is for Arbitrary Power they will say a Papist And in cases where the people do not think fit to begin with Execution Common Fame goes for proof against such a Minister and the political whispers of other Great Men who inspire them goe for demonstrations and they think knocking down Arbitrary Power with Arbitrary proof is a good baculiâ—um argumentum ad hominem or rather a Monster of power for as such they look on one of the People who is so by the head higher then themselves I know none to have observed the constitution and customes of the Government of Venice better then your Lordship and there any one that is but Arbitrarily affected as our term is here Popishly affected is taken volly before he comes to the ground or at furthest at his first rebound and his head made a Tennis Ball before he comes to be bandi'd among the people I mean he is first Sumonarily dispatcht or made away and his plenary process is dispatcht or made up afterward Your Lordship hath in the course of your travels been there in person but my eyes have only beheld it as a traveller in Mapps and Authors one of whom namely Boccaline in his Raggnagli di Parnasse Speaking of Venice saith that the dreadful Tribunal of the Councel of ten and the Supream Magistracy of the State-Inquisition could with three ballotting balls easily bury alive any Caesar or Pompey who began to discover himself in that well governed State. And according to the Lawes of that Country any aspirer of the first rate so sunk by the shot of the ballotting balls may be said to be kill'd very fairly though there was no more Citation in the case then in that of the Martyrdom of Sir Edmond Godfrey who yet according to the principles of the Canon Law was likewise killed very fairly I here allude to the Style of the brothers of the blade who when sworn at a Tryal about one murthered in a Duel usually depose that he was killed very fairly And indeed I have by a Neighbour of mine who is a Civilian been shewn it in a Civil Law Book called the Second Tome of the Common Opinions in folio Book 9. p. 462. Printed at Lions that Rebellis impunè occidi possit tunc demum probari declarari quod erat rebellis And the Canonists do as I am informed by him all agree that valet argumentum à crimine laesae Majestatis seâ— rebellionis ad heresim and with good reason according to the Popish hypothesis for that he that is a heretic is a Rebell or Traytor to the Pope and therefore a Heretic by that Law may be destroyed before his Process is made But the Kings of England like those of Israel are merciful Kings and in the Laws of England Iustice and Mercy are still saluting each other and with as much kindness as they can possibly shew without embracing each other to death and the meanest Commoners Life in England becomes not a forfeit to the Law but after a Tryal by his equals and in this our Law agrees with that gentleness and equity inculcated by Grotius de Iure Belli Pacis Book 3. Chap. 14. Temperamentum circa captos § 3. where he saith Cato Censorius narrante Plutarcho si quis servus Capital admisisse videretur de eo supplicium non sumebat nisi postquam damnatus esset etiam Conservorum judicio Quicum conferenda verba Iob. 31. 13. I must confess I was very much shock't with one expression used in a long Speech by one of the managers of the House of Commons in the Trial of the Earl of Strafford wherein the saying That Beasts of Prey are to have no Law was applyed to the Earl. I am sure that Wolfs and Boars are Beasts of the Forrest as well as Harts and Hinds and in the Kings Forrests where they are in his protection they are to have Law and so likewise Foxes To this Metaphor of hunting of men in Parliament there is an allusion in the printed Letter of Mr. Alured in Rushworths Collections 4 o. Caroli where 't is said That Sir Edward Cooke in the House protested that the Author and cause of all their miseries was the Duke of Buckingham which was entertain'd and answered with a cheerful acclamation of the House as when one good Hound recovers the scent the rest come in with a full cry So they pursued it and every one came on home and layed the blame where they thought the fault was But yet by this saying of Alured it seems they thought they were to give him Law and 't is a brutish thing to suppose that wild predatory Beasts have in the Kings Forrests more protection and more exemption from being arbitrarily hunted down than his Liege people to whom he is sworn have in the whole Realm in general and in his Courts of Justice in particular That time seemed not so much 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But your Lordships knowledg in the Laws of the Land and in the Laws of Nations is so universal and profound that you can come to no Court in the World but will either find Law there or bring it and your great knowledg of the Parliamentary Transactions in all past Ages cannot but secure you against any apprehensions of not finding Law. For it hath been rarely seen that a House of Commons has gone to hunt any man down tho with the Law that was not a Nimrod a Mighty hunter of our Laws themselves and never was the House of Peers thought a Court of Rigor and Cruelty and as the Tribunal of Cassius was for its dire severity called Scopulus Reorum In the end of the famous Tryal of the Earl of Strafford the House of Commons foresaw that the Lords would acquit him and therefore they broke up the Judicial prosecution against him and proceeded by Bill of Attainder and shortly after broke in pieces on his Grave the Rule and Standard of Treason they proceeded by as Heralds break their Staffs at the Funerals of Illustrious Persons and cast them into their Tombes Had I been one of that Lords Judges I should have consented that after he had been hunted so long by the Prosecution for Treason and was not Judicially convicted of it he should have had the priviledg of a Hart-Royal proclaimed of which Manwood in his Forrest Law speaking saith That if the King doth hunt a Stag he is called a Hart-Royal and that if he doth hunt a Hart in the Forrest which by chacing is driven out and the King gives him over as either being weary or for that he cannot recover him then because such a Hart hath shewn the King pastime and is also Cervus eximius and that therefore the King would have him preserved he causeth Proclamation to be made in the adjacent Villages that none shall kill hunt hurt or chace him and hinder him from his return to the Forrest and ever after such a Hart is called a Hart-Royal proclaimed But
under whom they be Born some for Heresie some for Murther Treason Robbery and are there further represented as such whose secret practices have not fail'd to stir her Highnesses Subjects to a Rebellion against God and her Grace c. But secret Traitors they were found by the Realm and secret they were left by it Two of them were Iohn a Lasco Uncle to the King of Poland and Peter Martyr that were thus sent out of the Realm with Sanbenitos on and so far were our Popish Ancestors from Hospitality to Strangers and thereby unawares entertaining Angels that they made Devils of them and as such used them and to make amends to the multitude of Forraign Artists for the Gold they brought here they had the Dirt of Shams thrown at them by a Proclamation And as if not only the Biting but the very Barking of Mad Doggs had power to make others Mad she grew so enraged by the Books of Heresie and Sedition Printed in Forraign Parts and here Imported that she Publish'd a Proclamation Printed likewise in Fox wherein she Declared to all her Subjects that Whoever shall after the Proclaiming hereof be found to have any of the said Wicked and Seditious Books or finding them do not forthwith Burn the same without shewing or reading the same shall in that Case be Reputed and taken for a Rebel and shall without delay be Executed for the Offence according to the order of Martial Law. But nothing can palliate the Arbitrariness of Queen Mary's Proclamation for the Exercising of Martial Law but that she thought her Reign a time of War and perhaps not altogether Improperly for that Hereticks have the Title of Hostes given them by Popish Masters of Ceremonies There was another reason that induced Queen Mary to use the Arbitrary Power that her Popish Predecessors did not and that is this The People of England in the days of Popery were like to the three Fools in Lipsius that being ty'd together by a twine Thread went Whining about the House and consenting that they who would unty the Knots of it should have what Money from them they pleas'd And thus were our Foolish Ancestors innodated with Papal Censures and the Priests did but Arbitrarily ask and have their rewards to Absolve them But that Queen finding that the Reformation begun had proved Physick to Cure those Idiots of their dull Stupidity she therefore supposed that the Fools who before were held by the twine Thread must then be bound to the good Behaviour with Chains In fine by these three Important Acts of Arbitrary Power the which presently occurred to my remembrance out of her Story and without my troubling my self to rake for more she gave the alarm to her Subjects newly after their Eyes had been opened and their Hands unty'd by the Reign of K. Edward that they were to expect no free Trading where there was no free Living and to hear nothing but the dying Groans of Liberty and Religion So very exact indeed is the Frame of our English Government and of the Soveraignes Power and Peoples Liberty therein that as in an Arched Building if one Stone be removed from it the whole is immediately endanger'd and nothing could probably have saved it from ruin but the Restoration of our Law as well as Gospel by such a Reign as Queen Elizabeths who was so far from the exercise of Arbitrary Power on her good Subjects and Friends that she did it not on the worst nor on her Enemies One would have thought that after the many attempts against her Life and after the forementioned threatning Letter of Campians which notifies that the Iesuits had entred into a Covenant or Association to Kill Heretical Princes c. that she might have been provoked to have declared that Order by a Proclamation to be Hostes a thing that she or any Protestant Crown'd Heads might do without Violating the Laws of Nations in reference to those Forraign Princes that were their Allies and to whom any of that Order were Subjects a thing not only Consonant to the jus gentium but to our Lex terrae as it was resolv'd in Cambden's Elizabeth by the Lord Chief Justice Catelin who being ask'd Whither the Subjects of another Prince Confederate with the Queen might be held for the Queens Enemies Answer'd That they might and that the Queen of England might make War with any Duke of France and yet in the mean time hold Peace with the French King and a thing that if done would have tended more to their Extermination out of this or any Country perhaps then all other Laws against them in regard that it would have more effectually bereav'd them of the benefit of Correspondence Aids and Assistance from thence all Subjects being every where by the Law rendred Traytors who Correspond with or give Aid and Assistance to declared Enemies Nor would the term of Hostes bestow'd on such be more then a Retaliation and to this purpose Mariana makes the people authoriz'd to Proclaime a King upon occasion to be a Publick Enemy and so likewise Lessius even in his Book de Iustitiâ jure saith That a Tyrant is to be declared an Enemy by the Common-welth and thus Parsons alias Doleman in his Book of the Succession Part 2. Cap. 4. terms an Evil King an Armed Enemy The term I mention'd before of inimicus homo is certainly proper enough for those that sow such Tares in the World as the Iesuites do and make not only Lollards of ordinary Hereticks but as the Commenter on the Epitome of Confessions otherwise the 7 th Book of Decretals tells us in Commendation of all the Iesuits in these words Tyrannos aggrediuntur lolium ab agro Dominico evellunt I shall here observe how in the year 1596. the Hollanders and others of the States of the Vnited Provinces did Publish an Edict That none of the Bloudy Sect of the Jesuits or any that gives himself to Study at this time among the Professors of that Sect whether he be Bâ—rn in any of the Provinces that are Confederate or be a Forraigner crept secretly into the same Province should longer remain there then the time prescribed under the pain of being accounted and kill'd for an Enemy But that Magnanimous Queen did as much think it Inglorious for her to employ her Anger in such a Proclamation on such firy pedants as I believe our potent Neighbouring Monarch whose Name will look as great in all â—uture Story for mighty dilligence and for exact prudence in the Conduct of his Affairs of State as for the Success of his Arms would to Honour with the Title of Enemies such little great talkers who here in the Coffee-Houses Arraign his Political Measures And the truth is as it is not worthy the Grandeur of Princes who are Heavens Vice-gerents to squander away its thunder in experiments on Shrubs and Mushrooms or on slight grounds to call any of slight mankind and who are of no Name by that dreadful one
countenanced and maintained by the same And I believe none will imagine that those Nonconforming Divines would take any Oath but in the imposers sence or Casuistically advise others so to do 'T is therefore no marvel if our later Presbytery being so unconformable to the Law of the Land and to the Tenets of the former Nonconformists soon grew weary of it self and did with its horrid Visage only face us and march off Your Lordship found that in another thing it resembled Popery namely in that it would be all or nothing and you helped it to the latter part of the Alternative Mr. Nye who made a great Figure in the Assembly of Divines hath in that Book of his forementioned p. 98 helped this Age to know how Arbitrary they would have been in delivering men to Satan for saith he there the exercise of Discipline in our Congregations was ordered by the Parliament but limited likewise to an enumeration of the Sins for which we might excommunicate exempting other Sinners that were as much under our charge This was looked on by the Assembly as a great Abridgment of their Ministerial Liberty and so great as they professed it could not with a good Conscience be submitted to as not being able to perform their trust which they receiv'd from Iesus Christ and must give an account of to him resolving to stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free So ridiculous were those Divines that tho no Pope ever arrogated a power to Excommunicate one but for the Crimes nominated in his Canon-Law and tho our Church of England never claim'd a power of excommunicating but for a Crime express'd in the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws yet those froward Disciplinarians would have been allow'd to shoot their Thunderbolts of Excommunication upon a Capricio But not only the Parliament but the whole Nation in a manner pronounced them Contumacious the people saw how Arbitrarily they would have interdicted the whole Land from the use of the Cup and Bread too in the Sacrament and have rail'd in the Communion-Table with fantastick Qualifications and they soon judged those Clergy-men guilty of Irregularity and the rather for that they had engaged so far in Causâ sanguinis and the same Sun of Reason and Knowledge that with the strength of its Beams had here put out the Popes Kitching Fire of Purgatory did soon without noise and insensibly confound their Dominions in the Kingdom of Darkness and those Divines themselves found that their destroying Episcopacy here had in effect by the Parliaments being their Superintendants enthroned Erastianisme that which indeed their Principles led them to hate more then Episcopacy it self Mr. Baxter in the Preface to his second part of the Nonconformists Plea speaking of Presbytery saith I do not hear of many out of London and Lancashire that did ever set up this Government and I know not of one Congregation now in London of Englishmen that exerciseth the Presbyterian Government nor ever did since the King came home c. And saith they have no National Assembly no Classes no Coalition of many Churches to make a Presbytery and I hear of none unless perhaps some Independants that I know not that have so much as ruling Lay-Elders Alluding to some expressions before applyed to Papists and Popery I may say that the Cato's of Presbytery came here on the Stage tantum ut exirent and that Government soon had its period here per simplicem desinentiam 'T was obvious that Presbytery as well as Popery directed men where to stand in a place divided from the Civil Government and so to shake the Earth and it appear'd very inauspicious to the Model of the Covenant that in its first Paragraph it should stumble upon implicit Faith by swearing to a Government and Reformation that shall be and to the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government the particulars whereof the Lay-Covenanters of England if not the Clerical also were far from understanding And tho in that Paragraph the Covenant binds its takers to endeavour to advance the Reformation of Religion according to the word of God a Clause that Sir Harry Vane declared to a very worthy Gentleman now living that he caus'd to be inserted into the Covenant after much debate about the same and opposition from the Scotch Commissioners with whom he was interested in the making of it and thereupon said That â—e was three days in getting the word of God into the Covenant yet that Covenant having almost extirpated Root and Branch those spiritual Guides from whom the people might expect a more Rational and Learned Interpretation of the Sense of the word of God then from the Presbyterian Divines they were soon sensible of their danger both as to the perverting of the Scripture and subverting of the Church from the new Correctors of Magnificat and found that such an Inundation of Vile Religionary Tenets was got into the Church that the Houses of Parliament ordered the 10 th of March 1646. To be set apart as a solemn day of humiliation to seek Gods Assistance for the suppressing and preventing of the growth and spreading of Errors Heresies and Blasphemies and that Mr. Vines on that day Preaching before the Commons p. the 4 th of his Sermon printed acknowledged That that day was the first that ever was in England on that sad occasion and p. 67 of that Sermon mentioned a most detestable thing then broach'd by the Press though yet in the way of Query namely what is meant by the word Scripture when it is asserted that the denying of the Scriptures to be the word of God should be holden worthy of death for saith the Author either the English Scriptures or Scriptures in English are meant by the word Scriptures or the Hebrew and Greek Copies or Originals the former cannot be meant with reason because God did not speak to his Prophets and Apostles in the English Tongue nor the latter for the greatest part of men in the Kingdom do not understand or know them Mr. Vines declared his just Abhorrence of that insinuation and saith If this dilemma be good what is become of the certain foundation of our hope or faith or comfort how can we search the Scriptures without going first to School to learn Hebrew and Greek And 't was obvious to every one to consider that if the English Scriptures are not the word of God there was an end not only of the Reformation according to it mentioned in the Covenant but the substantial one promoted by the Protestant Religion that help'd us to the Treasure of our English Bibles and that we should soon be stranded on the Shore of Implicit Faith. Nor could it long be hid from common observation that those Divines who exclaim'd so much against the Ceremonies of the Church of England as an oppressive Yoke would have imposed on us such a rigid observation of the Sabbath the great Scene
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
Guymenius shortly after in that year appearing in Print as a Champion for the Principles so damned the College of Sorbon shortly after that damned the Work of Guymenius in the 11th of May the same year and that in the latter end of Iune so shortly following in the same year the same Pope Alexander the 7th damned that very Sorbon Censure of Guymenius and that therefore 't is possible the great Scene of Vertue appearing in this Popes said Decree may with a short turn of Apostolical Power receive too the Fate of Pageantry and presently disappear and that the great Mountain which his Faith hath removed into the midst of the Sea may in little more than the twinkling of an Eye return to its old place But in Answer to which I shall do that right to the Papacy to clear the mistake in the objection and inform the Reader that tho Alexander the 7th did Ex Cathedra damn that Sorbon-Censure as aforesaid yet it appears out of the Condemnatory Bull it self that what that Pope there did was not out of favour to Guymenius or the Iesuites themselves or their Tenets and that to satisfie the World in that point he there gives the reason for his damning the Sorbonists Censure namely because it intermedled in Censuring some other Propositions or Principles of the Jesuites that concerned the Authority of the Pope the Iurisdiction of Bishops the Office of the Parish Priests and the Privileges granted by Popes and but for the Sorbons complicating which with their Censure of the other Scandalous Principles of the Iesuites no doubt but the Sorbon Censure had stood as a Rock unshaken Let therefore such who fear every thing fear that this great Pope will after his said Condemnatory Decree appear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Condemned while I observe it for the honour of his Iustice that he made that Decree and for the honour of his Prudence that before Nature had caused the detestable Principles therein censured silently to evaporate he gave the World this loud warming of them as it likewise may be for the honour of that great Seminary of the Divines of our Church of England our University of Oxford observed that before the Seditious Principles and Tenets of Iesuites and some Dissenters came to be naturally exterminated out of the English World by fear and shame they notified them to this Age and to Posterity There is no Subject that hath since the year 1641 more employed the English Press than that of Liberty of Conscience pro and con and the fiercest and sharpest of the Writings concerning it were what passed between the Independents and Presbyterians on the occasion of Presbytery's great Effort to make the English Nation by one short general turn Proselyted to its Model and when it pushed for the auspicious fate of former great Religionary Conversions happening as it were simul and semel and when Nations seemed to be like the Hyena which having but one Back-bone cannot turn except it turn all at once But the Independents observing the Kingdom and Presbytery frowning on one another thought they could do nothing more popular than to take the Arguments they found in the many Pamphlets of the Presbyterians lying on every Stall for toleration under the old Hierarchy and turn them upon Presbytery and every one then who had fears and jealousies of the Arbitrariness of Presbytery seem'd to be a well wisher to those Books for Liberty of Conscience and the destroying of the Credit of Presbytery by Books that had so much contentious fire in them was really an acceptable sweet-smelling Sacrifice to the Nation And after the King's Restoration tho some few Books were writ of that Subject and with much more Candour than the others yet the Yoke of the King 's Ecclesiastical Laws was so easie to the People as that the Writing of Books against it was not encouraged by Popular Applause The King's Declaration of Indulgence afterward appearing and as not gained by dint of Pen but ex mero motu was applauded by some few particular Writers among the Popish and Protestant Recusants discoursing in Print at their ease of Liberty of Conscience But as if Nature meant that Books of that Subject should no more here divert the curious World the Empire toleration had thereby gained did presently labour under its own weight and the Non-Conformists being jealous of that Declaration proving a President of the Prerogatives suspending Acts of Parliament in general and suspecting that the Popish Recusants would have the better of that Game as supposed to have many great Court-Cards here and abroad in the World and likely to have more while the Protestant Recusants had not so good in their hands tho yet they had here what amounted to the point in Picquet I mean the advantage of their Numbers did presently thereupon cause all the Cards to be thrown up but first had in Concert with the dealers provided for the packing them to their own advantage in a new Deal In plain English some Loyal Persons and firm Adherents to the Church of England in the House of Commons thinking that Declaration illegal and whether justly or no I here presume not in the least to question endeavoured tanquam pro aris focis to get that Declaration Cancell'd and knowing they could not effect the same without the help of the Dissenters Party in Parliament engaged their help therein by giving them hopes to carry an Act of Parliament for their Indulgence but what a little fore-sight would have made appear to them impossible to be gained for many Considerations too obvious to be named And the natural result of this Fact which is on all hands confessedly true cannot but be the making of the former fashion of Polemical writing for liberty of Conscience to pass away We have since seen some few Florid Sheets published by some of the Dissenting Clergy on that Subject but they have made no other Figure then that of the poor Resemblances of Flowers extracted by Chimical Art out of their Ashes and any little shaking them in the Glass of Time must make them presently fall in pieces I have in this Discourse expressly owned my having no regret against any due or Legal Relaxation of the Penal Laws against Recusants but what any due or legal way may be therein I enquire not The power of the King in dispensing with the Penalties in case of particular Persons was not that I hear of in the least Controverted in the Debates of the Commons about that Declaration And Fuller in his Church History relateth that when Bishop Williams was Lord-Keeper there was a Toleration granted under the Great Seal to Mr. Iohn Cotton a Famous Independent Divine for the free exercise of his Ministry notwithstanding his dissenting in Ceremonies so long as done without disturbance to the Church and the lawfulness of which particular Indulgence I suppose none in that Age controverted as I think none would any thing of that kind in this
