book of his called Beams of former Light having spoke of the Ministers Calling being once a gainful one saith p. 123. It is vtterly otherwise now not but that there is a very liberal Maintenance appertaining to Ministers and greater by the bounty of the Honourable Parliament then the Preaching Ministry have formerly enjoyed The gradual encrease of our People and Trade hath proportionably encreased the Clerical Revenue which on the beginning of the Reformation was presently sunk so that Latimer in his Sermon before Edward the 6 th said We of the Clergy have had too much but that is taken away and now we have too little and what Iewel in his Sermon notified to Queen Elizabeth of that kind I have mention'd and so languid was the State of the maintenance of the Inferior Clergy in her time that She by one of her Printed Ecclesiastical Injunctions Anno 1599. did under great Penalties forbid all Priests and Deacons to Marry any Woman without the Advice and Allowance first had by the Bishop of the Diocess and two Iustices of Peace which I suppose was caution'd by the Queen that the many Ministers who had not competent Livings to maintain themselves might not marrying Wives without Dowries by new Births encrease the number of Paupers in Parishes It is observable that in the late times the Iesuites did publish many Pamphlets in Print against Tithes and did animate the people to make Tumultuary Addresses to the Usurpers to abolish that maintenance of the Ministers wherein as their Politicks were so unjust to our Monarch that had they succeeded they would have barricaded the way for his return in the minds of too many of the People for fear that the payment of Tithes should return too so likewise were they so ridiculous by cutting off all hopes of the return of Popery here in any Conjuncture of time that less then an Army of Bellarmines would never have perswaded the common People to hear with patience any talk of Holy Church's re-establishment here Tho as I have shewn that Tithes by reason of the equality in the Imposition of them and the diuturnity of time that hath habituated People to the payment thereof are a gentle part of the Yoke of our Ecclesiastical Government yet if the payment of them or any other Tax whether of Excise Customs or Chimny-money were for many years discontinued there would be no probability of bringing either the old Stagers or new Comers in the World to consent or hearken to their being re-established The Critical Observers of the Iewish State after Ten Tribes had made a Schism from the other two judge that there were two Conjunctures of time wherein their piecing together was fesable and that the great true Cause in Nature that hindred the Re-union of the Tribes was the aversion in the Ten Tribes to make three chargeable Journeys yearly to Ierusalem and to pay a double Tenth yearly out of their Estates besides Offrings and other Casualties to the Priests and Levites from which trouble and charge they had been relaxed by Ieroboam and by his Model of Idolatry and therefore the People having most inclination to that Religion that was cheapest and knowing that if they return'd to their old Religion they must likewise return to their old Payments to the Priests and Levites did venture to adhere to the cheaper Golden Calf and had the Iesuites here effected from the Usurpt Powers the Abolition of the Clergies Tithes which would have made the Return of the Church of England so difficult I may well argue that it would have made the Return of the Papal Religion and its chargeable Idolatry impossible whose Yoke of Payments neither we nor our Forefathers were able to fear But when senseless â—anaticks came with those Petitions against Tithes the more sagacious of the Usurpers knew that the hand of Joab was in them and they knew that hardly any Observation was more trite then that Popery gained ground chiefly in the poorer parts of the Kingdom where the despicable maintenance made the Ministry so too and where too the Pope would no more hunt for Converts then among the poor Norwegians but that it was of use to him to have the number of his Subjects increas'd in any poor places in a rich Kingdom where he tho a spiritual King might yet call his Subjects to Fight Sir Benjamin Rudyard takes notice of Popery's being an intruder among the poor Benefices of the North in the Speech before Cited and there saith p. 1. That to plant good Ministers in good Livings is the strongest and surest means to establish true Religion and will prevail more against Papistry then the making of new Laws and executing the old and there p. 3. relates what King Iames had done for the supporting of the Protestant Religion in Scotland where saith he within the space of one year he caused to be Planted Churches throughout that Kingdom the High-Lands and the Borders worth 30 l. a year a piece with a House and some glebe-Land belonging to them which 30 l. a year considering the cheapness of that Country is worth double as much as any where within an 100 Miles of London And p. 7. he mentions some Passages of Bishop Iewels Sermon before Queen Elizabeth where the Bishop having in general reflected on those that then caused the diminution of the maintenance of Ministers he further saith howsoever they seem to rejoyce at the prosperity of Sion and to seek the safety and preservation of the Lords Anointed yet needs must it be that by these means Forraign Power of which this Realm by the mercy of God is happily delivered shall again be brought in upon us Such things shall be done to us as we before suffer'd in the times of Popery c. 'T was there before mention'd how that Man of God with
Office and for my part I shall never give my voice for any ones serving in Parliament that will not be willing to move for the discharge of the Debt to the Clergy before mention'd as soon as the State of the Kingdom will bear it Sir Benjamin Rudyard in his aforesaid Speech p. 3. mentioning the danger we are in of being upbraided by the Papists for being willing to serve God with somewhat that would cost us nothing hath a saying that I have often heard Cited in discourse as anothers namely He that thinks to save any thing by Religion but his Soul will be a loser in the end And this Notion of his of not saving by Religion doth fortifie my affirmation of the publick inconvenience accruing by the getting by it as to which I have so opened the present State of the Clergies maintenance in England as to represent them rather losers then gainers When 't is considered how many there are in England of the Layety who gape for gain by Religion and are ready to devour one another for it as well as Religion by it I am sure none can with reason think the Quota of the Clergy's Maintenance should be such as in the time of the prosperity of the State to render them losers How scandalous and how ridiculous nay how ridiculous by Poverty it self many of our Lay-Popish and Protestant Religion-Traders have been I have already evinced and do suppose that nothing can blacken that Trade in the fancies of the People more then the discovery of the Traders who must needs appear more odious then they who are the Mercenary Brokers for the debasing of Humane Nature by Lust since the Hypocritical Religion-Traders do for Rewards prostitute the Honour of their Creator and as much as they can make the Divine Nature subservient to the diabolical Art of their Hypocrisy Before the late Market for Converts in France I have not heard or read of any Nation in the World wherein great Parcels of the Layety have gain'd Mony by Religion but only in England I believe that in Amsterdam whereas Des Cartes saith in one of his Epistles Nemo non mercaturam exercet there is not one Religion-Trader tho yet all Religions are there tolerated Nor yet is any Lay-man of that Trade in Paris who is of any other And in the Policy of the Turkish Empire 't is provided for as a Fundamental that nothing shall be there acquired by Religion insomuch that all that Emperor's Subjects as well as himself being by their Law enjoyn'd to be able to practice some Manual Trade when any are call'd out to discharge the Office of Priests or Celebraters of the Publick Religious Worship there such exact Care is taken that they shall get by the exercise of that Office just so much and no more as they did by their Manual Trade for which purpose an Excellent Person who was the King's Ambassador at Constantinople related to me That he complaining to the Visier of some injury done by a Turkish Priest to one of his Servants the Visier deprived him of that Holy Employment and that the Priest being afterward sent to Petition to be restored to his place he answered that he would not being as well content to work on in the Mechanick Trade to the exercise whereof he was returned since his said deprivation But this Trade and sort of Traders that hath so long pester'd our Kingdom is now about to expire and dye a natural death and which it could not before be brought to do by a violent And as the Trade of sturdy Beggars the which is as much a Trade and as much conducted by Laws among themselves as is any incorporate one that hath the stamp of the Great Seal could by no Legislation be extinguished but would soon be so by peoples voluntary forbearing to be their Contributers thus too will this sturdy Religion-Trade have its Period Our Fifth Monarchy-men who thought to inherit the earth without giving sixteen years Purchase for it and who pretended to follow the Lamb wheresoever he went but really out of dreams of a golden Fleece are by all exploded The condition of Britannia languens and that too very much occasion'd by the former insolence of the Papists being understood at Rome will make the old Gentleman there think 't is vain for him to hope to be possess'd of the Abby Lands without giving for them many Millions of Pounds Sterling and the Papists here will I believe so soon penetrate into the present State of our Poverty that they will find no way effectual for the delivering them from the vexatious Prosecutions of Protestant Informers but the Removal of that decay of Trade and general dearth of many that has necessitated so many to be Informers and who cause them to spend upon under Sheriffs more Money then they save by not being high Sheriffs and which decay of Trade hath sunk a 4th part of the value of their Lands and which can never be cured but by the dissolution of the Religionary one and finding the Credit of the Iesuites Society crack'd as I have before express'd will find that their Iourneymen Calumniators as Mr. Sergeant calls them in a Paper of his I have seen must necessarily break too and it being found that not only our Enthusiasts are forced by necessity of Nature to desist from expecting any gain by Religion but all Protestants whatsoever the Popish Traders therein will be the more content to give over one of their Trades and the fare of them will be like that of the Associated Jesuites to march out of their Spiritual Corporations insensibly like the captious Scribes and Pharises in the Gospel of whom 't is there said Being convicted in their own Consciences they went out one by one beginning at the eldest even to the last c. Tho as I said no man in Holland doth get or lose by Religion yet since the Reformation there was a Controvery of Religion I mean the Armiminiâ—n one which made an extraordinary fermentation in their State and which Controversy tho Knaves there frighted Fools with as if it were stirred by the Remonstrants with an intent to bring in Popery yet the knowing few easily understood that neither side of the Question could produce that effect and they likewise understood that the profession of the belief of the several opposite Points of that Controversie among the opposite Parties there serv'd only as Ribbands of several colours to distinguish Parties that are against each other in Arms. And yet that very great Controversie in Religion which divided Holland and distracted our Kingdom in the time of the Royal Martyr and the substance of which perplexed the Trihaeresia of the Iews the Saduces Essenes and Pharises and likewise three sorts of Christians the Pelogians Calvinists and Arminians and that of old divided the Sects of the Philosophers and hath many years raged among the Turks and likewise among the Iesuites and Dominicans after its having for so
at all in the World whether reveal'd or natural then that any such Hypothesis or Doctrine that Authorised a Practice of that nature should be universally receiv'd in it as its Religion For tho natural Religion acquaints me with the Divine Power and gives me hopes of my Creators not rendring me miserable by that Power and the rather when I have seen that many of the Contemners of Heavens Thunder lived prosperously on Earth yet if a Model of Religion pretended to be the only reveal'd one shall controuling all the Dictates of natural Religion enjoyn the firing of whole Cities and mankinds confused outraging one another I must abandon my further hopes of Bliss from such a Being as was it self miserable for so that would be whose nature was still in a fermentation of Anger and Passion and rear'd up Men as the Workmanship of its hands only to dash those curious but brittle Vessels against one another and that even for such a Being 't were more eligible to be then to be always so miserable as well as 't would prove so for my self too then to be always in Torment by Anger But we know that as God is the God of Order and not of Confusion so he is likewise an overflowing Fountain of Goodness and so infinitely benign that if his Nature were rightly represented to an ingenious Atheist if he did not at last believe he would ardently wish there were a God and I think if there be any number of that degenerate sort of Mankind called Atheists as was said that such degeneracy must needs be chiefly caused by the mis-representations of the Divine Being I have before mentioned how Tully in his de Natura Deorum shews great Wit in his Anger against the Epicureans for their representing the Deity as unconcern'd for Mankind and against the rendring God careless of the welfare of his Creature man he there exclaims Deinde si maxime talis est Deus ut nullâ gratiâ nullâ hominum charitate teneatur valeat How passionately then would he have upbraided any Mushroom Sect of Philosophers if such had sprung up in the World as in his time and before there never did that had represented the Nature of the Deity as solicitous and careful only of procuring the misery of Mankind and disorder of the World and enjoyning men to spit fire at one another exposing them to the sury of Wild Beasts if they lived in Desarts and of wilder Creatures that is themselves if they lived in Cities There was an Ingenious and Learned and Pious Divine I mean Cressy who in our days forsook the Communion of the Church of England and turned