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A77411
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A brief collection of some memorandums: or, Things humbly offered to the consideration of the members of the great convention and of the succeeding Parliament.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing B4555A; ESTC R173274
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9,364
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15
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Swearing Cursing and Blasphemy scarce ever filled the Air of any Climate as here The Devils believe tremble and have such presages of the great day of Judgment that they deprecate their being Tormented before the time so far are they from imprecating their own damnation 3. Drinking Healths hath filled all places with vomit and sometimes with Bloud-shed and slaughter the effect of Drunken Quarrels I enlarge no farther as were easy to do and nothing could excuse for saying so much of this in an intended Breviate but that certainly there is nothing so Necessary to the Nations welfare as Repentance and Reformation see if you please Luke 13.3 5. and Jer. 18. verse 6 7 8 9 10. c. For remedy against the Debauchery which has been apparently encreasing almost these Thirty years the things next mentioned are heartily and humbly wished 1. That there may be appointed solemn humiliation Fasting and Prayer throughout the Kingdom And what if the Ministers such as are able might in so extraordinary a case and duty be allowed the use of their own gifts without being limited by some new Collects 2. That the Court may be exemplary for Sobriety and Vertue If Whoring Healthing Swearing and Cursing c. be discountenanced there it will be a signal and publique Blessing Regis ad exemplum totus c. And so if the Nobility and Gentry would follow the good example of a temperate and vertuous Prince how happy might we be 3. Good Justices of the Peace and inferior Magistrates of all sorts What Heart can a Drunken Swearing or Whoring Justice have to punish or with what face can he punish those Vices in others 4. Good Ministers of which somewhat before 5. Good Laws made and executed against the Vices of the times without such little Penaltys annexed as rather encourage to them than deter from them 6. Some Law for ejecting Justices of Peace and inferior Magistrates for common Swearing Drunkenness Whoring and other gross Debauchery's if commonly practised upon conviction by a Jury 7 Some like remedy for scandalous Ministers 8. Some wish for a Law against lend profane and lascivious Plays If any of these seem to any to be points of too high a Reformation for the present season in faece Romuli to him who humbly Offers them to consideration it shall be sufficient to have willed and wisht them And they must be waited for until we come nearer to the time of the new Jerusalem for it 's hoped that by that time or before it The Kingdoms of this World will become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ c. 8. Laws against Protestant Dissenters as such and the severe Execution of them as some think have been and ever will be of an apparent tendency both to Popery and Slavery and to every thing else that 's naught Papists as since appears industriously promoted some of them The Design of this Paper allows not long discourse about Liberty of Conscience Books have been written Pro and Con. Christs Doctrine abhors Persecution for Religion and Persecution of Protestants by Protestants for Non-conformity to things which the one part confesses in their own nature indifferent the other believes and avows judging onely for themselves without censuring others to be uninstituted and sinful is most unnatural as well as Vnprotestantly A Dog they say will not eat of a Dog Laws intended against Papists have been interpreted and executed against Protestants together with other Laws expresly made against Dissenting Protestants Peaceable and Religious meetings beyond all express Laws and to eek them out as not sufficiently severe have been arbitrarily punished as Riots Do these things please God because they please wicked or superstitious men Scarce any Law as some think has made a more direct invasion upon Magna Charta than those against Conventicles as in other respects so in the way appointed for conviction by any one Justice without a Jury And who knows but Himself or his Wife may be a Dissenter before they die and his Children be such after him The Liberties Estates Trades Dwellings Country yea Lives of good and peaceable Subjects are by one or other of these Laws exposed to loss for worshipping God in the best manner they can because of some inconformity to the common mode Tantum Religio potuit c. A worthy House of Commons in Parliament I think two of them in the latter end of the Reign of King Charles the Second after the Discovery of the Popish Plot Voted against the Execution of the Penal Laws against Protestant Dissenters But alas they were Abhorred for it one of the most disingenuous actions of a people towards their own Representatives and such wise Senators that have been seen My Lords the Bishops have as is reported not only by former but later promises put their Fellow-Protestants the Dissenters in Hope of a due Liberty which must be full and without any ensnaring Condition or else it will not be accounted due For although the Dissenters thankfully receive Liberty to worship God according to their Light as an Almes from the Government yet they suppose it in its full Latitude their Due by Christ's Law And they Hope that this Great and Wise Prince whose Heart God has touched with such a Zeal for the Protestant Religion will be under God a great Instrument of breaking every Yoke and letting the Oppressed go free and thereby unite all Protestants to a chearful and unanimous Defence of their Countrey and Opposition to Popery That no Protestant Dissenter may say Wherefore were the former days better than these And alas that Papists should deal better with us than Fellow Protestants like the old Lamentation Heu quod praestet infidelitas quod non praestitit fides If Popery give Liberty to Protestants is not Popery in this become Protestantism and if Protestants persecute Fellow-Protestants is not Protestantism in this become Popery I allude to Rom. 2.25 26 27. Now in this matter there is a two-fold Wish and Petition 1. To the Great Convention which although it consists of the same Lords which usually constitute the House of Peers in Parliament and of the same Commons for number and manner of Election which usually constitute the House of Commons in Parliament Yet being the Representative of the whole Kingdom gathered together in an extraordinary case and manner and for extraordinary ends it seemeth to be something greater and of greater power than a Parliament If the whole Nation thus assembled shall deliberate about and settle a New Government as if they were to begin the World again this seemeth to be a Transcendent Extraordinary and Original power beyond what they could exert as a Parliament And they who can do this what can they not do cui licet quod majus est ei id quod minus est non debet non licere And though this great Convention may think fit to leave the repealing or altering of particular Statutes to the ordinary legislative