Royal Line from the Crown ib. and p. 222. The Protestants in France now about 2 Millions p. 222. Their Loyal Demeanor to Harry the the 4 th after he became a Papist ib. His condition after he became one ib. An account of the Apology for John Chastel the Scholar of the Jesuites assassinating himâ— and of the Positions in that Apology ib. The Aâ—ology affirms That Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right and that Henry of Bourbon cannot be called a King by reason of his Conversion p. 223. An account of the Gun-powder Treason out of Thuanus and the Tenets that the Traitors had imbibed from their Confessors and particularly That Heretical Princes by being reconciled to the Church of Rome recover not a Title to their Crown and that by such reconciliation they only save their Souls and that Heresie barrs the Hereticks Line from the Succession c. p. 224. Observations on the Millenary Petition in the beginning of King James's Reign ib. Observations on the Papists Petition to him about the same time p. 225. Dr. Burnet's History of the Reformation commended p. 226. The reason why the Author would have more severity shewn to a Seditious Protestant than a Seditious Papist p. 231. Mr. Fox referred to about his Question Whether the Turk or Pope be the greater Anti-Christ p. 232. An account of the Popes being Pensioners to the Turk p. 234. The Author observes in the famous Hosius of the Church of Rome a viler Blasphemy than any he remembers in the Alcoran p. 235. Observations on the Loyalty of many Papists in France to Harry the 4 th when he came to inherit the Crown and remained a Protestant and under the Papal Excommunication p. 236. Harry the 4 th an expected Protestant Successor was Primier Ministre to Harry the 3 d a Papist ib. An Argumentative Speech of an Arch-Bishop of France to prove That Harry the 4th ought not for his Religion to be debarred from the Crown ib. Maimbourg reflects on Calvin for his instigating the Magistrates of Geneva to burn Servetus ib. and p. 237. Dr. Peter du Moulin cited for saying That in the time of the late Usurpation the Jesuites were the principal directors of the Consciences of the English Papists ib. A Book published Anno 1662 observes That of the Papists in England 7 parts of 10 were Gentlemen and People of great Quality ib. The Author believes that the more ingenious and modest sort of Jesuites will by Natural Instinct be more and more ashamed of the turpitude of the former Principles of the Iesuites and particularly of the 13 th 14th 15th 30th 32d contained in the Popes Decree before mentioned p. 238. The Author judgeth that all bloody and rebellious Principles owned by any who call themselves Protestants must naturally by shame and fear decay ib. Mr. Cranford a Presbyterian Divine cited for saying in a Printed Sermon at St. Pauls in the Year 1645 That in 80 years there did not arise among us so many Blasphemous Heresies under Episcopacy as have risen in these few years since we have been without a Government and that above 160 Errors have been here since broached and many of them damnable ib. and p. 241. A Speech in a late Parliament referred to for observing that according to the best Calculation the Dissenters could not in the last Elections for Knights of the Shire bring in above 1 in 20 into the Field ib. The present Gentlemanly temper appearing in the People of England observed as to the not having râ—sentments against any men or their Converse by reason of their asserting Controverted Points capable of the name of Religion p. 241. The great Controversy about Easter now slighted ib. The Terms of Omo-ousios and Omoi-ousios will make no more fermentation in the World p. 242. The word Heresy now generally here reduced to its quiet Primitive Signification of an opinion without reference to truth or falshood ib. Our Courts Christian do no more prosecute men for being Hereticks than for being Usurers ib. There is now a more valuable libera theologia in England then was under the Usurpation p. 243. The Obligation our Land hath received from the Royal Society mentioned ib. The knowledge of Anatomy enriched within this last Century a 3d part ib. There were in the Year 1599 reckoned in Christendom 2,25044 Monasteries ib. By Herods Infanticidium a Million and 44 Thousand slain in the account of Volzius p. 214. In 45 years the Spaniards in America put to death 20 Millions of Indians ib By the growing Populousness of Mankind we must naturally hear more and more of Wars and rumours of Wars p 245. In the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr England not afraid to contend with both France and Spain ib. 2,50000 l. per Annum Calculated to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years gained to England by the Balance of its whole Trade p. 246. The Author en passant Calculates that England hath for late years gained double that Summ by the fashion of Crape ib. Ten times as much spent on the Law or Physick here as on the Clergy p. 247. By the Calculations of Cardinal Pool there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England then in France which he said exceeded England by two 3ds in the numbers of People as in Lands p. 248. The Author observes that in the Code Loüis published in the Year 1667 the Method injoyned for the registring the Christenings and Burials in each Parish in France is better contrived than that used in London ib. 'T is supposed that the publishing the Observations on the Bills of Mortality about three years before in London might occasion the aforesaid exact registring of the Christenings and Burials in France and moreover the registry of the Marriages by the Code Loüis enjoyned p. 249. The Registring of the Births and Burials is as old as the ancient times of the Romans and introduced among them by Servius Tullius ib. The prudenâ—e of the Code Loüis remarked in the numbring of the Regulars and Seculars there enjoyned ib. Sometime before the year 1588 the number of men in Spain being taken by secret Survey there were returned a 11 hundred and 25 thousand and 300 and 90 men ib. A Computation out of Thuanus of the Expences and Receipts of Lewis the 13 th for the Year 1614 ib. The Expences and Receipts of that Crown were more than quadrupled in the year 1674 p. 250. A Calculation of about a 3d part of the Current Coyn of England yearly carried into France ib. A Descant on the saying so much in vogue viz. Res nolunt male adnimistrari and an account of its Original ib. The Author supposeth that a more important Linen Manufacture will here happen from the many French Protestants here lately planted than was the Woollen one here introduced by the Dutch whom Duke Alva's Persecution brought hither p. 251. Remarks about the general sowing of Hemp and Flax here and about the designed
Religion of the Church of England hath naturally pierced through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy ib. The numbers of the Non Conformists are daily decaying ib. There were in the Year 1593 judged to be in England 20000 Brownists ib. The Gross of the Numbers of Non-Conformists always consisting chiefly of Artisans and Retail-Traders in Corporations p. 281. They were very numerous there before the King's Restoration ib. A new way by which their Numbers and Potency may easily there be diminished ib. The Author judgeth the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants to be necessary p. 282. The Lord Keeper Puckerings Speech of the ill behaviour of the Puritans in 88 referred to ib. The prudence and justice of the King's Measures asserted as to the not repealing the Statutes against Protestant Recusants ib. The Peace of Munster observed to have removed the popular fears abroad in Case of the Successions of lawful Princes differing in Iudgment from the Religion Established p. 283. The Author of the Catholick Apology with a Reply cited for there not being one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England in the year after the Declaration of Indulgence then in any year of trouble p. 284. The Author mentioneth the soft and gentle disposition of Bellarmine p. 284. The Authors reflecting on the Principles of the Iesuites with sharpness as the Pope and his Court of Inquisition have done ib. The Author disowneth all acerbity and rancour relating to the usage of any Papists ib. He observes that the putting Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion ib. The Author observes that an English Priest of the Church of Rome hath done him the honour to adopt as his own many passages of the Authors long since printed that were disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion p. 284. Observed that if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private judgment in matters of Religion 't is hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Church of Rome of the guilt of Schism ib. The Author not inclined to be severe to any Papist for being in any Tenets that may properly be called Religion guided by his private judgment to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome ib. The Custom of Authors of large Discourses publishing together with them a REVIEW ib. He promiseth to the Earl of Anglesy a REVIEW of this Discoursâ— p. 285. The Author will in a short REVIEW explain some passages on occasion and add others ib. If he doubts of any thing or shall alter his opinion of any thing therein he will in the REVIEW acquaint his Lordship why he doth so ib. The Author thinks that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunâ—es are positive ib. C2 R DIEV·ET·MON·DROIT HONI·SOIT·QVI·MAL·Y·PENSE Devon Jan. 27. 1680. My Lord AS to the Candour of the English Nation that was formerly so very extraordinary and the whiteness and sweetness of the temper of the People of England that did adde to the representing it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and to the making it like the Galaxy to have one brightness from thousands of fixt Stars placed so high by Nature that they could not suffer the least Eclipse by the shaddow of the whole Earth we may well since the Publishing of the horrid Affidavit of the Infamous Person and so many valuing themselves as the best of Men upon their believing what was sworn by the worst lament the temporary decay of so great a part of the Glory of the English good Nature And they who knew your Lordship and consequently knew you to be a steadfast approver of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England have reason more particularly to be sensible of what concern'd you in that calumnious Affidavit because the wretch presumed therein to fasten on your Lordship the Sanbenito of a Court of Rome Papist and to represent you as a favourer of Popery or the Papal Usurpations that were in Harry the 8th's time hence exterminated and as an endeavorer to stifle the Evidence about the Plot notify'd by the Government for the recalling that kind of Popery Altho I know no Christian more tenderly inclined then your Lordship to shew all Christian Indulgence to the Persons of Popish and Protestant Recusants and have sometimes observed your Lordship while you were wishing that none of the New Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Creed were by any believed yet out of tenderness to the Persons of Devout and Loyal Papists with great reason to wish likewise that no Odium might come to such from the Name of POPERY for their Profession of such Tenets as are held by the Greek and other Churches who yearly Curse the Pope and are so Curs'd by him yet none need doubt but that your Lordship will as much as any man account it the opus diei by all due means to oppose all plotted Designs whatsoever to retrive the Papal Power of Usurping over the Crown or Conscience My Lord there are some among us who would usurp on and appropriate to themselves the Name and Thing of Protestancy and would be thought the only true Protestants and would be Monopolists of all the heat and light against Popery But as I shall make bold to come in for my share with them so I shall yet acquaint your Lordship that if I may in any part of this Letter to you seem with any excess of Passion to reflect on Popery I shall before I take leave of you afford you such a Patriotly and Gentlemanly reason of my warmth against it as I think hath not by others been given nor particularly by some Pedantick Anti-Papists who render their Conversation nauseous by their eternal talking of nothing but Popery and while they are neglectful of all the due means to prevent its growth These things being therefore premised I shall in despite of the Affidavit say that I will be the last man in England who shall believe that my Lord Privy Seal can be such a Court of Rome-Papist I think it was St. Augustine who meaning well in a pang of Zeal cry'd out on one occasion Credo quia impossibile est But I shall both as to the truth of any deposing or imposing Doctrine and of your Lordships believing it ground my disbelief on the impossibility of either When I hear men say they look upon it as an exerting of a miraculous Power Divine that the Globe of the Earth hangs in the Air without falling I interrupt not their thoughts of devotion but know that the Earth which is ballanced by its own weight cannot fall but it must fall into Heaven Coelum undique sursum And should any one tell me of your Lordships falling into any gross erroneous doctrinal opinions I who have long observed the constant tendency of your understanding toward the Center of truth cannot apprehend any danger of your falling from it So likewise when I hear men impute it
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
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
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 Earth and scandals to Heaven I mean all Religion-Traders whether Popish or Fanatical those vilest of Nominales who cheat in nomine Domini and such likewise who disquiet States by assuming the Trade of World-menders and everlasting Propounders that are like busie Insects flying in the Eys of Mankind and whom Sir E. Coke in the 85. Ch. of his Institutes which is entituled against Monopolists Propounders and Projectors deservedly brands and Atheists that would reform a Church Bankrupts in their particular Trades that would advance Trade in general Defiers of Justice who would amend the Law and wasting that time as Censors of the Manners of Kings for not paying their Debts which they should employ in acquiring Assets to pay their own In fine Undertakers to Cure Church and State as Confident as the Quack who said in his Bills He Cureth all Diseases both cureable and incureable All these sorts of men whose Trade is talking and whose talk is cheat will only come to be Bankrupt by being heaved out of all places by the Generations of Useful Traders multiplying there Nature that has been long laying its Siege to such Idlers in places of resort will then at last carry on its works so far as to leave them no Earth to play their Engines upon and such unprofitable people will be as naturally extruded out of our Towns as are Women and Children out of Places besieged nor can all the humming of their Propositions procure them more continuance in such places of business then the noyse of Drones entitle them to a residence in the Hive and it will as little quit Cost to have them planted in our Cities as for a Gardiner that pays a high Rent to have beds for weeds Of the Improvement of great quantities of Land by Gardening the Ilands of Iersey and Guernsey are examples and we have a Pleasant and Profitable Prospect of such Improvement near our Metropolis and other Great Cities and I doubt not but England may flourish so as to become the Garden of the World and do as little doubt of any Course of time bringing the Pope again to say as Matthew Paris tells us he did Verè hortus Noster deliciarum est Anglia as I do of that honest Monk's sleeping till the Resurrection or Mr. Coleman's having any more Dreams of a Paradise in the Gardens of Wooburn 'T is hard for a Visionaire not to fancy any thing possible but he who shall pronounce that England can from its present improvement and populousness be driven back ad primordia rerum and that the many cultivated understandings in it and who have reduced Knowledge ad firmam by calculation can be reduced to the Calculation only of Beads and be imposed on like the Indians to part with their Gold for Beads and that half the Land of England now inhabited by three Millions of People as all estimates make to be the least that half of it contains will be delivered up to 50000 Regulars and to persons that the Laws in being allow not so much as a Foot of Earth for Graves and that it is not of equal detriment to a Country to have half the Land made unprofitable and become Bog or the like as to be long in perpetuity to unprofitable people and that such as make property their God which they who over value the things of this Life do and are the Majority of any Country will idlely sacrifice it to those real Impropriators who make but a Property as I may say of God I mean those hypocritical Idlers who only by a Religion-Craft without any service useful to Mankind claim a great Quota of the Profits of others labours and that when we are going on so fast toward the exactest culture by Gardening which excludes all Weeds the old inimicus homo shall find six Millions asleep to give him an opportunity to sow Tares and to ask half the Land for his pains I say he who shall pronounce as aforesaid is one that looks but at few things and so de facili shoots his Bolt and is one that we may think to be a fool without being in danger of Hell Fire and Holy Churches great work of the Conversion of three Kingdoms to the end that it may Convert half the Land again to its use is likely to prove as fruitless as the Christian endeavours to recover the Holy Land. There is such a strong Rampart of living Earth against the assaults of Popery in this kind I mean the Number of our Protestants and particularly of those employ'd in Tilling the Land that Popery cannot dissolve and let it pipe never so plausibly we shall be like the deaf Adder stopping our Ears by laying them against the Earth we are possest of My Lord They who have observed the Intervals of your pleasure when you have had some breathing times for retirement from the fatigue of Affairs of State know that the contriving the improvement of your Ground by Tillage and Planting and Gardening hath been at once your care and your delight And I believe Cicero's Cato Major doth not describe the pleasure of old Age in the improvement of the Earth with greater hight then your Lordship is able to do and your example in this thing may Crown both that of Tully and the Aged Hero's by him there commemorated for delighting in Husbandry and indeed it may be supposed but natural for old Age being so near the Earth its Center to move with a quicker sort of delight toward it and especially among Christians to whom the dull Earth Aided by the acuteness of St. Paul I referr to his similitude of the Corn is so kind and greateful for their culture of it as to Court them with an Embleme of their Resurrection and to teach them a surer way then Galilaeus had found out to Transplant the Earth into Heaven But now methinks to one that has so curious and perfect a Sence of this solid and manly pleasure that the Culture of the Earth affords as your Lordship the very Idea of England's Degeneracy from its thriving State of Agriculture to poor solitary pasture how unpracticable soever the thing is must necessarily carry some horrour with it to be imagined and the very telling it to you that some vain Popish Projectors would rob us not only of the Culture of Learning but even of that of the very Earth must give your thoughts a Nausea instead of such a Noble Extacy as fill'd the whole Soul of Erasmus who in his old Age in a Letter to Budaeus speaking of Sir Thomas More 's and other mens Works that did then begin to beautifie the World with Learning cryes out Deum immortalem quod seculum video brevi futurum Vtinam contingat rejuvenescere And as I am sure you would not desire to Renew your Youth like the Eagle only to live in an Age of buzzards so you know too much of the course of nature to wish your Life a day shorter for fear of the
longevity of Popery if ever it should call it self here the State-Religion for it can naturally be but a short dull Parenthesis of time in an Age of Sense and the Eye of Reason can see through the duration of it as well as through its absurdities and it can naturally be but like an angry Cloud that with the Eye of Sense we shall see both dropping and rowling away over our heads and shall behold the Sun playing with its Beams around the Heavens near it at the same time and nothing can be easier to you then to dye in the Faith that Popery cannot live long in England and to know that you are not to be compared to an Infidel though you should have provided for your surviving Family nothing but Abby Lands the which I believe may by a bold instrument of Eternity drawn by a small Scriveners Boy be effectually Conveyed to any Lay-man and his Heirs for ever I know that the present State of that part of the Land of England that was aliend from the Church is such that it bears not the price of years purchase it did before the Plott and that it is according to the common expression become a drug as to Moneys being taken up on it in comparison of other Lands and it is obvious to consider how much herein the Plott hath prejudiced the Wealth and Trade of the Kingdom in making so great a part of the Land in some regard comparatively useless to the Possessors but I likewise know that hereby Popery will be no gainer for that 't is apparent that the owners of it will be indefatigable in the use of all means lawful to bring Popery to such a State as shall make any men ashamed to say they fear it Tho Holy Church that everlasting Minor that Minor like Sir Thomas Mores Child that he said would be always one will be still labouring the Resumption of what was alien'd from it and hence I believe it hath proceeded that our Kings thô in the eye of the Law always at full Age have thought fit to learn from Holy Church the Priviledge too of being reputed Minors or Infants in Law for so the Books call them that upon occasion they may resume what was alien'd from the Crown and thô the hopes of such resumption would be a bait to help Popery to Multitudes of Proselytes yet the people imagine a vain thing who think such resuming practicable in England and especially at this time if the Calculation of the Ebb of the Coinage of England be as is contain'd in Britannia languens viz. from the foremention'd period of May 1657 to November 1675 near another nineteen years 3 238 997 l. 16s ¾ a Calculation that I think cannot be disproved but by the Records in the Pipe Office where annual account of the Money Coined in the Mint are preserved or by Ballances of Trade made up from that time whereby the exportations eminently preponderating what is imported would evince what considerable quantities of Bullion have been Coyned or by our knowing that since that time Sterling Silver has not still obtain'd the Price of 5 s 2d an Ounce a price that it has not indeed fall'n short of in England about these twenty years past and therefore before the late Act for the Coynage could never be entertain'd by the Mint to be Coyn'd which was by its Law and Course necessarily restrain'd from giving for Sterling Silver above 5 s. the Ounce and which Rate and no more it did afford when the Ballance of Trade favouring us caus'd that vast Coynage mentioned in the former Ternary of nineteen years But in fine his Majesties Royal Goodness to his People in not only quitting what did accrue to him for Coynage but being at the expence of the Coyning the most exquisite sort of Money in the Known world and such as in Curiosity does equal Meddals is an indication of the Ballance of Trade not having employed the Mint sufficiently in making for his Subjects the Medium of Commerce and for the depression of the Trade not only of the English but of more then the European World the Usurper Cromwel is to be justly blamed who not long after the wounds England had felt by the Munster Peace did harrass us by his fantastick War with Spain which not only impoverish'd England but the Trading World and forcibly obstructing the Returns of the Spanish Plate Fleets did particularly put both Spain and France under a necessity of making that Peace that gave the French Crown its leasure to trouble the World. But let any one judge then how ridiculous it is to suppose that the Trade of the Nation must not as I may say shut up Shop if half its wealth should be again juggled into the hands of a few Ecclesiasticks and the old Trade between England and Rome be renew'd of giving the Pope Gold for Lead It must indeed be acknowledged by all who have conversed with History that the absolute and unbounded Power with which the Eastern Monararchs Governed their Kingdoms did not more require an excessive share of the publick Revenue to feed standing Armies then Priests who with their Idols and Superstitions and Crafts did awe and delude People into obedience but as in orderly Commonwealths there is no need of such an immense Charge for Artifice to make men obey themselves so in our Constitution of the English Government it being justly to be supposed that we have all the desireable solid and substantial freedom that any Form of Government can import besides the insignificance of the name of it and insignificant we may well call it who remember that our late real Oligarchists took not only the name of God but the name of a Commonwealth in vain and are to the envy of Forraigners and shame of our former Domestick Propounders blessed with the Soveraign Power of a Great and Glorious King over a free and happy People as the words of the Royal Martyr are in one of his Declarations it may be well said to any one who shall talk of giving half the profits of the Realm to use Art and Imposture to make Members obey their Head so constituted quorsum perditio haec But in a word to come closer to the Case of Popery any one that would have half the Revenue of the Kingdom given to Impostors for the making a Monarch only half a King or King but of half his People and for the tricking both him and them into a blind obedience to a Forraign Head and for the making a Forraign Power Arbitrary and absolute is a very bad Land-Merchant and knoweth not the use or value of the soyle of England and will never find the half of 25 Millions of Acres sold for Chains and Fetters and will be put to the trouble of taking out the Writ de idiota inquirendo against at least three Millions who have already out-witted him and will never think a Forraign Minor and whose concessions are resumable fit to be
man certainly apprehended no reason of an additional Commandment Thou shalt not fire thy Neighbours house and had he been convinced that the Pope in his decrepit Age had made a Commandment for the firing of it and whole Cities and had so pronounced è Cathedrâ would probably have imputed the lingua dolosa and the caâ—bones desolatorii to his Doctrine and the smoak from that fiery Doctrine would have had the effect of opening his Eyes But as for Mr. Cressy's Idea of the Massacring any Incendiaries tho they had been tooâ—â— in flagranti if he had staid in his old Church I mean that of England he would have found any such thing sufficiently stigmatised by its Doctrine which makes the King to bear the Sword and that not in vain and allows not the Rabble to be a Terror to Evil Doers nor Hell to break loose for the support of Heaven and which inculcates Obedience to the Law of the Land for Conscience sake and even that Law permits none to Assemble in Arms against a declared Enemy but by the Kings particular Commission and he must therefore go to China or to Rome that will have a Street or a Town or the Vniversitas or Community therein punish'd for the pretended or real faults of particular persons Moreover the English Genius hath not in Story that I know of been tainted with Infamy for penetrating any thing of that horrid Nature except in the old days of Popery in relation to the Iews and the Lay-Rabble was then put upon it by the Rabble of Fryars and Monks who owing Money to the Iews were that way willing to confute their Creditors And since the time that that Great and High Judg of Reason as well as Equity and to whom the Custody of the King's Conscience was Committed and who hath held the Scale of Equity with as steady an hand and tender heart and as discerning and watchful an Eye as any of his Predecessors did place the dreadful Guilt of the Firing of London where he did at the Condemnation of the Lord Stofford and probably had satisfied his Judgment for the doing of it by Observations or Examinations of Passages that occured elsewhere rather then at that Tryal for there the Evidence did not rise clear and high enough for the occasioning that part of his Sentence and since the time that the People of England by their Representatives threw the Guilt of that Fire on the Papists and the Magistrates of our Metropolis inscribed it on the Monument the populace have been as calm and temperate in their judging of it and as perfectly free from resentments of Revenge against all the Papists in general or any one Papist in particular as if none but that poor angry Antiquary Mr. Prynn had censured them for it and whose Thunder the World being so long used to did so much despise that his popularity could scarce have obtain'd an out-cry for the killing of a single Mad Dog. I must confess tho by the reiterated Confession and by the Execution of Hubert a Papist it appear'd that he did set Fire to the House in London from whence its rage began and tho his Confessing of Peidelow to be one of his Accomplices in the Fact exempts it from being doubted that Papists burn'd London and tho after I had heard of that judgment of the Lord Chancellor and of the House of Commons and of the Magistrates aforesaid and was shewn that Papal Tenet by your Lordship I doubted not of the Justice of attributing in my thâ—â—ghts one part of the Guilt of the Fire to some Jesuited Papists and that it might be said with the same propriety of Speech that London was Fired by the Papists as 't was by Sir Walter Raleigh that Harry the 4 th of France was kill'd by the Papists yet I never thought any considerable number of the Gentry among our Lay-Papists would have practised any thing of that kind tho the Pope himself should have Commanded it There was a Book containing Observations on our late Affairs of Church and State Printed in the Year 1680 called the Arts and Pernicious Designs of Rome wherein is shewed what are the Aims of the Iesuites and Fryars c. by a person of their own Communion who turn'd Romanist about thirty years since and throughout that Book as he in general fortifies my observation of a Protestant when turn'd Papist not being able to abandon all Candour his mind was first nourished in so he doth it particularly p. 25. where having in Proposition 4th spoke of the Mischiefs we havâ— received from some Popish Orders and particularly that of the Iesuites he saith as followeth in Proposition 41 viz. Amongst which the late sad disaster happening to the City of London not to mention divers others of like nature happening in divers other places since if it were a Practice of any Humane Contrivance and not a meer judgment of God from Heaven upon us cannot reasonably be thought to have been the Project or Practice of any other Men then these and to have come originally from Rome and the Consistory there who beside the bad Principles already mentioned which legitimate such doings at all times that they judge it convenient for their ends were without doubt willing to signalize that year 1666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some in that Party who have had the confidence to affirm and as it were to predict that in this year Rome and their pretended Antichrist the Pope should be utterly destroyed That it appear'd a Practice of Humane Contrivance by the very Confession of the Incendiary is plain and that it was by the People in the City then suspected so I have said but so far were our plain English natures from charging it on any Lay English Papist that Mr. Marvel in his Growth of Popery Printed Anno 1677 having said That we may reckon the Reigns of our late English Princes by a Succession of the Popish Treasons against them adds And if under his Majesty we have yet seen no more visible effects of the same Spirit then the Firing of London acted by Hubert hired by Peidelow two French Men which remains a Controversie it is not to be attributed to the good Nature or better Principles of that Sect but to the wisdom of his Holyness who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special Mark of his Indignation I presume not to charge or discharge any sort of men about this Fact further then the Law hath done whether Papists or Priests or Fifth Monarchy-men for of a Conspiracy to Fire the City on the day it was fired on several of that latter Sect had been before Convicted and deservedly Executed for it as we must either Grant or Arraign the Justice of the Nation and therefore Mr. Cressy had reason to blame Mr. Prynn in some measure for concluding that the Papists were the only Incendiaries of the City
