Popish Of reckoning up the pernicious endeavours of the Sectaries in consort with the Devilish Designs of the Papists And as if this were not sufficient to declare what they mean they not only take upon them to thank His Majesty For not passing Limitations or Nullifications of such wholesome Acts as were designed for Preservation of the Reformed Religion especially the 35th of Queen Elizabeth and for not suffering that Law and others made against Conventicles to be Repealed but they humbly pray His Majesty that those Laws now in force may vigorously speedily and equally be put in Execution against all Papists and Protestant Dissenters And particularly that the Statutes of the third of King James and the five and thirtieth of Queen Elizabeth may be put and continued in their due Execution It is something strange to find a company of men so zealous for the Protestant Religion when divers of them are the Disgrace and Reproach of any Religion which they take upon them to profess But can we believe that they are Protestants or at least that they understand the Protestant Interest who represent Dissenters as equally dangerous to the Government Established Religion as the Papists are It would administer a ground of too ill an Opinion of our Supreme Rulers and Publick Ministers should they allow and approve what these men have suggested For are there any among the Dissenters that have sworn Obedience to a Forreign Power that they should be thus put into the same List of dangerous persons to the Government with the Papists Or is there any Security that the Legislative Power can require of them for their Peaceableness that they are not willing and ready to give Yea Is not the Religion of the Dissenters established by Law as well as that of the Conformists tho' there be some things Ordained as the Accoutrements and Modes of the National Religion which the Non-Conformists cannot submit unto For as the only Foundation upon which the Dissenters go is that their Faith and Worship are agreeable and according to the Scripture which is the alone Rule of the mind of God to all his People in what they are to believe and perform So from the Authority which the Scripture hath allowed unto it by the Law of this Land and by the Consonancy of their Doctrine to the Establish'd Articles of Faith they humbly conceive that they have the countenance and warranty of the Law for their Religion Nor doth the Law disallow or forbid any thing which they profess it only enjoyns some further things which they cannot come up to And as the Dissenters do not oppose any one Doctrinal Article of the Church of England so they blame and judge no man for the Canonical Obedience that they promise to the Bishops or their Conformity to the Ceremonies but merely beg that themselves may be excused And should they be gratified as to all which in our present circumstances they do desire it would amount only to this That they may Preach the Gospel without being liable to Imprisonment Fines and Banishment Nor do they covet Ecclesiastical Preferments or Parochial Maintainance tho' were it not for some things which are made the Tests to those Places and Advantages and which without any Inconveniency might be laid aside there are many of them that are as worthy of them as others Neither can that which is stiled the Church of England suffer any diminution in the number of its Members by an Indulgence to Protestant Dissenters having both this will I give thee and thus saith the Migistrate on their side unless the Clergy should fall short in Abilities for their Function and in having Thus saith the Lord to plead for them But how dare these persons who have subscribed the Addresses assume the confidence to censure Parliaments for going about to repeal Laws which by woful Experience have been found not only useless but inconvenient both to the Protestant Religion and the Safety of the Kingdom For as Parliaments have Power to Enact Laws so they have the same Power to Abolish them whensoever they find that instead of answering the Ends which they were made for they have proved prejudicial to the Common Good And surely one may humbly say and that without the least Reflection upon the Grace and Favour with which the Addresses have been received that two Parliaments so fairly and unanimosly chosen and consisting of Gentlemen of the Chiefest Quality best Parts greatest Wisdom most plentiful Estates and firmest Integrity to the Interest of Religion and the Nation and all except a very few Zealous Sons of the Church and unfained Defenders of the present Hierarchy Discipline Forms and Rites of Worship were in all probability as able and likely to know what will let in or keep out Popery what will preserve us from or betray us into the hands and power of the Papists as Twenty or Thirty persons in a County or Corporation most of whom are not worth Forty Shillings Freehold a year and many of them not able to speak Ten words of sense together But it is easie