Roman Catholick and went beyond Sea and returned to England in the Conjuncture of the petulant Insolence and was so far infected therewith and likewise with the Chagrin incident to sickness that he writ very peevishly against our Church and one of our great Church Men and his Writings were justly censured by the Earl of Clarendon but according to my former Observation so much of the Character of the rationality of the Protestant Religion that he was long bred up in remain'd in him indelibile that I believe had he been made an Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity he would neither have took away a drop of Blood from any Protestant nor a hair from his head and in his Reply to that Noble Lord he is so candid as speaking of the Position charged on Roman Catholicks that no Salvation is to be had out of that Church to affirm that all Catholicks grant that this is not necessarily to be understood of an actual external Communion and that many Christians of vertuous devout lifes and having had a constant preparation of mind to prefer truth whensoever effectually discovered to them before all temporal advantages they dying in this disposition tho not externally joyned to the Church will be esteem'd by our merciful Lord as true Members of his Mystical Body the Church No Papist but one bred a Protestant could have had thoughts so large concerning the extent of the invisible Church or fancy that what is before mentioned is granted by all Catholicks and should I hear any Priest in a Fryars Cowle grant what is abovesaid I should fancy that he remain'd an invisible Protestant and that he continued so exuberantly good in his natural disposition as not to be able to frame an Idea in his mind of the damning of Mens Souls and making Coals of their Bodies and Bonefires of their Cities for mistaken Sentiments in Religion and had Mr. Cressy lived till this time 't is possible your Lordship by your Notification of that fiery Tenet of the Papal Church aforesaid might have been an instrument of his visible Return to our Church for his labour'd heating himself with Passion upon the mention of the Practice of that thing in his Church History shews sufficiently how he would have abhorr'd any Church that abhorr'd not that Tenet The Place I refer to in his Church History is in the 14th Book 4th Chapter where he doth strenuously endeavour to prove that Monk Austin was unjustly Accused of having killed 1200 Brittish Monks and having said there § 9th yet of late this poysonous humour of Calumniating God's Saints is become the Principal Character of the New Reformed Gospel he goes on thus I will add one example more of a Calumniator to wit Mr. William Prynn a late stigmatised Presbyterian c. But alas what repentance can be expected in such a person speaking of Prynn who is inveteratus malorum dierum when we see in his decrepit Age his rancorous Tongue against innocent Catholicks yet more violently set on Fire of Hell so far as to sollicit a general Messacre of them by publishing himself and tempting others to damn their Souls also by publishing through the whole Kingdom that in the last Fatal Calamity by Fire happening to London they were the only Incendiaries This he did tho himself at the same time confessed that not the least proof could be produced against them but said he it concerns us that this Report should be believed Complaints of this most execrable Attentat were made and several Oaths to Confirm this were offer'd but in vain But however surely there is a Reward for the innocent oppress'd and whatsoever Mr. Prynn may think doubtless there is a God that judgeth the World. Let him therefore remember what the Spirit of God saith quid detur tibi aut quid apponatur tibi ad linguam dolosam sagittae potentis acutae cum carbonibus desolatoriis is what must be given to thee and what must be assign'd to thee for thy Portion O deceitful Tongue sharp Darts cast by an Almighty Arm with devouring Coals of â—uniper And it follows § 10. With as good reason therefore St. Austin may be Accused of the slaughter of those Brittish Monks as St. Columban a holy Irish Monk c. might be charged with the most horrible death of Queen Brunecheld c. This good
Civil Wars observes well That there were at first in the Parliaments Army a great many London Apprentices who for want of experience in the War would have been fearful enough of death and wounds approaching visibly in glistering Swords but for want of judgement scarce thought of such death as comes invisibly in a Bullet and therefore were very hardly to be driven out of the Field And now therefore should any Great Person descend to ask my poor Opinion of the proportion of the danger we are in of a Relapse into the Plague of War I would give it by bringing the Doctrine of Dulce bellum c. into use and application thus namely I would Calculate the number of the inexperts now here living and who were not living in the time of the last War a thing not hard to do sufficiently for my purpose and thus I essayed to do it the last year when I fancied to employ my thoughts on that Subject diverting my self with these Queries 1. What part of the People of England now living are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. Of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War 2. What numbers of those who lived in 1641 about which time the War may be supposed to have begun are now dead 3. What proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War for it may be said that perhaps War may be sweet to such surviving experts 4. The War of Ireland ending about the year 1653 how many may the number of such inexperts there be supposed to be 5. The People of Scotland being now above a Million as are the People of Ireland and the Scotch War ending at Worcester Fight September the 3 d 1651. How many are now living in Scotland that lived there that day and what may be the number of the inexperts there In order to the satisfying my self in these Queries tho I know that many do make the Civil Wars of England to end with the surrender of Oxford in Mid-summer 1646 yet because several Acts of War in England were committed long after 1646 viz. in Lancashire Kent at Colchester Worcester I supposed not the English War to end till 1651 about the same time with that of Scotland both Kingdoms as they are but one Island so intermixing and bringing mutual Calamities on one another and besides a few years at that distance of time would not much alter the State of this Case so then as to the first and last Queries I thus concluded that the People of this Island in the year 1651 were and always are about one half of them under the age of 16 before which time as they are reckoned unfit for War so may they likewise be thought inexperts as to the miseries thereof and the other half above that age and that of this latter half more then one other Moyety are dead in these 28 or 29 years which have passed from 51 to near 80. For if we reckon only Arithmetically without any Consideration of Geomerrical proportion in the Case which with reason enough the Observator on the Bills of Mortality takes in yet 28 ½ the number of years in 51 in which the said half are supposed dead and 27 ½ for the years of the other half surviving and fifteen for the Age of the Inexperts from 1651 makes 72 the full Age of Man so that the surviving Experts are not a fourth of the whole And again at least one half of this fourth either through forgetfulness by Age or Dotage or for want of understanding all their whole life time may be very well counted among the Inexperts also And thus the Inexperts will be above seven eighth parts of the whole People And if in answer to the third Query we shall add the Number of the Gainers by the War which perhaps some will estimate but small and of those who lost by the Peace and Settlement on the Kings Restoration with the Heirs Executors and Principal Legatees of both and to these three last sorts the War was so very sweet that they may very well be reckoned for the Equivalent of three or four or perhaps many times more the number of the other common Inexperts we may on the whole matter judging modestly conclude the Inexperts of all the former sorts not to be less then 9 10 nine Tenths of the whole People and to these also they who have spent their Estates and cannot well live in Peace may be properly added I satisfied my self as to the fourth Query concerning Ireland that it may bear at least the same proportion with what was asserted in relation to Great Brittain and tho the War in the former lasted some years longer yet there are other Considerations obvious enough that would more then ballance that As for the Query about how many are now dead who were living in 41 the Principles I have variously discoursed of out of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality may easily satisfie Curiosity therein I account that of the Lords Temporal in the Kings Long Parliament that sate the 8 th of May 1661. there were dead 77 at the Dissolution of that Parliament in Ianuary the 25 th 1678. And of the 26 Bishops that sate on the 8th of May in that Parliament only 2 were alive in the 25 th of Ianuary 1678. And of the House of Commons which sate in the 8th of May 1661. And consisted of about 520 odd Members there died during their sitting viz. in 17 Years and 8 Months 307 Members viz. in each year about 1 17 th part which is one in about 30 of the whole of that House every year And these things considered we may well conclude that of the Parliament that sate on the 3 d of November 1640 there are few living and I think that of that turbulent House of Commons scarce 16 are now living and that of the Assembly of Divines that met the first of Iuly 1643. all the Divines except 2 are dead The Sculls of many of those hot Spurrs of Church and State that troubled us so much on the Stage of the World have perhaps since diverted us in the Scene in Hamlet and no doubt but of the poor handful of surviving Experts of them the most considerate are not now considering how by any Projects to put the World either in Tune or out of it but are tuning their fancies to the still Musick of the Grave We see that many of the Sons of the Divines of that Assembly and of other Presbyterians are true Sons of the Church of England and are of the Clergy in it But tho I am no Concurrer with their Estimates that make the number of those who gain'd by the War to be small for as the Judicious Author of the Regal Apology Printed in the Year 1648 and by the
Oxford Antiquities said to be Dr. Bate the late Eminent Physitian in p. 49 estimates That the Revenues of King Queen Bishops Deans and Chapters and Delinquents in the hands of those Vsurpers were almost one Moiety of the Kingdom besides many rich Offices c and as to the multiplicity of Offices then a very ingenious Pamphlet written in those days call'd the City Alarum with a Treatise of the Excise mentions in p. 33. That 't was easie to demonstrate that more then 200,000 l. per Annum was then consumed by superfluous Officers which by the way sufficiently shews the ill Managery of the publick Treasure in those days and tho I have put the rate of the Heirs of such above that of common Inexperts yet I am not without hopes that possibly some what like a sort of Experience that many of those Heirs have from the latest Histories and Traditional Accounts had of the breath of the People having blown away that mighty Ballance of Land out of the hands of the unjust Possâ—ssors and all their Models of Government built thereon and of many of their Ancestors who had by their Swords acquired ample shares of the Spoyles of the Crown and Church and Cavaliers Estates growing ashamed of their unjust Victories and the Yoke they have brought upon themselves and the Kingdom and affraid of their Estates and Liberties not being ensureable under a fluctuating Military Oligarchy thought it the best of their Game to aspire with their All to the feet of their Lawful Soveraign and to be his Restorers without Capitulation may incline a considerable part of such and who are not desperate in their Fortunes and have perhaps inherited the Blessiing of their Ancestors penitence by their Peaceable Morals to make such an exception in this case as may confirm the Rule and make them according to the expression before used become sound parts of the State. Another momentous thing cannot but be obvious to the thoughts of the Considerate among them and all Orders or Parties of men here that if the devesting the unjust Proprietors of about half the Land of England by the necessary Course of the Law at the Kings Restoration did in making so many persons and their dependants Paupers and useless in the improvement of the Land and many to be Nusances in it as troublesome Sollicitors and Barrettors and many likewise to withdraw to our Forraign Plantations and to our insula Sanctorum call'd Ireland unavoidably make the price of our Land sink to the proportion it hath since done that if any Sons of Belial and disloyal persons should be ever able by a new Commotion to introduce the old Confusions among us and dispossess the Proprietors of about half our Land as formerly that England it self would turn Ireland and our Land perhaps be valuable but at ten years purchase And tho the Experts now in being among us are comparatively few yet is the work of the Loyal part of them so easie to demonstrate to their Vicinage every where the dreadful inconvenience of essaying to mend the World by War that one Harvy could not more easily among the judicious propagate a general Notion of the Circulation of the Blood then may a thousand of these shew to Millions of others the impious folly of Blood guiltiness again incircling our Land and especially when all our Blood and our Treasure is necessary to be preserved for the Defence of the Realm in a Conjuncture that hath put Christendom in procinctu and therefore 't is but according to the Course of Nature that in such a season the generality of Peoples minds here should manifest such an Abhorrence of both the Irish and English in 41 and that the Religion-Trade which had us at its feet being now at ours if it should again struggle to get uppermost as formerly is to expect from so many to find the salute of the rising blow And as I love to think of these things without asperity or offering the least Violence to the Sacredness of the great Established Amnesty so do I observe the same inclination to be very prevalent among the weightier persons of the several Parties The smalness of the Number of Persons now living that wanted that Amnesty makes men generally concur in not esteeming it taâ—ti to wish it broken but tho most of our former Empirical State-Physicians are covered with Earth their Errors are not and People seem generally sensible that both the present and in likelyhood the future State of England will