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
of the Moral Law Principles whereof are in all mens natures and attended in their actings by a natural Conscience 3. Gospel Duties directed and ordered by a supernatural Light no Principles or Footsteps whereof are found in us For the former Religion in the first sense as the knowledge of God Conscience of an Oath Iustice Righteousness in our dealings c. are such things wherein the well-being of Kingdoms and Commonwealths is much concern'd But Religion as it stands in exerting supernatural Principles and in Duties termed the Commands of Christ as the other the Commandments of God Jo. 15. Such as Faith Repentance Sacraments Discipline and the like Gospel Ordinances in the Duties under this Head considered and as distinct from Moral Duties there is little or nothing directly and immediately contributed by them to Mens civil interests further than where these supernatural Vertues are planted in Mens minds the Moral Duties of Piety and Honesty do more plentifully abound and are in exercise As these Moral Duties do more immediately concern the Common-wealth so the Laws thereof are principally drawn forth out of them especially the second Table Duties forming and building them into Municipal Laws under Penalties and Encouragements greater or less as in the Wisdom of a State is judged most conducing to the Well-fare thereof For these Gospel-mysteries it is otherwise For as they contribute to us in our Civil Government no otherwise than as before mentioned so is there little contributed by the Wisdom or Authority of any State advantageous to the Gospel but Protection or being a defence upon the glory of it If Adam had stood all Common-wealths had been prosperous and flourishing and yet no Faith no Christ no Repentance nor any Gospel-Worship known or professed And since the fall you have had well govern'd Kingdoms among Heathens and Turks that never received Christ or Gospel-Worship It is with States as with particular Persons in Commerce another mans Estate or Trade or Credit or any other Civil Concern with whom I have to do is not prejudiced or better'd by Omission or Practice of what is a mere Gospel Duty If a man I deal with be unjust lye steal c. my worldly Interest is prejudiced hereby but whether he repent or exercise faith in Christ for forgiveness of Sins and humble himself I am neither gainer nor loser in my Civil Concerns Now it is Gospel-Worship Gospel-Religion we profess in this Nation c. The Christian Religion having suffered so much by so many Pedantly and Bigottish Writers having mis-represented it as an Invader both of the quiet and business of Princes and Governors and as if the necessary different Sentiments in Religion according to mens several Capacities were still to give the Political Conduct of the World unnecessary trouble and as if God who was in Christ reconciling the World to himself design'd by any various Religionary Notions to render Christian Princes and their People irreconcileable to one another and 〈◊〉 I may say to make the World irreconcileable to it self I am glad when I find the Subject of Religion by falling into the hands of any man of large and noble thoughts to have right herein done it as particularly hath thus been done it by Mr. Ny who had made Religion and Politicks very much his Study and I can refer the Curious to a Great Man of the Communion of the Church of Rome with some of whose Notions in this Point Mr. Ny's were partly Co-incident as any may find who will consult the 2d Volume of the Memoires of Villeroy whose great Character is Recorded by the Bishop of Rhodes in his History of Harry the 4th of France and to whom he was Secretary and was so before to Charles the 9th and Harry the 3d and afterward to Lewis the 13th and the greatest part of D'Ossat's memorable printed Letters from Rome was to him with high respect Addressed In the beginning of that Volume we have his Discours de la vraye legitime constitution de l' estat que l' ordre y est encore que la Religion n' y fust and in p. 6 he discourseth of this Subject viz. L' estat la Religion n' ont rien de Commun and in p. 11. there his Subject is That l' estat n' est estably ny mainteny par la Religion ains la Religion conservée par l' estat and in p. 16. his Theme is That la difference de Religion n' empesche point la paix de l' estat and in p. 19. he discourseth of this Assertion That Le Prince ne doit etre consideré pour sa Religion mais pour ce qu'il est chef du peuple It may moreover be supposed that God in his Government of the World and in his care for the Church in particular Countries when he thinks not fit to incline a Princes mind to receive the same Religionary Sentiments that the generality of the People owns doth yet often endow him with those Moral Vertues and habitual inclinations whereby he is much better qualified for the Protection of the People than any can imagine him to be by Orthodoxy in the Speculative points of revealed Truth The Church we know is in Scripture represented as a helpless Minor and Kings are there mentioned to be its Nursing Fathers and thus the Canon Law tells us that Ecclesia fungitur vice minoris and the Canonists that à minoribus ad Ecclesiam valet argumentum It is here therefore obvious to consideration that Power and moral Honesty and Diligence and Courage and Discretion are the chief endowments requisite for the protection of an Orphans Person and Estate We find these sayings commonly used by the Roman Catholick Authors who treat of the Rights of Protection granted by Sovereign Powers viz. Religio cum protectionis jure nihil commune habet and Religionis communio propriè nulla homini cum homine sed homini cum Deo and Religioni cum juribus Gentium nulla est necessaria conjunctio and on these grounds Magerâ—s in his 8th Chapter of his Advocatia armata raising the Question whether Roman Catholick and Luther an and Calvinist Princes may lawfully protect and defend one another determines that they may and that they ought so to do pursuant to the agreements of the Interim and other pacta Conventa and in his 1â—th Chapter he refers to the settlement of the Confraternities in Germany between Princes of several Religions and particularly of that settled between the Dukes of Bavaria and the Count Palatines of the Rhine Tam quoad bonorum principatuum quà m dignitatis Electoralis successionem and which was not to be dissolved by either of those Electors changing their Relâ—gion And the same reasons are assign'd by him and other Writers of the jus Protectitium for the lawfulness of Christian Princes protecting Iews Turks and Infidels and it passeth among them as the common opinion of the Canonists and Civilians Infidelitatem non privare
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
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
But if this Question of Toleration had not here been at the end of its Race and if no such thing had happened as the Declaration of Indulgence and Dissenters thereby manumitted from Penal Laws saying Soul take thy ease and presently Acting the Part of felo de se by effecting the Cancelling of that Declaration and if the Controversy were now to begin to start forward I account it would cause but a very short fermentation among us For no Books need be writ to prove the lawfulness of what an Act of Parliament hath permitted to every private Family and to a certain number of other persons to participate therein with them And if Dissentership would now call for more Toleration it s very being called on to name its Tenets in order â—o the security of the Government in granting it to more persons to assemble together in enjoying it it s very naming them would I believe soon perimere litem in the Case and some of its Tenets would perhaps appear too little and others too great to require the formality of Debate It is even ridiculous to suppose that any Iesuites and Dissenters would now dare to demand Toleration for the Principles of the Crown-Divinity of each mentioned in the Oxford Censure None of them would now dare to be Confessors of Religionary Principles that would make Kings Martyrs And as I think that the Pope needed not crave Aid from his Vatican nor the Oxford-Convocation from their Bodleian Library to confute monstrous Tenets Condemned by either for in this Case according to the words of Tertullian advers Valent. Demonstrare solummodo destruere est so I likewise think that both Popish and Protestant Recusants will be ashamed to crave Aid of Toleration from the Magistracy for Principles they are ashamed to own or indeed for any but what they shall first own and the rather when our Protestants shall recollect with what vigorous Expedition the great Owners of that Name in Germany published their Religionary Confessions as Alsted tells us in his Chronâ—logia testium veritatis where he makes mention of the Augustan Confession tendred to Charles the 5th and the States of the Empire in the year 1530 and of the Confessio Suevica in the same year and of the Confessio Basileensis in the next year and of the Confessio Helvetica in the year 1556 and of all the other great Protestant Confessions exhibited severally to the World before the year 1573. Such of our Dissenters therefore who have to this year 1684 made it their business to be Anti-Confessors by hiding many of the particularities of their Principles and giving the World cause perhaps to say Difficilius est invenâ—re quà m vincere and who yet assume the name of Protestancy will perhaps hardly think it possible for them to gain Toleration for their further being called by that Name