A Brief Collection of some Memorandums OR Things humbly Offered to the Consideration of the Members of the Great Convention and of the succeeding Parliament ADVERTISEMENT This Collection was designed for the Great Convention at their first Sitting but by a Miscarriage was delayed however the worthy Author thought it not altogether unseasonable to offer it to the Consideration of the Members of this present Parliament 1. TOuching the Present State of the Kingdom into which we are brought by the most wonderful works of God lately wrought among us The Design of this Paper permits not to enlarge They who please may peruse Psal 2.10 11 12. Psal 102.15 to v. 23. Psal 118.23 Rev. 19.1 2 c. 2. By general consent of the late printed Papers The two great evils lately feared and to be obviated are Popery and Slavery 3. What then is to be done Quid igitur agendum an old Athenian Question fit in this case to be decided only by the Supreme Authority But some Particulars among many which wiser men may suggest are humbly propounded to consideration In a great Fire kindled every one is allowed to bring his Bucket of water I. As to Popery and for preventing its return may it be considered 1. Whether there should not be a Bill of Exclusion Vide 13 Eliz. c. 13. larger than the former endeavoured in Parliament viz. to render any Papist uncapable of Reigning here If the former Bill had passed some think our late and present dangers had been in a great measure prevented They who opposed that Bill do now see what have been the effects and consequents of it s not passing and the extreme danger of the Kingdom has put them and others upon such a course as seems to some to have out-done all the so often decryed proceedings of 1641. One day teaches another and the latter goes to School to to the former And as a branch of such new Bill were it not meet to provide against the Linsey-Woolsey marriages of our Protestant Princes with Papists The World is wide enough Fit Protestant Matches for them may be found 2. That Papists be rendred uncapable of at least great Offices in the Kingdom 3. That it be made very Penal for Jesuites to come upon English ground It may be Castration might be a better remedy than Death They are the known Boutefeu's of the World And even some Popish Governments suffer them not 4. That Great endeavours be used for instructing the People in the principles of Christian Religion and arming them by sound Doctrine and especially by sincere Conversion to God against the errors of Popery 5. That to this end a Godly Ministry be sought and encouraged 'T is a miserable defect in the Ministry of a Nation where any evidence of Regeneration is not so much as desired in the Ministers nor made any qualification of the Persons admitted If with out Regeneration no man enters into the Kingdom of God i. e. becomes a true Christian which seems a considerable part of the meaning of those words of our Saviour to Nicodemus then surely this should be desired in all Candidates to the Ministry Whereas according to ordinary practices a very small portion of saecular learning procures Admission by Ordination And we have too many Ministers who are not Christians in Christ's sense Yea who do not so much as pretend to any internal Regeneration but are far from the Kingdom of God immersed in Vice haters of persons and things which are good This intends no reflection upon the worthy and good Ministers of the Church of England 6. Many good men wish with the principal Bishops in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign such as Jewel Sands Horn Coxe Grindal and before them Hooper That the Popish Vestments with all the other remnants of Popery might be thrown out of the Churches and out of the minds of the People See Dr. Burnet's Letters First Letter pa. 42 43 44. 7. There is nothing which has a more Natural and Moral tendency to both the evils lately complained of i.e. Popery and Slavery than the abounding of wickedness in the Land It may be questioned whether the Nation was more vitious in the ancient times of Paganism or Popery than it hath been of late under Protestancy though this is the Doctrine of God our Saviour Vice and sensuality prepare men to hate and desert the Gospel which condemns them in all those wicked practices that they resolve to persist in and to embrace Popery which offers them so many Wise Medicines and reliefs against sin and its guilt without troubling them with the harder taks of Faith Repentance and Reformation of Life And it 's not much to be doubted but it has been a piece of Modern Policy to prepare the Kingdom both for Popery and Slavery by an industrious promoting of Vice and Immorality That it hath lately fallen out that the whole Nation good and bad as one Man hath been so unanimous and zealous for Protestant Religion in opposition to Popery doth not evince that Vice prepares not for Popery but is to be considered as a Stupendious and Extraordinary working of the Divine Providence such as 't is hard to parallel out of History And besides this may make even the worst of men stand up for Protestant Religion against Popery viz. because Popery threatens the loss of Church-Lands and other emoluments and is a more costly Religion than Protestancy Priestly Absolution admission to the Sacrament Burial in sure and certain hope c. are to be had among some Protestants upon cheaper terms than the undergoing of imposed Penances and Freedom from an imaginary Purgatory among the Papists Popish Pardons must be well paid for and when purchased what are they worth And then secondly How does Vice debase mens spirits and render a Nation tanquam ad servitutem natam Few generous Thoughts tending to their Country's freedom and good lodge in sensual breasts or arise out of the fumes of a constant Intemperance The wise and good Patriots are virtuous and read somewhat else besides Plays Romances or an Observator And as Debauchery naturally disposes to Slavery so also morally For when men give up themselves to be slaves to their Lusts God if they repent not will make them slaves to Rulers 'T is a Grave Observation of Dr. Burnet concerning the City of Strasburgh See his 4th Let. p. 222. That before they lost their Liberty and fell under the French Yoke Corruption in Morals had overspread the whole City together with a popular Pride and Self-confidence To say We are a most vicious and sinful People is not nor is intended to reproach our Nation It 's too manifest to be denyed we declare our sin as Sodom Vice hath from an Impure Fountain over-spread the whole Nation 1. I have known one of the condition but of a Day-Labourer who with impunity and impudence owned himself to keep a Miss in his Cottage in compliance with Great Examples 2. Such Hellish