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
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
that have been since augmented Yet however I doubt not but that if it had been Gods will further to have lengthen'd the last reign the Course of Nature would then have operated as I have mention'd And if it shall appear that those natural Considerations I have urged shall have the success of such further Parliamentary Supplies to His gracious Majesty as may tend to the further greatning of his Character and that of the Kingdom I shall account my claim the more equitable to have the pardon of my fellow Subjects of what Religionary Sect soever for any thing in this Discourse that may disgust them And as an eminent Protestant Divine hath in a Printed Sermon thus said viz. that man is not worthy to breathe in so good a Land as England is who would not willingly lay down his life to cure the present divisions and distractions that are among us I shall say that any Subject deserves not to live here under the Indulgence of so good a Prince who for the helping him to money by all due means for the defence of this good Land would not wish himself as well as his Bigottry a Sacrifice and who would not as to any Extravagant dash of a Pen lighting on his Party and bringing Money to his Prince cry foelix peccatum rather then such Divisions and Distractions and Diffidences of the Government and stifling of Publick Supplies should still live as were formerly known in some Conjunctures and when the Art of Demagogues appear'd so spightful in endeavours to frustrate the Meetings of Parliaments But our Prince having freed all his dissenting Subjects from their uneasiness under Pecuniary Mulcts for Religion and the Members of the Church of England from the uneasiness of imposing such Soul-Money will I doubt not when he shall please to Call a Parliament find from them such necessary Supplies for the support of the Body of the Kingdom as may ease him under the weight of his great Desires for it and that it will then appear to all as absurd to Crown such a Head with Thorns as hath taken the Thorn out of every man's foot in England and that his pass'd Sufferings for his Conscience and others of his Communion having too suffer'd for his Conscience bespeaking us in those words of the Apostle Fulfil ye my joy that both his and theirs will be then Consummated and as the Ioy of those of the Church of England and of all nominal Churches in England hath been fulfill'd by him and that as Luther was pleas'd in a Christian-like transport of good Nature to Profess in his Epistle to Jeselius a Iew Me propter Unum Judaeum Crucifixum omnibus favere Judaeis we shall for the sake of one of the Roman-Catholick Communion who hath formerly suffer'd so much for his Conscience and since done so much for the freedom of ours shew all those of that Communion our favour to such a proportion as may compleat his and their Ioy. My Lord I am here obliged to acknowledge that tho while the several Parts of the following Work were written in the times the Government charged both Papists and Anti-Papists with Disloyalty and Plots I express'd my sense of the Non-advisableness to have the Penal Laws against them repeal'd pending such Charge and Plots I desire the Reader to look on me as very far from insisting on any thing of that nature in this Happy State of England now that the Corner Stone and that some of the Builders rejected hath thus successfully united the sides of the Fabrick of the Government in Loyalty My Lord It is near a year since I writ my Thoughts at large concerning the Subject of the Repealing those Laws and they are in the Fourth Part of my Work about The Dispensative Power of which the two first Parts conclude this Volume ready for the Press and reserving my poor Iudgment in this great Point till the Publication of the whole I think I shall then set forth my Opinion as founded on Medium's that have not appear'd in Print from other Writers and which I believe will not only not give offence to any Member of the Church of England but be of general use in allaying the ferment the Question hath occasion'd And if as they who were long fellow-Passengers in a Ship among violent Tempests and Hirricanes do usually from their being Participants together in the danger and horror take occasion to raise a friendly esteem and well-wishes for each other such of the Loyal whose belief I referr'd to as imbarqued with mine in that of the Plot during the late Stormy Conjuncture shall be the more favourable to what I write I shall be glad both for their sakes as well as mine but do further judge that what I have so largely in the following Discourse asserted and by Reasons taken from Nature concerning the Moral impossibility of the belief of the Tenets of the Church of Rome gaining ground here considerably on the belief of the Doctrine of the Church of England will tend to secure any one from fears of our losing our Religion by any loss of the Test that may happen a thing that none I think will fear who are of the Iudgment of the House of Commons in their Address to the late King on the 29 th of November 1680. that I have referr'd to in my Fourth Part and where they say that POPERY hath rather gain'd then lost Ground since the TEST ACT and make that Act to have had little effect I have in the following Discourse referr'd to that Act as represented to have had its rice in the year 1673. from the alledged petulant Insolence of Papists in that Conjuncture and I took notice of a learned Lord since deceas'd as vouching somewhat in Print of such temper among some of them And a Proclamation that year charging the Papists therewith I was implicitly guided thereby to take the thing for granted and as to the which considering since the publick Passages in that Conjuncture I have otherwise judged But as I think no loyal Roman-Catholick should in that Conjuncture have suffer'd any Prejudice for any ill Behaviour of any other of that Communion then much less ought any such thing be now and when there appears so noble and general a spirit of Emulation among all men of sense in the Diffusive Body of the People about who shall make the Head and all Members of that Body most easie and for the doing which we may well hope that the People representative and the other Estates of the Realm will come with all due Preparation of Mind when it shall please His Gracious Majesty to assemble them My Lord I have nothing further to add but my begging your Lordship's Pardon for this trouble and my owning the many Obligations I am under to be My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Earl of Anglesy having shewed me an Affidavit and Information against him delivered at the Barr
with a Person of so great Morality and Vertue as the present Pope is and a Pope that would brand the sicarious Principles of those Ianizaries of former Popes the Jesuites and that he would be by so many Roman Catholicks called the Lutheran Pope and that the Papists numbers would be here so comparatively small long before this time as to render it absurd to think that without the Execution of Heavens Peanal Law of an infatuation upon them they will ever attempt any such desperate design against such vast Numbers protected by the best of Princes under the best of Governments Whatever Principles of Irreligion any particular dissolute Papists might by any be supposed to retain it is not to be supposed but that they who shew respect enough to Numbers and their weight in spiritual Matters and particularly in the Divine Concourse with the Majority of Numbers in the Election of the head of their Church and in the determinations of a General Council and in their valuation of their Church by its Universality will not contemn the power of Numbers in Matters Political and I believe it will never among their innumerable Miracles and Revelations be Revealed to them that numbers are by them in things Political to be dis-regarded But as I observed of Mr. Hooker's Prophecy in this Discourse viz. That he guessed shrewdly so one thing hath happened that may partly salve the Credit of this Prelate's Conjecture And that is that some Nominal Protestants but too justly to be thought Popishly affected having robbed the Jesuites of their Doctrine of Resistance and of their Principle of Dominion being founded in Grace Endeavoured to robb them of their Massacre and as his Majesty's Declaration of Iuly the 28th 1683 mentioned did plot an execrable Out-rage of that kind and some of the Dissenters that appeared to me for sometime after I began this Discourse only as Sheep straying from the Flock as they did to that Great Minister of the State who bestowed on them that expression were afterward turned ravenous Animals and as the effect of Nycippus's Sheep according to Aelian bringing forth a Lion in one of the Greek States was resented as portending a Change of the Government these mens producing the Principles of the Iesuites was to be much more regarded as an Omen of our Future Mischief than what any former predictions could import and it was shortly accompanied with a real design to have effected it and as I hope it will be with such a sense of shame in others of them when they shall survey the Circumstances of that bloody design notified in the King's Declaration as Mr. Iohn Geree an Eminent and Learned Presbyterian Minister of S. Faiths in London did express in a Dedicatory Epistle before a Book of his called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 published some Weeks before the Fate of the Royal Martyr and in which Epistle he importunes the Lady Fairfax to shew the Book to her Husband then Lord General to prevent his participating in the guilt of the Regicide then feared and saith O Madam let us fit down and weep over our Religion and we whither shall we cause her shame to go How shall we now look Papists in the Face whom we have so reviled and abhorred for their Derogatory Doctrine and Damnable Practices against Kings or any in Supreme Authority O study that it may never be said that any Person of Honour and of the Protestant Religion had any hand in so unworthy worthy an Action as the deposing and destroying of a King whose preservation they stand bound to endeavour by so many Sacred Bonds I have accorded with our timid Protestants that Popery may gain ground perhaps in some turbid Interval and how by the Divine Omnipotence and Iustice the Course of Nature in its continuing the Protestant Religion may be over-ruled and that on the account of our having justly deserved the Visitation of Popery we may reasonably apprehend the dangers of it p. 140. but have never recurred from shewing them the Future prosperous Estate of Protestants and Protestancy in England but to advance the more forward into the following Representations thereof But having thus with Compassion to the timid endeavoured to discharge my duty as to the Moral Obligation of Complaisance an Obligation that Mr. Hobbs hath so well shewn to be most clearly rising from the Law of Nature and which the Christian Doctrine so strongly inculcates and by vertue of which we are to bear one anothers Burthens and sometimes to the weak to become as weak I thought it afterward proper by the strength of Argument desumed from the nature of things to fortifie the minds of the Loyal against Un-Christian and Un-manly Fears But as to the Dis-loyal and Factious let them by my consent fear on I shall not trouble my self to bear the burthens of them who resolve to be Burthens to the Government and who would if they could load it with Presbyteries dead-weight while they give that term to our Bishops Let those who would have both Protestant Princes and their other Subjects fear them be laughed at for fearing of Papists and for not having a better understanding with the Persons of Papists when there is so good an understanding and coincidence between the Principles of such Nominal Protestants and that very part of the Principles of some Papists that is Irreligionary and subversive of the Rights of Princes and their Governments and when yet they seem not to understand that and let Papists by my consent afford themselves recreative smiles if ever in any Conjuncture of time that may come they shall behold the Factious Revilers of the Church of England to come under its Wing for shelter after their so long endeavouring to deplume it But because I have observed some well meaning and loyal Dissenters frighted both by Cholerick and Melancholy Expositions of the Apocalypse a good Book in which some ill men have found the obscurest passages to be the clearest for their ill purposes and in the dark places of which Book many having long lain in Ambush have thence sallied out to cut Throats and subvert Governments I have here rear'd up a Bull-wark of Nature that may secure them from the imaginary dangers of Castles in the Air or Visionary Armies in the Clouds of any Mens fancies and in compassion to the Loyal Protestants of the Church of England whose Melancholy Suppositions I had a while closed with both as a Friend and Wrestler that I might give them a fair and soft fall I thought it then proper to warn them of the danger of extravagant Suppositions and acquainted them that most Bedlams were founded on Suppositions and the thought of Quid si caelum ruat and of Peoples imagining Earth-quakes to happen in the State from falling Skies and have shewn them how irrational a thing it is to suppose that a lawful Prince how unlawful or heterodox any of his Tenets in Religion may be will injure his Laws and the Religion by
Law Established and having conducted the Reader through the former more melancholy and strait and unpleasant passages in the Fabrick of this Discourse have took care to lodge him in a more Airy and Cheerful appartment and whence he may recreate himself with looking out on the Future State of England and remain assured that no frightful Spectrums and Fantoms will disturb him there when he is either at his Rest or at his Devotions and which I have for his diversion furnished with some such fair Pictures of his Countries Future State as may perhaps not much either shame it or my self in regard that I think in the draught and design thereof my Art has been according to Nature how carelessly laid soever the Colours may have been and where he moreover will have the Prospect I before described and if his sight be clear will find the Sky so more and more tho so many Politick and Lachrymist would-be's have told him of the contrary I believe that since the Predictions of the deluge by Noah to the old World there were never so many angry Predicters and Predictions of a general inundation of misery to any Country under a Future Prince as within these late years we have been overwhelmed with and that to the discomposing of mens minds in their common converse and while they did eat and drink as in the days of Noah and were so ready to devour all their Countrymen who believed not the same inundation with them But during this great Deluge of our popular fears of one of Popery I have ventured in p. 297 and 258 of this Discourse to express my presension of the Future State of England making men ashamed of their past fears and their former deference to ill boding Prophets and that our Melancholy Prophets will appear to be toto Caelo mistaken in their Auguries as much as Gassendus tells us all the Astrologers were in France when by reason of the great Conjunction of watry signs in Piscis and Aquarius in the Year 1524 they said that there should be then in the Month of February a second Deluge that should overwhelm France and Germany and by reason whereof many People went with their Goods and Cattel from the low Lands to the hilly Country and yet after all the fâ—rmentation those Astrologers had made among the Populace in France that Month of February as Gassendus tells us tho naturally rainy proved the dryest Month that ever was known in those Countries I account that the deluge of the popular fears did sensibly decrease after the year 81 and that to the great dissatisfaction of those whose broken Fortunes made them no worse under it than the Fishes were in Noahs The more rational and sagacious sort of Protestants who had been so long Sea-sick with that deluge and did nauseate the fears and jealousies that had discomposed them began to see Land when his Majesty with so just a Caution advised them in his Speech to the Oxford Parliament That their just care of Religion should be so managed as that unnecessary fears should not be made a pretence for changing the Foundations of the Government and his Declaration of the Causes that induced him to dissolve that Parliament signifying his Royal Resolution both in and out of Parliament to use his utmost endeavours to extirpate Popery and in all things to Govern according to the Laws of the Kingdom was in effect like the Olive-branch brought by the Dove into the Ark an happy indication of peace and settlement to the minds of the people and of the Waters being abated and indeed a demonstration to them that the Dove had found ubi pedem figeret and that our Laws and Religion had done so too and on that great Vision of the Lex terrae that so many mists had so long kept us from seeing there ensued a general shout of Loyal Addressers throughout the Kingdom like that of Sea-mens at their first seeing of Land after a long stormy Voyage and when they thought they had lost their Course and the hearing of those shouts from the several Countries served as a Call of invitation to the many Timid and Loyal and likewise to many unfortunate persons to return thither after they had flocked from thence to the Metropolis as an Ark for their preservation on the rising of the deluge of fears in some preceeding years and it served to some clâ—an and to other unclean Beasts as a Call of Nature that they were to March out of the Ark. By the unclean Beasts I mean the sturdy Paupers that I have in this Discourse spoke of who were observed shortly after the Alarms of the Plot from so many Proclamations to flock from so many parts of the Country to London like the Rustical Plebs I have spoke of naturally thronging to the shore when they see a poor Vessel contending with a violent Tempest near it and the next Minute likely to Condemn it as a wrack and furnish them with Gods Goods I mean such as they call wrack'd ones and when to prevent the Owners of them from the benefit of some coming alive to the Shoar they are so ready to out rage those forlorn Marriners they see swimming to Land. Many such Atheistical Ruffians of all Religionary Sects and who had been desperate in the Country might being come to the Metropolis there probably feed themselves with vain hopes of mischief to be done to or by some particular persons and would probably have been ready enough to be Mercenary Bravo's to either any Iesuites or fifth-Monarchy men or the Jesuited Protestant Patrons of the Doctrine of Resistance But this Scum of the Country was afterward as naturally thrown off from the well governed City as are the Purgamenta Maris from the Shoar without making any Heads or Arms ake to remove them and not finding more welcome harbour in the City than they had in the Country were I believe litterally thrown upon the Sea to Convey them to the Asylum of the Malheureus that we may call our Foreign Plantations and of the great and extraordinary Glut of the Advenae from the Country ceasing in London after the year 1681 the yearly general Bills of Mortality gave a sufficient proof and did as I may say include too the Burial of the Plot or at least of the popular fears of danger from it The critical Observator on the Bills of Mortality having long since told us That there come about 6000 yearly out of the Country to live in London and which swells the Burials about 200 yearly and likewise taught us the Rule of 1 in 30 there yearly dying I have in p. 155 Calculated by the yearly great encrease of the Burials from the Year 1675 when the fears of the Growth of Popery were so much in fashion how very great the encrease of the number of the living there was to the Year 1679 inclusive and the extraordinariness of which encrease was so justly imputable to that of the
Advenae from the Country and to which it may be added that the Burials from what they were in the Year 79 viz. 21730 falling back about 700 in the Year 80 yet in the Year 1681 were in all 23971 and so for every Thousand gradually dying more in those Years referred to 29000 were supposed to have in the same gradually lived more than in the former and all which years before mentioned were of ordinary health But the Year 1681 having produced that Pacific Royal Declaration and the Congratulatory Addresses thereupon and likewise that encrease of the Burials before mentioned that might be supposed to happen partly by the Advenae from the Country being for some time necessarily detained in the Metropolis in making preparations there to leave it and by some of them in the mean time dying and partly from some new Pâ—upers then coming from the Country to hide their heads in obscure places in London and which they durst not shew in the Sun-shine that Declaration had made in the Country and partly by the deaths of many Loyal Persons in London whom the Addresses and expectations of Preferment for their Loyalty brought thither yet the Burials in the following year viz. 1682 being but 20690 was a considerable indication of the abatement of the popular fears which led so many timid Persons from the Country with hopes to find our Metropolâ—s to be the most quiet part of the Nation as the most quiet part of a Ship is naturally that which is nearest the Main-mast and the Burials in the year 83 being but 20587 gave an indication of the Advenae from the Country not then encreasing and although the Total of the Burials for this year 84 was 23202 yet it being most probable that there dyed above 3000 of Infants and of Aged and infirm and indigent People by the Accidents of the extraordinary Frost it may be well accounted that the popular fears have not been in this year augmented Altho during the so long continuance of the general ferment in the Kingdom after the Plot-Epoche and in which interâ—al so great a part of the following Discourse was printed Sheet by Sheet I could not after the King and Pope had both of them by written Edicts as it were denounced War against the Tenets of the Iesuites that included so much Hostility to the Church of Rome as well as of England but participate in the general heat against those Tenets and improve the occasion of writing polemically about the same yet I think none could more carefully observe the Laws of Military Discipline than I have those of Loyalty in not going beyond the Measures of the Government and in following the Standard of the Royal Pen set up in the Proclamations and likewise in the Declaration aforesaid Dr. Donne dedicating his Pseudo-Martyr to King Iames begins his Epistle by saying that as Temporal Armies consist of pressed men and voluntaries so do they also in this War-fare in which your Majesty hath appeared by your Books and not only your strong and full Garrisons which are your Clergy and your Vniversities but also obscure Villages can Minister Souldiers c. Besides since in the Battel your Majesty by your Books is gone in person out of the Kingdom who can be exempt from waiting on you in such an expedition That Learned Monarch in his printed Premonition to all Crowned Heads free Princes and States doth Magno Conatu go about to prove the Pope to be Anti-Christ and very subtilly discusseth the Moot-points out of the Apocalypse that refer to it and from that one word of Anti-Christ the Papacy hath since the Reformation received much more prejudice than hath the Reformation from that other famous word of Heresy and the Compellation of Anti-Christ is especially a more terrible weapon against the Pope when used by the hand of a King. But I must frankly say should my Prince Combat the Pope with this name in Print and descend to Command my poor Service in that Warfare I should humbly apply to him to excuse me therein and as it was observed concerning Aretine that he left God untouched in his Satyrs giving this reason for it Ille inquit non mihi notus erat so I shall say the same thing of Anti-Christ But when the Thunder of the Royal Power was in so great a number of Proclamations heard all over Christendom against particular persons and their known Principles and Designs his Subjects might well think it a part of Loyalty during that time to wear Clouds in their Brows and to be tributary to the Royal Cares by endeavouring in their several Capacities to support the Throne and to concur with the constant Practice of Nations in receiving the beliefs of Matter of Fact as stated by Soveraign Power according to the common saying of Imperatori seu Regi aliquid attestanti plenè creditur It is this Teste of the Sovereign as I may say with allusion to the words in our Writs of teste me ipso that will be the Clew to the Historians to guide them in that dark and intricate Labyrinth of time I before spoke of and will probably be helpful to any ingenious Protestants or Papists who shall write its History when they shall from the many Collections of the Pamphlets relating to that time treasured up by the curious see so many bold and contradictory Shamms and Affidavits fighting with each other for that belief in a Future Conjuncture that they could not obtain in the past and 't is nothing but the declared Sense of the Government that in such odiosa materia will qualifie a judicious Historian to do right to himself or his Reader or even to his History and keep it from being thrust down among Narratives It may be rationally supposed that when Princes and their Ministers do think fit to notifie their judgments of some matter of Fact wherein they might receive the first Information from Persons lyable to exception that there were many concurrent Circumstances lay in the Balance before them and which perhaps they might not think convenient to divulge and moreover it is a thing commonly observable that Divine Providence doth influence the understandings of Princes who are its instruments in the Government of the World more signally than of other men and that Crowned Heads are still blessed in some measure as of old by another Spirit coming on them than what animated them while private persons and that therefore their asserting of Facts of State is more to be revered than that of other men I therefore in the Case of the shamm of throwing the Odium of a Plot upon Protestants in one particular Conjuncture have not come short of or gone beyond the Measures of the Government nor do I believe that any Historian of it will. And when I did read the various Pamphlets and did confer Notes with some of the Curious about the last mentioned Shamm and participated with the Loyal Protestants in their Concern and Sollicitude for