to conjecture who in divers places set these Addressers at work and who put that in reference to Protestant Dissenters into so many Addresses namely either persons Popishly inclined that they might thereby continue and heighten our differences and make us the more easily a prey to Rome or some ignorant Clergy-men who besides their enmity at Phanaticks have little else to recommend them to the obtaining a common and civil respect but their Cassock and their Surplice SECT XIX And as if all this that I have with the greatest sincerity and justice represented unto you were not enough to blast the credit of the Addresses and to oppose the weakness and folly of such as have subscribed them there is something yet further and which is infinitely more pernicious that they pursue and aim at namely to possess His Majesty and the World with a belief that there is a design carried on by Protestants against the King and the Government Hence they not only thank His Majesty For recollecting the several steps and advances by which we were betrayed into our former confusions but take upon them to observe that there are some ill men who labour the subversion of our Religion Liberties and Properties under the specious pretence of Reformation being the same method that they brought to pass all the miseries of Vsurpation and Tyranny that this Kingdom lately groan'd under and that being seasoned with the old leaven of Common-wealth Principles they have endeavoured to make a misunderstanding betwixt His Majesty and his people and to throw us back into the same confusion we were delivered from by His Majesties happy Restauration and that not only the good order and quiet of the Government hath been most wickedly attempted to be disturbed and shaken but to be overthrown and utterly subverted and the very Monarchy it self to be destroyed Surely had these persons who
in it self and will be found so in the issue that they contain and express only the sentiments of a few persons of little interest and most of them of a very small and mean figure in the Nation For if Elections of Members to serve in Parliament be the best standard to judge the disposition of the Kingdom by it is not so long since we had an opportunity of feeling the Pulse of the Nation but that we may reasonably conclude that all other things remaining as they did the temper and complexion of the generality of the people is also much the same And whensoever His Majesty shall either find himself obliged from the necessity of His Affairs or from the goodness of His Inclinations be pleased to call a Parliament How little will he upon a disappointment of what he is made to believe and expect judge himself indebted to those who have so industriously deluded him SECT VI. And as they are no ways subservient to His Majesties profit or service so neither will they in the event prove so useful either to a Popish or Arbitrary Design as some do apprehend Not that any think the King knows of such a Design promoted by them but there are those who may have ends in this as in the Dutch-War and Black-Heath-Army which His Majesty was not aware of But tho' some little creatures may have ultimately aim'd at some such thing by promoting of them yet such villanous designs are in charity to be supposed far from the intentions of most that have subscribed them And accordingly when divers of the most zealous Actors in the carrying them on have been calmly told what were the natural and ill tendencies of them they have solemnly professed that they would sooner be hanged at their own dores than be intentionally accessory to the establishing a Despotical Rule over the Nation or the enslaving the Kingdom to Popery again Nay it is to be hoped that should either or both these at any time hereafter more neerly and visibly threaten England that many of the present Addressers will in their lawful stations be amongst the most forward and zealous to withstand them Nor will they in such a case find any way to expiate their indiscretion and attone for their present folly but by thus demonstrating that it was no part of their intention hereby to contribute to these things And should any in the List of the late Thanksgivers be hereafter found to have promoted Addresses with a prospect of introducing either Tyranny or the Papal worship the names and pretences of Law and the Protestant Religion which they have not only flourished their Papers with but made His Majesties promise of preserving them the ground of their acknowledgments and the foundation of the Tenders which they have made of their Lives and Fortunes will entail an everlasting infamy upon them and render them the objects of all mens contempt and indignation And in the mean time the jealousies and fears which some are said to have conceived of a Popish and Arbitrary design at the bottom of the Addresses do by quickning the watchfulness of the Nation serve not only to countermine but to give them a total disapointment therein