without shewing the Title of their Principles to it As on the account of what I have said it would be a Persecution to the World for the most ingenious men to trouble it with Discourses of the lawfulness of Toleration so it would too be to trouble it with Discourses of the unlawfulness of denying Toleration to men who either deny their Principles or deny to give an account of them a duty that can plead as clear a jus Divinum for it self as any Form of Church Government and by Vertue of which Christians are to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks them a reason of the hope that is in them with meekness and reverence There are some Principles to which it is by all agreed that 't is unlawful to give Toleration namely to those that disturb Civil Society nor would it appear otherwise than ridiculous to the hoodwink't sober Party of any Sect that when the Magistrates reprove them in those words of our Saviour yee worship yee know not what the Magistrates by tolerating them at that time should give cause to others to tell them yee tolerate yee know not what I have observed it in the Course of my reading that there is one great point of Religion on which the hinge of Loyalty doth very much turn that several Eminent Papists and Non-Conformists have not dared to speak their plain agreed sense of and as to which it may therefore seem very rational that they should and that is How far the Civil Laws of Princes or the Municipal Laws do bind the Conscience a Point that the Council of Trent could not be brought to Define and herein 't is obvious to consider that tho 't is on all hands granted that in any thing contrary to the Divine Law natural and positive those Laws do not bind the Conscience and that the jus Divinum of the Papacy Presbytery or Independency would not be caught with a why not on the holding the Question in the Affirmative that Humane Laws do bind the Conscience in things not contrary to the Law Divine yet are the Adherents to those Religionary Models conscious to themselves that in many particulars necessary to bring them into practice there must be a Sanction of thâ—m by Penal Municipal Laws and they hoping to have the Magistracy and its Power on their side and to Act in Concert with them according to that Saying of the Emperor to his Bishop Iungamus gladios and knowing that the Authority of the Magistrate to support both Religion and Loyalty and for the Custody of 〈◊〉 Tables hath as clear a jus Divinum as their Plat-forms can have and that therefore the Civil Power 〈◊〉 not let its jure-Divinity be taken too by any with a why not as it would be if the Question were held wholy in the Negative they have in their Writings been generaly obscure and short in that point and have hoped by their power and interest to keep the World from calling on them to explain But I have in my occasional Converse with some of the most learned of the Non-Conforming Clergy observed them in Discourse to speak out their minds plainly and Categorically enough that Humane Laws do not bind the Conscience and to account it an absurd thing to make any Penal Law bind the Conscience even in matters purely Civil and wherein there is no pretence of any things enjoyned concerning the Worship of God and yet where the things under Penalties enjoyned are of great importance to the State. The men of somewhat hot rather then distinguishing heads tho they know that Humane Laws are necessarily Penal and tho they believe that Oeconomics do best subsist by their Wives and Children and Servants being bound to observe those their lawful Commands by the Tye of Religion that they intended should be effectually obeyed have not considered that Politicks would likewise thereby be best preserved nor learned to distinguish the Penal Laws where the Magistrate intended to oblige the Subject in point of Fault and where only in point of the Penalty but our clear-headed and loyal hearted Sanderson who may
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
are to be cut off and thus they are to be law'd every three years for the preserving the Kings Game and the peace of his wild Beasts The Regarders of the Forrest are to make a TRIENNIAL enquiry about it tunc fiat per visum testimonium legalium hominum non aliter that is not Arbitrarily there must be legal Judgment upon legal Testimony and no Dog law'd without Judicial proceeding This Forrest Law made in the time of our Popish Ancestors did suppose that the Kings Game could not be preserved nor the Peace of his Wild Beasts by the Dogs being then either exorcised or their lapping a little holy water or any expedient as I may say without expeditation which did ipso facto destroy their Power of destroying the Kings Game and the Peace of his wild Beasts and therefore that 's the only valuable Garranty we can have from those who without Law and against Law would hunt down the King himself and his Tame Subjects that the excrescence of their power should be hambled or expeditated but the modus of this I do again say ought by them to be tendered to the Consideration of his Majesty and the Triennial Regardors of the Kingdom I am sure 't is worthy the consideration of us English what the Learned Frenchman Monsieur Bodin tells us in his Book de Republica Lib. 5. Cap. 6. Vna est tenuium adversus potentiores securitatis ratio ut scilicet si nocere velint non possent cum nocendi voluntas ambitiosis hominibus imperandi cupidis nunquam sit defutura And now my Lord to give your Lordship a home Instance of Jealousie taking Fire in some meerly from the power of another to do them hurt I will instance in your self at this conjuncture of time The nature of Iealousie renders it to be a troublesom weed and yet such an one that growes in the Richest Soil of Love my meaning is that 't is a fear of Love not being mutual when one doth love intensely with desire of being so loved My Lord in the picture of your mind that I have already drawn in this Letter I have only done you a little right and not at all favour'd you and 't is but Justice to you to acknowledge that the Protestant part of your Country hath a singular love for you with a desire of being so loved by you and 't is in this Critical conjuncture of time that your power makes them fear the love not to be mutual Your Lordship knows that fear in people is an aversion with an opinion of hurt from any object and they soon hate those things or persons for which they have aversion and fear of hurt by power disposeth men naturally to anticipate and not to stay for the first blow or else to crave aid from Society and from others especially whose concern may be the same or greater then theirs and who are their representatives and to wish ill to those who make them sleep in armour or to stand in the posture of Gladiators with their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on another and to be still in procinctu and all those passions sprung from the Root of Jealousie as far as they exceed the bounds of reason are degrees of madness And tho mans life be a constant motion and for the most part in both a Rugged way and near Precipices yet during that madness men are still by their own Scorpions scourging it to make it move faster then the regular and intended pace of Nature and injuring themselves with their passions are content too to wound another through their own sides And thus my Lord give me leave to tell you That 't is a kind of a Complement from people to a great good man of whose power and of whom they are jealous when that it may be said of them that they are occasionally faln mad for love of him One part of your Power namely that wherein you are a Conduit-Pipe to convey the grants of Honour and profit from your Royal Master the Fountain of Honour 't is possible for you to quit and that with pleasure too that you may have time to quench your great thirst after knowledge in that great collection of waters into which so many Streams of learning have met from all ages and Nations I mean your vast and choice Library And I may well suppose that your Lordship hath now that sense of Greatness and of power by publick Employment that Cardinal Granvel expressed at his retirement from the same That a great Man is like a great River where many sorts of Creatures are still quenching their thirst but are likewise still muddying and troubling the Stream Your Lordship knows who said thâ—â— actio est conversatio cum stultis lectio cum sapientibus In the Scene of the busie World you are necessarily troubled with the affaires of men whose being born was unnecessary to the world and there you are usually put to play at hard games well with ill gamesters the jest that fortune playing in humane affâ—ires commonly puts on the wise to spoil their busie sport there you are sometimes deafen'd with Complaints of Mimick Apes and grave Asses of airy fools and formal fops one against another but in your noble Library you have the advantage of the still Musick of the Tomb you have the weight of many dead Authors making no noise you have Socinus and Calvin standing quietly by each other and some Authors content with the dust of your Library who thought one Christian world not enough to trouble 't is there you will avoid any trouble by Authors of gilded outsides intruding nor be molested as now by nonsense in fine clothes You cannot now quietly enquire after the fountain of Nile for the noise of its Cataracts nor appease your thirst after knowledge otherwise then tanquam canis ad Nilum for fear of the Crocodiles of the World devouring you nor have a view of the tree of knowledge without a Serpent of envy circled about it nor have time to look on the pieces painted for eternity nor to mind the Eclipses in the Heavens while you are preventing your own being eclipsed in the Earth But my Lord there is another kind of power inherent in you and that you cannot part with such a power as King Charles the first in his Eikon Basil. affixes to the Character of his favorite when he sayes he looked on the Earl of Strafford as a Gentleman whose great abilities might make a Prince rather afraid then ashamed to employ him in the greatest affaires of State. Your very Reputation for power is power for that engageth those to adhere to you who want protection Your Success in your past conduct of publick affaires is power for it makes men promise to themselves good fortune while they follow you Your eloquence that fastens mens ears to your lips is power Your great knowledge in the Law whereby you possess that Engine by which you can be