the honour of their Religion thereby attacqued yet I gave no Rule about the Merits of the matter in my private thoughts till I saw in the Prints the Copy of the Order of Council of November 2d 1679. reflecting on the Treasonable Papers thrown into a Gentleman's Chamber by which divers Noblemen and other Protestants were to be brought under a suspicion of carrying on a Plot against his Majesty and which Order was after a Person was sent to Newgate by the Council for forging of Letters importing High-Treason and fixing the same in a Gentlemans Chamber and oâ— which Forgery I yet thought none but some few of the faex Romuli who believed and practised the Jesuites Doctrine of Calumny could possibly be guilty But I presently accordâ—d in my thoughts with the many Loyal Protestants and Papists who judged another Effort that pretended to be of the same Nature with the former and referred to a Plot of Protestants to be a poor vile Artifice or Shamm projected by some Calumnious Anti-Papists a shamm too despicable to be here named and obvious enough to detection from the Trite saying That they who can hide can find But the many pitiful Shamms whose humming noise did a while please our Mobile and were below the notice of the Government have had their triduum insecti and are not to expect to live in Story or to be there Entombed like the Fly in Amber The powerful Effects of the Royal Declaration freeing our Land from the Plague of Fears and Jealousies and the Annoyance of the Swarms of these Flies as Moses his intercession prevailed to deliver a Realm from the Judgments of other ones will be a more adequate Subject to a great Writers thoughts and especially when he shall consider that in the Course of Nature and without Miracle those great Effects could not but rise from so great an Efficient and as to which any one will perhaps be of opinion with me who shall consider that the most terrible of terribles in so many mens apprehension of Popery is its arbitrariness and that therefore the publication of the Royal Resolution to govern according to the Laws would effectually secure us against all Arbitrary Power whatsoever Mr. Hobbs saith in his Behemoth I confess I know very few Controversies among Christians of Points necessary to Salvation They are the Questions of Authority and Power over the Church or of Profit or of Honour to Church-men that for the most part raise all the Controversy For what man is he that will trouble himself or fall out with his Neighbours for the saving of my Soul or the saving of the Soul of any other than himself And no doubt it is not barely any mens believing the Doctrines of Purgatory or Trasubstantiation or Merit or Works of Super-Errogation that hath made the past ferment among us but the Arbitrariness of the Papal Power and the Complication of the Tenet of the Plenitude of that Power with those Religionary Tenets and the making of it Penal not to receive those or other Tenets from Rome and the making men Tenants in capite to a Foreign Head for their Brains and Estates and an outlandish Bishop who lives a Thousand Miles off with new Non obstantes outraging their old Laws and whom they can never see blush after it But his Majesty having declared That he would use his Royal Endeavours both in and out of Parliaments to Extirpate Popery of which its Arbitrariness was its great dreaded part and in all things to Govern according to the Laws of the Realm the People knew that the Laws had sufficiently provided against Appeals to Rome as well as against Appeals from the Country to the City and that Declaration naturally fortified the minds of the People as a Praemunimentum guarding them before hand as I may say with allusion to our Statutes of Praemunire against the Arbitrary Power either of Rome or Geneva and did in effect set up an Ensurance Office in each of his Majestie 's Courts of Iustice to secure them against Arbitrary Power as such in whomsoever and that they might in in utramvis aurem dormire as to any danger from the same and 't is therefore no wonder that the Reflux of People from the Metropolis to the Country ensued thereupon as I have remarked out of the Bills of Mortality and from which Bills perhaps we may divert our selves with the sight of the Burial of that Plot which some feared and others hoped would have been immortal who would have had it Entailed too on their Heirs and Successors tho they would not allow the Crown to be so to the Royal Line The Political uses that the Bills of Mortality may be put to being more various than the profound Observator on them took the pains to mention as I have thence by a glancing view of the gradual Encrease of the People coming out of the Country for several years to dwell within the Compass of those Bills and likewise of the gradual decrease thence deduced given an account of what I thought might in some measure deserve the name of an Indication of the diminution of the popular fears resulting from the Burials after the great auspicious year of the Royal Declaration so I could in order to the lessening of the fears of the encrease of Dissentership within the Circuit of those Bills from the Total of the Christenings in the respective years since that of 81 give what I might without Vanity call more than Indicium and which perhaps would be by Critical Persons allowed for somewhat like a Demonstration of the Encrease of the Numbers there as I may say born into the Church of England and to what proportion and that very particularly and make it out thence that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the Year 81 there were Christened 1084 in the year 82 and that the disposition of People for baptizing their Children in the way of the Church of England did encrease near a 13th part in the year 82 and that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the year 82 there were in the year 83 Christen'd 2146 which is near a 6th part that the Baptizing of Children in the way of the Church of England hath gained and Dissentership hath lost ground in that year Nor do I find cause to alter my opinion of such baptizing in the way of the Church of England having lost but rather on the contrary gained ground in this year 84 tho to what proportion I cannot positively judge by reason of what I before hinted namely of the extraordinary proportion of the Burials this year arising from the Accidents of the great Frost and which Physicians by comparing the encrease of the particular Diseases by which so many died this year more than in the former happening from those Accidents have judged to be considerably above 3000 and likewise by reason of the Births having this year been reverâ considerably
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
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's 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 Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
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
and a printed Devotional Office called The Office of the immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin our Lady approved by the Sovereign Pontiff Paul the 5th had been much in vogue in the Papal World yet the Pope by his Decree of February the 17th 78. damned that Office and as I may say threw it over board And of this the Author of Iulian the Apostate might have took notice if he had pleased when in his Comparison of Popery and Paganism he instanced in the transprosing of part of the Psalms to the Virgin Mary after the mode of this Office that had been suppressed about 4 years before The old stubbornness of Popes against the making any Reformation of Abuses and Errors in their Church hath been commonly observed but I believe that considering the great Figure England makes in the World it may not be unlikely that the brisk Spirit of Opposition against Popery that had displayed it self in England for about 8 years before the Plot-Epoche and the sharp and learned Books that were in that Conjuncture printed here against the Abuses of the Church of Rome might much contribute to the laudable Proceedings of this Pope in those Decrees I have mentioned And therefore when Nature had thus enforced the Papal Chair in so great a Measure upon Recantation and a great deal of pretended infallibity was thrown over-board and that even relating to some Principles that might be called Religionary it may reasonably be thought that the same operation of Nature will produce among our little Protestant Recusants a tacit renuntiation of the Irreligionary part of those very Principles that both the World and themselves must needs see they have transcribed from Popery The Complication of the Principles of Irreligion that hath joyned the Iesuites Popery with that of our former Presbyterians Popery hath long been as visible as the great Isthmus I spake of that joyns the Mexican and the Peruan parts of the new World and as I being to explain as in a Dictionary what I meant by Popery I would not expose my self to the Critical Religionary Controvertists by nicely defining Popery the Observation being no less than a Rule in the Civil Law that omnis definitio in jure Civili periculosa est parum est enim ut non subverti possit but gave the Description of my sense of it as before in this Preface so if I were to give a Description of our Scotch Presbytery as Covenanted to be here introduced I would take the said Description of Popery and only mutatis mutandis say that by Presbytery I mean the power of our Presbyters in imposing Creeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on men and the Presbyters jurisdiction interloping in that of our Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Jus Divinum and as they are Christs pretended Vicars and do account that its intended Arbitrariness here in England justly appeared as terrible as that of Popery and that our Consciences being enslaved to a Foreign Bishop is not more inglorious than their being so to our fellow Subjects and that a blush being divided among ten thousand Ecclesiasticks after they had out-raged our Laws and our Consciences would have here been no more seen by us than one at Rome on occasion of any Popes there blushing after they had so done I have observed in this Discourse how that part of Presbytery that may tho erroneous be called Religionary as practised in some Foreign Churches hath here decayed and must so naturally more and more and was glad to hear That since the putting the Laws in Execution against Protestant Recusants those of them who were called Presbyterians have on recollection of thought and after Conference had with our Divines forborn their former Schismatical Separation from our Churches and that particularly in our Metropolis they have in all things been ameinable to the Doctrine and Discipline of our Church except as to the submitting to have their Children baptized with the use of the Sign of the Cross there and their Superstition in not complying with which will I hope not be long lifed The gradual encrease of the Christenings in some Parishes in the Country that I have seen Accounts of and in which places the Dissenters formerly were very numerous hath been to a far greater Proportion than the gradual Encrease by me remarked as to London and within the same years And a Learned Divine who is Minister of a Parish not far from London hath acquainted me That the number of Communicants being there about the beginning of those years but a 100 hath since arisen to 400 and I believe that generally the numbers of Conformists may have much encreased in the Country beyond the proportion of their Encrease in the City and may probably do so for some years Tho there are several Merchants and rich Traders in our Metropolis who are Dissenters yet I have observed that the gross of their numbers consists there of ordinary Retail-traders and as these have been naturally Sufferers there by the Cities so much removing Westward and by the Retail-trade being so much gone to the other end of the Town and are likely so to be more and more so it hath been and will be natural to them to be more and more querulous according to the saying of Omne invalidum est Querulum And in this Case it will be natural to them both to support their decaying Trade by Religionary Combinations and perhaps to fancy Religion it self breaking together with their Bankrupsy and both for the Consoling one another as Socii doloris and likewise relieving one another thereby to endeavour to keep Heterodox Religionary Societies as long and as much as they can But Necessity the known Mother of Industry must naturally in time cure them of their Poverty and Temptation to Heterodoxy thereby Our Quakers are by many thought to be a kind of a Roma subterranea but whether justly or no I enquire not nor shall I give my opinion in it till the Principles of their Light within shall be exposed to that without many of which Principles have hitherto been by them kept as hid from the World as were the Subterraneous Lights preserved in the Roman Monuments and as to which Principles they are perhaps conscious that when they shall be exposed to the Air and Light of the Sun they will be as naturally extinguished as those Monumental Lights were when occasionally brought into the open Air. But one of their known Tenets being the unlawfulness of Oaths I account they have an advantage thereby beyond the Presbyterians or Independents in their Claim to Indulgence by demanding it in a Doctrinal point wherein there is Dâ—gnus vindice nodus by reason of some words in the 5th of St. Matthew and 5th of St. Iames seeming primâ facie very emphatically and vehemently to forbid all manner of swearing as the Commentators generally observe And in this point they are entituled to a very true and
making a Ruffian of the Pope himself But indeed long before the Edition of that trifling Book many things had occurred so far to shake the testimony of the Witnesses as that it grew generally the Concordant voice of the Populace that on a supposal of several of the same Persons being again alive to be tryed on the Testimony of the same Witnesses before the same Judges it would not have prejudiced a hair of the heads that were destroyed by it and particularly in the unfortunate Lord Stafford's Case I have in two or three places of this Discourse speaking of the Papal Hierarchy called it Holy Church its old known term and by which I meant no reflection of scorn nor would I laugh at any Principle of Religion found among any Heterodox Religionaries that the dying groans of the holy Iesus purchased them a liberty to profess But 't is no Raillery to say that the Artifices of any dis-loyal Popish and Protestant Recusants that have so long made Templum Domini usurp on the Lord of the Temple and his Vice Gerents that is Kings and Princes will support no Church and that as it hath been observed of some Free Stones that when they are laid in a Building in that proper posture which they had naturally in their Quarries they grow very hard and durable and if that be changed they moulder away in a short time a long duration may likewise be predicted to the Arts and Principles of reason applied to support a Church as they lay in the Quarry of Nature and where the God of Nature laid them for the support of Princes and their People and è contrà In fine therefore since the Principles of the Church of England are thus laid in it as they were in that Quarry none need fear that they will be defaced by time or that a lawful Prince of any Religion here will accost it otherwise than with those words of the Royal Psalmist viz. Peace be within thy Walls and Prosperity within thy Palaces AN INDEX Of some of the Principal Matters Contained in the following DISCOURSE IN ALETTER TO THE Earl of ANGLESY HIS Lordship is vindicated from mis-reports of being a Papist and an account given of his Birth and Education and time spent in the University and Inns of Court and afterward in his Travels abroad Page 1 2 3. An account of his first eminent publick employment as Governor of Ulster by Authority under the Great Seal of England p. 4. An account of his successful Negotiation with the then Marquess of Ormond Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands p. 5. An account of his being a Member of the House of Commons in England and of the great Figure he afterward made in the King's Restoration ib. Reflections on the Popular Envy against the Power of a Primier Ministre ib. and p. 6 7 8. Remarks on the Saying applied in a Speech of one of the House of Commons against the Earl of Strafford viz. That Beasts of Prey are to have no Law ib. Reflections on the rigour and injustice of the House of Commons in their Proceedings against the Earl of Strafford p 9. The Usurpers declared that tho they judged the Rebellion in Ireland almost national that it was not their intention to extirpate the whole Irish Nation p. 10. The Author owneth his having observed the Piety and Charity of several Papists p. 11. The Author supposeth that since all Religions have a Priesthood that some Priests were allowed by the Vsurpers to the transplanted Irish p. 13. An account of the Privileges the Papists enjoyed in Ireland before the beginning of the Rebellion there and of the favour they enjoyed in England before the Gun-powder Treason p. 14. Observations on the Pope's Decree March the 2d 1679. Condemning some opinions of the Jesuites and other Casuists in Pages 15 41 50 51 52 53 201. The great goodness of the Earl of Anglesy's nature observed and particularly his often running hazard to save those who were sinking in the favour of the Court p. 16. The Authors observation of the effects of the hot Statutes against Popery and Papists in Queen Elizabeth 's and King Iames his time shortly ceasing ib. The Authors Iudgment that a perfect hatred to Popery may consist with a perfect love to Papists p. 19. He expresseth his having no regret against any due relaxation of any Penal Laws against Popish Recusants p. 20. An account of the Earl of Anglesy and others of the Long Parliament crushing the Jure-Divinity of Presbytery in the Egg p. 29 30. The out-rage of the Scots Presbyterian Government observed p. 29 The People of England did hate and scorn its Yoke in the time of our late Civil Wars ib. Remarks concerning infamous Witnesses and their credibility after Pardon of Perjury or after Crimes and Infamy incurred p. 33 34 35. at large and p. 204 205. The incredibility of the things sworn in an Affidavit by such a Witness against his Lordship p. 35 36. The Principle in Guymenius p. 190. Ex tractatu de justitiâ jure censured viz. licitum est Clerico vel Religioso calumniatorem gravia crimina de se vel de suâ Religione spargere minantem occidere c. p. 37. Cardinal D' Ossats Letters very falsly and ridicâ—lously cited by an English Priest of the Church of Rome for relating that the Gunpowder Treason Plot was a sham of Cecils contrivance p 38. Father Parsons one of the greatest Men the Jesuites Order hath produced p. 40. D' Ossat in his Letters observed to have given a more perfect Scheme of the whole design to hinder King Iames his Succession then all other Writers have done ib. Observations on the Author of the Catholick Apology with a reply c speaking of his not believing that Doleman's Book of the Succession was writ by Father Parsons and that Parsons at his death denied that he was the Author of it and on Cardinal D' Ossat in his Letters averring that Parsons was Reverâ the Author of it and that Parsons made application to him in order to the defeating King James his Succession unless he would turn Catholick p. 41. D' Ossat's observing that Parsons in that Book doth often and grossly contradict himself ib. D' Ossat's commending our English Understandings for so soon receiving King Jame and so peaceably after the death of Queen Elizabeth ib. The Author grants that Papists may be sound parts of the State here as they are by Sir William Temple in his Book observed to be in Holland p. 44. The vanity of some Papists designing to raise their Interest by Calumny and Shamm ib. The Pope's said Decree of the 2d of March accuseth the Jesuites and other Casuists of making Calumny a Venial sin p. 45. The nature of a Venial sin explained ib. The Jesuites Moral Divinity patronizing Calumny is likely to be fatal to their Order p. 47. 49. 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
Government admitted only to probation for three years and were no more hindered of the freedom of a Gentlemans Conversation thereby then by the Government of the foremention'd Presbyter Iohn in the East and England was then not only free from the charge of Peter-pence Legatine levys oblations contributions for the Holy Land and both charge and trouble from all the Papal Courts and Masses Anniversaries obits requiems dirges placebos Trentals lamps but from all contumacy fees in spiritual Courts and from those Courts themselves of which yet the yoke is very easie compared with either that of the Papists or Scotch Presbyters and our condition as to ecclesiastical discipline was like that time or conjuncture of liberty that Father Paul in the History of the Councel of Trent refers to speaking of the time when a certain custome prevailed saith il che come e un uso molto proprio diove si governa in liberta quale era all hora quando il mondo era senza Papa That it was a custome very proper where they governed with liberry which was when the world was without a Pope I never heard of any man that was gored with the horn of our Presbyters excommunication nor of any dissenter from them that was tyed up for them out of their horn of plenty of Church power to force a drench of Doctrine down his throat and much less of any dealt with in that way mentioned by Spotswood in his Observation that the Devil would not be feared but for his horn referring to the horning in Scotland that is the seisure of all a mans goods when the horn blew after he was excommunicated by the Presbytery There is no doubt but that some of the Divines of that persuasion were brib'd to it by an expectation of power to oppress when that the great Revenues of the Church were denied them And thus the Pope keeps his Guards in Rome only with the pay of priviledges but instead of their riding the People the Parliament rid them and with that caution as they of old did who rid on Elephants in battel which great animal being observed to be then unruely sometimes and to endanger both the riders and their camp and it being known that their receiving a Conâ—usion in one part about their head would presently dispatch them their riders had alwaies a hammer with them ready for that use on occasion He therefore that saith he loves popery better then the Government of Presbytery as it was de facto setled or rather permitted in England and when they that would have its maypole for them to dance about had it and those that would have none had none saith that he loves a fiery and tormenting furious Church-Government that would make Mount Sion to be still belching out fire like Aetna better then none at all that he loves a Hirricane better then being a while becalm'd that he loves the Church government that was like coloquintida in the pot rather then that of the Presbyter which was here but like Herb Iohn and that he fears a Mastiff who was not only hambled and whose jus divinum was lawd and whose spleen was cut out by the State Chirurgeons more then an incensed hungry Lion of Rome that he likes a Government better that at best is like a Peacock that is all Gaudery and damned Noise and nothing else except pede latro that is all Ceremony and devouring all with ceremony then a Government that with its looks can neither allure nor fright and which we could pinion as we pleased and play with till we could get a better in its Room Whether a Papist was to be loved better then a Puritan was a vex'd question in the time of Queen Elizabeth and 't was resolved then in the affirmative only by the Pensioners of Rome and their dependants The Learned Author of the Book called Certain considerations tending to promote Peace and good will among Protestants doth in p. 13. quote our famous Gataker for relating that Dr. Elmor Lord Bishop of London in Queen Elizabeths time when one in a Sermon at St. Pauls Cross inveighing against Puritans rendred them worse then Papists sharply contradicted that censure saying that the Preacher said not right therein for that the Puritans if they had me among them would only cut my rochet but the Papists would cut my throat and that his Successor Dr. Vaughan Lord Bishop of London when another in the same Pulpit too shew'd the same eagerness in representing the Puritans worse then Papists expressed the same sense with his predecessor concerning it and wished that he had had the Preachers Tongue that day in his Pocket It was it seems then the good fortune of London to be blest with Bishops renown'd for their great zeal for the Protestant Religion and with such a one it is at this time enriched and dignified I will not say Bishop of it only by divine permission but miseratione divinâ the Style I have seen of Bishops in some antient Instruments 't is out of the Divine Compassion that such an eminent Protestant City has such a Prelate Nor do I intend by the just praise paid to this great and good man to lessen the worth of others of the Fathers of our Church of which number I have the honour to be acquainted with others who endeavour the extermination of Popery with as couragious a zeal as can be wisht and no doubt but the text of Scripture in the Title of my Lord Bishop of Lincolns book namely Come out of her my People lest ye be partakers of her Sins and Plagues is by the whole Church of England lookt on as a seasonable alarm and no doubt many of this our Church who have writ with so much various learning and strong Reason against Popery know that if that ever be de facto and by law paramount the Church of England will be ipso facto crusht thereby out of all its visibility The thought of this brings that Scripture to my mind viz. Matthew 21 v. 44. and who soever shall fall on this Stone shall be broken but on whom soever it shall fall it will grind him to powder And if the Church of England by only falling super hanc Petram I mean heretofore by the Empty Project of some for the Uniting Rome to us was broken and disjointed therefore if ever it shall come under the Stone of the Roman Catholick Religion and it be thereby made possible for the Stone to fall on it the Church of Rome will then grind it to powder It s former falling on the Rock could only break it into the pieces of Presbyterian and Independent and other seperate Churches but that Rocks falling on it will not break it into pieces but grind it to powder as was said and perhaps Papists then from this place of Scripture would form as good a title by divine right to crush our Church as they did from the super hanc Petram in the 16 th of
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
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
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
taught to know the Numbers of all people but our own But in this State of improvement that the World is arrived at I do account that all who shall hereafter employ their Pens about that greatest exercise of humane Wit and Judgment call'd History and shall not found the weight of their Remarques upon the Numbers of the People they write of will no more be termed grave Authors or indeed ought but grave nothings and such who deal irreverently with a World that is weary of trifles and from which they are to expect no other Doom then that of the Annales Volusi And though as to the faetus populi as well as to the faetus pecuniae called faenus accidents may happen that may cross the Rule of encrease in both Cases as in the latter by Bankrupts and in the former by Plague or War c. and thus once as to the Romans Censa sunt Civium Capita 270 Millia and in the following enrollment but 137 Ex quo numero apparuit saith the Historian quantum hominum tot praeliorum adversa fortuna populi Romani abstulisset as if he would infer that the losses they received from Hanibal had swept away 133000 Citizens yet do such exceptions but confirm the Rule the which may be made out by continued mean proportionals But this by the way If my Lord Herbert who mentions pag. 121 of his History That in the Year 1522 Warrants were issued out Commanding the Certificates of the Names of all above sixteen Years old had set down the total number of the persons certified he had much more obliged the World then by many things in his History I do not remember that any of our Historians of those times do relate the Numbers of the Religious Persons that all the suppressed Monasteries contain'd We are told by Godwin in his Annals That the number of the Abbies that were in England is not easily cast up and the Names of the chiefest and whose Abbots had voices among the Peers in Parliament he thereupon enumerates But Weaver in his Funeral Monuments p. 104 mentioning That all the Religious Houses under the Yearly value of 200 l. being given to the King and that they were all worth per annum 20941 l. saith That the Religious Persons put out of the same were above Ten Thousand My Lord Herbert p. 441 speaking of that sort of Monasteries being dissolved in the 27 th year of the King's Reign makes Thirty or Thirty two Thousand pound yearly thereby fall into the King's hand And p. 507 makes the total yearly value of all the Religious Houses suppressed to be 161100 l. It may therefore be thence infer'd that if Thirty Thousand pound yearly maintain'd 10000 Religious Persons that there were maintain'd by the 161100 l. above 50000 Religious Persons or Regulars And according to the aforesaid rate of the yearly value of the Land viz. 161100 l. the allowance to each came to somewhat above 3 l. per annum the which shews that those Lands were not sold to half the value because less then double that Sum cannot be imagined to have maintain'd such a person then I do account that supposing the Parishes to have been then in England and Wales as Cambden in his Britannia says 9284 that the Secular Clergy added to the Number of the Regular only the last said Number For then the Canon Law which requires that Orders shall not be given to Men without Titles being strictly executed there were perhaps not more Parish Priests in England And the adding to those Numbers the Dignitaries viz. Two Archbishops and 24 Bishops and 26 Deans and 60 Arch-Deacons and 544 Prebendarys and several Rural Deans doth enlarge the Sum to another Thousand of Persons who lived by the Altar Moreover there being then estimated to live in Oxford and Cambridge about Sixty Thousand Students who in expectation of Church-preferment as either Regulars or Seculars abstain'd from Marriage I account that the Number of Persons then ty'd by Caelibate from encreasing and multiplying the people to be above 120000 as at present above double that Number are in France What accrued to the Secular Clergy then or since by Tithes ought not to have been looked on by any one with an evil Eye as I suppose by Mr. Fish it was not For as to the nature of the payment of Tithes according to the judgment of Sir W. P. in his Book of Taxes and Contributions p. 58 It may be said to be no Tax or Levy in England whatever it might have been in the first age of its Institution And this notion of his may be extended even to that which is called a Tenth but is revera a Fifth I mean the Tith of arables in regard of the charge of Culture and Seed which is ordinarily at least as much as the Rent of the Land because it is a charge equally incumbent on all proprietors of such Land and for that the true notion of Wealth and Riches depends on comparison and 't is only the inequality in the proportion of the Tax that is the sting thereof But that which Mr. Fish chiefly level'd his Calculations at was the excessive share in the Wealth of the Kingdom the Monks and Fryars had who did so little for its preservation and the encrease of its Numbers What an infinite number of people saith he might have been encreased to have peopled the Realm if this sort of Folk had been married like other Men Instead of using his Rhetorical Expression of infinite I shall affirm that these 120000 adult able persons living in Celibate might according to the notion of the Observator of the Bills of Mortality That every marriage one with another produceth four Children viz. Two apiece for each Sex have more then doubled their number in the same age by which any one may well conclude that as the number of the people of England is now vastly encreased by the dissolution of Abbies so it would likewise be so diminished by their re-establishment To effect therefore to lessen thus the number of the people of England when the French King with great wisdom has by the Revival of the Roman Immunity of the Ius trium librorum and the application of others laid so a great Foundation for the growing populousness of France would too much expose us to his power and derision The Divine Wisdom's allotting to the Levitical Tribe the affluent quota it enjoy'd is very justly took notice of by those who discourse of the Clerical Revenue The Author of the Present State of England saith That our Ancestors according to the pattern of God's ancient people the Iews judged it expedient to allot large Revenues to the English Clergy and that the English Clergy were the best provided for of any Clergy in the whole World except only the Nation of the Iews among whom the Tribe of Levi being not the Fourth part of the twelve Tribes as appears in the Book of Numbers yet had as Mr. Selden