SECT VII Nor yet in the next place is the number of the Subscribers so considerable as to bear any proportion to those who are against them For tho' a few busie people have made a great noise and buz in several places of the Kingdom yet all of them put together make not so great a number as we have seen not long since to one Petition for a Parliamant So that it is matter of wonder that the Government for its own reputation hath not in some publick way prohibited and forbid them and especially when it finds that after all the neglect and scorn which the Addressers are exposed unto for their paucity and fewness yet they have not the discretion to forbear and desist Sir you must needs have observed by reading the Gazett's where you have the Inventory of them that almost all the Counties and the most principal Cities such as London and York and the chiefest Towns and Corporations have forbore and declined presenting any And I may add that even where they have been obtained not One in Ten and in some places not One in a Hundred had any hand in or gave concurrence to them For if it be allowed as in justice as well as modesty it ought that whosoever have either avoided or refused subscribing are as truely to be judged against them as they who have positively withstood or directly opposed them then the Tale of the Addressers will make but a very small show and appearance in the muster Roll of the Nation SECT VIII And this is the rather to be taken notice of and doth the better evidence what opinion the people have of them if you consider the means ways arts and methods that have been used and taken to advance and promote them For besides that most of the Clergy and many in the present Commissions both Civil and Military as well as several of the Magistrates of Corporations have not only interested themselves in countenancing but been sticklers for them as for the great Charter or Petition of Right The Grace and Favour with which they have been received and the marks and characters of honour which have been conferred upon divers that presented them who for ought the world knows had no signal matter else to recommend them were very proper means to have procured an universal and national application And yet neither the influence of those who pretend to prescribe unto the understandings as well as to direct and conduct the Consciences of men nor the authority and advice of those to whom all are willing to pay a respect and obedience in whatsoever their Interest Religion and the Law will suffer them nor yet the hopes of Titles and Honours which some merely for that service have in the truest sence been loaded with have been effectual to prevail with or bring over any great or valuable number to joyn in them And should I tell you what other Arts have been pursued to obtain men to Address you would say that either a sullen crosness or some more generous principle had possessed the Nation that persons should every where so generally refuse and withstand them SECT IX And if you more narrowly enquire into the condition of those that are engaged in the Addresses you will find their quality for the most part as inconsiderable as their number The greatest part of those who have given thanks for Dissolving Parliaments are such as either for want of years or poverty were never capable of giving a Vote in Election of Members to sit in them Setting aside Two or Three or a few more in a Town or Corporation that have embark't in them the greatest part are made up of the scum and refuse of the places where they live Norwich whence we have been alarm'd with
in its due and Legal course of Descent and undertake to sacrifice their Lives to preserve the Kings Heirs and lawful Successors And offer their Lives and Fortunes to his Majesties Disposal for this purpose All people do sufficiently understand what they aim at and that the meaning of all this is That they would have the Duke of York come to the Throne But I wish they had shown so much Ingenuity and Candour as to have taken notice and acknowledged that all His Majesties Subjects are as tender of the Preservation of the Monarchy and as zealous to have it continued in the Royal Line as any of themselves dare pretend to be For it is more than probable that nothing so much influenced the bringing and pressing the Bill of Exclusion as a regard to the Preservation of the Monarchy which some of the best wisest and most Loyal of His Majesty's Subjects think the coming to have a Popish King may shake and endanger especially considering what this Nation felt from the last Papist that possest the Throne and how it hath been of late and still is threatned by the Bloody Conspiracies of the Romish Party Besides it had not been amiss if our late Addressers had owned that the King Lords and Commons have a Power to dispose of the Succession as they shall judge most conducible to the Safety Interest and Happiness of the Kingdom and that he is His Majesties Heir and Successor upon