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
their Guardian and account it a very preposterous thing that since our Saviour refused to divide an Inheritance his pretended Vicar should do nothing else Moreover Holy Churches resuming all its Lands out of Lay hands would appear the more strange in England when we see as my Lord Primate Bramhal saith in his vindication of the Church of England p. 212 that the very Kings of Spain impose Pensions usually on Ecclesiastical preferments to the 4th part of the value and particularly one Pension on the Arch-Bishoprick of Sivile in favour of an Infant of Castile of greater value then all the Pensions there imposed by the Pope and when we know that the French King doth for the behoof of so great a number of Lay-men impose so many and great Pensions on the Abbeys without saying to the Abbots more then Car tel est nostre plaisir Sir Edwyn Sands in his Europae Speculum writ in the Year 1599 and in the time of Harry the 4 th of France speaking of that Kingdom saith That there the Church Prelacies and other Governments of Souls are made the Fees and Charges of meer Courtiers and Soldiers and our excellent Animadverter on Monsieur Sorbier reflecting on that Country Intimates in effect how there the chiefest spiritual dignities are entailed upon Families and possest by Children They who unjustly cry out of the Constitution of the Church of England for interrupting the Trade of the Kingdom would be loud enough in their Complaints of Omnia comesta à Belo under Popery He who knows not that the Revenue of the King now depends in a manner solely upon Trade and that Trade depends on populousness and that the encouragement of people to live under any Government is that great thing call'd Property in their Estates Religion and Laws and that therefore any thing that calls it self Religion that goes to exterminate above a hundred and fifty persons for every one it leaves for so the Proportion between Non-Papists and Papists by the Bishops survey made about the Year 1676 was return'd to be and to call them Hereticks and which makes their Goods and life ipso facto a forfeit of the Law will not ipso facto exterminate Trade is fitter for the Galleys or a Trading Voyage to the Anticyrae then for any discourse of Trade and Commerce Your Lordship hath in your Travels sufficiently seen it long since exemplified that the Protestant Countries for the quantity of Ground exceed the Popish in Trade and numbers of People and that thus the Protestant Hanse Towns have eclipsed their Roman Catholick Neighbours and Amsterdam Antwerp and the Vnited Provinces Flanders and that in Flanders where the Ecclesiasticks are Proprietors of seven parts of ten of the whole Country Levies of Men and Money for the defence thereof have been made with so much slowness and difficulty and been so inconsiderable as not to have secured themselves against Invaders Nor did the Ecclesiasticks there think it worth their while to strain themselves in Contributions to resist an Invader who is of their own Religion the which made the French Kings Victories there flie like Lightning more then our over-rich English Regulars did to oppose William the Conqueror when he came here under the Popes Banner And thus were they here and in Flanders are like Wenns in the Body which draw to themselves much nourishment and are of great trouble and no use and thus ridiculous is it that so over great a part of the property of the Land should be linked to persons who are no way linked to the interest of the Country more then professed Gamesters and Empyrics and Soldiers of Fortune and are no more damnified by Popish Invaders then Fishes of the Sea are by Earth-Quakes But on the other hand in the United-Provinces how easily and soon are vast Taxes raised when their All is at Stake to what a prodigious encrease of the numbers of their People have they attain'd since the Reformation insomuch that the Author of a Political discourse of the Interest of Holland Printed in Dutch in the Year 1669 and Licensed by Iohn de Witt and by Van Beaumont makes the People in the Province of Holland to be 2 Millions and 400 thousand and so likewise doth Pellerus in his Learned Notes on Klockius de Aerario p. 300. and there cites that Book of the interest of Holland when as Gerard Malynes in his Lex mercatoria makes the People in Flanders in the Year 1622 to have consisted of a hundred and forty thousand Families and he reckoning each of them one with an other at 5 persons makes the Total of the people in Flanders to have then amounted but to seven hundred thousand Souls And yet as that Author of the interest of Holland saith the Province of Holland can hardly make 400 thousand profitable Acres or Morgens of Land Down and Heath not put in and that the 8 th part of the Inhabitants of Holland cannot be nourished with what is growing there but tells us what prodigious Granaries they there have and that Amsterdam that in the Year 1571 was about 200 Morgens or Acres of Land was in the year 1650 enlarged to 600 Morgens or Acres of Land in Circumference and to have in it three hundred thousand Souls And the defence of the Zelanders Choice Printed in the Year 1673 mentions Aitsmas Liere to have reckon'd the publick Incomes of Holland alone in the Year 1643 to have amounted to 1100 thousand pound Sterling and the Author of the Interest of Holland saith that in one Year in a time of Peace viz. In the Year 1664 the Inhabitants of Holland did over and above the Customes and other Domains of the Earls or States of Holland pay towards the publick Charge as follows viz. To the States of Holland 11 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Maze 472 898 Gilders To the Admiralty of Amsterdam 2 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter 200 thousand Guilders Which comes to in all about 14 hundred 87 thousand Pounds Sterling How meanly do the Atchievements of Venice and their Efforts to aggrandize their Republick compared with Hollands shew in story for the quantity of years many times doubled since the Dutch threw off the Yoke of the Papacy History hath recorded the longevity of the Venetian Government as it has of Methusalem of whom we read not 〈◊〉 great thing he said or did or attempted but a few days of the short life of Alexander in the Ballance of same weighs down the 999 years of the other The very Religion of Popery makes the Venetians more narrow in their principles and even in their Rules of Traffick then are the Inhabitants of Protestant Countries The Popish Religion doth hamper its devout Professors as to Trading with Hereticks and holding Communication with such as are ipso jure ipso facto excommunicated and giving any Quarentine to men said to be infected with Heresie insomuch that we are told in D'
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-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
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
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
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
overthrown and the Scope of the Book is to plant Loyalty throughout the Kingdom and to make the Oath of Allegiance be re vâ—râ a Premuniment in all mens Consciences against Faction and Rebellion The Sect of King Iames's old Enemies in Scotland the Puritans and whom he said he found there more dishonest than the Highlanders and Border Thieves is not named in that Book and he having cleared them from being participants in the Gun-powder Treason did with Justice as well as perhaps with hopes of their emendation after the Tenets of Loyalty that had been then lately published by the English Non-Conformists order that Sect not to be in that Book marked Nigro carbone But he could not but know their former Principles as well as Practices here as exactly as any one and in his Canons here published a Year before the Gun-powder Treason The impugners of the Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England were variously censured the Authors of Schism in the Church of England were censured by the 9th Canon and the maintainers of Schismaticks by the 10th and by the 27th Schismaticks were not to be admitted to the Communion The maintainers of Conventicles were censured by the 11th and the maintainers of Constitutions made in Câ—nventicles censured by the 12th and it refers to the wicked and Anabaptistical Errors of some who outraged the King's Supremacy and Regal Rights and who did meet and make Rules and Orders in Causes Ecclesiastical without the King's Authority and therefore as the King knew that such Persons who had made Schisms in the Church had thereby made Factions in the State and would make more the Church being