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
Millions of Souls But there scarce needs any other Medium whereby to evince that the Progress of the Reformation hath vastly encreased the value of our Land and proportion of our Commerce then that it hath so vastly encreased the number of our People a Fact that I have already proved and have shewn what Depopulaors or dispeoplers of the Kingdom the Monks were and have made some Calculations of the numbers of the Religious Persons living in Celibate and the effects thereof in restraining formerly the growth of the Numbers of the People but do find that I was extremely short in assigning the number of those whom Popery made to live in Celibate to be but 120000. I was glad to gain a rise for somewhat like an Estimate of the numbers of all the Religious persons in Monasteries by finding it in Weavers Monuments that the Religious Persons put out of the Religious Houses under the yearly value of 200 l. were above 10000 and that therein Weaver agrees with Sanders de Schismate c. but I made no Estimate of the numbers of Friers Mendicant the which were very great and I was too short on the accounting that there were perhaps no more Secular Priests then Benefices in England for thô the Rule of the Canon Law allows not Orders to be given to Men without a Title yet it admits an exception in the Case of Men who can live on their own patrimony and it still took the Title to be a Curate as current Coyn for one to a living and moreover the livelihoods that many unbeneficed Secular Priests acquired by saying particular Masses did pass for Titles and thus in France it being conceived that the Secular Priests unbeneficed are about 6 times as many as the beneficiaries we may thence guess what the proportions of their numbers were in England But yet further to discourse of the growth of the numbers of the people of England before and since the Reformation I shall acquaint your Lordship that you may easily find among the Records of the Exchequer what the number of the people of England was in the Year 1522 when Harry the 8 th as I cited it out of my Lord Herberts History p. 121 Caused Warrants to be Issued out Commanding the Certificates of the number of all above 16 years old to be returned and by an Index or Repertory of the Matters of State in the Exchequer that I have I can readily direct the finding it out there and moreover by the accounts of the Pole Acts in former times a considerable indication of the numbers of the people in those days may be had And if we may guess at the encrease of the people of England from that of London I can easily satisfie any person about the prodigious growth of that City in numbers of people and consequently in wealth since the abandoning of the Papacy I have by me an account of the proportions of the Shires of England City of London in a Tax of 50000 l. long since in Edward the 3 ds time and in which Surry bore the same proportion with London and in which London and Surry and Middlesex paid but about 1500 l. which was but about a 16 th part And in Harry the 8 ths times it hapned that Cardinal Pool excited divers Princes of Christendom to invade England a fit man he was who had been then a Traytor to come here and absolve Hereticks but Holling shead in his Chronicle of Harry the 8 th p. 947 tells us That the King having heard of the Treasonable practices of the Cardinal did Anno 1539 make a Survey of his Naval Strength and did ride to the Sea-Coasts and that Sir William Foreman Knight then Major of London was commanded to certifie the names of all the Men within the City and liberties thereof between the age of 16 and 60 whereupon the said Mayor and his Brethren each one in his Ward by the Oath of the Common-Council and Constable took the number of Men Arms and Weapons and after well considering of the matter by view of their Books they thought it not expedient to admit the whole number certified for apt and able men and therefore assembling themselves again they chose forth the most able persons and put by the residue especially such as had no Armour But when they were credibly advertised by Thomas Cromwel Lord Privy-Seal to whom the City was greatly beholden that the King himself would see the People of the City Muster in a convenient number and not to set forth all their power but to leave some at home to keep the City c. then he saith the number beside the Whifflers and other Waiters was 15000. But the Observator on the Bills of Mortality hath in his last Observations on that Subject told us That there are in London about 6 hundred and 70000 Souls and thô I know that some Parishes are included within the Bills of Mortality for the said City that formerly were not yet the said Observator having told us that there are in London more Males then Females and it being true that there are as many above the Age of sixteen as are under it and that the Sexagenarii are but a 6 th part of Mankind and the Quota of the numbers resulting from the Parishes added being likewise shewn us by that Observator let any one judge how vast the number of able Men certifiable between 16 and 60 is grown to be since that year of Harry the 8 th before mentioned It must be acknowledged that the thanks of the Age are due to the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for those solid and rational Calculations he hath brought to light relating to the numbers of our people but such is the modesty of that excellent Author that I have often heard him wish that a thing of so great publick importance to be certainly known might be so by an actual numbring of them and the truth is it is much to be pittied that by the care of Magistrates an exact number of the people as well of London as of all other places in the Realm hath not with diligence been made and preserved the knowledge whereof is the Substratum of all political measures that can be taken as to a Nations strength or riches and the part thereof that is spareable for Colonies and the value of the branches of the publick Revenue and the equality in proportioning any Taxes or Levies by Act of Parliament and the satisfying the World about the value of our Alliances a thing one would think somewhat necessary when 't is published in Print that a Forraign Minister who hath spent much time here and is deservedly famous for being a Critical Judge in the Politicks and in many sorts of Learning makes the people of England to be but two Millions and when a late famous French Author of la Politique Francoise who sets up with his Goose-quill to be a Governor of the World reproacheth us
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
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
the Invention of the double bottom'd Vessel and a rude Description of it being sent me for News into the Country I easily guessed that such a Ship bearing much more Sail then other Ships must needs go a great deal faster before the Wind but I was not inform'd of the Provision that the excellent Artist had made against the danger of Divulsion it being obvious that in some Tempests 't is as much as one entire body can do to preserve it self against the â—ury of the Sea. This hath been the condition of Popery with its double bottom of Principles namely to bear a great wide spreading Sail and it has heretofore in a quiet World sail'd apace before the Wind and in fair weather but the Tempestuous Debates its Principles have raised here and abroad in the Sea of the People have made this old double bottom'd Ship of St. Peter in such danger of Divulsion that especially with such Pauls Marriners as it employs it can hardly escape I doubt not but the Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturb'd worshiping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the Blood of Christ for Religion being Mens Priviledge as well as Duty just as the Romans did account that they endowed any place with a Priviledge when they gave them their Laws they may thank their great Redeemer for being restored to it By the vertue of his Blood the Papists stand seiz'd of a good and indefeisable estate of Christian Liberty and they are bought with a Price and are therefore not to be the Servants of Men and one is their Master even Christ who is the Lord that bought them and they are therefore to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free Socinus saith he went on his Knees to God to find out the meaning of the 58th V. of the 8 th of St. Iohn And should I chance to over hear any one Member of Mankind at his Private Devotions and importuning Heaven to illuminate his mind with the knowledge of some point in Religion that he conceived necessary to his Salvation and acknowledging it to the praise of the Divine Goodness that excited him to the use of all means whereby to discover it that he had so far through the Efficacy of assisting Grace practised the Truths his understanding was possest with as to satisfie his mind that he was a serious Supplicant for its being the depositary of more I should be so far from wishing this man delivered over to Satan from differing for me in any controverted Point of Religion that I should think that if the truth he was in quest of imported his Salvation God would send an Angel to explain it to him But as to one part of the double bottom of Popery tho we should grant it laden with fundamental truths yet 't is notorious that the other is overladen with Fundamental Errors and such as are apt to undermine the Foundations of States and Kingdoms and there is no need of an extraordinary Messenger from Heaven to tell one embarked therein that the Pope is not to absolve Subjects from the obedience of their Princes nor to cause an eternal fermentation and inquiâ—tude in the World through his Kingdom that should not be of it at all yet being unbutted and unbounded by him in all the parts of it I will likewise tell any Soeinian that his great Master Socinus made such a double bottom of his Systeme of Notions that it hath forfeited its right to the Name of Religion by one Tenet complicated therewith and that he ought to throw that off and simplificare se ipsum Let any one if he pleaseth call the Socinians denying of the Trinity in Unity and Original Sin and the Baptism of Infants or the Divine Prescience and many other of their Notions by the Name of Religion but there is own of their Tenets that their Master needed no long wrestling with Heaven as a Supplicant to find out the truth of and which Notion when really believed is as pernicious to Crown'd Heads and their Subjects as the lawfulness of any ones sometime killing the next man he meets and that is that my Prince and I may not defend our lives against the next Invader who comes to take them away for as to that great Question An bellum offensivum vel defensivum fit licitum the Socinians answer is negatur which any one may see who pleaseth to consult the Themata F. Socini de officio Christi p. 7. Inter breves tractatus F. Socini and likewise his Epistle to Christopher Morstias p. 498. among his Epistles And thus let the well-willers to Presbytery call that erroneous opinion of their Church Government being founded on that Divine Right and the immediate Command of Christ and his Apostles a Tenet of Religion but to confront the Laws of Kingdoms in the settling it and to eradicate any part of those and especially to root the inheritable Monarchs Power in popular Election or Approbation and to make him but the Peoples Attorny and his Authority as revocable by them as a Letter of Attorney is abusively call'd Religion and is only properly to be term'd Sedition or Rebellion I have been so copious in insisting on the necessary separation of all Tenets that are denominable as Religious from those that are really Irreligious and Seditious under the gross name of the Religion in any Party as a thing perfectly just in it self and necessary for the quiet of the World and do hope that the Age that is so much addicted here to the improvement and polishing of our Language will incline it to do it self that right as not to give false Names to Things and Names of a contrary signification We know that the Standard of England in the Mint refers both to weight and fineness and tho a piece of Money may have the Royal Stamp on it engraven with all possible curiosity yet if it be not standard 't is so far from being allow'd the Name of any Species of the Kings Coyn that 't is instantly to be broken in pieces and as this is but just so is it but necessary for the quiet of the People who else detecting it would suspect the whole credit of the Mint as well as of that Species of Money and would either not take it or else with a Clamour raise the price of their Commodities for it And thus it is too a thing unreasonable and troublesome to the World for Men to Coyn false words or false denominations for any Tenet in Religion intrinsecally defective what curious stamp of the artifice of any Party soever it may bear its reprobate Silver is not to be call'd Religion and it makes Religion it self lyable to suspicion among the inquisitive it will trouble every hand it passeth to and from and in giving a value to it the People will raise the price of their tolerating it and
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
and Mr. Fox saith That after that day there never was one that suffered in Smithfield for the Testimony of the Gospel And the Prophetic Impetus of George Sophocard a Scotch Minister was very remarkable as Buchanan in his 15th Book of his History relates it and when the Cardinal in Scotland and his Train of Priests were Spectators of the Tragedy of the Martyr he fixed his eye on the Cardinal and said That the Cardinal who there gazeth on me with so much Pomp and Pride within a few days shall fall there with more Ignominy then he now sits with State and so it fell out that the Cardinals Carcase was shortly dragged with infamy by that very place It is somewhat natural for dying men and perhaps for all unfortunate men to offer at Prophecy They who have good Cards dealt them in one Game trouble not themselves to Prophecy that they shall have either good or bad ones in the next and few who have sound minds in sound bodies and with sound Estates can tune their thoughts to Divination But as I would not rashly embrace so neither would I trample on the Predictions of Pious men in their last Agonies and particularly of what they who are Gods Witnesses or Martyrs Predict about the Cause of Religion for it is the Lot of Witnesses in any Cause to be frequently entrusted with the Secrets of it But however the most raised Intenseness of Humane Nature near its period in any men may tempt them to believe that the things they wish to the World will have their certain Birth in it yet whether God doth then inspire them with the knowledg of Futurity I know not but know that the very Prediction of Future things from dying men of valued Fame is according to natural Causes an Engin in the hand of Fate to bring the things predicted to an accomplishment For it being sound that Sagacious men on the Confines of Eternity have foretold any alterations in the World such as wish the same will think them first possible and then by degrees likely and then by the next thought certain to come to pass and that therefore they are safe by Heavens Office of Ensurance that their Embarquing in Designs to bring those things into practice will be prosperous However when we see those Martyrs both living in Story and their Predictions in Nature and when our Martyrology hath represented to us with what an Heroick Bravery their Souls flew up to Heaven from the Flames like the Eagles cut loose and Towring aloft from the Funeral Piles of the Roman Emperors as they were going to be made Divi can we be dispirited by dull fears and suppositions of Protestancy and our Laws loosing their Vigour and be Proditors of the honour of out dying Martyrs I do rather both hope and believe that as dead mens Sculls do serve to strengthen the heads and feet of the Epileptick living that the ashes of those Marian Martyrs will confirm the faltring paces of our weaker Protestants from staggering into an excess of the fears of Popery And as in the Hospitals of the mad it is often seen that an Hypochondriac Person whom irrational fears and fancied dangers brought thither is by a real danger imminent on his Family or Estate frightning him into his Senses led out from thence such a Restoration of People to their Wits do I expect from the present and probable Future State of Christendom and that it will necessarily rescue us from unnecessary fears as likewise from all Curiosities that would imply our ingratitude to Heaven while we would illegally mend our own Country after the example of other parts of the World that is almost the only quiet part in it and Propounders will I believe every day grow more out of request who would make Earthquakes by telling us of the danger of falling Skies It may perhaps be rationally estimated that the greatest part of mad men becomes such by extravagant Suppositions and that the Quid si Coelum ruat is the Foundation of most Bedlams and likewise the subversion of most States by Intestine War making them appear as much the Ludibrium of Fortune as was the Story'd Fate of the two Brothers killing one another on occasion tho not of falling Skies yet of their imaginations travelling thither and ones Supposition of his having Pasture Ground as spacious as the Firmament and the others of his having as many Sheep as there were Stars there and his demanding their being pastured there and fatally resenting its being denyed him What a grave piece of madness is it in the common Writers of Politics to make it a kind of Proverbial saying as I find it used by Reinkingh in his Tractatus de Regimine seculari ecclesiastico as well as by other dull Learned Writers of Politics namely that a Prince may be resisted Si navem Reip. in quâ ipse cum subditis navigat perforare velit 'T is a degree of madness to suppose it and the like I thought of a Supposition in a Pamphlet printed not long after our 41 Commotion and called Observations on some of his Majesties late Answers and Expresses where in p. 4. 't is gravely said That if a Generalissimo should turn his Cannons upon his own Soldiers they might disobey him c. or thus supposing with Gerson That if the Pope goes to strike and box any one or with Alacius de Privileg l. 1. c. 8. that if the Emperor doth so that it is lawful in such Case to lay violent hands on either of them and thence gravely to conclude that the Party so uncivilly and outragiously treated becomes thereby the Deputy and Lieutenant to nature which is a common and equal Soveraign to them all as one Persons words of inference in this Case are from those Authors Bodin doth therefore very wisely in his De Rep. check the affected wisdom in a Venetian Edict against two Banditi who were Father and Son and offering the Son his Liberty and Estate if he would bring in his Fathers head and being angry with the supposition of such a things being done faith That 't were better that the whole City of Venice had been swallowed up by the Sea then that it should have rewarded so detestable a Villany But it is a madness for any to trouble the World by putting wanton impossible Cases and extending the Gold of Reason to such a thinness that will make it lose its weight and value To an over subtle Case put that blundering Answer of a Lawyer was good enough Non est ejusmodi casus dabilis Mr. Hobs in his Behemoth doth to the Question What if my Prince should command me with my own hands to execute my Father in case he should be condemned by the Law answer well enough this is a Case that need not be put We never have read or heard of any King or Tyrant so inhumane as to command it But I will suppose better things of the Future State of England then
to believe it will ever suffer such real madness and real dangers as formerly from Suppositions and Fictions not of Law but of Injury and when some injurious Demagogues did often acquire both Popular Air and bread by their but seeming to suppose what they seduced the people really to do and to be really thereby impoverished When I think how some men by false Alarmes of suppositions would for the lengthening their Interests lengthen the fears of any persons and among Mortal men make the dangers of Plots immortal I call to mind that 't is not very long ago that a Forraigner who was Physician to King Charles the First I mean Sir Theodore Mayerne occasioned an Universal Out-cry of the Disease of the Spleen here and was observed in many Cases where the Disease proceeded from the fowlness of the Stomach or other Causes yet to attribute it to that part of the Body which tho all Animals have yet most if not all may live without I mean the Spleen but however he got his Living thereby and so plentifully that it may be said that he as it were made the Spleen and the Spleen made him And thus doth a Spleen of some Popish Sham-Plots and the continuance of the fears and danger from a true one make some persons perhaps who made the former and the continuance of the fear of the latter and such State Empyricks would be as much impoverished by the utter abolishing of the same as some of our great Merchants who Trade in Companies and with Convoys would be if there were no Argeer but as the swelling of the Spleen proves the emaciating of the other parts of the Body so hath the swoln Spleen of the Popish-Plot particularly not more enriched some Merchants that Traded therein than it hath impoverished the Kingdom in general and I do believe that a Tax of a Million of Money raised in England in the way before mentioned would not have been universally so heavy a burthen as the Popish-Plot in its Effects and Consequences hath been But what by the bravery of the English Genius to which as was said the continuance of any sort of fear is unnatural and despair which generally grows from Sloth and Cowardize appearing so dull a thing humane Nature being apt easier to descend into it than to ascend by presumption and what by Peoples being Convinced of the smallness of the Papists numbers here comparatively and of the ridiculousness of the rumour'd greatness thereof in particular places as for example of there being 60,000 Papists in St. Martins Parish where there dying ordinarily about 2000 in a Year there cannot be judged to live 60000 Souls of Men Women and Children according to the Rule of 1 in 30 dying each year and what by the late great divulsion of the double bottom of the Pope and the Iesuites appearing by his Decree of March the 2 d before mentioned which makes all thinking People as much to expect its Shipwrack as do the throngs of the Plebs resorting to the shore in Tempests expect the Ruine of Navigating Vessels and to look on Papisme as saying in effect to Iesutisme nec tecum nec sine te and what by the Notion so much in Vogue and so likely to be more that 't is as improper to call some of the Tenets of Popery by the Name of Religion as 't would be professedly to mis-call any thing obvious as for example to call Musick the Art of Rhetoric or Grammar Logic or to call Astronomy or Dyalling by Surveying or Gawging and that 't is only that that is Religion indeed that is to be honoured according to that expression in the Scripture honour Widows that are Widows indeed and what by the urging Fate of Christendom now so loudly as with the voice of Thunder repeating it to us that this Nation must either now be quiet or that the World abroad can never be so and that the hand of this Realm must be steady if ever it will keep the Ballance of Christendom so and what by the Nations having outlived all the Malignant Symptomes of the Plague of its Fears I think on the whole matter we may without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only from the Light of Reason presage that the excessive fear of Popery as well as its danger will here be exterminated I doubt not but the former as well as later experiences of the Papists here concerning the Inconveniences of their Artifice of making or increasing Dissensions in the Kingdom the dividing of which by them as well as other Religion-Traders hath prejudiced it more than the so much talk'd of Division of the Fleet will in the present Conjuncture of Affairs incline the sober Party of them to joyn with the Body of the People of England in being sharp Abhorrers of the Principles of the Iesuites for they can hardly go any where now in the Land without seeing a Cain's Mark set on those who cause divisions or still drive the old Trade that the Bohemian Nobleman Andreas ab Habering field in his Detection of the Popish Practices mentions that Sir Toby Mathews Maxwel and Reade those Jesuited Political Interlopers did in the Reign of the Royal Martyr namely to mis-represent the Court and the Puritans to one another and to endeavour to perswade male-contented People that that Pious Prince designed their Slavery a thing so false that he was Reverâ their Martyr as he with great Justice said of himself on the Scaffold and which great name he might challenge even on the account of Natural Justice if there had been nothing relating to reveal'd Religion in the case to entitle him to it for St. Iohn the Baptist was a Martyr and yet died for no Article of the Christian Faith. It may be justly said that our Monarch fell a Martyr for the People by not violating the lex terrae that he was by his Oath bound to maintain and by his therefore not owning the Jurisdiction of the Vile Court over him and moreover the Law of Nature obliging him indispensably to do nothing that by his exemplary abdicating any Right Inherent in the Crown would have incapacitated him and his Successors from protecting their liege-Liege-People in their Inheritance of the Laws and it being a thing certain that the Law of Nature is as much the Law of God as is the Law positive or his written Word and indeed as Gataker saith well in his Book of Lots The Law of Nature written in Mans heart is the very same so far forth as 't is yet undefaced with the Law of God revealed in the Word it may be with reason averr'd that any Member of Mankind whether Prince or Subject who is put to death by any Court of Justice or Armed Force or by the hands of Russians or Bravos on the account of his discharging his Obligations to the Law of Nature may enter his just Claim to the Name of Martyrdom I have therefore supposing that Godfrey lost his life by vile