not allow of Political Physicians trying more Experiments on us and particularly the former churlish ones that succeeded ill and especially in a Conjuncture when nature is by necessity leading us to a Convalescence As in Boccalines Politick Touch-stone Where the Monarchy of Spain is represented throwing her Physician out of the Window and Apollo desiring to know the Cause of it she told him how about 40 years ago she asking Counsel of her Physician he prescribed her a tedious and chargeable Purge of divers Oyls of Holy Leagues of Insurrections of People of Rebellions of Cauteries and other very painful Medicines that had wasted and weakened her spirits and that he prescribing just such another Purge as before was therefore thrown out at Window so would such Purges and such Purgers as we were troubled with forty years ago be here deservedly dealt with now How ridiculous will any Demagogue now appear that should in an English Parliament harangue it against supplying the King in such a manner as Sir Iohn Elliot and Mr. Pym did 4 to Caroli who then as Rushworth's Collections tells us moved in the House of Commons not to yield the King Tunnage and Poundage till they had first settled Religion touching the Points of Ariminianism They might as well have moved that the King might have no Money till they had found out the Longitude and likewise discovered the Quadrature of the Circle and they by that motion would have ensured to him the name of Pochi-Dinari that my Lord Herbert in his Harry the 8 th says was given to Maximilian the Emperor for his famed want of Money But that wantonness of Popularity did shew the worse in those two great Demagogues of their Age for the ingratitude it carried with it they moving so in the House of Commons as they did so soon after the great Royal Concessions as to the Petition of Right and might well excuse the Great Earl of Strafford's then quitting their Company But I shall here observe to your Lordship that after the discovery of the Gun-powder Treason viz. 3 Iacobi the Parliament gave him three Subsidies and six Fifteenths and Tenths of the Layety and four Subsidies of the Clergy all which by estimation amounted to 453000 l. and it was but just in them then so to supply the Crown after the detection of that Conspiracy because it appeared by several Examinations That if it had taken effect an Association of Forraign Roman Catholick Princes by a Solemn Oath
like that of the Holy League in France was desigued to have assured the business afterward and it was but natural for the Parliament believing the same to enable their Prince with a Counter mine of Gold to blow up the Associated Purses of those Forraign Princes and no doubt but by the very Noise of that liberal Supply being heard abroad in the World that Association was Thunder-struck as any one else must be in a Conjuncture when the Nations abroad shall see our Prince provided with effects as King Iames was as aforesaid a Conjuncture I despair not of seeing nor of its influencing the World with Terror as did the very sound of the supplying the King by the last Pole-Act to enable him for a War with France and which was the Cause that the Panic Fear in some of our rustical Plebs of the French landing in the Isle of Purbec and when some of the poor adjacent Mobile in the air of their fancies heard the noise of adventare Gallos as Alexander ab Alexandro genialium dierum l. 3. c. 14. saith Gallis etiam Senonibus ad urbem properantibus in novâ viâ ubi alloquâ—tionis postea templum fuit vocem auditam quae Gallos adventare diceret inter exemplâ— relatum est was not more opprobrious then that fear of the French that marched off an Army and Royal Fleet so abruptly out of Scicily when they heard a voice of Adventare Anglos which evaporating of the French Forces from thence as it was a sufficient indication that there was no perfect love between our Kings great Minister of that time and the French Ministers for perfect love casts out fear and had there been any perfect good understanding between him and them the nois'd Adventare Anglos would not have exorcised them out of the body of that Kingdom so it perhaps proved an occasion of the perfect French Hatred against his Lordship that he so satisfactorily acquainted our English World with in one of his solid and sinnewy Printed Vindications and I do believe that the future Warlike State of Christendom will necessarily prompt all that affect to be Patriots instead of studying to make men unwilling to promote publick supplyes to bend their brains in the way of Calculation to shew what the Kingdom is able to contribute to its defence and how to do it with equality in Taxes and Levyes and that he will appear the most popular man who shall shew our Representatives how and in what proportion the Rateable parts of Mens Estates may be rated a thing that I hear Sir W. P. in his Manuscript called Verbum sapienti has essayed to do and given his Sentiment that supposing a Million should ever be raised in England there should be Levyed on the  m. ll  Lands 216 viz. 1 30 of the Rent Cattle 54 viz. 1 600 Personal Estate 60 viz. 1 60 Housing 45 viz. 12 d a Chimney in London 10 d without the Liberties 6d in Cities and Towns and 4 d elsewhere People 625 at 2s 1d per Head or rather a Poll of 6d and 19d Excise which is not full 1 38 part of the mean expence and he doth there Chap. 9. § 7. with great Judgment insinuate That the over-favourable taxing personal faculties and Estates makes Plebeians richer and surlier and that the effect of which may be feared as a tendency to Democracy How favourably such Estates were Taxed when Subsidies were in use I have shewed and how very little they came to in the Execution of the last Poll Bill is fresh in Memory and yet in the Dutch Republic when the States raise an extraordinary Tax sometimes of the 1000 dth sometimes of the 500 dth sometimes of the 200 th part of every Mans Estate richer or poorer and men are Taxed therein according to Common Fame and Report by their Magistrates of their several Cities and Towns and the Party grieved at his Assessment declaring on his Oath that his Estate is not worth so much will be always relieved it is very rarely seen that any man makes himself poorer then common Report speaks him by means whereof that Tax is very considerable and therefore for us to debase our Government by the making of that Tax so low when they advance theirs by chearfully making it so high will to the Loyal Lovers of our Monarchy naturally in time seem unâ—easonable I believe then that he will be the most Celebrated Parliament-man that can in any Mony-Bills direct the making the Levy generally proportionable according to that saying in pari jugo facilis est tractus and can in the Debate of any Book of Rates provide against the danger of a clogging of Trade which he who takes wrong measures in burthening doth as one saith put a pound Weight at the end of a Pole which is heavier then twenty times so much placed at the hand and doth thereby work down Land Revenues more then the Sums actually paid c. and can demonstrate what burden the People can well bear and that Parliamentary Imposts may be put on them in the way that men use to lade the Camel when he lies down so as he may cheerfully rise up with his burden and how that which is the second Principal Conclusion in Sir W. P' s Political Arithmetick viz. That some kind of Taxes and publick Levies may rather encrease then diminish the Common-wealth may be render'd applicable to us and in his explicating which Conclusion he doth not as a Propounder but as one having Authority namely that of Reason Instance in three various Taxes for England Scotland and Ireland that would encrease the wealth of the same and how to provide for Equality in Taxes Mens Estates may be as accurately weighed as they were of old by the Roman Prudence which for that purpose instituted the Office of Censors and when in the Censes the Civil Law ordered the Censors Estimates to be registred and both the bona Mobilia and Immobilia to be registred and even the Sums of Money at Interest to be registred and the names of the Debtors and this upon Oath and in the registration of Lands their true value was set down and how they were fertile or barren and every Tax was Collected where the Estimate was made and that the Quota of Taxes might not be sunk by Peoples being return'd as real or feign'd Paupers the whole City was ratably Taxed to make up the Capitation or Pole-money for Paupers and that the People might be exactly numbered and all this to be done every five years the time when new Censors entered into their Office and to which the word lustration refers and how to Copy out the Politics of the House of Commons in Queen Elizabeth's time when the securing the Protestant Interest at home and abroad made them so inclinable to look on the giving her Mony to be the great quid agendum and on which they thought depended both the Law and the Prophets in the English Tongue and when as
with Oyl to strengthen themselves did then that they might the better lay hold on one another and might not slip out of each others hands Se mutuo pulvere sive arenâ aspergere ac propemodum faedare a thing too many among us have done outright and thereby shewed themselves not to be so much as almost Christians and a ridiculing humour of throwing dirt that the Colluctations about the Land on the Continent of Christendom will I believe ridicule out of our World at least and unteach us the turpitude of such Railery and make the Doctrines of speculative points of Religion to give us no more disturbance than doth or ever did the Doctrine of Lines and Figures And as the more ingenuous and true sober part of the people is now moved with pity to Nonconformists for being led away by the Nose from our Churches by the Iesuites a thing that Mr. Nye himself affirms in his Book called A Case of great and present use whether we may lawfully hear the now Conforming Ministers and printed Anno 1677 and the not thinking which lawful he makes a misperswasion and saith in p. 24 and 25 In most of the misperswasions of these latter times by which mens minds have been corrupted I find in whatsoever otherwise they differ one from another yet in this they agree that it is unlawful to hear in publick which I am perswaded is one constant design of Satan in the variety of ways of Religion he hath set on foot by Iesuites among us and doth the more pity them for that some well meaning persons among them who were blindfolded into some of their Nonconformity by Iesuitic Emissaries had not heretofore their Eyes opened to see that the same persons were often Sollicitors with Magistrates to do their duty and put the Laws in due Execution against them for their Nonconformity and that such Emissaries had thereby an occasion of saying to them according to the Style of the Chief Priests after they had blind-folded our Saviour and then smote him Prophecy who is he that smote thee and for that such well meaning persons have been observed at the same time to importune the Almighty That he would open the Eyes of Kings and Princes so hath it likewise general resentments of Scorn and Anger against the Principles of those bantring Popish Seducers who as they have some Emissaries here to kill Souls and others probably ready on occasion to kill bodies have distended the Doctrine of Popery abroad in the World to such an excess of Cruelty that no man can Calculate the number of Gods it hath made or of men it hath destroyed and I hope that such Iesuited Emissaries will in time generally appear not only hateful but ridiculous to our Papists themselves for who indeed can choose but laugh at the discussing or deliberating of the Question in p. 98. Of the Mystery of Iesuitisme viz. Whether the Iesuites may kill the Iansenists So very hateful are their Principles to some of our ingenuous English Papists that I have heard a Great and Noble Person mention it with Contentment that some of that Order of False Prophets were since the Popish Plot executed for it tho yet he doubted of the Veracity of the Witnesses against them I very much differ'd in my Judgment from that of that Noble Person and would have no man damnified in the least for the greatest Crime but by Witnesses greater than all exception and do account it easier to give Heaven an occount of Mercy than Justice but yet on the recollecting of my thoughts I have found it so incident to humane nature to delight by ill Witnesses to punish the avowers of false Religionary Principles that I have read it among some Rabbinical Observators of the Customs of the Iews that they anciently allowed of false Witnesses against false Prophets and of whose being such the Sanhedrim did cognosce and so they impiously reputing Christ to be such did barefaced bring forth false Witnesses against him and he could not be allow'd to except against their Persons but only against their sayings as discordant and to this purpose we find it in the Gospel of St. Mathew Ch. 26. Vers. 59 60. Now the Chief Priests and Elders and all the Council sought false Witnesses against Iesus to put him to death but found none yea tho many false Witnesses came yet found they none At the last came two false Witnesses and in St. Mark Ch. 14. V. 56. and 59. 't is declared how the Testimony of the False Witnesses agreed not together I have mentioned this as not in the least intending to reflect on the testimony of any one Witness ever produced in behalf of the Crown in any Criminal Cause in any age of time and do think that according to the saying that defensio non est deneganda Diabolo and that as a railing Accusation is not to be brought against the Devil so much less ought a false Testimony And I am moreover in any Point relating to the safety of Princes Lives and when there are exasperated Parties in a Kingdom criminating and recriminating each other about the same inclined to do what is fairly to be done to support the Credit of Witnesses considering as the Observation is that as he who is bound to the King his Bond is good for nothing to any one else so he that during such a Conjuncture is a Witness for the King is liable to so many Volleys of Dirt from some one of the inraged Parties and to have all the particular excesses and extravagances of his Life so display'd as to endanger his Testimonies usefulness in other cases But yet if any Magistrate finds the Testimony of Witnesses he would support to be insupportable and doth not believe them to be fide digni he is obliged Morally to avow such his Sentiment thereof when he is legally put upon it And here I cannot pretermit an occasion of mentioning your Lordships great Courage and Justice in an Affair that my Correspondent writ to me of namely that when some Witnesses had in the House of Lords been Examined about a Popish Plot in Ireland and that the Vote of every one in that House was given for the reallity of that Plot except your Lordships you entered your dissent as not believing any such Plot in Ireland as was by the Witnesses sworn which was certainly most worthy of your Lordship to do if you thought not the Witnesses worthy of your belief and your Caution in your so judging that the Papists in Ireland designed not such a Plot to be Executed in that Kingdom was the more remarkable in regard that 't was some time since published in a large Pamphlet of the Growth of Popery that the Irish Plot was a thing contrived only to divert and hound us away from the pursuit and Examination of the English one And yet the same Witnesses as I was inform'd obtain'd that belief from a Loyal and Honourable House of Commons concerning the Irish