necessarily included in the State and would be as dry Tiâ—der ready to take the Fire of Rebellion from such Republican Tenets as were in Parson's Book of the Succession and the Writings of Bellarmine and other Romanists and being justly apprehensive that such Antimonarchical Principles as had infected the Scotch Puritans might in time infect the English ones as well as that the Principles of the Powder-Traitors might infect other Loyal Papists he applied the Oath of Allegiance as a general necessary Antidote to the Consciences of his Subjects to prevent such infection In p. 109. of his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance he cited Bellarmine for the Tenets That Kings have not their Authority nor Office immediately from God and that Kings may be deposed by their People for divers respects and when such Writers did so spitefully with the Papal Power endeavour likewise to bring in the Sea of the People to overwhelm Kings it was time to raise the Bank of that Oath the higher against the same and for the Takers of that Oath to be obliged to bear Faith and True Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs c. and him and them to defend c. against all Conspiracies c. which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by reason or colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or OTHERWISE and to declare that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve them of this Oath When therefore I see any serious man disloyal who hath took the Oath of Allegiance and whom Necessity as we say doth not draw to Turpitude I still attribute much of his disloyalty to his not with intense and recollected thought dwelling on the view of his Moral Obligations in the clear Mirror of that Oath but to his cursory viewing them and as St. Iames's words are like a man beholding his natural face in a Glass but beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straitway forgetteth what manner of man he was How many outragious Acts of Disloyalty after 41 had been avoided if the Law of the Oath had been writ in the hearts of the Takers of it as it ought to have been As for Example since to Prorogue or Dissolve Parliaments was ever a known Right and Privilege belonging to the Crown could any Person who had sworn to defend its Rights and Privileges endeavour to retrench that particular one by the Act for the perpetuating the Parliament of 40 How easie would Princes find their Reigns and Subjects their Consciences if these would think of all the Royal Rights they have sworn to defend and how they are to defend them I have mentioned the great Law of Athens against any ones bearing Office under an Usurpt Power and the terrible Oath for the confirmation of that Law and I have likewise mentioned the Author of the EXERCITATION and Mr. Prynn as asserting the unlawfulness of bearing Office under our late usurp'd Powers by reason of the Oath of Allegiance having before obliged them to the King his Heirs and Successors The Author of the Exercitation doth very appositely to strengthen that his Loyal Assertion cite an excellent passage out of Tully's Epistles ad Atticum viz. of his doubting the lawfulness of his bearing the Office of a Councellor of State in such a Case Ec magnum sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 veniendumne sit in Consilium Tyranni si is aliquâ— de re bonâ deliberaturus sit Quare si quid ejusmodi evenerit ut accersamur quid censeas mihi faciendum utique scribito Nihil enim mihi adhuc accidit quod majoris Consilii est And the truth is the great thing that inclineth so many to desire Changes in Governments being the hopes of the Acquest of Offices it was but natural for the Athenian Wisdom to fence with sharp precaution against the lusciousness of Authority under an Usurper and to let every man know as I may say in terrorem that in the day of his eating the forbidden fruit he would die the death by the hand of every man and for the wisdom of the Government in King Iames's time by the effect and necessary Consequences of the Clauses in the Oath of Allegiance to tye mens Consciences from supporting any Vsurpation by bearing Office under it That Law and Oath of Athens were no doubt as almost all other matters of Learning known to King Iames and could he have foreseen how the guest after Offices occasioned the Demagogues to promote the â—ebellion of 41 for 't is known they were then mighty Nimrods after mighty Offices in the State and after what particular ones and how the several Vsurpations supported themselves here afterward through mens supporting themselves by Offices under them and how in this present Fermentation men have been tempted to Faction by hopes of Offices and in pursuit of which men were never generally so wary as iâ— this Conjuncture I am apt to think that in uberâ—orem cautelam for Loyalty and the making men appear perjured even to all of the grossest understandings who should bear Office under any Vsurper and consequently deterring them from projecting to altâ—r the Hereditary Government he would have inserted into the Oath a particular express Clause of not bearing Office here under any other But further to illustrate the intent of the Government
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
I concluded with the Observation That it was not for nothing nor without some end that Divine Providence permitted so many Protestants to erre in one great Point and that probably it might be to the end to produce in their Minds so great a degree of Compassion and Charity toward the Persons of all Roman-Catholick Christians as may not only last in this Conjuncture but be operative in them by all Moral Offices of Humanity and Christianity during their Lives But the Course of Providence having further honoured His Majesty's Government by bringing to light in it the Truth about those odious Matters that particular Roman-Catholicks were charged with and for which in the general Iudgment of the Impartial they appear now to have been put to Death by false Testimony the cry of such Blood may well I think pass for a loud Call against making the Body of the Roman-Catholicks uneasie by the Penal Laws and while the Reason for their Severity hath so apparently ceased As toward the latter end of the Preface which was committed to Writing in the latter end of the last Reign I mention'd it as the Concordant vogue of the Populace to throw off the belief of the only Person referr'd to as a witness in the following Discourse so it must be acknowledged that Time hath by its births of Discovery now given a just occasion for the laying aside all the Aggravations there against any Principles in the Canon-Law or the Casuistical Morals of the Iesuits that my self and others then built on the Fate of Godfrey and hath aâ—cording to what I have predicted concerning the Fate of the Principles of the Iesuites Condemned by this Pope tacitly evaporating by Fear and Shame made them appear obsolete And it is one of the Glories of His Majesty's Reign that all those Principles in terrorem which gave occasion formerly for the Continuance of the Laws in terrorem do now appear offer'd up as Sacrifices to the Iustice of it And tho from the account I found in The Policy of the Clergy of France of the Fact of some of the Iesuits having opposed the Publication of that Decree in France as having issued from the Pope in his Court of Inquisition I took occasion to dilate on the Aggravations of their Disobedience to the Pope yet upon my having since enquired into the Transactions of the Papal World I have found Cause to absolve them from any Censure of that kind And accordingly as the Ingenious Dr. Donne in his Pseudo-Martyr saith that Chrysostom expounding that place in Jeremy Domus Dei facta est spelunca Hyaenae applies it to the Priests of the Iews as hardest to be converted and saith That the Hyaena having as Chrysostom observes but one Back-bone cannot turn except it turn all at once so that the Romanist Priests having but one Back-bone the Pope cannot turn but all at once when he turns it must be acknowledged that the Pope having by that his noble Decree done so much right to his own Honour and that of his Church and indeed of Humane nature as to damn those tenets the aversion of the whole Order of the Iesuites from them was necessarily and naturally to happen And from the Doctor in that Book applying further to the Iesuites saying Christ said to those whom he sent what I tell you in darkness that speak you in light and what you hear in the Ear that preach you in Houses and fear not them that kill the Body and if no other thing were told you in darkness and whispered in your Ears at your missions hither then that which our Saviour delivered to them you might be as confident in your publick preaching and have as much comfort of Martyrdom if you died for executing such a Commission and then reflecting on the instructions that were delivered them in darkness in that Conjuncture for the promoting those Papal Vsurpations on the Regal Rights whereby they were delivered from all subjection to the King it may be here occasionally observed that many persons of our several Religionary Perswasions having for Curiosity gone to hear the publick Preaching of these Missionaries have there met with such ingenuous Explications of the Moral Offices that concern the most Vital parts of Religion and those so pathetically applied as that they have looked on such men who were formerly dead in Law to be as it were sent from the dead to make others better Christians and better Subjects and to be thankful for the Dispensative Power animating those