Papal World must be surfeited with it at last And indeed the experience Popish Polititians have had of their success by dividing us formerly as was said would tempt them to omit other courses and to persist still in that if it were not now generally seen through 'T is in viridi observantiâ how our Famous great Usurper Cromwel who founded his Dominion in pretended Grace or Religion and was afraid of Thunder from every Cloud of Enthusiasme he saw over his head and was awed likewise by the Serene and Rational Religion of the Church of England had no other Game to play in order to the dividing the several Religionary Parties but by in some manner tolerating all according to the Mode of Iulians Politics The Papists were the first who miscalled any of our English Princes by the name of Iulian and that they did in the Case of King Iames as appears in his Learned Apology for the Oath of Allegiance printed Anno 1609. where being much concerned for his being so termed and that too by no meaner a man then Bellarmine he doth with great strength there largely prove that that name was congruous as his words are in no point save one that is that Julian was an Emperor and I a King and indeed 't is a very impotent humour of Calumny in any Protestant to call any one an Apostate or especially the Apostate merely for the alteration of his Judgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants and which are denominable by the name of Religion and 't is a great folly to cherish immoderate fears that any English Prince who possibly may happen in such Controvertible Points to change his perswasions in Religion will if a Papist attempt á la Iulian to plant Divisions among his Subjects by the Instrument of Religion for that their being kept undivided and all of a piece will be essential to the life of the Kingdom as the State of Christendom is likely to continue nor is it probable that any such Prince can ever think in the single course of his life to make this Nation all of a piece or united under the perswasion of Popery For if any one would suppose it possible that in the Reigns of three or four Successive Princes of that perswasion the nature of things might be so far forced as that Millions of men might by artifice be made to abandon a Rational Religion and one that is framed to support the Government for one that is not so such one Prince must be supposed to have acquired the gift of long life that Ante-diluvian Patriarchs had and to extend the Span of his life to that of three or four Princes It is a known Rule relating to Mathematics That there is no reconciling time and force and he who would have one man do as much as four must allow him to be as long a doing it as four one after another But the surviving Experts have seen too much of the effects of the shaking all Civil and Ecclesiastical Polity by a Protestant Usurper ever to wish for another in any Case and to have the ballance of Christendom again broken and the Kingdom be again divided to preserve his Families interest and to keep that entire which is notorious to have happen'd under the aforesaid Usurper both of Religion and the Kingdom and the name of Iulian is most properly applicable to him or any Protestant Usurper and who will be necessitated to follow him in his Track of Politics and the notion of which Ammianus Marcellinus lib. 22. set us right in where he shews that Iulian that he might weaken the Power of the Christian Religion which he feared knew no way so easie as to endeavour to do it by it self and therefore recall'd the Bishops banish'd by Constantius and gave them and the People leave to be Christians tho himself was a Heathen Nullas infestas hominibus bestias ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus i. e. because he had never found Beasts so cruel to one another as he had most Christians and therefore as he travelled through Palaestine cryed out O Marcomanni O Quadi O Sarmatae tandem alios vobis inquietiores inveni Thus did the Usurper promote the Animosities among Religionary Parties and was enforced thereby to weaken the Kingdom to strengthen himself some indulgence he shewed to Congregations where Divines of the Church of England worship God in the way of its Church yet permitting none to have Benefices but such as were of the Presbyterian perswasion generally and among such and the Independants he distributed his Donatives of preferment in the Universities and he took care that no form of Church Discipline or particular Church might preponderate by his being a Member therein He made some Lay-men and some Divines differing in Judgment about Presbytery and Independency to be Tryers of Ministers fitness for Livings and Commissioned many ignorant Lay-men in the several Counties to be Judges of the sufficiency of Ministers for their continuing in Livings The press was open to all unlearned Wranglers about Religion Many of his Military Preferments he placed on Anabaptists and did suffer many of the Fifth-Monarthy Religionaries to disturb the Apocolypse and the World thereby gave freedom to Muggleton the Impostor to set up for a Prophet and one of the two Witnesses and was a particular Patron to Manasseth ben Israel and in treaty with him here to introduce the Iews and tolerated Biddels Congregated Church of Socinians further likewise so far giving an occasion to Mr. Marvels Writing a Book then of the Growth of Popery that Mr. Pryn in his Book called A true and perfect Narrative of what was done c. Printed in the Year 1659. saith in p. 57th That Sir Kenelm Digby was his particular Favourite and lodged by him at White-hall that Maurice Conry Provincial of the Franciscans in England and other Priests had his Protections under Hand and Seal and that he suspended Penal Laws and Executions against Popish Priests and Iesuites tho sometimes taken in their Pontificalibus at Mass and were soon after released and that he endeavoured to stop the Bill against Papists the very Morning he was to pass it by his White-hall Instruments who moved its suspension for a time as not suting with the then present Forraign Correspondencies against whom it was carried by 88 Votes that it should be sent up with the rest then passed and that he writ to Mazarine to excuse his passing that Bill as being carried on by a violent Presbyterian Party much against his Will and that yet it should not hurt them tho passed c. And I suppose an Author more profound in his Observations than Mr. Pryn doth in a Loyal Pamphlet Printed in the Year 1656. Called a Letter from a true and lawful Member of Parliament c and generally conceived to be writ by the late Lord Hollis there in p. 58. and the following ones charge Cromwel home for the
swarming of the Iesuites then in England and transforming themselves into several shapes among the divided Sects here and saith What liberty the Priests and Iesuites take how far they prevail on the People what Countenance they receive from this Government is apparent enough by not proceeding against them in Iustice as if no Laws were in force for their punishment Your private Negotiations with the Pope and your promises that as soon as you can â—stablish your own greatness you will protect the Catholics and the insinuations that you will countenance them much further are sufficiently known and understood and of their dependance upon and devotion to you there needs no Evidence beyond the Book lately written by Mr. White a Romish Priest and dedicated to your Favourite Sir Kenelm Digby Entitled the Grounds of Obedience and Government in which he justifies all the Grounds and Maximes in your Declaration and determines positively that you ought to be so far from performing any promise or observing any Oath that you have taken if you know that it is for the good of the People that you break it albeit they foreseeing all that you now see did therefore bind you by Oath not to do it and that you offend both against your Oath and Fidelity to the People if you maintain those limitations you 〈◊〉 sworn to and sure what you do must be supported by such Casuists And afterwards speaks how Cromwel in distrust of the whole English Nation was Treating to bring over a Body of Swiss to serve him as the Ianisaries do the Turk The Declaration here referred to was Cromwels Declaration of October 31 Anno 1655 and which was supposed to have been worded by his Lord Keeper Fiennes wherein all the measures of Justice toward the Cavaliers and particularly the Public Faith of the Parliament for the punctual and exact performance of Articles with them after the vast gain that had accrued to the Parliament by their Compositions and an Act of Grace and Oblivion afterward granted to the Royal Party are avowedly broken and in p. 36. of that Declaration 't is said If the Supreme Magistrate were tyed up to the ordinary Rules and had not liberty to proceed upon the illustrations of reason against those who are continually suspected there would be wanting in such a State the means of Common Safety c. and before in p. 12 and 13. the Iesuites are out-done as to the keeping of no faith with Heretics by the asserting in effect in general that nulla fides est servanda and the humour of Pope Paul the 4th is Repeated who as the Author of the History of the Council of Trent tells us declared it in the Consistory That 't was Heresie to say the Pope can bind himself And we are assured out of Mr. Peter Walsh his History and Vindication of the Irish Remonstrance that Edmund Reilly the titular Popish Primate of Ireland who at a public Dinner boasted that he never had been friend or well wisher to the King and his two Brothers and the Duke of Ormond did yet write Precepts under his Seal to all the Province of Armagh to pray for the Health Establishment and Prosperity of Cromwell Protector and his Government More need not be said of the danger of Popery and Arbitrary Power to the Nation if God and man had not hindered Lamberts Usurpation over it I have mention'd how some of the Plot-Winesses have deposed somewhat thereof and some of his Countrymen have in discourse affirm'd his having been there a Fautor of Papists and my self observing it to a worthy Gentleman of Yorkshire that one of the Popish Lords in the Tower did in February 1662 pass a Grant from the Crown of several Mannors in Yorkshire forfeited by the Attainder of Iohn Lambert he averr'd to me that Lamberts Son enjoys that Estate at this day It had been just for the Almighty to have punished the extravagance of the Fears and Jealousies that Reigned in the time of the Royal Martyr about his not being a Protestant a Character of Religion he had constantly own'd in the view of the World both by his publick Devotions and Alliances and particularly that with Holland which chiefly his Zeal for that Religion made him to ensure by the Marriage of his Daughter with the Prince of Orange in the time that the War between the Crown of Spain and the States was depending by permitting a private Gentleman whose name perhaps had not come to public knowledg but for the figure he made in illegal Arms so far to march with his Religion undiscern'd through the Quarters of all the gathered Churches and the Classical ones too that he deceived in that point so many that called themselves the very Elect and who were as well vers'd in the business of all Religions as Iews are in Coines and in the way of adulterating them and who after that Religion had always been the Staple Commodity of England as much as Wooll did almost nothing else but Weave and Dye and Tenter the same with all subtilty of Art possible to them and as the Israelites marched out of Egypt without the farewel of a Dogs barking at them we were then near the point of being driven back to Egypt to Civil and Spiritual Slavery without the least â—arm given us by any of our best and deep mouth'd Dogs against Popery But the extreme danger to Protestancy from that intended Usurpation hath been long since over nor do I expect that any fatality of that kind can ever happen to it from any Prince of the Right Line how much a Papist soever he may be that is to say from one who was swathed with the Laws in his Cradle and will be Circumscribed with them in his Crown According to that great severe truth I observed before of the fate of the ten Tribes after they had made a defection from the Line of David that they were punished with a Succession of 10 Kings and not one ' good one in the whole Pack and their falling at last as a Prey to Forraigners it was the Lot of England justly to suffer what has been here described from various Governments and Governors for its defection from the Royal Line and the experience of our disastrous past Calamities must needs convince all men of serious thought and sense that we can have no Usurper how true a Religion soever he may own but will be false to the Interest of the Nation and that particularly by diving it and thereby as much depretiating it in the view of all Christendom as a great Diamond would be if cut in two for tho Diamonds or Pearles be equal and like in their Figures Waters Colours and Evenness yet if they differ in their Weights and Magnitudes those are the Roots of their Prices and a Diamond of Decuple weight is of Centuple value I therefore think the Kings Loyal long Parliament did consult the public Security when in the great Act of the Test they enjoyn'd
verò muneribus honorat amplissimis augustissimis in toto regno alibi tum bello tum pace c. Quartò consilium suum è puris putis haereticis stabilit c. So that after he had with St. Peter denied his Lord the followers of St. Peter's pretended Successor call'd him in effect a Galilean and said that the Speech of his Actions bewrayed him and after his absolution he continued in effect what the Pope styled him in his Bull of Excommunication filius â—rae and after as a Prodigal having fed among heretical Swine he returned to his Romish Ghostly Fathers house and had cryed peccavi and abjured and his Father had compassion on him he experimented the contrary to for this my Son was dead and is alive again and himself was the fatted Calf that was slain and so much wantonness was shewed by the contrivers of his dire fate that Gassendus in his life of Peiresk Book 2 d shews how in the beginning of the Year 1610. An Almanack or yearly Prognostication was brought out of Spain in which the Accidents of Harry the 4ths death were foretold and that it was sent to his Majesty to read who slighted it as Gassandus did likewise all judicial Astrology but yet supposed that the figure-flinger might possibly be acquainted with the Plot against that Kings Life and saith sure I am it could not be perfectly conceal'd either in Spain or Italy for even the Kings Ambassadors and particularly the most excellent Johannes Bochartus Lord of Champigny then Agent at Venice had already preadvertised his Majesty thereof and it was sufficiently proved that all the Sea-faring Men of Marseilles who for two Months before came from Spain brought word that there was a report spread abroad in Spain that the King of France was already or should be killed by a Sword or Knife Poor Harry the 4 th He who while a Protestant had Dominion over his own Stars and his Enemies Stars too for they were his Enemies who made him first be call'd Great and their designing to ruine him by embroiling France in Civil Wars tended to the advancement of his Interest and his Glory and the Artifices by which they thought to have chased him out of Guyen brought him into the heart of France and their former by unjustifiable practices urging the King his Predecessor to have prosecuted him with more violence then he had done were the causes of his being reconciled to that King and who then in the most dark and stormy night of his Affairs never wanted that Illumination from above which was like a Star to him and not only a sign of fairer weather but a mark of direction in the foul and which would have furnished his Portraiture in Story with another guess Star than that usually engraved on Coesars Image and which by its blazing seven days ore the Games consercrated to Coesar by Augustus did make him inter Divos and did awe the World as being thought his Soul which vouchsafed from Heaven to visit it with its lustre this Harry the 4 th was at last grown the ludibrium of Star-gazers And if any one shall say that Franciscus de Verona Constantinus the Author of the Apology for Chastel was not a Voucher good enough for the spreading the Belief of the Doctrine that Heretical Princes by their absolution from the Pope are not restored to their Regal Rights let him consult the Great Thuanus and he will find that in his Book 135 and on the Year 1605 where he gives an account of the Gun-powder Treason here he saith that the Conspirators therein Ante omnia conscientiam instruunt eâque instructâ ad facinus audendum obfirmant animum sic autem à Theologis suis disserebatur That Hereticks are yearly excommunicated by the Pope in the bulla coenae and are ipso facto fallen into the punishment of the Law and that thence it followeth that Christian Kings if they fall into Heresy may be deposed and their Subjects released immediately from their Princes Dominion nec jus illud recuperare posse etiamsi ecclesiae reconcilentur Ecclesiam communem omnium parentem cum nemini ad eam redeunti claudere gremium cum dicitur adhibitâ distinctione interpretandum esse modo non it ad damnum periculum ecclesiae Nam id verum esse quoad animam non quoad Regnum Nec solum ad Principes hac labe infectos paenam extendi sed etiam ad eorum filios qui à Regni successione ob vitium paternum pelluntur haeresim quippe lepram morbum haereditarium esse atque ut disertius res exprimatur Regnum amittere qui Romanam Religionem deserit diris illum devoveri nec unquam ipsum aut illius posteros in Regnum restitui quoad animam à solo Pontifice posse absolvi His se rationibus cum satis tutos intus existimarent munimenta externa conjurationi quaerere coeperunt c. ita ad facinus non solum licitum laudabile verum etiam meritorium à Theologis suis auctorati accesserunt They thought it seems that by the Authority of the Doctrines of those Divines they might blow up the King and three Estates with Gun-powder very fairly It is a thing that cannot have escaped your Lordships curious Observation that both the Nonconformists and Papists were sturdy Petitioners to King Iames in the beginning of his Reign that he would be a Fautor to them and their Hypotheses In April in the Year 1603 a Petition was presented to him call'd the humble Petition of the Ministers of the Church of England desiring reformation of certain Ceremonies and Abuses of the Church and there they particularly desire that Ministers may not be urged to subscribe but according to the Law to the Articles of Religion and the Kings Supremacy only and that none migat be excommunicated without the consent of his Pastor and therein they complain of Ministers being suspended silenced disgraced imprisoned for Mens traditions This Petition was commonly called the Millenary Petition the Petitioners averring themselves to be more then a thousand and an animadverting Answer was made to the same by the Vice-Chancellor and Doctors and Proctors and Heads of Houses in the Vniversity of Oxford and printed in the Year 1604. Methinks a Humble Petition with a thousand hands is a kind of Contradictio in adjecto But the Vniversity in their Animadversions on the Petition do observe that the two contrary Factions of Papists and Puritans did shew themselves by their Petitions discontented with the present State and Ecclesiastical Government They mention particulars as parallels wherein their Petitions agreed and resemble them to Samsons Foxes c. I had occasion before to mention to your Lordship the Supplication of the Papists to King James that was Contemporary with that of the Puritans and printed too in the same year and tho I remember not any of our Historians to have given the World an account of that memorable
busie Anti-Papists then others have been immediately admitted to the good Graces of the People and cried up by them as Patriots and Hero's and by their afterward espousing the true Interest of the Kingdom as to the point of Popery all their former spurious Actions have been not only pardoned but almost according to the Canon Law legitimated and as the Popes in any Croysad for the Exterminium of Hereticks were wont to give plenary Indulgences for all Sins past and to come for many years so have the People heaped such Indulgences on such Persons that in any Conjuncture shewed their zeal in the extermination of Popery And though to an ordinary view these mens Title to their Fame may appear by some of their former Actings much incumbered yet who ever pryes into it is as much generaly hated as are those Projectors who rake for their Bread among the weak Titles of other Mens Estates and cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when they have found out a flaw there 'T is observable that S. Iames C. 2. in his Assertion of Justification by works gives two Instances of Persons so justified and that one is of Abraham and the other of Rahab the Harlot in v. 25. likewise also was not Rahab the Harlot justified by workt when she had received the Messengers and had sent them another way and yet too that senâ—â—â— the Spies another way as the Fact is Historically mentioned in Ioshua the 2 d would to some Scruplers seem unjustifiable Thus do the People in their way justifie all that they believe are assistful to them in the attaquing of the Romish Babylon and look on them as their Saviours and as captious as they are against others yet think of nothing but saving them and all that they have as was in the case of Rahab Nor is it to be wonder'd at that Men who have so much to account for to the Public should be thus discharged by the populace tho many of them are Gallios in Religion and were no more concern'd for the Eclipse of Protestancy or the light of the Gospel in the year 1678. or 1680. then they were for the four Eclipses of the Luminaries viz. two of the Sun and two of the Moon that will be in the year 1701. and particularly of that of the Sun which will be in Ianuary then and not seen by us but only by our Antipodes but there is that adherent to Popery that if it could rivet it self into our Law here it would make the light of the Sun not worth the looking on namely the Confiscation of the Goods and Estates of those that Holy Church calls Heretics and the throwing them into such forlorn Prisons where they could see neither Sun or Moon and therefore as the Devils those Seducers in Chains are hated by Men because they know those Fiends would destroy their lifes if they could for the same reason all that lye open to the Name of Heretics will be animated with a brisk hatred against Popery and magnify those as their tutelar Angels that shall pretend to defend them from it tho such did before conspire against them But therefore because a Zeal against Popery is a remedy so cheap and so easie to be had and yet so infallible a one against the Peoples being discontented with Men who did before so much by their Principles poison the Realm 't is the common interest of us all both Protestants and Papists out of love to our Country to wish that no Men may be tempted so fatally to injure it hereafter by being beforehand sure of purchasing both Pardon and Adoration from the People on such easie terms The strong currents of Inclination I find in my self and observe in others not only to Pardon but to extol and magnifie nay to bless all Men that help their Country as it is contesting with Popery or Presbytery or either of those or any Religion-trade and to say to them as the Expression is in the Psalms We bless you in the name of the Lord will I hope be accompany'd with such an Extirpation of it as will not leave any Fibre behind it in our English World. As it need not be told to our Divines of the Church of England that they are under no obligation to strain any point of Courtesie whereby to render the Papists generally not worse than Puritans and that their Character hath been by the Papists all along render'd more vile than that of the Puritans and that Doleman in his Book of the Succession weighing the Parties in England and having first spoke of the Protestants of the Church of England afterward p. 242. saith That the Puritan party is more generally favour'd throughout the whole Realm with all those which are not of the Roman Religion then is the Protestant upon a certain general persuasion that the profession of the Puritan Party is the more perfect especially in great Towns where Preachers have made more impression in the Artificers and Burgesses than in the Common People And among the Protestants themselves all those that are less interested in Ecclesiastical Livings or other Preferments depending on the State are more affected commonly to the Puritans c. And p. 244. The Puritan Party at home in England is thought to be most vigorous of any other that is to say most ardent quick bold resolute and to have a great part of the best Captains and Soldiers on their side which is a point of no small moment and that Weston Lib. 3. de Trip. Hom. Offic. Cap. 16. p. 226. in a very janty manner crying up the Puritans beyond the Prrotestants of the Church of England saith Protestantibus inâ—â— Sacrâ praestabiliores puritanos Qui enim estis Protestantes hominum judicamini ignavissimi omnium religionis etiam fuco destituti impiissimi aeruscatores parati jurare in cujusvis verba modò inde emolumentum rebus vestris accrescat and in p. 227. Puritani sane multò solidius ac syncerius sua dogmata profitentur So neither need it be told the Papists that the Divines of the Church of England did never prefer the Tenets of Popery or Professors thereof to those of Puritanism or Presbytery as such and that they never complain'd of the Protection the Dutch and French Churches have long here enjoy'd with Liberty to worship God according to their peculiar Rites and Church Discipline and that upon the late great migration of many French Protestants from their own Country hither under great Circumstances of want our Divines and particularly those in and near London shew'd all the efforts of their Art of Persuasion from their Pulpits to move their Hearers to liberal Contributions to them that they could have possibly done in the case of their own Countrimen or Kindred and that one of those Divines in one of the greatest Cures there being for his Learning and Life and Endowments proper to his Function a great Ornament to the Gospel when he with great Eloquence so pathetically bespoke
mens judgments or fancies to appropriate so much the meaning of that word to fleshly Lusts. The Devil is called an unclean Spirit in the New Testament though not supposeable to use bodily Lusts or to confine his temptations to them The filthiness of sin is mentioned by St. Paul to Timothy and St. Iames 1. 21. commands the laying aside all filthiness c. A Sentence obtain'd from a Judge that was given by Bribery is said to be lata per sordes and for the turpitude of such a judgment a Judge was long since brought to a shameful end in this Realm and in his Enditement for Bribery 't was said that he did violare sacramentum Domini Regis and the reason thereof was that the Oath of our Kings relating to the doing of Justice to their People such corrupt Judges did by their injustice do violence to that Oath of our Monarchs and in like manner all Kings generally being by their Coronation Oaths bound to protect and defend their People I ask what King on earth can do it if either an outragious Pope or the General of the Jesuites shall secretly cause men to be killed by their Emissaries and what Subject can any were enjoy the benefit of the Tacit Paction between him and the Law to the effect of fac hoc vives if he must hold his life by the Tenure of a Jesuites Caprice This Orders sicarious Principles must therefore be naturally as fatal to it as those of their Calumny beforementioned and indeed this their affected Arbitrary Power over Hereticks lives is liable to the Battery of fear and shame from the other Papists for if such believing the Justice of the Pope's Decree shall speak ill of the Iesuites Contumacy and on that account render that Society disobedient to Holy Church and scandalous to the same will not Tenet the 30 th condemned by the Pope viz. It is lawful for a Person of Honour to kill a man that intends to calumniate him if there is no other way to avoid that Reproach render the lives of such Papists forfeitable to the Jesuites Assassins and again will it not render the Jesuites lives forfeitable by their own Principles to such Papists and thus our Popish Layety and the Iesuites be in a State of War instead of such Layety being amicable Disciples and bountiful Patrons to them Neither the Law of God or the Land do trust the punishment of Malefactors to private persons but as Tolosanus de Repub. tells us l. 13. c. 132. Processum fuit judicialiter sententiâ excommunicationis contra vermes radices segetum edentes in diocesi Curiensi constantiensi and he there sets down such a Sentence of Excommunication pronounced against those animalcula so much more ought such Locusts tho now as to the Pope they have no King I allude to Solomon's words The Locusts have no Kings yet go they forth in Bands and tho their Principles would eradicate the Lives of our Hereditary Kings and their Subjects to have the legal benefit of Judicial Proceedings but the turpitude of such Principles and Practices as pollutes the Land with Blood and may bring a Curse upon it is likely to bring them many an extrajudicial Curse from the Popish and Protestant Populace and if as Tully tells us in his Offices that there was a Law at Athens that ordered publick Execrations against all that did viam erranti non monstrare such Confessors as by insinuations put people out of the right way by vile irreligionary casuistical Principles so fatal to Souls and Bodies must naturally be anathematized by them Thus likewise by shame and fear in our populous English World must all Bloody and Rebellious Principles own'd by any Persons that assume the the name of Protestants be naturally hated and if any are not ashamed or afraid togive just occasion of Jealousie concerning such Hostile Principles being secretly harboured in their minds others will be ashamed and afraid to keep them Company and as if there were some speedy Judgment impending on those who conversed with them according to that Proverb of the Jews Migrandum est ex eo loco in quo Rex non timetur The last prefatory Paragraph before the Bishops Survey is that the Heads and Preachers of the several Factions are such as had a great share in the late Rebellion Such men tho like the Trumpeter in Alciat they made part of the fighters and had been fairly dealt with by the Amnesty if they had not been permitted any more in their profession to have lifted up their voices like Trumpets again or trusted to make any harangues to the People in publick yet at the time of that Survey were very few and are now generally as silent in the Region of the Dead as Meroz was when they curs'd him and themselves are according to my Calculating Observation turn'd to Earth whose Voices like Air in the wrong place made such Earthquakes in Church and State and both fear and shame might teach them how in bello non bis peccare if their being Experts of the inconveniences of War had not naturally excited in many an aversion to it but with the surviving Experts there doth undoubtedly a reminiscentia which Mr. Hobbs calls a re-conning survive how that the long Parliament had not formerly more fears and jealousies of Popery then of Presbytery and of some of the Divines of that perswasion designing to trouble every Parish with a New Court-Christian after the tremendous example in History of the Inquisition for Heretical Pravity being first committed to the Orders of the Dominican and Franciscan Fryars and without any Tribunal and which by their zeal in preaching they afterward obtain'd with a vengeance and to the Scandal of Humane Nature and how that that Parliament as Fuller observes in his Church-History would not trust the Presbyters to carry the Keys of Excommunication at their Girdle so that the Power thereof was not intrusted to them but ultimately resolved into a Committee of eminent Persons of Parliament in which Thomas Earl of Arundel was first named and moreover how that England was then turned into such a common shore of Heretical Opinions that one of the most Learned of the Presbyterian Divines Mr. Iames Cranford in a Sermon of his called Haereseo-machria preached before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen at S. Pauls on February the 1 st 1645. and printed in the following Year saith there in p. 47. In eighty years there did not arise among us so many horrid opinions and blasphemous Heresies under Episcopacy a Government decryed as Antichristian as have risen in these few years since we have been without a Government He had before in p. 5. said it is lamentable what success errors have had among our selves in these last 3 or 4 years of Ecclesiastical Anarchy and Conâ—â—sion whether we respect the numbers of Errors of the erroneous Amsterdam Poland Transylvania Places most infamous for Heresies are now righteous if compared with England London