some Papists whose names the Age riseth up to for their great advancement of real Learning I mean Peiresk Descartes Gassendus Mersennus had as much tenderness for any differing in judgment from them as Protestants can have and that mighty hunter after knowledg Peiresk was so far from eagerness in pursuing the blood of Heretics that being one of the Judges for Capital Causes in France he would always come off the Bench when Sentence of death was to be given though against the most outragious Murderer and he always carried in his mind a charity large enough to embrace the whole World and maintain'd a constant Correspondence with Salmasius Causabon and other Protestants and did put Grotius on the writing his De jure belli pacis that hath taught more Civility to Nations than the Modern Papal Christianity hath done and who hath there so perfectly manumitted Secular Magistrates from being obliged implicitly to execute the Sentences of Ecclesiastic Judges that he hath there asserted it l. 2. c. 26. § 4. Quin probabile est etiam Carnifici qui damnatum occisurus est hoc tenus aut quaestioni actis inter fuerit aut ex rei confessione cognita esse debere causae merita ut satis ei constet mortem ab eo commeritam idque nonnullis in locis observatur nec aliud spectat lex Hebraea cum ad lapidandum eum qui damnatus est testes vult prodire populo Deut. 17. By the 7th Verse of that Chapter the hands of the Witnesses were to be first on him to put him to death which Law no doubt had the effect of a Caveat with men against their ambitus of the standing Office of Witnesses by tacking thereunto the standing Office of Executioners Moreover both common observation and Cursory looking into Books and indeed common sense will teach us that the Papal Principles do not oblige men at once to fence against Heretics lives and against impossibilities nor to endanger themselves by fighting with the Wind-mills in Heretics Brains That great Cardinal D' Ossat whom I have so often here cited and who was so renown'd for his probity as well as comprehensive knowledg of matters of State doth in the 86th Letter that is to Villeroy in the Year 1597. give him an account of his discourse with the Pope on the occasion of his Holyness angrily resenting Harry the 4ths observing the Edict of pacification and that D' Ossat thereupon said That it was necessary for the Peace of France that the Edict should be observ'd that for want of such an Edict France had not been quiet for 35 years That the Date of the Edict 1577. shewed 't was not the present King but the late King 12 years before his death that made it that the late King and King Charles his Predecessor and Brother did not make such Edicts of Pacification with their good liking and frankly but were constrain'd to it by necessity even for the good of the Catholic Religion and the Realm after having found that many Wars made by Heretics served for nothing but in many places to abolish the Catholick Religion and in a manner all Ecclesiastical Discipline Iustice and order c. And that besides that necessity hath no Law in whatever Subject and Matter it be Jesus Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn that other Catholick Princes used so to do whom none spoke ill of for it That the Duke of Savoy as great a Zealot as he makes himself for the Catholic Religion doth tolerate Heretics in their Religion in the three Valleys of Italy of which he is Lord. That the King of Poland did as much not only in the Kingdom of Sweden but of Poland that all the Princes of the House of Austria and who are Celebrated for being Pillars of the Catholic Church did as much not only in the Towns of the Empire but also in their own proper Estates as in Austria it self from whence they take their Name in Hungary Bohemia Moravia Silesia Lusatia Stiria Carinthia and Croatia That Charles the 5th Father of the King of Spain was he that taught the King of France and other Princes to yield to such a necessity by making the Interim that every one knows even after his having Conquered the Protestants of Germany That his Son the King of Spain at this day who is reputed to be Archi-Catholic and to uphold the Catholic Religion as Atlas doth the Heavens doth yet tolerate in his Kingdoms of Valencia and Granada the Moors with their Mahumetanisme and hath caused to be offered to the Heretics of Zealand and Holland and other Heretics in the Low-Countries the free exercise of their pretended Religion if they will for the future acknowledge and obey him c. And concludes his discourse to the Pope saying That the Kings ablest Counsellors were of opinion that if his Holyness saw things so near as the King did and that the Pope was to Command France in the State the Realm was at present his Holyness would not in this point do less than the King did To all which D' Ossat saith The Pope made no reply And I think it may with parity of reason be affirmed that if the Pope himself were to Command England in the State it is in at present he would be no hammer of Heretics so as to knock any one of them on the head I know that after the date of that Letter viz. Anno 1597. of D' Ossat's last mentioned the various Revolutions in Christendom made the Scene of the toleration of Heterodoxy in those Countries to be altered with a Vengeance for six years after the death of D' Ossat viz. in the Year 1610. King Phillip the 3d of Spain made an Edict for the exterminating the Moors with their Mahumetatisme out of his Realms and which was executed with great Cruelty and the Vnion of Vtrecht entered by the Provinces in 1579 and the blow given to the Spanish Monarchy by Queen Elizabeth in 1588 and the Patronage the United Provinces had from her and the kindness they found from Harry the 4th of France made his Conditional offers of favour to the Dutch Heretics not thank-worthy but even at this very day tho in the Low-Countries both of the United and Spanish Provinces there is a certain reciprocal liberty for the Papists in the Dominions of the States and for the Protestants in the Dominions of the Spaniard yet is the liberty not equal for in the United Provinces the States allow the Papists a certain number of Priests to officiate among them in sacris which is done by an express Concession But in the Spanish Dominions there is no such Concession and the Ministers who there privately officiate among Protestants do it at their peril And in the Year 1599. Ferdinand of Austria expelled the Lutherans out out of his Provinces and in Austria Bohemia
ever errors they fell into as I should be if I heard any Principal speak unkindly of his Second who contending for him in loco lubrico or fencing on the Ice did slip and shall be as apt as any to wish and hope that now such have consulted with their Country as the Agonothetae and know their opinions better then formerly that they will take other measures and especially when they see the present State of Christendom importuning us to be quiet more then formerly and thus in the old Agnonistic Games many of the lapsi athletae came to be Crown'd The Rule in those Games was that the Agonists were to make three Attaques on each other and he that did slip or go back in the first and second if yet he overcame in the third On-set was lawfully Crown'd and good luck say I have they with their honour who having an opportunity of a third Assault against Popery shall out-do not only others but themselves and I have the Charity to believe that what the great Athletae did in the Exclusion Bill was thought lawful by them and that they thought therein they did not transilire metas And 't is but with Justice that the generality of the People of England seem as Agonothetae to have judged of the temper of our Prince in this Religionary Certamen and I believe whatever time can cause that yet among all composed and sedate Minds his Majesties deportment in the late Conjuncture will never happen to be forgot and particularly his wrestling with his Parliaments as I may say by several Gracious Offers and Messages relating to the security of the Protestant Religion and to the making of English Men everlasting Comprehensors of the same He notified it to them by the Lord Chancellor on March the 11th 78. That this is the time to secure Religion at home and strengthen it from abroad by strengthening the Interests of all the Protestants in Europe c. The results of this Council seem to be decisive of the fate of this Kingdom c. And I must confess I wish that tempus acceptabile as I call'd it before had been accepted of that great Critical Moment of time when the curious needed no intelligence from that Oracular States-man of the measures taken abroad to extirpate Protestancy and when its Enemies in some Countries thought they had the life of that Religion as sure within their gripe as he had that of the Bird when out-braving the Oracle he ask'd if the Bird in the hand were dead or alive and when all his Majesties real acceptable offers were thus reiterated to all the noble Contenders and offered like the water of life to prevent their fainting in their Race and that without Money and without Price And because his Majesties Title hath appear'd as due to his Agonists Crown as to his Inheritable Royal one for having in the several periods of his life at home and abroad contended so earnestly for the Protestant Faith and purchased an immunity from Envy it self and that according to the right of that Law in the Code that restrains the obtaining of Immunities only to such a one who hath striven per omnem aetatem cum coaevis and hath to the Athlotletae given proof of his valour from his youth and who hath at least in tribus agonibus been Conqueror I think the rather that a Crown of Iustice is laid up for him both in time and in eternity for his preserving the property of his Line in some of those his earnest Messages aforesaid and for that he did not by the infringing the Legal Rights of that as I may say transilire lineas or by doing any thing of the Justice whereof he doubted and much more of the Injustice whereof he was fully convinced As the figure of a Crown must be entire so must every good Action consist of entire Causes that is to be rewarded with it and any Prince who doth deliberate of the doing a thing in it self unjust has need of the Caution given to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia hold fast that which thou hast that no Man take away thy Crown and indeed for a Monarch to do an Act of Injustice is a greater misfortune to him than to be deposed the latter being but the evil of punishment and the former of sin I reading lately in Klockius de aerario was ashamed to see the 41. Summarium of Chap. 109th Book 2d to be this viz. A Iustitiâ licite in parvis subinde variariut in majoribus inviolata sit and ashamed to find in that Chapter Tacitus quoted by him for it and saying Habet aliquid ex iniquo omne magnum exemplum and Plutarch cited for saying A justitia in parvis rebus nonnunquam abeas si salvam eam voles in magnis But honest Cicero tells us better things and that Nihil honestum esse potest quod justitiâ vacat and the Christian Morallity I am sure prohibits the doing of one unlawful Act tho the effect of it would be the restoring the whole Creation in integrum to its first State in Paradice and it enjoyns the fortitude of not fearing those that kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul as our Saviours words are in St. Math. 10. 28. and where he doth not say fear not those that can kill the Body but who do actually and frequently kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul implying that unjust men often labour to do that and would do it if they could and their cursed sollicitude therein is not capable of being practised more then by endeavouring to prevail on Men by fear of imminent bodily danger to warp from principles of Justice and the Scripture doth annex the Crown of Life to the condition of being faithful unto death and to not fearing the things to be suffered as 't is said in Rev. 2. 10. the ominous Text Preached on at the Coronation of the Royal Martyr And as it is a saying that Must is for the King so he that Rules over Men must be just ruling in the fear of God as part of the last words of King David assures us and must not by fear of Man do any unjust thing that would imply his intermitting the filial fear of Heaven which is justly punished by being abandon'd to the Servile Fear of Man and to that fear bringing a Snare as that Kings Son hath in his Proverbs told us and when otherwise he might have made his own wrath as the roaring of a Lion as Solomons words are And 't is when exact Justice is as it should be fixed in the Firmament of a Princes Mind that its brightness is above being Ecclipsed by any popular temptations or fears that it resembles the fixt Stars whose great height dazles the eyes of gazers and which Stars cannot be eclipsed by the shaddow of the whole earth The Populace and their Multitudes and Commotions are in the Scripture frequently compared to