for that purpose and have found no Cause to fear that they had any Politick whispers in their Missions to oppose the Power of our Monarch more then their Brethren do that of the Great Neighbouring one and to whom in the litis-pendentia between him and the Pope about the Regale they adhered My Lord as to what I adventured to predict of the success of his Majesties Political Measures his past Prudence so eminently appearing in the Series of his Great Actions might sufficiently encourage me without any help from Enthusiasme for Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia And the Supposal about his coming to the Throne in great maturity of years a thing that the prudence of the Romans had strict regard to in the Age of their Consuls and for which Office none was qualified under the Age of 43 years and his bringing to the Throne a vast Treasure of Knowledge and Experience refin'd and solid by many Experiments of Providence on himself according to the Divine words of Seneca de provid Deus quos amat indurat recognoscit exercet might well raise the highest expectation of his Conduct But yet neither was I without some regard therein to the common Course of Divine Providence even in this Life rewarding in any Illustrious Person a signal tenderness for Religion and inquisitiveness in any Controverted Point about it and at last contrary to the most valuable secular Interest determining his thoughts one way tho perhaps erroneously and I will venture to conclude that if it had imported the salvation of such an exemplary inquisitive honourer of God and who with great holy Exercise had defecated his thoughts from settlement on any local Religion as such to have found out the truth in that Problematick Point God would have honoured him so far as to have sent an Angel to direct him to it and will expect that such a one whose delight was in the Law of the Lord and therein did meditate day and night tho he perhaps comprehended not every thing aright in it yet that he shall be like a Tree planted by the Rivers of Water that brings forth his fruit in his Season and that his Leaf shall not wither and that whatever he doth shall prosper and that his ways thus pleasing God he will make even his Enemies to be at peace with him and that he who makes peace in his high places and who can make peace between high and low and makes men to be of one
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
and Principles Religionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is Irreligionary and against Nature The words of exterminating and recalling are often used by Cicero as signifying the contrary and when Mr. Coleman's Letters shewed such an imperious design in him for the Revocation of Popery that had been driven away and banished or exterminated hence by so many Acts of Parliament and even for the Extermination of Heresie out of the North as occasioned such apprehensions in the Government of what was intended by other innocent and modest Papists that made the gentlest of Princes in a Speech in the Oxford Parliament say and if it be practicable the ridding our selves quite of all of that Party that have any considerable Authority c. none need wonder at the past warmth of Subjects expressed against the Recalling of the Exterminated Papal Power nor yet at the warmth of their Zeal against the Principles of the Iesuites propagating an Internal Power here when they had been exterminated from Rome it self and when the Lord Chancellors Speech to both Houses had mentioned the Proceedings against Protestants in Foreign Parts to look as if they were intended to make way for a general Extirpation They are poor Judges of things who think that Doctrines of Religion cannot be said to be exterminated out of Kingdoms and their Laws without the Banishment of the Persons professing them Who accounts not Protestancy sufficiently exterminated from being the State-Religion in Italy and yet Sandies his Europae speculum tells us That there were 40000 professed Protestants there Is not Iudaism sufficiently Exterminated from being the Religion at Rome tho thousands of professed Iews are there tolerated 'T is the publick approbation of Tenets or Doctrines and not any forbearance or indulgence to persons who prosess them that gives Doctrines a place within the Religion of a State for to make any State approve of a Doctrine contrary to what it hath Established is a Contradiction But the truth is the famous Nation of the Iews formerly Heavens peculiar People on Earth having not been more generally guilty of Idolatry during their prosperity than of Superstition during their Captivity and Oppression and Extermination from their Country hath taught the World this great truth that the readiest way to propagate Superstition and Error is by the Exterminium and Banishment of Persons Whatever Church any men call their Mother if the Magistrate finds them to own the Interest of their Country as their Mother and to honour their true Political Father they cannot wish their days more long in the Land than I shall do I remember under the Vsurpation there passed an Act of Parliament as 't was called for the banishment of that famous Boute-feu Iohn Lilburn and under the Penalty of the Vltimum supplicium and he shortly after returning to England and being tried in London where he was universally known and the only thing issuable before the Iurors being whether he was the same John Lilburn those good men and true thought him so much transubstantiated as to bring him in not guilty and when ever I find any Papist not only willing to change the Name Papist for Catholick but the thing Papistry for the Principles of the Church of Rome under its first good Bishops and before Popes beyond a Patriarchal Power aspired to be Universal Bishops and Universal Kings and that even a Iesuite instead of the Rule of Iesuita est omnis homo hath alter'd his Morals and Principles pursuant to the Pope's said Decree so far as truly to say Ego non sum ego I shall not intermeddle in awakening Penal Laws to touch either his life or liberty Nor can any Presbyterians with justice reflect on the Zeal of any for the Continuance of the Laws for the Extermination of Presbytery when they shall reflect on the Royal Family having been by their means as is set forth in this Discourse exterminated out of the Realm into Foreign Popish Countries and of which they might easily have seen the ill effects if their understandings had not been very scandalously dull But there is another happy Extermination that I have in this Discourse from Natural Causes predicted to my Country and that is of the fears and jealousies that have been so prevalent during our late fermentation concerning which the Reader will shortly find himself referred to in many Pages in this Discourse and to have directed him to all of that Nature would have made the Index a Book I have in this Discourse designing to eradicate the fears of Popery out of the Minds of timid Protestants by the most rational perswasions I could shewed somewhat of Complaisance in sometimes humouring their Suppositions of things never likely to come to pass I have accorded with them in the possibility of the Event of Arch-Bishop Vsher's Famous Prophecy tho I account the same as remote from likelihood as any one could with it and do believe that if that Great and Learned Man could have foreseen the mischief that Prophecy hath occasioned by making so many of the Kings good Subjects disquieted thereby and which by at once Chilling their Hearts and heating their Heads hath rendered them less qualified for a chearful and steady discharge of their respective Duties he would have consulted privately with many other Learned and Pious Divines about the intrinsick weight of the matter revealed to him before he had exposed it to the World for that in the days when God spake by the Prophets yet even then the Spirits of the Prophets were always subject to the Prophets and there is no Fire in the World so bad a Master as the Fire of Prophecy It is observable that there hath scarce since this Prophecy been a Conjuncture of time wherein men uneasie to themselves would make the Government so but this Prophecy hath been reprinted in it and cryed about and few Enthusiasts but are as perfect in it as a Sea-man in his Compass The substance of it was to foretel Persecution that should happen in England from the Papists in the way of a sudden Massacre and that the Pope should be the Contriver of it and that if the King were restored it might be a little longer deferred A person less learned than that Great Prelate could easily give an Account of the past Out-rages of Massacres that have been perpetrated by Papists and of the tendency of the Iesuites Principles to the very legitimating of Future ones but the most Pious and Learned Man in the World ought with the greatest Caution imaginable to pretend to Divine Revelation of Future Contingencies in a matter both so unlikely and so odious as this and which might probably occasion so much Odium to so many innocent Papists and so much needless trouble to so many timid Protestants That Pious and Great Prelate did not I believe foresee that at the time when his Prophecy should dart its most fearful influence St. Peter's Chair would be filled