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
Archimedes his doing it would have been of any importance and the Papal Pride elevating him to say with Lucifer sedebo in monte testamenti in lateribus Aquilonis I will sit in the sides of the North would soon be attended with the Exclamation of How art thou fallen O Lucifer Son of the Morning c. and Is this the man that made the Earth to tremble France that I believe exceeded England by two thirds in the number of People in Queen Mary's time when Cardinal Pool made his Estimate thereof did securely heretofore suffer great numbers of its People to be unemployed in it as namely the Beggars and others of the lower ranks and through want of opportune means of subsisting at home to seek their Fortunes abroad and that not as 't is in the Case of so many Scots yearly leaving their Country the which perhaps is not able well to nourish more Inhabitants than it hath but through the abovementioned want of encouragement to continue in that opulent and fertile Kingdom a Kingdom that Grotius doth but right to when in the Dedicatory Epistle of his De jure belli pacis to Lewis the just having mentioned the Kingdom of Heaven he saith which Kingdom only is better then yours And 't is no wonder if the Ministers and Counsellors of State there did not concern themselves to make rational Estimates of the growing Populousness of the Northern Countries and particularly of England when nothing of that kind was perhaps so much as attempted here before the probable inferences of the Observator on the Bills of Mortality made about the same As to the former unconcernedness of France in preserving or encreasing the numbers of its People there is an observation of Sir Thomas Culpeper Knight in his Discourse about Vsury where he saith France tho so good a soyle lies half of it waste the Natives even loathing their own Country and burdening all the habitable World with their beggarly Colonies one third of the Lacqueys and Valets in Europe being French Men. Witness Dr. Heylin who tells us that once at Madrid they banished them all as dangerous for their numbers finding the French Servants in that Town alone to exceed Thirty Thousand so just and natural is it for oppression to disarm it self But I have already mentioned it that the present Great French Monarch not more renowned for his Armaforis then his Consilium domi and his able Counsellors there doth by Accurate Measures study the encrease of his People and 't is very remarkable that in the Code Loüys which he published in April 1667. he made some Ordinances with great care for the Registring the Christenings and Marriages and Burials in each Parish in his Realm as appears by Title 20. Article 8 9 10 11 12 13 14. there from p. 107 to 112. and with much more exactness then the Bills of Mortality in our Metropolis are ordered and the which that Great Prince thought worthy to be enjoyned in his Code of Laws having perhaps been informed by his Ministers that many Political Inferences as to the knowing the numbers of People and their encrease in any State are to be made from the Bills of Mortality on the occasion of some such published about 3 years before by the Observator on the Bills of Mortality in England and where tho many are apt to think that the Registring of the Births of People was first used and invented by Cromwel in Harry the 8 ths time yet is the thing as old as the ancient times of the Romans and among them introduced by Servius Tullius who to ascertain the number of Births and Burials ordered that when a Child was born the Kindred of the Child should bring a piece of Money into the Aerarium of Iuno Lucina and so likewise in the Exchequer of Venus libitina when any died or came to Age. And this Custom being quite abolished was revived by Augustus Caesar at the Birth of Children as Lips. on Tacit. observes But what was worthy of the French King 's providing for the stability of his Throne he further ordered an exact Registry to be took of the numbers of his half Subjects I mean the Regulars and Seculars by the following Articles there namely the 15 th 16th 17th in that Title Mr. Samuel Pepys that Great Treasurer of Naval and Maritime Knowledge and of that great Variety of the Learning which we call recondita eruditio having Communicated to me the sight of a Paper mentioning that in the whole Number of Men in the Realm of Spain long since when by secret Survey there were returned a 11 Hundred and 25 Thousand and 3 Hundred and 90 Men and which secret Survey I suppose was made some time before the Year 1588. I observed that the number of the Regular and Secular Clergy was not included in that Survey But I think the numbring of the many Regulars there who no doubt so often say in their hearts Nos numerus sumus c. had been of as much importance to the Government as the numbering of the Lay-men and for the number of which the Code Loüis hath as aforesaid so carefully provided and thereby made the prudence of this French Kings Code outweigh Iustinian's and hath discovered to the World the acuteness of his understanding to be not inferior to that of his Sword. And the Expences of the Crown being under the Government of this Monarch so very much greater than in his Fathers time have necessarily occasioned such an exact knowledge of the Numbers and Wealth of his Realm as hath provided him his strong Sinews for War. Thuanus on the Year 1615. tells us how that Lewis the 13th Having appointed some Persons to compute his Expences and Receipts for the Year 1614. That one and twenty Millions and fifty thousand Livres i. e. at 20d a Livre one Million 7 Hundred 54 Thousand 66 Pounds Sterling were issued out of the Exchequer and that 17 Millions and 8 Hundred Thousand Livres i. e. 1 Million 4 Hundred 83 Thousand 3 Hundred 30 Pounds Sterling were brought into it and so his Expences then exceeded his Receipts three Millions seven Hundred Thousand Livres i. e. 2 Hundred 70 Thousand 8 Hundred 33 l. Sterling and beside those Receipts and Expences the Historian saith that there were eighteen Millions of Livres Collected out of the Provinces i. e. 1 Million 5 Hundred 8 Thousand 3 Hundred Thirty Three Pounds Sterling and which were distributed in them for the Pay of the Officers there employed for other Expences there So that the Expences and Receipts of that Crown since the Year 1614. were more then quadrupled in the Year 1673 of the which I mentioned the Total before and abstracted the same from a Paper that some Merchants gave in to the Loyal long Parliament wherein the particular Sums accruing from the respective Generalities in France are set down as likewise others are in Klockius de aerario for another Year We have already found that it is
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
know that neither the Decrets nor Decretals were ever as such received as Law in England yet the Pope and Jesuites saying that they ought so to have been and that they were and are obligatory upon us it will follow that by reason of an unlucky Proverb of Ben Syrah Quantulus ignis quantam materiam accendit and which is used by the Apostle St. Iames saying Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth and for that there are some little People ready to apply that little fire when the Pope or Jesuites would have them the Majority of the Papists here being Jesuited as was observed and that part of them not being of the Gentry would not be byassed by generous education and temper against the Commands of the mercenary Pope or Jesuites and for that even in the Jesuited Gentry here there were Bigots found to plot and to prepare to execute the Gun-powder Treason it is apparent that the Pope may if he will be very troublesome to our Cities with his Writ de Civitate comburendâ and that he or the Jesuites can command numbers of instruments to execute that his Writ as I may call it who will think that therein that they do as lawful an Act as if the four first General Councils had expresly warranted the same He said that the Popes Decrets and Decretals are in several Popish Countries so much regarded that to encourage men to study the same Academick Degrees are conferred namely of Doctores decretorum and Doctores decretalium That in France where the Canon Law was never in gross received as Minier the President of the Council of Aix did set fire on the Heretical Villages as such so he hath heard that Boerius an eminent Lawyer of France and President of a Parliament there and who has published a Volume of Decisions hath in Tractatu de seditiosis asserted this Tenet of the Pope's power to burn Heretical Cities That the Christians of old when they groaned under the heaviest weight of the Pagan Persecution abhorred this revenge against their idolatrous Enemies as appeared by Tertullian's Apology and their sense of the ease with which this revenge might have been executed Quando vel una nox pauculis faculis largitatem ultionis posset operari si malum malo dispungi penes nos liceret sed absit ut aut igni humano vindicetur Divina secta i. e. One night with a few Fire-brands would yield us sufficient Revenge if it were lawful for us to discount evil with evil but God forbid that the followers of the Divine Religion should either revenge themselves with Humane Fire c. That the very Heathens of old accounted there was turpitude in promoting not only their own profit but that of their Country in firing the Fleet of proclaimed Enemies as appeared in Athens when Themistocles by order from the Senate had privately Communicated to Aristides how he could destroy the Lacedemonians by privately burning their Fleet and Aristides had reported to the Senate that the project of Themistocles communicated to him was profitable for the State but was not honest they unanimously resolved against hearing it as Tully tells us in his Offices and much less would they have deliberated of its turpitude That the Athenians in the time of open War with King Philip and when their Priests offering their most solemn religious Sacrifices to the Gods for the prosperity of their Country did Philippum liberos terrestres navalésque copias atque omnem Macedoniam exitiali carmine diris imprecationibus detestari yet intercepting some Letters writ by him they returned them to him unopen'd That the Pope and his Trent Council having never disown'd this power nor branded this Canon nor yet by any index expurgatorius damned the Writings of Gratian or Gundissalvus or the Famous Canonists by him cited for this opinion it was plain that they might therefore be said to approve of the same that Qui non prohibet cum potest jubet That the Trent Council had gone far in the Confirmation of the Canon Law and that the saying used by the Fathers in that Council was here applicable viz. Omnia nostra facimus quibus authoritatem nostram impertimur In fine he saying that every one ought to withdraw from a Church while it in effect approved Doctrines in the Faith erroneous and in practice impious and asking me if some of the Great Writers of the Church of England as namely Bishop Iewel Bishop Andrews Arch-Bishop Laâ—d Bishop Sanderson or any of them had industriously published it in Print that we might lawfully employ Emissaries to burn Rome or any City where all or the Majority were Papists and that such Writing of theirs was never censured by Authority and impugned by any of our Divines tho yet by occasion thereof no Anti-Papists had ever been the Incendiaries of Popish Cities I would not however withdraw from the Communion of the Church of England till I saw such Tenet of those Divines publickly branded and till such Writing had received the usage that the Canon Law had from Luther when he cast it into the Flames I plainly told him that I would and the like he said he was inclined to as to Communion with the Church of Rome if he found that the Fact of that fiery Tenet against Heretical Cities was chargeable on the Pope in his Law and in the Writers thereupon as aforesaid And as little Credit as I wish all Mushroom Prophets and Prophecies may find I am of opinion if ever any clear discovery should happen in time to be made of that Fires having proceeded from the Councils of great numbers of Iesuites Friars or other Papists a thing I never Expect that Popery would thereby be loaded with such a lasting general Odium here and in Forraign Countries both Popish and Protestant as it would hardly breath under the weight of and the Prophets of the effects of the Year 1666 would cry that their predictions did hit right and boldly say to us their upbraiders that 66 in its effects is not yet past just like the Sooth-sayer who being rallied by Caesar going to the Senate-House and saying the Ides of March were come replied to him that they were not passed There is another happy effect I expect from the grown and growing numbers of our populous Nation and all mens errors being necessarily the more visible to each other by their close Vicinage namely that men will be ashamed to aggravate the supposed Political Errors of the Ministers of our Princes as formerly and much more not to take it patiently when their Princes pardon them How shameful a thing was it that the Kings Pardon was not allowed as good by the Lords and Commons to Arch-Bishop Laud when nothing but that could save them from the danger of the Laws for taking away any mans life by Ordinance of Parliament But so sharp and perfect a haâ—er is your Lordship of all Cruel and Arbitrary Practices that I think I have
thing that can happen and that whoever shall write the Story of your Lordships life after you have finished your Mortality will have cause to say of you as Mr. Fox p. 411. mentions that one who writes of Wicliff recorded of him that he persevered in his Religion ita ut cano placeret quod Iuveni complacebat that the same thing pleased him in his old Age which did in his youth Nor do I indeed doubt but that when your Lordship shall be upon your passage to the other World you will take your long leave of your friends in the Style with which Dr. Holland the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford was observed commonly to bid his friends farewel viz. Commendo vos amori Dei odio Papatus and that your Lordship who hath been so successful an Agonist against Popery will share in the Glories of that Promise from Heaven To him that overcomes will I give the Morning Star and that as the Morning Star is the same with the Evening one and in the Morning is call'd Phosphorus and in the Evening Hesperugo so the Protestant Religion will appear in the Evening of your Life with the same brightness that it did in the Morning thereof and so continue till you shall arrive at that Region where all the Morning Stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy How unreasonably rigid are they who when the Ministers of Princes are studying and procuring the ease of Mankind as your Lordship hath done will in spight of fate disquiet themselves in rendring the lives of such Ministers uneasie a temper that I think shewed it self over much in a late Speech in the House of Commons of Sir W. I. who if my Information be true did not reverently use the power of his Popularity when with much Acrimony reflecting on some in the Kings Council he was supposed to have aimed at your Lordship in words to this effect There is another in the Council a Noble Man too among the Kings Ministers and a Lawyer but if we cannot reach him do not impeach him intimating that he would have been glad of any being able with Articles and Proofs concludent to have reached your Lordship in order to Impeachment There is another Honourable Person who is your Collegue in the King's Council a Great Man and a Lawyer too whom I was sorry to find by the printed Votes of the House of Commons that were sent into the Country so many persons were endeavouring to reach with matter of Impeachment I mean my Lord Chief Iustice North. It seem'd to me a thing worthy the name of News that the advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions should be thought a sufficient ground to proceed upon to an Impeachment against him for high Crimes and Misdemeanors The security and quiet of Kings and their People are to be so tenderly regarded that the drawing one Proclamation after another to prevent the blowing or breathing in the Kings Face I allude to the words in one of the Articles against Woolsy by Tumultuous Petitioners a thing punishable at common-Common-Law and likewise by the severity of the Council-Board seems strangely imputed as a Crime to a Judge and Privy Councellor The people petitioning in Multitudes are so far from being like the Horse not knowing his own strength that their coming in such numbers shews they have Calculated it and perhaps with more nicety than the Author of the Discourse before the Royal Society concerning the use of Duplicate Proportion had Calculated the strength of Animals the which strength he saith is as the square roots of their weights and substance and if 1728 Mice were equiponderate to one Horse the said Horse is but 1 144 part as strong as all the said Mice and so might easily strip the Horses Neck of the Thunder that God and Nature according to Iobs expression have cloathed it with and their petitioning in numbers being a real Proclamation of their power it was the part of so good a Councellor of State and Mathematician to advise his Prince and his Country not to be taken in a Trap by the Petitioning Mice and it was worthy of so knowing a Iudge to forewarn them of being entrapped by the Law and as the Millenary Petitioners were forewarn'd in King Iames his time What occasioned the Proclamation referred to by the House of Commons I know not but by what I have observed of his accurateness in the administration of Justice in his great Sphere and of his Mathematical Genius even not receeding from it self while on the Tribunal he in every Cause demonstrates the rationality of the Laws of England and makes Justice there in its Arithmetical and Geometrical proportion so visible to all and by what I have seen of the serenity of his temper in having had once or twice the honour of his Conversation I believe that as a Privy Councellor he would too as much occasionally assert any Legal Right the Subject hath to Petition his Prince as he would the Right of the latter not to be illegally and with the apparent Menace of Members addrest to a way of Petitioning that hath so often and so lately been the Prologue to the ensuing Tragedy of War. I was very much pleased to hear how this Learned Iudge being once moved to grand a Prohibition to the Court Christian in a certain Cause and that the Council fencing with Presidents pro and con that came not home to the point his Lordship declared in words to this purpose that in any proceeding that was against Universal Reason he would grant the Writ and I think it was as proper for him as a States-man to advise a Prohibition in the way of a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions than which nothing can be more against Vniversal Reason But if a person who is so great a Master of that Reason and indeed of Universal Learning and of that part of it that deserves the name of Real and whose single Learning would serve to vindicate a whole profession from Erasmus his Aspersion of doctissimum gâ—nus indoctorum hominum and of knowing nothing of the Sense and Reason of the World beyond Dover and the brightness of whose parts hath given a Lustre to the Science of the Law and by whom if by any of this Age that may be thought possible to be done that our Great Lord Bacon advised King Iames to Crown his Reign with namely the bringing the Body of the Common Law or our jus non scriptum into a Digest I say if a person thus accomplished cannot have the skill to walk through the World free from Impeachment it will be sufficient to make all men of Illustrious Abilities and Godlike Inclinations to do good retire from dangerous Mankind and not adventure to Aid Princes who are Gods Vice-Roys in the Government of the World and to be happy in themselves without preserving it as the first being was before he made
are somewhat disguised but are as well known as the Ecclesiasticks are in France and are not in the least assaulted c. There was one day in a Long-boat or Ship a Priest dressed in black Cloths who was not otherwise disguised than that his Coat was short who said his Breviary before a hundred persons with as much Liberty as he could have done in France And yet perhaps the number of those who in Holland fear them or who pretend to fear them is but the least of numbers I think too in this sharp sighted age where Art among the Inquisitive follows Nature as carefully as Equity doth Law one may safely predict that in the Dividend of our time little will come to the share of Metaphysicks or the considering how Metaphysica agit de iis quae sunt supra naturam and that the World being infinitely busie will not trouble it self with Arriagà s infinitum infinito infinitius and Christendom's being universally employed in preparing its defence against War and giving us time only for real Learning will divert us from either much opposing or defending the old point whether Vniversale be ens reale or whether Vniversalia are res extra singularia If by Metaphysicks we could find a real Answer to the Question what is truth or what is time of which it hath devoured so much or learn how to measure it by knowing what 's a Clock we might go on with its entitas which Mr. Hobs well englisheth the isseness of a thing but since it resolves not what things are as aforesaid but as Hudibrass saith only what is what I think as Filesac de authorit opiâ—c c. 1. mentions that the Council in France forbad Aristotle's Metaphysicks and punished with Excommunication the exscribing reading or having that Book our time will hold little Communion hereafter with Second Notions on those who Trade in them and that as it will seem very absurd to sacrifice much time to the enquiry if Vniversale is a real being and whether Vniversalia are res extra singularia and to sacrifice men for believing the contrary so it will likewise seem to enquire Whether there be one Catholick or Vniversal Apostolick Church existent apart from particular Churches which sense and reason tell us are and must be many tho the Catholick Church be but one and for the want of considering which so many People have been decoyed into the Church of Rome Many are the things that an ordinary Philosopher may predict concerning Rome and particularly varying from the Prophecy that it was to be destroyed by Fire may soretel Romam fore luce delendam and as Tully's words are in his Book de Naturâ Deorum Opinionem Commenta delebit dies veritatis judicia confirmabit And thus too it is easie to predict that the light of Reason and Experience will forever blot out here the Innovations that came from Geneva as well as those from Rome The Jewish Rabbins have from the words of the Sol Iustitiae arising with healing in his wings introduced a Proverb of The Sun ariseth the infirmity decreaseth meaning thereby that the Diseases that make Mortals groan and languish in the Night are somewhat abated by the rising Sun and thus the State of our Nation will be attended with greater health on the decay of Presbytery's Kingdom of Darkness The Walls of its Iericho are fallen down flat with the sound of the Trumpets of the Dissenters own Sayings so usefully published Tho I have said enough to speak my opinion of all Dissenters to the Discipline of our Church not owning such sanguinary Principles as are chargeable on some Papists yet the Dissenters Sayings have proved enough what some of their Principles were Nor can it be forgot that King Iames did very justly in the Conference at Hampton Court accuse the Notes in the Geneva Bible to be Seditious and to savour of Traiterous Conceits and that he instanced there in the Notes on Exodus 1. 19. Where they allow of disobedience to Sovereign Kings and Princes As absurd as that Tenet beforementioned in the Decrets and there founded on the 13th of Deuteronomy is I would wish no Presbyterian to insult over any Papists for it for it is visible in no meaner a Book than the Assemblies Annotations on Zechary 13. 3. where the Father and Mother of a false Prophet are commanded to say to him thou shalt not live and 't is said his Father and Mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he Prophesieth The Comment on the words Thou shalt not live affirms that the equity of the Law of Deut. 13. 6. 9. remains under the Gospel and with less danger is a Thief an Adulterer a Witch tolerated than such an Heretick and Seducer The present pleading for liberty of Conscience in Preaching and Practice is a thing extremely shameful dangerous and destructive and the Comment on the the words His Father c. is His Parents themselves shall not spare him preferring therein their Zeal and Piety towards God before the Affection and Love which naturally they bear toward their own Children See Deut. 13. 6. 9. No less Zeal is required under the Gospel than was under the Law. I pray God deliver all Mankind from the cruel rigour of the Equity as those Divines term it of that Iudicial Mosaic Law binding under the Gospel and from that kind of Zeal binding under the Gospel that did under the Law by virtue of the 6th and 9th Verses of that Chapter and from the 16th V. of which Chapter the Obligation for firing Heretical Cities was as well deduced by the Pope The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine and our Reverend Bishop Sanderson tells us in his 4th Lecture De obligatione conscientiae that no Law given by Moses doth directly and formally and per se â—ind the Conscience of a Christian i. e. as it was given by Moses for that every Mosaic Law as such was positive and did oblige those only it was put upon i. e. the Iews and shews that the Precepts of the Decalogue oblige not because Moses commanded them but because of their being consentaneous to nature and confirmed by the Gospel and so doth manumit the Christian World from the Yoke of the Iudicial Law that was made only for the stiff necks of Jews Calvin himself on that place of Zachary 13. 3. doth blunder as shamefully as did our Assembly men for he there makes the Penal Jewish Laws to bind under the Gospel His words there are these Sequitur ergo non modo legem illam fuisse Iudaeis positam quemadmodum nugantur fanatici homines sed extenditur etiam ad nos eadem lex and himself was in this point the Fanatick and not the contrary opinors and deniable it is not that several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines beyond Sea did imbibe the error of hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians namely that the Penalâ—severe Jewish Laws were obligatory