water and the Sea and like that they are apt to be eating towards the Roots of the Powers of Soveraigns but while the Mountains of their Power are bottom'd on Natural Justice all the preying of the Sea of the People there makes but the promontory more surely guarded and appear more majestic as well as be more inaccessible And of this Sea of the Peoples as I would wish every Prince in the just observance of the Municipal Laws of his Country to espouse the Interest as much as the Duke of Venice doth his Adriatic yet should I see one for fear of Popular Envy or Obloquy forbearing to administer Iustice and to follow the real last Dictates of his practical understanding rightly informed and servily giving up himself to obey any mens pretended ones I should think it to be as extravagant a Madness as Hydrophoby or fear of water on the biting of a Mad Dog and while a Sovereign observes the immutable Principles of Justice he may acquiesce in the results of Providence and expect that the troubling of the waters may be like that of the Angel before the time of healing or a Conjuncture of the Peoples being possessed of healing Principles and in fine a King when he finds the Waters of Popular Discontent more tumultuous by Religionary Parties as two Seas meeting as for example Papists and Presbyterians he may depend on his being near Land that being always near where two Seas meet and let every Prince be assured that 't is not only Popery but Atheisme in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion I know that it hath been incident to some good men to strain pretences beyond the nature of things for justice Causes of War abroad in the World to advance the Protestant Religion And thus in the last Age the Crown and Populace of England being clutter'd with the Affair of the Palatinate the Prince Palatine had here many well-wishers to his Title for the Bohemian Crown and Rushworth tells us in his 1st Vol. Ann. 1619. That he being Elected King of Bohemia craved Advice of his Father in Law the King of Great Brittain touching the acceptation of that Royal Dignity and that when this Affair was debated in the Kings Council Arch-Bishop Abbot whose infirmity would not suffer him to be present at the Consultation wrote his mind to Sir R. Nauton the Kings Secretary viz. That God had set up this Prince his Majesties Son in Law as a Mark of Honour throughout all Christendome to propagate the Gospel and protect the Oppressed That for his own part he dares not but give advice to follow where God leads apprehending the work of God in this and that of Hungary that by the Pâ—ece and Peece the Kings of the Earth that gave their power to the Beast shall leave the Whore and make her desolate that he was satisfied in Conscience that the Bohemians had just Cause to reject that Proud and Bloody Man who had taken a Course to make that Kingdom not Elective in taking it by Donation of another c. And concludes Let all our Spirits be gathered up to animate this Business that the World may take notice that we are awake when God calls Rushworth saith that King Iames disavowed the Act of his accepting that Crown and would never grace his Son in Law with the Style of his new Dignity And in King Charles the Firsts time in the Common-Prayer relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runs for Frederick Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife yet in the Assemblies Directory afterward as to the Prayer for the Royal Family that Lady Elizabeth is Styled Queen of Bohemia But our Princes not being satisfied it seems that the Palatine of the Rhine had a just Title to the Bohemian Crown thought it not just for them to assert it However that Arch-Bishop Abbot the Achilles of the Protestants here in his Generation thought that the English Crown ought to descend in its true Line of Succession whatever profession of Religion any Member thereof should own appears out of Mr. Pryns Introduction to the History of the Arch Bishop of Canterburies Tryal where having in p. 3. mentioned the Articles sent by King Iames to his Embassador in Spain in order to the Match with the Infanta and that one was That the Children of this Marriage shall no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience of Religion wherefore there is no doubt that their Title shall be prejudiced in case it should please God that they should prove Catholicks and in p. 6. Cited the same in Latin out of the French Mercury Tom. 9. as offered from England Quod liberi ex hoc matrimonio oriundi non cogentur neque compellentur in causâ religionis vel conscientiae neque leges contra Catholicos attingent illos in casu siquis eorum fuerit Catholicus non ob hoc perdet jus successionis in Regna Dominia Magnae Britanniae and afterward in p. 7. mentioned it as an Additional Article offer'd from England That the King of Great Brittain and Prince of Wales should bind themselves by Oath for the observance of the Articles and that the Privy Council should Sign the same under their hands c. He in p. 43. mentions Arch-Bishop Abbots among other Privy-Counsellers accordingly Signing those Articles and further in p. 46. mentions the Oath of the Privy-Council for the observance of those Articles as far as lay in them and had before given an account not only of Arch-Bishop Abbots but of other magna nomina of the Clergy and Layety in the Council that Signed the same and particularly of John Bishop of Lincoln Keeper of the Great Seal Lionel Earl of Middlesex Lord High Treasurer of England Henry Viscount Mandevile Lord President of the Council Edward Earl of Worcester Lord Privy-Seal Lewis Duke of Richmond and Lennox Lord High Steward of the Houshold James Marquess of Hamilton James Earl of Carlile Lancelot Bishop of Winchester Oliver Viscount Grandison Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland Sir Thomas Edmonds Kt. Treasurer of the Houshold Sir John Suckling Comptroller of the Houshold Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway Principal Secretaries of State Sir Richard Weston Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Julius Caesar Master of the Rolls who had done the same Mr. Pryn afterward in p. 69. having mentioned the Dissolution of the Spanish Match gives an account of the bringing on the Marriage with France and saith It was concluded in the life of King James the Articles concerning Religion being the same almost Verbatim with those formerly agreed on in the Spanish Treaty and so easily condescended to without much Debate and referreth there to the Rot. tractationis ratificationis matrimonii inter Dom. Carolum Regem Dom. Henrettam Mariam sororem Regis Franc. 1 Car. in the Rolls The Demagogues of the old long Parliament who made such loud Out-cries of the danger of Popery
ten times as many Females as in London that one half of this proportion of the London Crape-wearers may wear Crape in the Country viz. half a Million in all It may be supposed therefore that the Crape-wearers one with another wearing ten yards a piece that five Millions of Yards of Crape may be yearly worn in England and Wales and that one pound of Wooll making fifteen yards of Crape will occasion the Consumption of a third part of a Million of Pounds weight of Wooll per Annum viz. 333000 and 333 pounds weight of Wooll which accounting fine Wooll such as makes Crape to be worth one Shilling per Pound amounts to 16000 l. Sterling The labour of the People in Manufacturing the same amounts to about thirty times as much as the Wooll viz. half a Million of Pounds Sterling and this yearly gain England cannot miss of while the Women of the Court continue the fashion of wearing Crape whom the Women of the City and Country will imitate in their garb If any shall think that the allowance of 10 yards to be yearly worn by each Female Crape-wearer may seem too much he may consider that some Crape used by men about their Apparel and the great quantity thereof employed in shrouding the Dead pursuant to the late Act and which but for the invention and use of the Manufacture of Crape perhaps would not have been effectually put in Execution may probably incline him to be of an opinion that England gains more vastly by this new Manufacture of Crape then I have supposed The ridiculing humour of so many in the Age may perhaps move them to think observations of this kind to be unimportant But if any shall take a Prospect of the substantial and great wisdom of our Ancestors in our Statute-Book he may find there 11 Acts of Parliament about Thrums and Yarn and many about Fustians and 26 about Worsted and Worsted-Weavers and another Statute of Pouledavis but there is that of moment in my Account relating to England's Gain from Crape that after 145 Statutes made to advance our Wooll and Drapery and Dyers and our Woollen Manufactures so much decayed in spight of them all this seeming poor little thing hath without any Act of Parliament enriched us And many are the Foundations of Manufactures laid in our Country Cities and daily growing since the time that Dr. Williams Arch-Bishop of York in his Speech in the Parliament of 1640. in defence of the Bishops Votes observed that Tapsters Brewers Inn-keepers Taylors and Shoo-makers do integrate and make up the body of our Country Cities and Incorporations And tho the Northern Heretics are crasso sub aere nati yet have they as was said compensative Advantages from nature and as if nature meant them more then others for Lords of the Sea and Navigation the Pole of the Magnet which seateth it self North hath been observed to be always the most vigorous and strong Pole to all intents and purposes and the Magnetical Virtue impressed on the Earth is there more strong likewise I mean on the Church Land seized on from the Papal Idlers and Burthens of that Earth to support the necessary defence of the State and therefore will necessarily attract mens Iron and their understandings with Justice to keep it Dr. Heylin in his Geography in Folio tells us that 't is not so much the Authority of Calvin or the Malignant Zeal of Beza or the impetuous Clamors of their Disciples which made the Episcopal Order to grow out of Credit as the Avarice of some great Persons in Court and State who greedily gaped after the poor Remnant of their Possessions But tho nothing like an over-Balance of the Clergy in the wealth of the Kingdom ought to have sunk that Order and its Revenue in England where perhaps ten times as much is spent either on the Law or on Physick as is on the Clergy it need not be wondered at that in those Countries of the North where they are continually standing to their Arms at least of defence and Calculating their Provision for War that the Lutheran Princes as Heylin saith have divided the Episcopal Function from its Revenue assuming to themselves much of the latter and sometime giving part thereof to their Nobility with the Title of Administrators of such a Bishoprick and of super-intendent to those who have there the Pastoral Solicitude and with some proportion of the Revenue for their maintenance not much exceeding what is usually received by Calvinist Ministers And if my Lord Primate Bramhal may pass for a good Casuistical Judge of the Law of God who in p. 39. of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of an excessive Revenue of the Clergy and their over-balancing the Layety saith And if the excess be so exorbitant that it is absolutely and evidently destructive to the Constitution of the Common-wealth it is lawful upon some Conditions and Cautions not necessary to be here inserted to prune the superfluous Branches and to reduce them to a right temper and aequilibrium for the preservation and well being of the whole Body Politick and if any Credit ought to be given to the Account of Cardinal Pool shewed to me within these few hours relating to the over-Balance of the old Ecclesiastick Revenue here after he had used all his own diligence and that of others to prepare a Calculation of the same for the Pope and had sent 3 Reams of Paper of this to the Pope that are now in his Archives and had acquainted the Pope therein That it was visible that had not the Church here fallen into the Shipwrack of its Revenues the Ecclesiasticks had here in a short time insensibly rendred themselves Lords of the whole Kingdom and that there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England than in France which exceeds England by two thirds both in Lands and Numbers of People we may very well conclude that had any accidental force in Queen Mary's time renversed the alienation of the Church Lands that force would not have long continued and should any as wild Imaginers may suppose happen for the future here or perhaps in other Kingdoms of the North those Lands would soon appear to all to have such a Magnetical Vertue as is in the Globe of the Earth whereby as to its natural points it disposeth it self to the Poles being so framed and ordered to those points that those parts which are now at the Poles would not naturally abide under the Aequator nor Green-land remain in the place of Magellanica and thus it may be said that if the whole Earth were violently removed it would not forsake its Primitive Points nor pitch in the East or West but very soon return to its Polary position again and resemblingly in any new forced over-balance of those Church Lands the very dull Earth's Animus revertendi to the just libration of States and Kingdoms would soon be apparent and neither the Popes moving the Earth or even
not so many of our Peoples taking the name of this great and wise Monarch in vain that will do our Business or their wishing the Ocean of the Wealth of that Kingdom exhausted that will do it and 't is now visible to all that nothing can prevent its encrease but the stopping up the Rivers of Money that run into that Sea from our Countries and others for the Commodities and Manufactures of that Kingdom that can only produce that effect and which not so much our hatred of France as love of our selves will necessitate us to produce and which therefore must stop up the Rivers of Contributions that from deluded or Enthusiastic People formerly ran into the Religion-Trade and then the great Cry of Templum Domini get as little Wooll from the Kingdom as it hath brought to it and the zeal of the very Vox populi drive such Buyers and Sellers and Money changers out of it that formerly made it a Den of Thieves and indeed if it should be supposed that the Balance of solid Trade should continue for the future to be against us to the proportion it has been estimated of late years neither Papists nor Presbyterians would be able to maintain a double Clergy as now they do I mean their own and that by Law established 'T is fresh in Memory that the House of Commons in the Kings long Parliament ordered the Commissioners of the Customs to compute for them what Goods went hence to France in a year and their value and what in that time came from thence hither and their value and that they computed that the value of those exported hence into France was about 1 hundred and 70 thousand Pounds and the value of those imported here from France was about 1 Million and a half beside 6 or 7 hundred thousand Pounds worth of Goods they supposed were brought in by stealth as Silks Embroyderies c. at which rate 't is possible we may have about a 3 d part of the Current Money of England yearly carried into it and indeed all our grave Laws against sending Money in Specie out of the Country when the Balance of Trade is against us are but hedging in the Cuckow and so we have by necessity of Nature the Prospect of a busie World before us that we may recover that Balance on our side And during that Conjuncture of Business all the Nerves of our Minds must be extended to prevent our doom from that forementioned Sentence of late so much in vogue and which I have heard some men living falsly vouch'd for the Authors of viz. Res nolunt malè administrari for it is in Tully who I suppose had