built at Fredericsburg by the present Prince Elector one of the fairest Churches in Germany and which was by him in our great year of fears and jealouâ—ies and fatal discords namely 1680 finished and dedicated to Holy Concord and Vnion perhaps in Contra-distinction to the Term of Holy Church and its Dedication and Consecration was with great Devotion solemnized and not without the choicest Vocal and Instrumental Musick that could be thought proper to be used then and with which the Offices of the Ceremony began and the Musick being over there was an inaugural Oration there made in the honour of Holy Concord and of the Dedication of the Church to it And after that the Prince Elector who is a Calvinist engaged Doctor Fabritius Principal Divine to his Electoral Highness to preach there and in the Afternoon of that day another Sermon was there Preach'd by a Lutâ—â—ran Divine and in the Evening another Sermon was there made by a Roman-Catholick Divine and they all made pious and learned Sermons in order to the propagating of Holy Concord applauding therein the Electors design and with a most devout attention all those three Divines were present at each others Sermons Nor was any of his Popish Subjects then afraid that he would infringe the rights of the exercise of their Religion because the Papal Interest had been so active in bereaving his Family of the Bohemian Crown as well as of its ancient Rights many of which are forever abdicated from it by the Munster Peace Thus on this Rock of the Munster Peace was the Holy Concord of holy Church-men discordant in opinions founded abroad by a Prince allied to the Crown of England and whereby the opposite Religionary Opinors quitted their Antipathys against each other and the Lion made under his Government to lie down with the Lamb at the same time that we groaned under a judgment more opprobrious than that threatned to the Iews in Leviticus namely The sending of wild Beasts among them I mean that of our Populace being frightened and worried with Chymaeras and with Chymeric Ideas of all Popish Princes being bound to have the Council of Lateran by heart and to observe it semper ad semper and without the Latitude of Prudence which the very Definition of Moral Verâ—ue makes Essential to it as I may say with allusion to Aristotle's sicut vir prudens eam definiret and to lose themselves in catching of Tartars and to have forgot the Saying of Solomon That in the multitude of the People is the King's honour and the want of people is the destruction of the Prince and with the Idea of a Heterodox Prince swearing to maintain the Laws and yet breaking them and with another Idea as horrid and monstrous namely that men might observe their Oaths acknowledging Allegiance to Kings and their Heirs and Successors and yet exclude their Heirs and Successors from the Throne by a Law. It was an Observation worthy of the Doctor of the Gentiles and which he inculcated to the Corinthians namely that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the fashion of this World passeth away I have in this Discourse mentioned that in the year 1212 the Lateran Council brought in Transubstantiation as an Article of Faith and decreed Princes were to be compelled to exterminate Hereticks but the World hath been often Transubstantiated since that time and its substance that the Apostle calls its fashion hath been ever in transitu and the fashion of that Lateran Council is so far passed away that Protestant Writers are somewhat put to it to prove it to have been a General one There was a scurvy fashion long since in the World abroad and that was the fashion of mens sowing a piece of red Cloth on their Garments when the Monks had Preached them into Crusados for the Exterminium haereticorum and by Virtue of one of which Crusado's Bellarmine boasts that 100,000 of the Albingenses were slain but that fashion hath been long left off in the World and the World been since no more outraged by it than by the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross nor so much as our English World hath been by some who have troubled it about the sign of the Cross. It was a saying of the old Greek Philosophers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Papal World is as to many of its Politicks quite another thing from what it was Azorius in his Instit. Moral observed in his time That it falls out often that that which was not the common opinion a few years ago now is Some of our timid Protestants who do not know the Papal Lutheran and Calvinian World because they see it not in the Antique fashion they heard it was dressed in 30 or 40 or 50 years ago seem to have been asleep since the Munster Treaty and to have dreamed that such fashion would never alter and are like Epeminides that the old Fables mention to have fetched a sleep of fifty years and who found himself lost in the World at his wakening wanting the sight of the old fashion to shew him where he was I have therefore a great Compassion for those Protestants who take the measures of their Religion and Politicks in a manner only out of the Revelation and who think that almost all the Predictions of that Book were made only for England and that England was made to be governed only by their fancies and their fancies to be given up only to fears of all ill fashions of things and principles in the World being unalterable tho there be scarce a Chapter in that Sacred Book but what refers to Changes and Revolutions and to moving the unwieldy bulk of Empires by unexpected and irresistable Turns of Fate The old Fashion of the Popish Writers asserting the Right of the Bishop of Rome to take away Hereticks lives by virtue of that Branch of the Iudicial Law of the Iews Deuteronomy 17th hath been long exterminated by them The words of the Text are thus agreeable to the old Latin Translation And he that out of Pride shall refuse to obey the Commandment of that Priest which shall at that time Minister before the Lord thy God that man shall by the Sentence of the Iudge be put to death and the Calvinistick Fashion of founding the practice of Hereticidium on the Authority of the Iudicial Law is passed away I have in this Discourse represented the Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Canon Law founded on Deuteronomy the 13th to be chargeable on our late Presbyterians and that justly on the account of their having declared the Iudicial Law obligatory to us and have shewed what Calvin's Principle and Practice was pursuant to that Law. The Learned Klockius a Lutheran Lawyer in his large Volume de Aerario l. 2. c. 86. n. 10. endeavours to acquit the Divines of his Religionary perswasion from the Tenet of Hereticide and saith Nostri vero Theologi ut capitali paenâ haereticos contrà quam plerique Calvinianorum cum
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
Treaty cited in the Margent of the Author of The Reasonable Defence as I have mentioned the thing with Historical Truth Arch-Bishop Brambal in p. 178 of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of that Peace and how thereby freedom of Religion was secured to Protestants and Bishopricks and other Ecclesiastical Dignities conferred on them and that many Lands and other Hereditaments of great value were alienated from the Church in Perpetuity and yet the Popes Nuntio protested against it and having there in his Margent referred to the aforesaid Bull of Pope Innocent saith yet the Emperor and the Princes of Germany stand to their Contracts assert the Municipal Laws and Customs of the Empire and assume to themselves to be the only Iudges of their own Privileges and Necessities And moreover Sir William Temple in his said Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire writ in 1671 mentioning The Domestick Interest of the Empire to be the limited Constitution of the Imperial Power and the Balance of the several free Princes and States of the Empire among themselves saith that those Interests have raised no doubt since the Peace of Munster While the Iesuites make the Pope infallible and some Anti-Papists generally make him a meer natural Agent that must always Act Ad extremum virium I fear not to take a middle way and to suppose him to be a rational Animal and one that knows when the Papacy is not to exert its former Principles against the Power of Kings and lives of Hereticks and for this reason namely Quia deerant vires and one who will not do it for the Future in all places Quia deerunt vires He is not to learn the reasonableness of that Gloss in his Canon Law that Canes propter pacem tolerantur in ecclesiâ and especially when the Heretical Dogs are there the most numerous nor needed he or the Popish or Protestant Princes of the Empire to have been minded of the Dutch Proverb so well known there viz. Veel Honden Zyn de' haez dâ—ot i. e. Many Dogs are the Hares death and that the old sport of hunting down Hereticks with Crusado's was hardly practicable when both Popish as well as Protestant Princes were weary of it and that therefore according to the saying Difficile est ire venatum invitis Canibus Nor was either the Pope or the Popish Princes of Germany to be taught that if ever there was to be that wild thing of a Crusado against Hereticks again better use might be made of them then by killing them and that it would turn to better Account to deal with them as Mathew Paris tells us on the year 1250 the time about which Crusado's were most in fashion and when Popes that had a mind to ravish the Regal Rights of Princes would take an opportunity to do it by sending them on Fools Errands to the Holy Land that the Pope dealt with the many Pilgrims who were Cruce signati in an Adventure for that Land namely that he very fairly sold those crossed Pilgrims for ready Money as the Iews did their Doves and their Sheep in the Temple And if the 100,000 Hereticks that I mentioned out of Bellarmine as slain by one Crusado had been sold but for 20 l. Sterling each a fond