it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender Branch thereof will not cease tho the Root thereof wax old in the Earth and the Stock thereof die in the Ground yet through the Scent of Water it will bud and bring forth Boughs like a Plant and the hand of the God of Nature kept her hands from extirpating it and the irrigation of Nature wrought more powerfully than her Fiâ—es and the Scent of Water made Sagacious Loyal Protestants with their Lachrymae verae and lachrymae antiquae presage the growth of Protestancy but as our Laws now are and likely forever to be Protestants here may not only take their measures of the natural duration of their Religion from the similitude of the sublime Prophet viz. as the days of a Tree are the days of my People but from the stability of the Lex terrae and the very Earth I have before spoke of the Papal Power ending in England under Harry the 8th per simplicem desinentiam and by the power of Nature and without the Midwifery of the trouble of his Conscience or any Artifice in troubling the Divines and Academies of Christendom about his Marriage with his Brothers Relict the birth of Fate would by necessity of Nature have I think happen'd as it did Alas His Marrying her who had been his Brothers Wife was only against the Iudicial Law of the Iews and I am sure was not against the Law of Nature as all granting the Law of Nature to be indispensable and the necessity of Cain and Abel Marrying their own Sisters and Gods Commanding them to increase and multiply and God's calling Sara Abraham's Wife who yet was his Sister when as that Matrimonial Contract if it had been against Nature had been null and granting likewise that God who never commanded any thing against the Law of Nature did yet in the Levitical Law Command a Brother to take his Brothers Wife to Marry her and to raise up Seed to his Brother must grant I therefore concluded that without Harry the 8ths either having any Conscience or any Trouble in it the weakest pretence in the strong hand of Nature would have been an effectual Weapon to have then beat down the Papal Power in England It was Nature that did as I may say raise up that strong Seed at that time both in England and Germany and elsewhere that ended in the Divorce of England and many Territories from the Papal Power And to resume the Comparison of the Seed of Plants 't is obvious to us to consider that while our Ships Royal were formerly made of the Oaks in our Forests that were generally self-sown that is such as sprang from Acorns dropping from Trees or that Birds in their flights let fall it may be said that those materials for rearing the Walls of the Kingdom were themselves reared by the hand of Nature and that those Seeds falling in a Soyle proper for them and by the Forest Laws guarded at first from the feâ—t of Men or Beasts and by the Autumnal Rains naturally beaten into the Earth and defended by the procerity of many other Trees from the injuries of the Wind and Sun were by the Husbandry of the God of Nature brought within the high Style of Arbores Dei as the Psalmist's expression is And moreover while it many times happens that we see one Timber Tree grow out of the Body of another and particularly an Oak out of a Beech and which may be well supposed to have so happened from an Acorn dropt by a Bird into the hollow part of a decaying Beech and there meeting with a reception from the putrid parts of the Beech and the Rain there furthering its passage downward and the Dews there watering it from Heaven and the Beech fencing it conveniently from the Wind and Sun the Stem of an Oak doth there naturally shoot up and as naturally pierce its way for its strong Branches through the sides of the Beech and work its Root into the ground through the Root of that Tree and in time causeth it as certainly to be thrust out of Nature as it could have been by any extirpation and when a decaying Oak is thus powerfully vanquished by the Seed of a less famous Tree as to this purpose we are told by Mr. Evelyn in his excellent Discourse of Forest Trees that persons of undoubted truth have asserted it that they have seen a Tree cut in the middle whose heart was Ash-wood and the exterior part Oak we may justly say that Nature did produce all these effects And the Energy of nature thus casually causing one Tree to penetrate through another into the Earth and there without noise forever to displace it is as perfectly applicable to Religionary Tenets and Doctrines and thus as I may with a running view observe the Seed of the Christian Religion being tho from some mean and obscure hands dropt on the decaying great Trees of Iudaism and Paganism presently wrought it self through their Bodies and Roots and afterward the nobleness of the temper of the Primitive Christianity decaying in the World that Religion whose heart of Oak had lasted so long and outbraved all the Storms of Persecution was yet pierced through by Arrianism and Arrius perplexing the simplicity of the Christian Religion with such Intrigues of vain Philosophy that instead of converting mens hearts turned their brains and even Constantine's own as appeared by his banishing Athanasius and then recalling and then banishing him again and when the Christian Divines vexed every vein of his heart more than they did Iulian's and very laudably in his Council of Nice presented him with Lampoons one against another and Christianity so soon proving top heavy when 't was made the State Religion of the World and Athanasius himself was at length the only sober Party and when the Arrians happened to be the first Christians that persecuted men for Religionary Tenets and as Grotius in his De Iure belli l. 2. c. 20. tells us In Arrianam haerâ—sin acriter invehitur Athanasius quod prima in contradicentes usa esset Iudicum potâ—state quos non potuit verbis inducere eos vi plagis verberibusque ad se pertrahere anniteretur and did bastinado People into Conversion and when the Orthodox Christians had groaned longer under the Arrian Persecution than they had done under the Pagan and when the Christian Religion whose Precepts do so nobly transcend the Morality of all others did shortly after appear in the World with such a Figure of a Dotard Tree as gave Salvian cause to exclaim Praeter paucissimos quosdam qui mala fugiunt quid est aliud omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum it was but congruous to â—ature that those rapacious Birds of prey the Mahumetans dropping the Seed of their new invented Religion on the Christian as decayed by Arrianism that it should so soon work it self through all its parts and roots in Asia and Africk and that the
the King's Heirs and lawful Successors by Virtue of these Oaths must remain uncancelled in the Court of Conscience and however any Act of Parliament supposed to be made against the Law of God may a while be de facto received in any Courts of Law yet is it in the Court of Conscience to be looked on as a poor Escrole and as not worthy the name of a Law. It is most manifest that by these Oaths there is jus alteri acquisitum I mean to the King's Heirs and Successors as well as to the King and that therefore any supposed relaxation of the Oaths without the consent of all Parties for whose behoof they were made is a thing Nugatory and not allowable in the Court of Conscience And as I have speaking cum vulgo called some Anti-Papists whose Principles tend to Faction in the State and Schism in the Church Nominal Protestants tho yet I should be still as much content with any Law that made it Penal to call them Protestants as with one that should be so to call Quacks Physicians so I should in the Court of Conscience call any Acts of Parliament that are contrary to the Eternal and Natural Rules of indispensable Iustice only Nominal Laws suitably to what is said in the admirable Preface of Aerodius his Rerum Iudicatarum Pandect viz. Quod si quid iniquè malo more sordibus adversus illâ—m sempiternam legem atque immutabilem hic aut illic judicatum tranaâ—ctum sit qualis fuit apud Graecos Socratis Phocionis apud Romanos Mâ—telli Numidici Rutilâ—i Rufi M. Ciceronis damnatio in ecclesiâ Flaviani Johannis Chrysostomi contrà absolutio P. Sexti Clodiorum atque adeo Gabinii quam proptereà legem impunitatis appellarunt non magis judicata aut decreta debent appellari quam Seiae Apuleâ—ae Liviae leges Leges non sunt inquit Cicero But Thirdly The just allowance of the Rebus sic stantibus that can be in this Case is this there being nothing of pretence of relaxation from all Parties supposeable these Oaths bind us to the King's Heirs and Successors as long as there is any ONE of them remaining in the World and without the insertion of the words in the Oath of Allegiance viz. I do believe and in Conscience am resolved that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve me of this Oath or any part thereof its indispensableness to those who know the Obligation of Oaths to be jure Divino naturali would have sufficiently appeared In fine there are Rationes boni mali aeternae indispensabiles and to stand to promises is one of the things that are simply and in their own nature good and it is impossible as the Scripture saith That God should lye and therefore man made after God's image must therein answer the Archetype and hereby our Princes have the Garranty of our Allegiance sworn to them their Heirs and Successors being indispensable by Popes or Acts of Parliament or by God himself for he cannot dispense with the Law of Nature Humanâ naturâ manente eadem Lastly It is most manifest from what I have already said that any such Tacit Condition in these Oaths as before mentioned was contrary to the sense of the Imposer as well as to the Words and was therefore not allowable in the Court of Conscience in this Case and I believe that the Consciences of such who have made this Objection must tell them that when they took these Oaths their sense of them was then contrary to any such condition being allowed And therefore any such After-birth of a strained Interpretation being so contrary to the Law of God and the Land and the sense of the Imposer as well as the words of the Oaths and to the sense in which they actually took them must be thrown away There hath been a third Objection if it may be called one or if yet it may be called a Scruple for I think it hardly deserves the name of that However it having got under some mens feet or into their heads it hath made them so uneasie as frowardly to trample on the Rights of Crown'd Heads and it hath troubled us by the name of Haeres viventis and as if that were a Chymaera when as indeed the Objection is altogether Chymerical When Sir L. I. had with so much clear reason shewed much to this purpose viz. That the Exclusion-Bill was against the Fundamental Iustice as likewise the wisdom of the Nation and that it would induce a CHANGE in the Government and that was likewise against the Religion of the Nation which teacheth us That Dominion is not founded in Grace and that we are to pay Obedience to Princes whether good or bad as accordingly the Primitive Christians did and that it was against the Oaths of the Nation namely of Allegiance and Supremacy and that his R. H. is the King 's lawful Heir if he hath no Child and in the Eye of the Law we are sworn to him and when he had further signalized the weight of his Political Remarks and Learning in that Speech as well of as his Loyalty so as on the account of both to merit a place for it in the English Story and had instanced in some Princes and their Subjects of different Religions living very happily together it may perhaps be a blot in that Story that Sir W. I. in an answer to that Speech granting That we are sworn to the King his Heirs and Successors said further That we are not obliged to any during the King's life but to himself for it were Treason if it were otherwise The King hath no Heirs nor Successors during his life for according to his Law meaning Sir L. I's and ours Nemo est haeres viventis In answer to which I shall say that that Proverbial Latin saying in the Law Books doth amount to no more in nature and hath no more influence on Humane Affairs nor particularly on Moral Offices than that kind of Proverbial Sayings in the New Testament viz. For where a Testament is there must also of necessity be the death of the Testator or a Testament is of no strength while the Testator liveth Every one knoweth that a Will is in its own nature revocable and Legatees and Executors may be altered by the Testator and for any one to quote it as a Maxim Nemo est Executor viventis and for a Legatee or in effect an Executor in a Will the word haeres iâ— often used in the Civil Law and by the Writers of it will be no more significant than the telling the Legatee or Executor is that they must not meddle in the Testators Goods till he be dead and it may usefully operate to divert People from the slothful Omissions of making their Wills in due time out of a fond imagination that their Legatees or Executors would have a Title to any thing before the Testators death But after what hath been said
of the revocableness of Wills if I have lawfully sworn to continue such a man my Heir or Executor of my Will or Legatee therein can I then at my pleasure with a Salvo to Conscience alter it therein And if a Father hath sworn to give his Children such a part of his Estate by his Will as by the Civil Law is due to them out of his Estate when he dies shall he then be allowed in the Court of Conscience to alter such bequest Ad libitum This comes a little home to our Case for we have before hand sworn to pay the King's Heirs at the Descent of the Crown the Allegiance that will be due to them then by inherent Birthright St. Paul writing to the Romans alludes to that Custom of the Roman Laws and which is yet retained in Germany and many other places viz. And if Children then Heirs and makes them certainly Haeredes viventis and when any by the Civil Law were Haeredes ab intestato or Heirs at Law that Law as it made no difference between Land and Goods so neither did it between Eldest and Youngest nor Male and Female but divided the whole Estate real and personal equally among the Children and the Law tying Parents to leave a Quota in their Wills to their Children St. Paul's Consequence was good i. e. if Children then Heirs We know that the Heirs of our Kings are not such as that Law called Haeredes Testamentarii but they succeeding by the right Divine and Inherent Birthright may be said to be Haeredes legitimi and when in the King's Life-time the Law hath enjoyned men by a Liquid Oath to defend all Privileges Preheminences belonging to the King's Heirs and Successors can it be either Law or Sense to say they are now no Heirs and that any who have taken that Oath may actually exclude such Heirs because they are not actual Successors and as if too none could be a Successor but an actual one according to that old Dicterium That no Prince ever put to death his Successor But to shew further how grosly Sir W. I. was mistaken in his interpretation and applying of the saying out of the Civil Law viz. Nemo est haeres viventis I shall refer to Paulus de Castro as Eminent a Commentator on the Civil Law as any one whatsoever who doth on the Digest De liberis Posthumis l. Gallus § etiam n. 3 o 4 to discuss the point of Haeres viventis and where he saith Nota quod filius vel alius descendens in potestate patris qui tenet primum locum dicitur esse suus haeres etiam vivente patre and then objects the saying That Vivens non habet haeredem ergo non suum haeredem and he answers That istud verbum HAERES idem significat quod DOMINVS c. potest sumi duobus modis 1 o propriè prout est Successor in Vniversum jus quod defunctus habuit meaning haeres as the same with an Executor by the Law of England isto modo vivens non potest habere haeredem 2 do Sumitur strictè c. impropriè pro filio vel nepote vel alio descendente qui teneat primum locum in suitate isto modo vivens potest habere haeredem sicut enim filius VIVENTE patre dicitur DOMINVS bonorum paternorum licet impropriè it a potest dici HAERES prout istud verbum sumitur pro Domino He had before spoke of the General Rule That Haeres suus dicitur quem nemo praecedit and he there mentions what likewise all the Books agree in That Haeredes sui necessarii dicuntur liberi qui in familiâ proximum à patre gradem obtinent sui quia haereditatem tanquam suam necessarii quia jure antiquo retinere cogebantur He intends there I suppose by the jus antiquum that Law of the 12 Tables viz. Intestatorum haeredes primò suorum haeredum velint nolintve sunto We find in the New Testament such Heir judged to be Lord of all Gal. 4. 1. And thus Grotius on that place in the Hebrews whom he hath appointed Heir of all things saith That by Heir is meant Lord Nam Latinis Haeres idem quod herus Christus in coelum evectus rerum omnium est Dominus à patre scilicet hoc jure accepto The very Institutes likewise tell us § ult De haered qualit That pro haerede gerere est pro Domino gerere veteres enim haeredes pro Dominis appellabant And such Lords of all then were the Heirs that tho ordinarily they could not have their Legitima pars in their Fathers life-time and so we find it but in the Parable in St. Luke that the Prodigal Son said Father give me the Portion of Goods that falleth to me and he divided unto them his Living yet if the Father were re verâ a Prodigal the Son might by imploring the Office of the Judge obtain in the Fathers life-time somewhat like the legitima to be allowed for his subsistance And moreover Grotius on the other place of Scripture Si autem filii haeredes saith Sententia est conveniens non tantum Israelitico Numerorum 28. sed etiam Gentium juri Nam lex quaedam tacita liberis haereditatem parentum addicit L. Cum initio ff De bonis damnatorum Sed magis est ut jus Hebraeum respexerit Paulus ideóque 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hic sunt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 filii non quod non utrique sexui Christianorum aptari possint quae dicit sed quod jure Mosis filii necessariò haeâ—edes filiae non nisi filiis deficientibus None need therefore wonder at De Castro's having pronounced the Heir to be the same thing with Dominus and at his leaving it out of doubt that direct Descendants are a mans Heirs in his life-time because they are such as are called Heirs at Law. And there is little room for doubting here in England who are Heirs at Law to private Persons for Sir Edward Coke hath to this purpose said that throughout his time viz. Ne duas quidem quaestiones adverti de jure haereditatum but God be thanked there can be no room for any in the Case of the Crown King Iames when he Erected the Monument for his Mother on the Northside of her Grand-father Harry the 7th's Tomb and put these words in the Inscription viz. Coronae Angliae dum vixit certae indubitatae haeredis necessarily implied that there was another Sovereign living while She was thus Heir to the Crown Let any one consider how many real Solecisms Sir. W. I's imagined one must occasion Is it not a Solecism to say I cannot now promise a future lawful thing viz. Allegiance to the King's Heirs at the time of the Descent of the Crown since nothing can be promised but what is Future In the Body of the Civil Law matters of right are sometimes founded on trite
him our Sovâ—reign Lord the King IS lawful and rightful King c. and so the word IS must necessarily hinder any Heirs or Successors forestalling the Market if they should presume before their time to come for our actual Allegiance however sworn to them to be paid in future time Our Law-Book of Oaths mentions a long Promissory Oath made voluntarily to Harry the 6th by 2 Arch-Bishops 16 Bishops 3 Dukes 5 Earls 2 Viscounts 14 Abbots 2 Priors and 7 Barons and but part of which I shall here set down viz. I A. B. knowledge you most High and Mighty and most Christian Prince King Henry 6. to be my most redoubted and rightwise by Succession born to Reign upon me and all your Liege People whereupon I voluntarily without Coercion promise and oblige me by the faith and truth that I owe to God and by the faith truth and ligeance that I owe to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord that I shall be without any variance true faithful humble and obeysant Subject and Liege man to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord c. and swear to endeavour to do all that may be to the weal and surety of your most Royal Person c. to the weal surety and preserving of the Person and benign Princess Margaret Queen my Sovereign Lady and of her High most Noble Estate She being your Wife and also the weal surety and honour of the Person of the right High and Mighty Prince Edward my right redoubted Lord the Prince your first begotten Son and of the Right High and Noble Estate and faithfully truly and obeysantly c. First my Allegiance to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord during your life c. and if God of his infinite Power take you from this Transitory Life me bearing life in this World that I shall then take and accept my said redoubted Lord the Prince Edward your said first born Son for my Sovereign Lord and bear my true Faith and Ligeance to him as by nature born for my Sovereign Lord and after him to his Succession of his Body lawfully begotten c. and in default of his Succession c. unto any other Succession of your Body lawfully coming But the wisdom of any Nation making Laws and especially about Oaths as short as may be I account that those of Supremacy and Allegiance have much better that Multi-loquious one as I may call it provided for the security of our Allegiance to the King Regnant and afterward to his Heirs and Successors by plain and liquid words as far as Humane Prudence could provide for the same And because what is made by Humane Art is in danger of being by Humane Art eluded and for that we see that Nature it self hath been made a Term of Art a word that St. Paul thought plain enough when he said doth not Nature teach us that c. yet of which word a late Lawyer and Kinsman of the Great Grotius hath in his Book De Principiis juris Naturalis told us of seven significations and for that it is as easie for a captious versatil Wit to turn the word Heir or most words into as many or more the Oath of Allegiance was further with deep precaution made to exterminate all cavilling senses and calumnious interpretations and such as that of the haeres viventis by that Final Clause which Crowns that Oath and that which alone as I partly hinted before amounts to an Oath viz. And I do make this Recognition and Acknowledgment heartily willingly and truly upon THE TRVE FAITH OF A CHRISTIAN and after which it follows So help me God. That the Faith of a Christian alone amounts to an Oath I shall cite the opinion of Tuldenus the Regius Professor of Law at Lovain when writing De interpretatione Iuramenti he saith Affirmatio perfidem tunc demum jusjurandum est cum additum fuit Christianam Alciat in l. 41. c. De transact I conclude therefore that what Christian soever hath taken this Oath hath by Virtue of the words of The faith of a Christian obliged himself thereby as much as if he had said That Great Privilege of Birth-right belonging to the King's Heirs a Privilege so great that the despising of it as in the Case of Esau is applied in Scripture to mens prophaneness in despising their Inheritance of Bliss by Christianity I do as sincerely promise to defend according to my Oath and without any Fraud or Mental Reservation or the least cavilling capricious or calumnious interpretation as I value the great Privilege that Christianity hath ennobled Humane Nature with in being Heirs of God and joynt Heirs with Christ as St. Pauls words are and of being Heirs according to the Promise and may all the Divine Promises be so Yea and Amen to me and interpreted with not only a plain but a full and fair interpretation and so likewise the very Oath of God mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews As I do plainly and fully and fairly and with the exuberant honesty and simplicity enjoyn'd by the Christian Religion and so much transcending the Bona fides of the Heathen Morality perform my Promissory Oath of Allegiance to the King and his Heirs and Successors I shall in the last place take notice of what I have not without horror observed namely that some disloyal Authors have presumed in Print to pretend the lawfulness of Exclusion of Heirs and Successors on the account of their Religion by colour of the punishment of Idolaters according to the Iudicial Law and as to which it will be sufficient here to say that that Law was given only to the Iewish Nation and that it did never bind any else or doth and that the Divine Law natural and positive bind us to the Observation of our Oaths and that Christianity doth not found Dominion in Grace and that the Patriarchs and Ioshua and the Princes of the People of Israel made Leagues with Idolaters and on both sides there was mutual Faith confirmed with solemn Oaths and that an Oath Promissory to pay Allegiance to the Heirs of the Crown at the time of its Descent is much more lawful And I might urge that the Iewish Kings tho often idolatrous yet as the Lord 's Annointed had De jure de facto Obedience payed them without respect to their Religion or Irreligion And by Virtue of the Moral Offices of honouring all men and of the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians I shall without offending the Church I hold External Communion with venture to go as far in my Measures of Charity as some of its great Ornaments Dr. Hammond and Bishop Taylor and likewise Bishop Gunning have done in freeing many Roman Catholicks from the guilt of Formal Idolatry Innumerable Acts of Idolatry may be charged on many Persons of that Communion and particularly on all such as do worship the Cross or Saints and Angels Culâ—â— latriae and on such as in the Eucharist determine the
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
more and more And it was natural for our Divines in this Conjuncture thus to do when so many factious counterfeit Protestants were by their outcries making Papists of them and publishing infamous Pamphlets that expressly shook the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and of the Church by Law Established and with an intent to shake the same in that time when the Exclusion was designed and as appeared particularly by the reprinting for that purpose the Pamphlet of the Rights of the Kingdom and in which the Author did endeavour to prove the Peoples Right to choose their Bishops The Clergy therefore seeing such Nominal Protestants by that real part of Popery of founding Dominion in Grace thus bent on the ruine of Church and State were concerned to bend all their forces of reason in permonishing People of their danger from that part of Popery Thus as when a Light-house is set up to warn Navigators of a Bank of Sand if yet by the force of the Sea and Wind such Bank happens to be removed the Light-house must be removed likewise the same thing was accordingly done by the Justice and Prudence of our Divines giving us a notification of the Sands of Popery having shifted their place The late Experience that our Church had of its usage under the Great Vsurper and of his putting it out of his Protection as knowing the born and sworn Allegiance of its Church-men and likewise its Doctrine must necessarily make them true Adherents to the King's Heirs and Successors hath necessarily taught them that they cannot externally flourish under any Vsurper whatsoever They know that the Oath that Cromwel's Parliament Enacted to be taken by him was a Canting Oath and to which he was sworn to the uttermost of his Power to uphold and maintain the true reformed Protestant Christian Religion in the Purity thereof as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament to the uttermost of his Power and his understanding The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England was not to expect to be upheld and maintained by him nor can it be upheld or maintained by any Vsurper Dr. Gibbon the Author of the Theological SCHEME averred to me that Mr. Nye and he attending a Committee of Parliament in the times of the Vsurpation that Mr. Nye being desired by the Committee to give them a definition or description of a Minister of the Gospel then answered A Minister of the Gospel is one sent forth by the State to preach the Gospel receiving protection from them and maintenance under them and all others restrained and we know that he and others then treated the Church of England in words and things like an Ecclesia maligrantium and how they were then RESTRAINED ab Officio c. and just as the Faction and Schism of many Nominal Protestants began about 41 to call our Divines Names as I have observed so lately the Popish Plot was made the Vehicle of the Poyson of some Mens Calumny and neither Machiavel nor Iesuit did ever more sledfastly practise the Divide Impera than such men in that Conjuncture did that by weakening us with our Divisions they might at once destroy the Lineal Succession of our Hereditary Monarchs in the Realm and the Succession of Bishops in the Church and our Kings in their Coronation Oaths swearing to keep Peace and Agreement to the Holy Church the Clergy and People Factious and Schismatical Persons having broke their own Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy may be said to have endeavoured to break the King's Oath according to the old known form of the Indictment of some of our Iudges for Bribery in which it was said that our Kings being bound by their Oath to do Iustice to their People such Judges did Violare Sacramentum Domini Regis It hath pleased God by the fierce Zeal of several Non-Conformists for the Exclusion to open the Eyes of many Conscientious and Loyal People among them and to bring them thereby to the Bosom of the Holy Church of England for they seeing such Doubts and Objections as some had raised against the Obligations of our Oaths to be but Scruples and that considerate serious and devout Persons of the Church of England had soon thrown the Scruples away were naturally thereby induced to throw off other Scruples and it was likewise but natural to them to think that their very Doubts and Objections for their having separated from the Church of England were but Scruples And as to doubts tho the Rule is Quod dubitas ne feceris yet not only Sanderson but Ames hath told us that Scruples are not to be regarded for Ames in his Cases of Conscience l. 1. c. 16. viz. Of a scrupulous Conscience having said That a Scruple is a fear of the Mind about what one is to do which vexeth the Conscience as a little Stone in ones shooe troubles the foot he wisely concludes That Multi scrupuli cum non possint commodè tolli contrariâ ratione deponi debent quasi violentiâ quadam dum excluduntur ab omni consultatione and that Scrupulus est formido temeraria sine fundamento atque adeo non potest obligare He there mentions A man being said to be scrupulous in discussing his past Actions or in ordering his futuâ—e ones and I am confident that many of the Loyal late Non-Conformists when they consider their past Actings will now accord to say that many of the clamorous pretences they were tempted to urge for Liberty of Conscience ought to have been as Ames's words are laid aside with violence and I do likewise believe that many of the Pious Members of the Church of England who while the Formido temeraria and sine fundamento carried them to incline to think it lawful to shake the Foundation of the Hereditary Monarchy and the super-structures of their Oaths by new interpretations do with a pious horror think of the poor Vapours pent in their Imaginations that made such Temporary Earthquakes in their Moral Offices of Loyalty and might have made perpetual ones in the Kingdom And that because some of our English Princes long ago whose Titles were cloudy did de facto make use of the Legislative Power to render them clear to the People for any to think that therefore the Monarchy was not then de jure and jure Câ—ronae Hereditary and that therefore after the Liquid Oath of Allegiance made to statuminate the most clear Title of a Crown that can be supposed it could since be lawful for any Parliamentary Power to disturb the Succession and dispense with our Oaths can appear to the Considerate to be nothing but a Scruple unworthy their thoughts And moreover because some of our Princes heretofore desired their Parliaments to intermeddle in setling the Succession for any therefore after the Oaths to think it might be lawful to disturb their Prince with renewed importunities again and again to alter the Course of the Descent after his various Declarations