it from Aristotle to whom Venerable Bede who died 949 years ago refers in his Axiomata Philosophica printed at London in 12 o as the Author of it in the Margint of that Axiome entia nolunt malè disponi quoting Aristotles Metaphysicks Among Bedes works 2d Tome p. 151. the Axiome is thus worded Nolunt entia malè gubernari Men may ill Administer their understandings as by Credulity Supineness and the like and they may think by the Artifice of Laws to pinion the wings of our riches from flying away and as absurdly as Sylla would by an Edict be judged fair but things meant by the word entia or being will not be ill administred and 't is easier to fix Quick-silver then the being of our Silver here if our importations preponderate The gravity of our Laws can no more make it stay still here than the Vox populi and the Almanacks can make a real Solstice or the Sun at the time of the year they call the Solstice not to move forward in the Zodiack as much as at any other times The Being of Money in a populous Country that hath no competent Mines in it depends on the Being of Trade and the Being of the so many Millions of Mouths in our Realm will necessitate the Millions of hands to work and the growing dearness of Provisions and cheapness of Wages will enforce men to work harder and the res parta labore will not be ill administred nor sacrificed to Idlers nor false Gods as formerly find true Perfumes here nor Metaphysical Entities or Notions rob men of useful Chymical Essences or rob Kingdoms of their being defended and enriched by destroying the Beings or Lives of so many Men as Hereticks and Beings that the Papacy endeavouring to administer ill and by its enslaving men making Persons res caused so many defections from it nor that precious thing called time suffer it self to be ill administred by Presbyterians erecting ten thousand new Tribunals or as one may call them Ecclesiastical Courts of Pye-powder that is one in each of our Parishes when as those men have been heard to complain of the Grievances Trade hath found from one Court-Christian in a Diocess and the same necessity which did make our Manufacturing Peoples Appetite for their Daily Bread to be the ingenii largitor or whet their Wits for the invention of Crape may in all probability produce Manufactures of Hemp and Flax as considerable as that of Wooll hath been and is which I think must naturally happen from the many French Protestants and others here lately planted and a more important Linen Manufacture be here by them introduced then was the woollen one set up by the Dutch Protestants whom the Duke of Alva's Persecution brought hither and which no Act of Parliament here or Projects of Work-houses would probably have effected or necessity else have brought in among us in some Ages And hence will a great improvement of our Land and Employment of our People probably happen by the sowing of Hemp and Flax for which so much Money goes out yearly hence in specie and then design of sowing which hath hitherto proved Abortive in several Parliaments and particularly in one of the last Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth and likewise in the King 's long Parliament Considering how easie it will be for those of the French Nation who are here and who were used to make Canvas and Sail-cloth for our Naval uses and for which France hath long had so much Money from us to make it here and by the Bait of the Gain thereby accruing to engage several of our Poor to work in that Manufacture our Nation is not likely to be long without it here advanced and many of our People therein busied and 't will easily appear necessary to all to promote the making the same here who shall recollect that the French King in that last War with him did forbid the importing it hither And that coarser Manufacture once introduced will naturally make way for the Manufacture of fine Linen and those Manufactures found generally gainful will naturally employ the Proprietors of Land in sowing great part of the same with Hemp and Flax and our good Land hereby retriving its former value of years purchace be no longer ill administred I believe therefore that if shortly
feed sleep in them they must work for it and that no Papists and Presbyterians will in their sleep cry out of Persecution as formerly and that no Papist will hereafter applaud either the Justice or temper of Mr. Coleman in writing as aforesaid to the Inter-Nuncio of the Execution of the Penal Laws against the Papists and saying Which are so insupportable that 't is impossible any that is reach'd by them to have wherewithal to eat Bread if they be executed according to the said Proclamation Nor I believe will such Complaining be heard in our Streets from any of the Non-Conformist Divines as I have read in Print from one Learned Divine of them viz. some of the ejected Ministers are so reduced and find so little succour that they live upon brown Bread and Water some have died through the effects of want we will be thankful to be under no severer usage than Colliers and Barge-men and Sea-men than begging Rogues and Vagabonds have But as among the Augurs of old the Poultreys not eating their Meat or Bread served as an indication that the Roman Army was not then to fight so I hope that the same thing was meant by the sullenness of Mr. Colemans Augury and the others Complaint and that both Papists and Protestants will here eat the Bread of Quietness with Thanksgiving And considering the great number of Attorneys and Sollicitors and Dealers towards the Law that hath long over-spread the Land and planted in the same such a general proneness to litigation and over-ran it so with Briars and Thorns of the Law that our Country is not more famous for our Wooll than infamous for our so much fleecing one another and considering how another thing hath occasionally put so many men to be skilful Masters of the Science of Defence with the Weapons of the Law I mean the farming of so much of the publick Revenue I may well predict that if such a wild probability should happen as any Princes hereafter endeavouring by any illegal Course to advance Popery that tho good and loyal people would be Lachrymists to him they would be soon apt to make all ministerially concerned therein to be Lachrymists to them Altho England had a King namely Harry the 1 st of whom 't is recorded that reforming the old and untrue measures he made a measure after the length of his Arm yet as we have one who hath graciously measured the Arm of his Power by the Laws so I may safely adventure to foretel what his lawful Successors will do and it is to this purpose in some of the most subtle seditious Pamphlets notified in Print by the ill wishers to the next Heir to the Crown viz. that they fear more mischief from him as Chief Favourite and Minister to his Prince than they would from him if ever he should live to wear a Crown for then say they we shall know how to be provided against him by the Course of the Law. Nor is it to be doubted but that he who never was known to advise his Prince to incommode any one contrary to the Law will never employ his own power to the illegal detriment of any man. During this time that his Prince hath so justly placed so much of the Royal Favour on him may he not as to his administration thereof say with the same Justice as the great Prophet Whose Ox or Ass have I taken May it not be asked whom of the mad sort of Cattle that with an infinity of Calumnies and Shams gored his reputation or wild Asses that kick'd at the same did he hurt with power or yet take the fair advantage of the Law against till his many loyal friends who were secret true Lachrymists for the publick false misreports spread against him did importune him so for the Kingdoms good to defend his honour and that they might no more be punished by seeing the limbs of his reputation lie torn and mangled in every Coffee-house who had so often exposed those of his Body to Bullets and Chain-shot in Sea Fights for the saving the life and honour of their Country Those therefore that could in earnest write to the effect abovemention'd in such seditious Pamphlets let them talk or look as gravely as they will I shall yet think but in jest while at other times they are amusing any with questions about their being Lachrymists under such a Prince and they put me in mind of a famous Musician we had in the Court in King Iames's time Dr. Iohn Dowland who printed a Book of Songs and Pavans for the Lute with the Title of Lachrymae and Dedicated it to Queen Anne and in the Table of the Book several of them are thus remarked viz. Lachrymae antiquae Lachrymae gementes Lachrymae verae and he observes there in the Epistle what is obvious enough that Tears are not always shed in sorrow but sometimes in joy and gladness But there is another thing of more weight that occurs to my thoughts from the remembring that Mr. Henry Peacham in his Book called the Compleat Gentleman doth on the name of this Lutinest Iohannes Dowlandus bestow the Anagram annos ludendo hausi and that is that many in several Parliaments who thought they could do no right to Protestancy but by doing wrong to the next Heir did too much and too long play with the Royal Offers and when they might if they pleased have effected as quick a prevention of the growth of Popery under any Roman Catholiek Successor as was took care of in Scotland Yet however I have said enough for my continuing to think that as in that Kingdom there are are few or none that fear that the belief of Popery can ever there gain much ground and ever be the Paramount Religion there and who think not that the words of arise Peter kill and eat will sooner bring the Scots to eat Hogs Flesh and believe there is a Divine Right for their so doing St. Peters Sheet from Heaven in the Vision having had that Animal in it than to swallow the belief of Popery or of the Iure-Divinity of the Pope so the fears of its growth in England or of any occasion for the Virtue of the Lachrymae antiquae of the Primitive Christians will daily grow more and more moderate and in time be extinguished The late Arch-Bishop of St. Andrews estimated the number of Papists and their Children in Scotland to be but about a thousand but their number in the States of the Vnited Provinces is vastly more insomuch that the ingenious Author of the Policy of the Clergy of France to destroy the Protestants of that Kingdom mentions that there are in Holland a Country of small extent ten times more Popish Ecclesiasticks than there are Protestant Mâ—nisters in all France which is very large There is a compleat Clergy and Hierarchy Amsterdam and all the other great Cities have their Bishops Those Bishops have their Chapter and their Priests There are even religious houses They
Crescent there should so powerfully dâ—ive away the Cross. And thus too when Italy was over-run with the barbarous Nations partly of the Pagan and parâ—ly of the Arrian Belief Pagâ—nism and Arrianism being then Dotard Trees in the World the Seed of the Christian Doctrine falling on them from the Pious and Learned hands of Gregory the Great did easily work through them and for the Conversion of them and likewise of our English Nation about the Year 600 from Heathenish Idolatry the greatest Celebrations are due to him and no wonder if the Papacy then yielding so good Fruit did then cast so venerable a shade in the World. But that Tree afterward being observed to degenerate and decay within Six Years as the general Observation of our Apocalyptick Men is Valeat quantum valere possit and who thus tells us of the aetates Antichristi viz. Nascentis in Bonifacio circa Ann. 606 Iuveniliter exultantis in 2. Consilio Nicaeno Anno. 787. Regnantis in Hildebrando successoribus post An. 1075. Triumphantis in Leone Decimo Ann. 1517. Vltima senescentis est and say that shortly after it began to be consumptive and the decays of it being obvious to the view of the gazing World and the Branches of the Lutheran and Calvinistick Tenets appearing through its sides the quiet and gentle Order of Capuchins was invented for the praying for its growth and flourishing in the Year 1530. and ten years afterward the Active Fiery Order of the Iesuites was invented to extirpate the Men that wished ill to its growth and after that the Fathers of the Oratory were set up to extoll and preach up the Tree but Nature would not be extirpated the Potent Seminal Virtue of the Rational Religion dropt on the Tree of the other hath passed its roots through and through and as I may say transubstantiated it self through them and rooted it self deep both into the intellectual World and into States and Kingdoms and their Laws and will in time probably leave not one Fibre or Capillamentum of the Roots of the Irreligionary part of the Tenets of Popery remaining in Nature and shew the World that the Schisma Anglicanum that Sanders and other Papists cry out of as so unnatural was a mere natural Scissure or Rupture of the parts of the decaying Tree of the Church of Rome that came to pass from the Seed of the Protestant Religion being cast thereon And such a Natural Scissure hath the Religion of the Church of England made through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy and the Seeds that by the hands of Non-conformists probably guided by Iesuites have been laid on the Royal-Oak of the Church of England which they vainly thought decay'd were in effect thrown away and as the old Prophetic Fiction represents it that every great Tree included a certain Tutelar Genius and still living with it it may be said that Nature it self is the Tutelar Genius of that Plant of Renown that according to the Scripture expression we may call the Church of England and will ever live with it The Numbers of our Non-conformists are daily decaying and the names of their Tenets will probably be in a short time forgotten We are told in Townsend's Collections that Sir Walter Raleigh mention'd it in one of the Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth viz. in Anno 1593. That there were then near 20000 Brownists in England a number somewhat near as great as that of the Papists to be estimated from the Bishops Survey The name of those Schismaticks is evaporated and their Tenets are not more known or enquired into by the Populace then are the Heresies of the Bardesanistae the Aquei the Abelonitae the Messaliani and some others As was remarked concerning the late Non-Conforming Divines not having bred up their Sons to Non-Conformity the same thing is much observable among the Lay-Dissenters and that their Children do not generally imbibe their Parents principle of Dissentership but rather the contrary The Gross of their Numbers always consisting chiefly of Artisaâ—s and Retail-Traders in Corporations where before the King's Restoration they were numerous and naturally hating Popery and its Parade of Ceremonies