might have been thereby provided for the incommoding the Turk very much more than by the taking from him the Holy Land. But the Pope and those Popish Princes are sufficiently sensible of their want of Power for any such Nonsensical Outrage and I wish that our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance and who with Bellarmine have agreed in that being the Cause of the Primitive Christians not attempting to shake the Empire namely because they had not strength to do it were but as sensible as the Papacy is of their wanting strength to do it in England No marvel therefore that the Iupiter Capitolinus in his Bull of Nullity did not discharge the old Artillery of the Lightning and Thunder of Anathemas and the greater Excommunications against the Emperor and Roman-Catholick Crown'd Heads and Princes concerned in the Munster Peace as I have shewn nor according to the Expression in the Reasonable Defence damned them to the Pitt of Hell for it No both the World and the Papacy were so Metamorphosed and their old fashions so far passed away that those Popish Crown'd Heads found that there was in this Bull only what partly resembled that which Ovid tells us of in his Metamorphosis viz. Est aliud levius sulmen cui dextra Cyclopum Saevitiae flammaeque minus minus addidit irae Tela secunda vocant superi c. But as I just now expressed my wishes that some of our English Owners of the Doctrine of Resistance were as sensible of their wanting strength to subvert the Rights of the Monarchy in England as the Pope was of his wanting it to break the Measures of the Crown'd Heads relating to the Munster Peace I have in this Discourse expressed not only my hopes but belief that nature it self which is thus always Acting to the extremity of its Power will overpower the Arts by which they have been seduced to Principles for endeavouring it and will render the Principles of many of our Protestant Recusants coincident with those of the Primitive Christians instead of those of the Jesuites and that this Storm which the World hath brought on the Irreligionary part of their Principles as well as of the Iesuites both of which have brought so many dismal Storms on the World will make them come to an Avarage and to submit to the casting many of their Principles over-board as well as the Iesuites have been obliged so to do by the Pope as Master of the Vessel commanding the same And as in a Storm the very Victuals of the Mariners are often according to the Maritime Law cast into the Sea to lighten the Vessel it may resemblingly be expected that many of our Dissenting Religionaries will now part with some of those Principles that have in their Religion-Trade afforded them a Subsistance and that when they shall consider how this present Pope notwithstanding the Privilege of a Master of a Ship by which he may refuse to begin the Iactus by throwing out first his own Wares and Goods did about a year before he threw out the Lumber of the Iesuites and Casuists throw over-board a vast Treasure of Papal Indulgences and by which the Ship of the Papacy was formerly victualled It was by the Popes Decree of the 7th of March 1678 that a Multitude of Indulgences was suppressed and the Names of 14 Famous Popes are there mentioned as having granted some thereof and great numbers of others are by him quashed without mentioning the Popes by whom granted and there was a particular Clause in the Decree that did shake the whole Body of Indulgences And tho the Virgin Mary hath been by many of the Vulgus of Papists oftner pray'd to in Storms than the Trinity
same thing almost the same words used in a Prophecy of the times of the Gospel Zech. 13. 3. He saith indeed that by those words in Deut. the meaning is not that his Father or Mother should presently run a Knife into him but that they should be the means to bring him to condign punishment even the taking away his life Calvin likewise in giving his sense of that place of Zechary foresaw the Odium of having any killed without going to the Iudge and there saith Multò hoc durius est propriis manibus filium interficere quam si ad Iudicem deferrent But here Mr. Burroughs and Calvin have Categorically enough asserted what the Iudges duty is in the Case and I have said what Calvin effected by going to the Iudge about Servetus Gundissalvus doth not determine the lawfulness of burning an Heretical City without going to the Iudge and the lawfulness of Protestant Princes judging the Persons or Cities of Idolaters to be destroyed by the pretended Obligation of the Mosaic Law is chargeable on the Anti Papists I have mentioned and I believe there are few of our Presbyterian or Independent Enthusiasts but who think it as lawful to burn Rome as to roast an Egg. But the Church of England abhorreth this flammeum sulphureum evangelium and Dr. Hicks in the Preface to his Iovian taking notice of the Reasons which the Papists urge for putting Heretick and the scotising Presbyterians for putting Popish Princes to death saith thereupon I desire Mr. J. to tell me Whether he thinks in his Conscience the Bishops of the Church of England could argue so falsly upon the Principles of the Iewish Theocracy to the like proceedings in Christian States And saith if this way of arguing be true then the Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth was bound to burn many Popish Towns in her Kingdom and smite the Inhabitants with the Sword c. I have therefore thought it Essential to the advancement and preservation of Loyalty to endeavour to have the Papal and Presbyterian Error as to the Iewish Laws exterminated And the setling of this point is the more important to the Measures of Loyalty because the same Chapter in Deuteronomy viz. the 13 th that hath been the Popes Palladium for his power of firing Heretical Cities hath likewise been made use of by our deluded Excluders as theirs to recur to in a practice so scandalous to Loyalty and to the Protestant Religion and which hath too much appeared in the many Factious Pamphlets for the Exclusion and as I hinted that that Chapter of Deuteronomy was impiously applied in a former Conjuncture for putting the Queen of Scots to death so the pretended lawfulness of the Exclusion by arguing from the greater to the less was by the deluded generally inferred from that Chapter and the place I just now referred too in the Preface of Iovian mentions Mr. I's arguing from Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother c. in citing of which saith the Dr. it is evident on whom our Author did reflect The very exposing the absurdity of the Papal power of destroying Heretical Persons and Cities on the account of the Mosaic Law will I believe as by Consent of the sober of all Parties much help to exterminate the aforesaid Error which hath cost the Papacy so dear and naturally tempted so many Calvinists to own the same Error partly by way of retaliation and not altogether through defect of Judgment and I doubt not but if the Papacy were now to begin to claim the allowance of exercising the Jurisdiction over all Christians in the World as the High Priest did over all proselyted to the Iewish Religion and as appears by not only the Inhabitants of Palestine but others of the most remote Countries and particularly by the Aethiopian in the Acts of the Apostles owning subjection to the Iewish Priesthood it would stop at the Conquest of that Oecumenical Power and Tenths of the Levites thereby without demanding the Power to destroy Hereticks Towns and to exterminate the Persons of Hereticks by Crusado's as other dependencies on it But the Papacy hath long ago passed that bloody Rubicon of the Iudicial Law and cannot in Honour or Politicks go back nor will any Pope expressly renounce the Power of compelling Princes to exterminate their Heretical Subjects tho yet the Fashion of the exercise of this Power be thus as I have shewed tacitly passed away and as a thing necessarily impracticable in the more populous World. And no Iesuited Papist dares disclaim this Power in the Pope's behalf or impugn the same however it was a thing that the Pope could not but foreâ—ee that his quashing the Iesuites Power to kill men by retail would render the Iesuites averse from writing for his Power to kill Hereticks by whole-sale and by Crusado's or for the power to fire Heretical Cities if there were occasion to have any such power asserted in behalf of the Papacy as I believe there neither is nor ever will be But partly according to my Conjecture of the Result of the Fermentation about the Regale in France I suppose that tho the Papacy will no more be brought to disclaim its pretended Monarchy over other parts of the World in ordine ad spiritualia than the Dukes of Savoy will the Title of their being Kings of Cyprus yet it will be neither able or studious to prosecute its Claim of such power by disordering the World as formerly All the personal Vertue and Probity of any Popes will never incline them to pronounce against their Iurisdiction however they may thereby and by want of strength to execute it be kept from the old injurious ampliating it and on this slippery Precipice the Papacy still remains and from whence through the natural Jealousie of Crown'd Heads and States in the point of Power it will probably fall down to its tame principium unitatis and its Patriarchal Figure and in time to nothing But by many of the Anti-papal Sects and such as call themselves The only true Protestants still owning the Obligation of the Iewish forinsec Laws a Necessity is by God and Nature put on the Protestants of the Church of England to Combat such pretended Obligations by dint of Reason and thereby to support the Rights of their Princes without Condition and Reserve and which no Jesuited Papists or Protestants either can or will do Nor is it safe for other Papists to own Principles that touch the Pope's imaginary Monarchal Power For Power how fantastick soever would seem a serious thing and will endure no raillery and the honest Father Caron whom I have mentioned as citing 250 Popish Authors who denied the Pope's Power to depose Princes doth tell us that the Pope's Nuntio and 4 Popes condemned his Doctrine and the Inquisitors damned his Book and his Superiours his Soul I mean they very fairly excommunicated him for it There is another thing that may render the knowledge of this Papal Tenet worthy