whom the whole Legislative Power shall think meet to settle the Inheritance of the Crown Nor would it have misbecome men professing the Protestant Religion and tender of English Liberties to have recommended to His Majesties second Thoughts and maturer Advice what three several Parliaments have with so much strength of Reason insisted upon and with so much earnestness pursued and desired And I wish they were able to tell us what they mean when at the same time that they engage to defend the Protestant Religion they vow to the last drop of their Blood to stand by the next Successor And the rather because there is some reason to believe that many of them will not be over-forward to dye Martyrs It would be also some satisfaction to be instructed how they think to defend the Crown in the Preservation whereof they pretend to be ready To sacrifice themselves and all they have seeing by being willing to admit a Papist to be King they consent to the robbing it of the Supremacy which is one of the brightest Jewels in it However it is some comfort that one end of setting on foot and carrying on these Addresses being to make a Survey and obtain a List of all that were for the Duke of York they do not upon the Muster-Rolls appear so many as to endanger the Nation in a Civil War in case the King should hereafter so far comply with the humble Requests of his People as to be willing to pass the Bill of Exclusion if tendred to him by a future Parliament SECT XVI But besides what is already said concerning the Quality and Design of the said Addresses there is this farther tendency in them all namely to insinuate to the Nation that we have and enjoy a sufficient Security for our Religion Lives and Liberties For as if it were not enough to acknowledge as all His Majesties Liege-people do His Majesties Easie Just and most Gracious Government since His Restoration and to testifie their sense of the Felicity and Happiness which all His Majesties Subjects have most comfortably enjoyed under a most Regular Gracious and Peaceful Government They are pleased further to add that His Majesties Promise in his late Declaration Of adhering to the Laws of the Land and making them the Rule of his Government is not only sufficient to allay all mens Fears and Jealousies remove the Misunderstandings of all well-meaning and reasonable People and give us all possible assurance of enjoying the greatest Liberty and best Religion that any people in the world have but that no greater Security can be had or hoped for in order to the enjoying our Religion Liberties and Properties than His Majesties Royal Word to Govern by the Laws Whereas not only four Parliaments have represented and declared the manifold Dangers by which our Religion Lives and Properties are threatned and encompassed and how difficult if not impossible it is to preserve and secure them from the Designs that are laid against them but the King also hath been pleased to signifie the same and that as well in several Proclamations published for the informing of His People as in divers Speeches to His two Houses of Parliament whose Advice He both thereupon required and also that effectual Laws might be made for the obviating and preventing those many Mischiefs and Dangers that are impending over us And if the King 's hitherto governing by Law hath not been sufficient to discourage our Popish Enemies from Conspiring our Destruction Can it be apprehended That His Majesties adherence to the Laws for the future will remove the Jealousies and allay the Fears which we have of the Papists Besides tho' His Majesty is always to be supposed resolved and inclined to Govern by Law yet there want not too many Instances wherein His Ministers that are trusted with the Administration of Justice have to the great prejudice of the Subject and the Alarming the whole Nation failed in their Duty Our dreadful Apprehensions do not proceed from any ill Opinion which we have of the King but from the implacable Hatred which the Romish Faction bear as well against Him as His Protestant Subjects and from the Corruption of those Officers of Justice who do either abuse or pervert the Law to base Ends or hinder its due and Legal Execution Nor is it our having good Laws but their being truely executed that will advantage and relieve us and therefore we are to be pardoned tho' we profess our selves doubtful of our security by them whilst some that have been entrusted with the administration of them are suffered to escape the punishments which they have deserved for obstructing their course and for perverting of them And what if we should with all thankfulness acknowledg that we are in some security during His Majesties Life will the Laws which we have without some farther and more effectual provision before His Majesties Death contribute much to our safety when we shall hereafter have a Popish King to Reign over us But can these men be supposed in earnest when they tell us that the Nation is in no danger while the Papists continue so active to extirpate the Northern Heresie and are in a more hopeful way to effect it than ever Alas the Popish Plot instead of being defeated is not so much as yet throughly detected And instead of the Papists being dismay'd by that discovery which hath been made or by the justice which hath been inflicted upon some of the Criminals they are only enflam'd to prosecute their divelish conspiracy