cannot but be sensible of the sharp hatred against the same in the Professors of the Religion of the Church of England as by Law Established and how vastly such Professors do every where over-shoot the Dissenters in numbers and how the Seed of the Church of England hath as naturally and with as much ease pierced through the Body of theirs and dissolved its Roots as doth the Seed of an Oak often growing in the Body of a decayed Willow The times were known in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth King Iames and King Charles the first and likewise since till within these late years that some States-men when their Court-Interest was decaying and in danger of Extirpation could by wheadling Dissenters into a belief that they would plant their perswasion in the Church plant themselves the better in the State but humanly speaking such Conjunctures of time will come here no more and the seeming Eradication of such a Religion-Trade in Church and State is a strong Indication That our Heavenly Father or as I may say the God of Nature never planted it But if there were no Laws in being to extirpate any Dissenters Schism or separation from our Church or to Mulct or Excommunicate the obstinate Separaters or if any of those Laws were never Executed as through the vigilance of our Magistrates they have been yet is there one apparent way whereby the Conformists to the Church of England could now as easily lessen their numbers and consequently extirpate their Potency every where as they can frame a thought or resolution to do it and by no other Engine than that with which our Universities of Oxford and Cambridge batter the Contumacy of particular Towns-men namely not by Excommunicating but by discommuning them that is to say by forbidding the Scholars to Trade with them Their own forbearance of buying from Conformists the Wares that those of their own Sect do sell may reasonably invite such a reâ—aliation While heretofore they were so numerous in England their Congregated Churches helped many of the mean Artists and poor Traders thereof with the pretence of Liberty of Conscience to force a Trade by Combination among themselves and their doing it then turn'd to some account but would now be altogether insignificant in this wane of their Numbers And thus without sweat or blood or one Information brought on Penal Statutes or the least occasion or colour for their Out-cry of Persecution may the many Millions of Conformists here humble the Comparative handful of Popish and Protestant Recusants both in Corporations and out of them too when they please and in effect reduce them to the Condition the many Empericks in our Land would be in if they only sold Physick to one another I affect not to be a Propounder of any new Law or of the execution of any old that
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
as formerly I will not despair of many of our Dissenters improving hereafter in Principles of Loyalty as likewise of Conformity but hope they will really deserve to be thought as Loyal as they were so de facto by many greater Judges than my self at the time of the beginning of this Discourse and when so many in our Loyal Parliaments were so extravagant in their Charity to Dissenters as to think that St. Peters Ship was the only Fire-Ship and Non-Conformity a quiet trading Merchant-man and being hared with fears and jealousies of Popery were so eager to have the very Laws against Protestant Recusants Repealed But as I hinted the distinguishing between Popish and Protestant Mathematâ—cks to be absurd and as a gross Error about Proportion or Numbers would appear more ridiculous in Archimedes than in an ordinary Mathematician so true Protestants Non-sense or true Protestants Rebellion is to be no favourable Case and the Name of Protestants must not more than that of the Society of Iesus be allowed as a Charm to raise the Devil of Rebellion When Luther and those who of old deserved the Name of True Protestants abroad as great Co-workers with Nature in introducing the Reformation of Religion were almost deafen'd by their Papal Adversaries Out-cryes of the tunica inconsutulis and when particularly as Sleidan tells us in his Commentarys Granvill the Emperors Deputy in an harangue he made to the Citizens of Wormes did so passionately conjure them That they would not tear Christ's seamless Coat the Protestant Populace was so far from being aw'd out of their way by those words as that they gave their Adversaries the Name of Inconsutulistae or the seamless men and as little will any of our false and jesuited Rebellious Dissenters effect any thing but the abuse of the name and thing of Protestancy and the ridiculing themselves by their usurping on a pretence to be TRVE PROTESTANTS It comes here in my way to observe that some of our Dissenters and other Nominal Protestants who are so apt without sense or reason to call others Enemies to the King and Kingdom have really appeared such to both by their having so much encreased Divisions in our State as well as Church and by their having been the Aggressors in the dividing the Populace here by spightful calling of Names which yet I have not thought fit to mention in this Discourse and whereby the Loyal have been forced some way to retaliate not only out of a generous scorn but that they might speak intelligibly such Aggressors have likewise notoriously contributed to the Divisions in the Kingdom by their too much encouraging the Plot-Witnesses and particularly that Recorded Profligate who so desperately perjured himself in the Case of your Lordship and the Earl of Peterborough and a High-born Prince and by extreme acerbity and rancour relating to the Persons of Papists But their most fatal injury to their Country hath been their weakning its Reputation a thing which Kingdoms must necessarily subsist by as well as private Persons through their studied Artifice of making a Popish Plot to be thought so long lifed and when England's reputation for its strength or which is all one for its being united within it self was much more necessary for its well being than in any Conjuncture of time that perhaps ever happen'd Considering therefore that the present State of England doth and that the probable Future State of it will call so peremptorily on all his Majesty's Subjects to preserve their Country by the Exterminium of all Divisions as I think I have not brought any disreputation to my own Judgment by adventuring to predict the necessary growth of Lâ—yalty making all England to become in time one Sober Party so I am sure I have provided for the Reputation of my Country thereby as well as I could I am not so angry as to think that many of our Religionary Recusants will either on the account of the Divine Prayer of the holy Iesus for the uniting his Flock or of any Scripture-predictions of the more pacific temper that Christians shall at last be blest with be thus inclined to endeavour to shew themselves as I may say honest Inconsutulists and to forbear dividing our Realm as formerly but by their Interest so visibly and palpably concerned in the strengthening the Kingdom I suppose necessity of Nature may be instrumental in the accomplishment of such Scripture-predictions and just as the Interest and Concern of the Souldiers in the Gospel who hoped to have Christ's seamless Coat come to their share inclined them not to rend it and to cast Lots for the same and whereby the Scripture was fulfilled as is said in the Gospel I have mentioned it out of the Scripture that the Stork knoweth her appointed times and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming and I may thinking of a great Prince abroad add that the sight of a numberless Flock of Stares making somewhat like a Cloud in the Air and safely flying close together while there is a Falcon towering above them will direct the Populace of several parts of Christendom to Loyalty and to the natural Garranty of Vnion at home under their respective Governors whereby they will be effectually preserved As I have in this Discourse entertained your Lordship with somewhat like a short Historical Account of the accidental encrease and natural decrease of the Numbers of the Papists in several Conjunctures since the Reformation so I shall in my intended Review with the like of those of the Non-Conformists and impartially take notice of the respective Conjunctures of their petulant insolence and whereby I shall shew to what strange Principles of Out-raging our Municipal Laws they were gradually abandoned As a Specimen hereof I shall observe That Ames a Learned Dissenter of the former Age in the Preface of his Puritanismus Anglicanus printed in the year 1610 speaking of the sufferings of the Clerical Dissenters saith That the Crime they were adjudged guilty of in England was Quod obstinaverunt sese contra leges and then goeth on to ask Sed quae tandem illae quarum gratiâ vi tot fideles alià s inculpati Ministri sunt bonis omnibus sedibusque pulsi nam ex altari vivebant dignitatibus functionibus suis exuti faedati etiam existimatione Sunt autem ne nescias non fundamentales Regni leges non vetera Majorum scita aut consulta quorum summam brevem in Magnâ ut appellant Charta conscriptam habemus haec illi Religiosissime colunt horum fidem implorant sed Canones nescio qui in legum fraudem dolo malo confecti à Parliamentario senatu damnati vere sontici quos denique adversus ministros inviti non sine pudore in alios culpae trajectione exercent Authores ipsi c. But we may with horror ask what kind of Laws is it that those have Outraged since 41 and some of them since the year 60 and since a
words in the Oaths altho it is a common sure Rule That Verba ubi sunt expressa voluntatis supervacanea est quaestio yet I shall ex superabundanti choose to corroborate such my Assertion by laying down this as my 9th and last Conclusion that it is manifest that it was the Law-givers intention to bind the Takers of these Oaths not only to bear true Faith and Allegiance to his Majesty but to his Heirs and Successors in the Due and Legal Course of Descent as I have before expressed It need not be much dilated on that Relations are Minimae entitatis but Maximae efficaciae and that Liberi sunt quasi partes appendices parentum not only Fictione Iuris but Naturâ â—ei veritate and that in the framing of the Oath of Allegiance and the designing the Obligations to arise thence the King had a necessary regard to natural affection and to the preservation of the Hereditary Monarchy in the Line of his Heirs and Successors and suitably to what is expressed in the Preamble of the Statute of 25 H. 8. c. 22. viz. That since it is the natural inclination of every man gladly and willingly to provide for the surety of both his Title and Succession altho it touch his only private Cause we therefore reckon our selves much more bound to beseech and instant your Highness to foresee and provide for the PRESENT surety of both you and of your most lawful Succession and Heirs Nor need it be much insisted on that 't is natural for every Government to defend and preserve it self and to this purpose the Author of the Exercitation cites Alsted a Lutheran Divine and likewise Grotius and Dudley Fenner for maintaining the lawfulness of what the old Athenian famous Oath enjoyned for the preservation of its Polity namely of any private Person killing any Usurper or one who without a lawful Title forcibly invaded the Government The Athenians had several Oaths of a high nature by the Religion of which they tyed themselves to defend their Government and one was the Iusjurandum epheborum which they took when 20 years old and which is set down in Petitus his Noble Commentary on the Athenian Laws and part of which as rendered by him into Latin is Patriam liberis non relinquam in deteriore sed potius in meliore statu Navigabo ad terram eamque colam quantulacunque illa sit quae habenda mihi tradetur Parebo legibus quae obtinent c. quod si quis leges abrogare velit populo non sciscente minime feram Vindicabo autem sive solus sive cum aliis omnibus Patria sacra colam c. ad mortem usque pro nutriciâ terrâ dimicabo But this Oath tho famous enough was not THE famous one I referred to but 't is the other of which the formula is set down in Petitus there p. 232 233. and which beginneth with Occidam meâ ipsius manu si possim eum qui everterit Rempublicam Atheniensium aut eâ— eversâ Magistratum gesserit in posterum c. That Oath of so high and strange a nature was made shortly after the driving out the thirty Tyrants and the Law made that Si quis Atheniensium Rempublicam evertat aut eâ eversê Magistratum gerat Atheniensium hostis esto impunèque occiditor c. To secure their Government forever from future Usurpation was the intent of that terrible Oath and to secure the Government of the Hereditary Monarchy here was the intent of our gentle ones and sufficiently favouring of the Mansuetudo Evangelii and which Oaths however binding the Loyal to defend the Government with their lives do yet strictly bind to the defence of the Rights and Privileges of the Crown one of which is both by the 13th of the Romans and the Lex terrae to be a terror to the Evil and to bear the Sword. But Sir E. Coke having told us in his Commentaries That the true Scope and design of our Statute Laws are oftentimes not to be understood without the knowledge of the Histâ—ry of the Age when the particular Statute was made I shall looking back on the Conjuncture when the Act for the Oath of Allegiance was made take notice that by many particular matters then obvious to all mens thoughts it appeared worthy of the wisdom of the Government then to provide for the security both of his Majesty and of the Succession Any who shall read D' Ossat's Letters will find the various deep designs there opened that related to several Foreign Princes and Potentates Jealousies of the Power that England would have in the balance of the World by the uniting of the strength of Scotland to it upon the rightful Succession of King Iames to the Monarchy and perhaps rather out of a design to amuse them than out of an humour to put by the thoughts of Mortality Queen Elizabeth did shew so much unwillingness sometimes to hear and speak of her Successor And during the constrained Altum silentium of the Succession then here a Book of the Succession was writ by Father Parsons and which made noise enough in the World as those Letters mention and by which Book the Author intended that our Hereditary Monarchy should be Thunder struck especially with the help of the Papal Breves that came here to obstruct the Succession King Iames at the end of his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs printing a Catalogue of the Lyes of Tortus i. e. Bellarmin with a brief Confutation of them refers to one Lye of Tortus p. 47 viz. In which words of the Breves of Clement the 8th not only King James of Scotland was not EXCLVDED but included rather and the Confutation is thus viz. If the Breves of Clement did not exclude me from the Kingdom but rather did include me why did Garnet burn them Why would he not reserve them that I might have seen them that so he might have obtained more favour at my hands for him and his Catholicks And that King in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 29. refers to the two Breves which Clemens Octavus sent to England immediately before Queen Elizabeth's Death debarring him from the Crown or any other that either would profess or any ways tolerate the Professors of his Religion contrary to the Pope's Manifold Vows and Protestations Simul eodem tempore and as it were delivered uno eodem spiritu to divers of his Majesty's Ministers abroad professing such kindness and shewing such forwardness to advance his Majesty to the English Crown Any one who reads in D' Ossat the inclination of that Pope to Principles and Practices of this kind will not wonder at his Majesty 's thus exposing his Vn-holyness and the nature of the Breves is sufficiently there explained and proved to be according to his Majesty's measures published of them That Great King was sufficiently acquainted with the Principles and Practices of the Papacy that had been so injurious to