they present their Acknowledgments to His Majesty For timely preventing by Dissolving those Parliaments the Designs of Ill men who in the same Age were a second Time attempting by the same Methods as formerly the destruction of His Loyal Subjects the diminution of his Lawful Power and the debasing the Grandeur of the English Throne I know not by what Name these false and slanderous Accusations charged upon two Parliaments ought to be called but it is to be hop d that the next Parliament will at once tell the Nation by what name the Law stiles them and what Punishment it hath allotted for those that have made themselves Guilty of so 〈◊〉 and scandalous an Aspersion as that two Parliaments had gone about to destroy the Protestant Religion as Legally established and to extirpate Monarchy Whereas these excellent persons of which the two last Houses of Commons consisted had many of them ventured their Lives and lost their Estates for the Monarchy and all of them were such as upon Principles of Reason and from Inclination are true Lovers of it They not only had too late and sad Experience of a Commonwealth to be fond of returning to it again but they know that no other Government can agree with the Genius of the People and suit the ballance of the Nation but a well-Regulated Monarchy such as ours is by the Laws of our Constitution Nor can His Majesty be supposed to believe that ever they will prove true to the Monarchy who are not true to the Rights and Priviledges of Parliament For they who can revile and despise one Essential part of the Constitution have nothing to oblige them to adhere to the other but the prospect of Preferment or worldly Gain And to see men countenanced that revile any one part of the Legislative Authority may be too ill a president and which His Majesty is obliged to see redressed from the Love that he beareth to the Crown For whosoever strikes at Parliaments does by undermining the Government as by Law Established shake the very Pillars of the Throne SECT XXI Nor do they only intimate a Design carried on against the Government but they insinuate a Change to be made by Force and upon that supposal while we are in and to the apprehensions of all sober persons likely to continue in perfect Peace they offer their Lives and Fortunes to the disposal of one part of our Legislative Constitution and Power in opposition to another We yield say they our Lives and Fortunes at Your Majesties Command and will to the last drop of our Blood and Penny of our Fortunes stand by your Majesty in the Defence of Your Royal Person Crown and Government and Lawful Successors So that by reading the Addresses one would be inclined to think that these men construe the King's Declaration as the Erection of the Royal Standard and that they intend these Papers for the Muster-Rolls of those that are to fight under His Majesties Ensigns But as we hope that His Majesty will never have occasion for War unless it be in relieving his Allies abroad against the Ambition of France who to all his other Invasions upon the Dominions of his Neighbours is at this time about employing his Forces against the Subjects of His Majesties Kinsman the Prince Palatine so we hope that both in that Case and in any other wherein His Wisdom and Justice will suffer Him to engage He shall not only have the Treasure of all his People through the Gift of a Parliament at His Command but all their Persons and Lives ready to be Sacrificed in His Service It is no marvel that such thirst after War who have little to live upon in Time of Peace and who may expect to be Gainers by Troubles But His Majesty who besides the care He is to to have of the Lives and Estates of all his Subjects hath more to lose Himself alone than all his People will not I judge be prevailed upon to hearken to rash and heady Councels And how unequal ought they to apprehend themselves to the Body of the Nation who whâ—n they have had the Folly and Confidence to present an Address in the Name of a whole County have at the same time acknowledged That they were not able to carry it for any that His Majesty might be inclined to recommend to serve in the next Parliament for the Shire SECT XXII The last thing I would observe concerning the Addresses is their making small numbers of men without previous advice had with each other and without being authorised or entrusted to judge of the State of the Kingdom For tho' it be lawful for any one man and much more for any number of men to represent to His Majesty their own wants and dangers and accordingly beg redress and relief yet to declare the State of the Nation belongs to no number of private persons whatsoever but appertains only to the Parliament as being the Representative of the whole Kingdom And therefore the Addressers by assuming to themselves a Right and Authority to determine about the State of the Nation and to judge concerning those things which the Trustees of all the people met in the great Councel are only proper and by Law allowed to meddle with have in my apprehension made too near an approach to the altering the whole Government And as they must expect that the judgment which they have passed upon persons and things will at one time or another come under a review so matters which have either been misrepresented by them or in reference to which Parliaments have been arraigned may before then come to be so well understood by His Majesty and all things so well adjusted between him and his people that the Addressers may neither find themselves able to decline nor be in a condition to controll the jurisdiction of the next Parliament to which we shall at present leave them SECT XXIII But whereas you may be ready to enquire that if the Addresses be so pernicious both in the subject matter and tendency of them and so contrary to the general sense of the Nation as I have declared why the people do not by Petitions from all parts of the Kingdom let the King know so much This I shall return you a just and true answer unto and then discharge you from any further trouble 1st It is the nature and temper of some men most to disserve the cause and prejudice the interest which they have espoused when they are quietly let alone to run their course and to take their full swing For according to the old Proverb Give some People Rope enough and they will Hang themselves The only way to know what they would be at was for others to look silently on a while And through giving them scope their own madness and folly hath made them more ridiculous than any opposition whatsoever from others could have rendred them 2dly The Petition first from my Lord Mayor the Court of Aldermen and the Common-Councel of London and then from the Common-Hall is a Copy of what all the Nation would say In London as in a Glass we see the face of the whole Kingdom For being the Epitome as well as Metropolis of the Nation whatsoever it says is a compendious expressing of the sense of England 3dly Men have been willing to forbear Petitioning lest by the disparity in the numbers to Petitions and to Addresses some thinking all safe through the consideration of the multitude that aim d at what themselves did might grow more secure than their dangers will well allow and lest others upon the same inducement might have taken occasion to grow more insolent than their duty and interest obligeth them unto 4thly His Majesty having received the Addresses with that favour which he did wise men thought it best not to administer occasion of his refusing Petitions that they foresaw would come accompanied with more hands It is good manners in Subjects not to grate too hard upon their Prince but if he have done any thing wherein they can t acquiesce with that contentment which they desire to give him time and liberty to recollect himself 5thly If Petitions shall be judged either necessary or convenient it is not so late but that they may be yet set on foot And if it should prove uneasie for any to find it so they must blame themselves who by their unwearied carrying on of Addresses make it needful for His Majesties good Subjects at last to undeceive him which they can no other way do at least till a Parliament come but by Petitions I am June 28. 81. SIR Your most ready and Humble Servant FINIS ERRATA PAge 8. l. 19. for was r. is p. 9. l. 3. del that p. 14. for an r. and. p. 21. l. 12. after bringing add in p. 32. l. 24. for oppose r. expose Address from Chatham Address from Darby Addr. from Barnstable Addr. from Haslemere Addr. from the Western Division of Sussex Addr. from Exon. Addr. from Norwich Addr. from Bristol Addr. from Norwich 4 Ed. 3. cap. 14. 36. Ed. 3. cap. 10. Addr. from the County of Somerset Addr. from Cambridge Ripon Western Division of Surrey Addr. from Hertford Addr. from Monmouth Addr. from Derby and from the Military Officers of Surrey Addr. from Bristol and from Derset Addr. from Lynn Regis Clifton Dartmouth Harness Grand Inquest of the County of Oxon Bristol c. Address from Ripon Addr. from Salisbury Address from Clifton Dartmouth Harness c. Addr. from Norwich Addr from the Western Division of Surrey Address from Norwich Address from Ripon Addr. from Southwark Addr. from Bristol Addr. from Reading Addr. from Derby Addr. from Monmouth Addr. from Ludlow Addr. from some in the Middle-Temple Addr. from the Deputy-Lieuten c. of Somorset Addr. from Eye in Suffolk Addr. from Okehampton Addr. from Norwich Addr. from Winchester Addr. from Bristol Addr. from Cardiffe Addr. from Monmouth Addr. from Bedford-shire