Hereditary Monarchs He knew that a Popish Parliament in England had shewed their Abhorrence of the Pope's being somewhat like an Excluder-General of Kings and an Arbitrary one too as appeared by the Words in the Statute of 25 H. 8. viz. The Pope contrary to the inviolable Grants of Iurisdictions by God immediately to Emperors and Kings hath presumed to invest who should please him to inherit in other mens Kingdoms and Dominions which we your Loyal Subjects Spiritual and Temporal abhor and detest and the practices at Rome for King Iames's Exclusion had made deep impressions in his thoughts As he was a Prince of great Reading he could not but know particularly the many Anti-Monarchical Tenets that were published by many Popish Commentators positive Writers School-men Canonists and never censured by any Index Expurgatorius tho yet several Popish Authors who asserted the Power of Kings were so censured and particularly Bodin de Republicâ and he could not be ignorant of Popes having required several Crowned Heads to swear Fidelity to them and their Successors and that particularly the Pope sent Hubertus to require William the Conqueror â—o swear Allegiance and Fidelity to Him and his Successors and who magnanimously refused so to do and that the Papacy endeavoured to root its Power in the World by obliging men in their Oaths of Fidelity to any particular Pope to swear the same likewise to his Successors according to the common Style in those Oaths viz. Fidelis obediens ero Domino Papae c. suis successoribus and that thus too the Oath of all Popish Bishops at their Consecration runs and that the Great Austrian Family had not more carefully secured to it self the Scepters of the Empire by the Constitution of a King of the Romans than the Papacy had made Provision of that King 's being sworn that he would from that time be a Protector and Defender of the Pope and Church of Rome according to those words in the Oath as I find it set down in Magerus viz. Ego N. Rex Romanorum FVTVRVS Imperator promitto spondeo polliceor atque juro Deo leato Petro me de caetero protectorem atque desensorem fore summi Pontisicis sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae c. He had moreover considered the great Fermentation in the minds of so many Loyal People in England by Queen Elizabeth's being so reserved as She was in the business of the Succession and which as Dr. Matthew Hulton Arch-Bishop of York mentioned in a memorable Sermon he preached before her at White-Hall Gave hopes to Foreigners to attempt fresh Invasions and bred fears in many of her Subjects of a new Conquest and who thereupon very loyally said then The only way in Policy left to quell those hopes and asswage those fears were to Establish the Succession and at last intimating as far as he durst saith my Author the nearness of Blood of our present Sovereign he said plainly That the expectations and presages of all Writers went Northward naming without any Circumlocution Scotland There is an Abstract of this Loyal and Learned Sermon and which throughout pointed at the Succession in the History of some of the Bishops of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth printed in the Year 1653 and the fate of the Sermon was such that tho perhaps it tickled not the Ears of that Queen it so far touched her Conscience that the Historian saith She opened the Window of her Closet and gave the Arch-Bishop thanks for it No doubt but Parsons saying in his Book of the Succession That he thought the Affair about it could not be ended without some War did much heighten the Popular Fears of War happening thereupon and 't is most probable the long fear of War in that Fermentation did variously weaken the Kingdom Nor is it a new thought for the long fears of War to be held to bear some proportion to the mischief of War it self in obstructing Trade and Commerce insomuch that several Writers of the Regalia and fiscal matters among the Tractatus Illustrium have told us That Quando timor belli idem operatur quod ipsum bellum remissio sit conductoribus i. e. of the Revenue and hath Entituled them to defalcations We may imagine by the just effects of our late Fermentation what the state of the Body Politick was in that namely like the state of long tormenting anguish in the Body natural upon the pricking of an Artery and importing often more trouble and danger than the cutting of one And by the great triumphant Flame of joy appearing in the Act of Recognition in King Iames's time and which appears in our Statute-Book as I may say lâ—ke a Pyramid of the Fire of Zealous Loyalty and greater and higher than any former Act of that nature we may judge how overjoyed all the Loyal People of England were on his coming to the Crown and as Pliny in his Panegyrick saith of Nerva's adopting Trajan It was impossible it should have pleased all when it was done except it had pleased all before it was done the same might be applied to the Case of King Iames's Succession to the Crown The very Title of the Act speaks the Triumph of the Hereditary Monarchy viz. A Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James his Progeny and Posterity There was an end of all the dreadful inconveniences of the uncertainty of the Succession and of the fears of the People of what was worse than being torn in pieces by wild Hâ—rses I mean the rending their Consciences by contrary Oaths about the Succession as in Harry the 8th's time There was an end of the â—ears from the growing greatness of France and fears of any Foreign Fremuerunt gentes England was restored to it self and Scotland added to it and tho Boccaline like an airy Iâ—genioso in his Politick Touchstone makes England weigh less on the throwing Scotland into the Scales any one will find that in him but grave Romancery who shall consider what with Oracular Wisdom another-guess Statos-man than Boccaline told Harry the 4th I mean D'Ossat in his long Letter to him from Rome Book 7th and Anno 1601. where he saith That the Pope desisted not to hope that his Maiesty might be perswaded by reason of State to endeavour that the Kingdoms of England and Scotland may not be joyned in the Person of one King considering the great mischiefs that the English alone have done to the French more than all other Nations put together c. And indeed that England is at this day preserved not only from the danger of being overbalanced by France but from the loss of its ancient figure of balancing the World must highly be attributed to the Hereditary Monarchy being fixt in the Line of King Iames and to Scotland being thrown into the Scales as was said and if any one shall tell me by the way that the weight of Scotland was prejudicial to Loyalty in
of his Mind that he would never consent to any such thing must necessarily appear to the considerate a Scruple fit to be thrown off Much more then must it appear to such to have been a vile Scruple to have fancied it lawful to pronounce men Enemies to the Kingdom because they so loyally defended the Hereditary Monarchy according to their Oaths in that HOT Conjuncture wherein the Air of mens fancies was so generally infected And as in any long Intervals of extreme hot or cold weather not to participate with the generality of mens bodies in some sensible effects of it would argue somewhat of distemper in ones Constitution so in the late heat of the Populace against Popery it was inconsistent with the soundness of Loyalty not some way to partake of the effects of that heat and as I have sometimes perhaps too much with many other Loyal Persons done I remember to have read it somewhere in a Print full of Wit and Loyalty said with gayety of humour to this purpose viz. That while a whole Nation was drunk meaning I suppose intoxicated with the belief of Witnesses telling incredible things and the Populace being thereupon drunk with Anger and Rage against the Persons of the Papists it was to little purpose for any one man to be sober The Notions that men had of a Plot were very various Some then were so far gone in Credulity as like the Fool that Solomon saith believeth every word they were resolved to believe every thing the Witnesses had said or would say The Loyal generally acquiesced in the Notification of it as published by the Government and thereby discharged part of the Moral Obligations of the Oaths I have discoursed of whereby they were to defend all the RIGHTS and Privileges belonging to the King his Heirs c. and one of those Rights and Privileges is what is allowed by the Law of Nations to all Sovereign Princes namely To have faith given to their publick attestation of any Fact. Yet Religion allowing men the use of the judicium discretionis about the sense and importance of the Writ divinely inspired they modestly employed their Discretion in considering what by the Dii nominales was published and if any thing therein seemed above their reason and not contrary to it their faith rested therein But the Loyal soon found that the fears and jealousies of Popery began more and more to turn into fears and jealousies relating to the Witnesses Veracity and they could not without a profound horror and astonishment reflect on the intoxication of a gaeat Body of Men believing some incarnate Devils in accusing one that had appeared to Christendom as great a Saint of her Sex as the steady practice of all Moral Vertues glorifying a heavenly mind on Earth could render her and who with such a Character must shine as a Star in the History of the Age. That many of the Popish Clergy about that time vainly endeavoured to have their Religion Paramount and had hopes to get their Lands again none will think impossible who have since seen some of our Schismatical Pastors so infatuated as to think it practicable for them again to thrive by their old Religion-Trade And that such particular Persons as were by the late Earl of Clarendon in his Book against Cressy printed in the Year 1673. remarked for the petulant and unruly Spirit that swâ—yed too much among them might continue in the year 1673. no wise man doubted for the said Earl there said The wisest and soberest Catholicks of England did all they could to restrain that petulant and unruly Spirit Many sagacious Protestants who knew the irreligious Principles that the Iesuits Writings swarmed with were apt to fear that there were then endeavours to have some of them practised by some ill men who were Bigots or Paupers and whom necessity might prompt to be mercâ—nary in making disorders in the State. The Iudicious and Learned Bishop Morly was observed then to have some Notion or Idea of a Popish Plot peculiar to himself And as then many had their various Conceptions of the noised Plot so many loyal and serious thinking Persons supposing it to be very unreasonable and barbarous to involve the whole Body of a Religion in the guilt of some particular Persons and on any pretence to bereave them of that freedom in the profession of their Religion that both the Law of the Land and of God allowed them did employ their thoughts and fancies for the reclaiming the Age from the humour of severity then shewed to the Persons of Papists in general The Earl of Anglesy one of his Majesties Great Ministers publickly moved him in the hot Conjuncture to release all Papists and even Priests out of Prison who were not charged with any thing of a Plot. And the Disloyalty of many Nominal Protestants then appearing in their many published Prints it seemed very horrid to all ingenious men that the lives and liberties of Loyal innocent Papists should be sacrificed to feed the humours or appetites of any Beasts of Prey in the Ark of the Protestant Church I speak with Allusion to those thousands of harmless Sheep in Noahs Ark employed in feeding about 20 pair of Carnivorous Beasts there I thank God that while I was a sharer With many of the Loyal in the hatred of the Irreligionary Principles formerly maintained by the Court of Rome and many of its Churchmen and particularly of those of the Iesuits which that Court hath lately disclaimed I have likewise shared with them in the Disclaiming of hatred or enmity to any mens Persons whether Iesuits or Iesuited Protestants and I desire to live no longer than I shall with the most perfect hatred abhor the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace and endeavour to perswade all pretended Protestants but real half-Papists so to hate the same but likewise with a perfect Love to love the Persons of their Brethren-Papists And it is with Justice to be by all men to our Popish fellow-Subjects acknowledged that whatever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of or of any ambitious design of making too great a Figure in the internal Government of the Nation yet that the deportment of the generality of them hath of late appeared with such a face not only of Loyalty but Modesty and Complaisance with his Majesties measures in employing the hands and heads of Protestants of the Church of England in the Management of the great matters of State as is necessarily attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion and the rather for that we have seen at the same time many Factious Anti-Papists to have made a greater Figure in the internal Government of the Kingdom than ever any Papists did in the Reigns of King Iames and the Royal Martyr and to have thereby given disturbance both to the External Government and the Hereditary Monarchy I did observe for some Considerable time after the Plot-epoche somewhat of a becoming Humanity and Gentleness in many Anti-Papists relating