of the entertaining our Curiosity tho we are past its danger and that is what occurs to me that I lately mentioned in a Discourse I had with an intelligent Person of the Church of England who saying to me that there was one part of the barbarous Out-rage of the Gun-powder Treason which was very scandalous to Humane Nature and which he thought could not be pretendedly legitimated by any Papal Principles namely that part of the Out-rage that related to the designed destruction of so many Magnificent Piles of Building and of the adjacent City of Westminster and the life 's of thousands of Men Women and Children with one Cruel Fatal Blow I gave him an account of the Tenet in the Canon Law grounded on the 13th of Deuteronomy so fairly and fully discussed in the following Discourse and whereby I satisfied him about the Principle that pretended to legitimate that part of the Out-rage and do assure any man that as arbitrary as the Papacy ever was it yet was so just as to inflict no kind of punishment on Persons or Communities that was not in its Sanctions intimated and for what Crimes I have in this Discourse render'd some of our late Fift-Monarchy men Principled for all Villany imaginable and justly Convicted and Executed for a design to fire our Metropolis and in which design they had subtilly contrived to have backed their Out-rage with the terror of Armed Forces nothing of which appeared in the Case of the two poor French Papists charged with the Odium of the Fact and beyond which least of numbers it is not in this Discourse extended and as to those two Persons there being then open War between the English and French it may be said that the Religion of Popery might be out of the Case of any thing done by such as were justi hostes as the Laws term them however I yet think that none concerned in the Government of that Nation would then be so barbarous as to design us such an Out-rage Moreover I have in this Discourse said that I will not charge the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists either at home or abroad and that no un-jesuited Papist nor perhaps some sober Party in that Order would think the worse of me for calling the Decretum of the Popes Canon Law by reason of its empowring him thus to burn Cities horrendum Decretum And because my knowing of this Papal Tenet as founded on the Iudicial Law made me after the beginning of this Discourse to surmize that more Papists might possibly be concerned in this Out-rage than really were and so in my balancing the actings of some Loyal Protestant Recusants in Ireland with some Dis-loyal ones of some Popish Recusants there and here I mentioned the Out-rage on the Metropolis as done by Papists i. e. by Papists and not by Protestants and as Sir W. Raleigh mentioned that Harry the 4th was murdered by the Papists that is not by the Huguenots I yet thought my self bound in Christianity and Moral Justice to shew my self so far from being in the least misled by the scandalous and incoherent Narratives that reflected on a great body of the Papists as concerned in such a horrid Fact and particularly by that whose Author in a Plot with Booksellers had stole his Fire of London out of old printed Examination before a Committee of Parliament that I have shewn the ridiculousness of the palmare argumentum of the Populace and cryed up as so unanswerable to prove that very many Papists designedly fired the City and which Argument I have not met with exposed to contempt by any other Person and which had so far happened to work on the understanding of an ingenious man who employed himself in writing the History of England since the King's Restoration that he had been likely but for my shewing him the Childishness of his Error to have sent it to Posterity with a Crown instead of a Fools Cap on its head And tho I have rendred the same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Pope's Canon Law founded on Deuteronomy chargeable on our late Presbyterians I have exempted the Persons of such our Protestant Recusants from any guilt of an Out-rage against our Metropolis as Idolatrous for whatever their Principles are there is yet another sort of Idolatry prevalent among them as all Religionaries and which I have referred to namely Covetousness that would secure them from firing their own Nests But here while I am troubling my self to do right to Papists and Presbyterians I cannot without all the horror and detestation imaginable call to mind how a vile traiterous Subject of his Majesties who presumed to call himself the Protestant Ioyner was so far transported with Madness and Fury as to the scandal of Religion and Loyalty and common Sense with the guilt or that Fire to reproach his Prince whose Reign had so long signalized it self with such a Father-like tenderness for all his Subjects And yet in the TRYAL of that Monster of Calumny his slandering his Prince thus with so much desperate and ridiculous Molice was in proof And ridicuâ—ous it may well be called for what could be more remote from the least shadow of possibility than a Prince of such Eminent Wisdom and known great Abilities firing his own Chamber and destroying his Revenue and vastly impoverishing the People and thereby weakening himself in the Flagrancy of War between England and France and the States of Holland It is absolute dotage and Bedlam-madness to imagine that any one interested in the Government of England and its being a Kingdom could be in the least a well wisher to such an Out-rage The very Fift-Monarchy men who designed it were abject Paupers and the two French-men were no better But Justice found out that Shimei who thus outragiously slandered the Lord 's Annointed and may all such his incorrigible Enemies be cloathed with shame and let them see that tho Heaven doth not think fit always to hide Princes from the scourge of the Tongues of men of Belial yet at the same time it sheweth some tender regard of the honour of Crown'd heads by abandoning the dis-loyal to reproach them with impossibilities It was observed by the late Bishop of Winchester in his printed Sermon before the King on the 5th of November p. 18. That the Doctrines among the Dissenters that tend to Sedition and Rebellion seem to be derived and borrowed from the Church of Rome but his Lordship in the same Page having before spoke of those Doctrines said That if they are believed and practised they must necessarily produce Confusion among us Yet having a regard to the Piety and Peaceableness of some Dissenters and considering how long many of them had been trained up to Principles of Loyalty before they went off from the Church of England we may reasonably have the better hopes of their not being able to believe the Doctrine of Resistance and Principles convulsive of Civil Society But
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
part of its Patrimony Queen Elizabeth alienated to secure the Protestant Religion ib. The fears of Popery further Censured p. 198. Ridly and Latimer Prophesied at the Stake that Protestancy would never be extinguished in England p. 198. Roger Holland prophesied at the Stake at Smithfield that he should be the last that should there suffer Martyrdom ib. Observations on the Natural Prophesying of dying men and its effects p. 199. The Vanity of Mens troubling the World by Suppositions ib. and p. 200. 'T is a degree of madness to trouble it by putting wanton impossible cases p. 200. The Author without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only by the light of reason presageth that the excessive fear of Popery as weâ—l as its danger will here be exterminated ib. The justice of the Claim of King Charles the first to the Title of Martyr asserted p. 201 202 203. The Author judgeth that some vile Nominal Protestants by the publication of many Seditious Pamphlets have given the Government a just Alarm of their designs against it p. 203. Of Papists and Protestants being Antagonists in Shamms p. 204. Mr. Nye cited for representing the Dissenters acted by the Jesuites in thinking it unlawful to hear the Sermons of the Divines of the Church of England p. 204. False Witnesses among the Jews allowed against false Prophets p. 205. The Earl of Anglesy's Courage and Iustice asserted in the professing in the House of Lords his disbelief of such an Irish Plot as was sworn by the Witnesses tho the belief of the reallity of such a Plot had obtained the Vote of every one else in both Houses ib. Above 2000 Irish Papists in the Barony of Enishoan demean'd themselves civilly to the English during the whole Course of the Rebellion ib. Several eminent ingenious Papists in England and Foreign parts celebrated for their avowed Candour to Protestants p. 206 207 208 c. D' Ossat's acquainting the Pope That if his Holyness were King of France he would show the same kindness to the Huguenots that Harry the 4th did p. 208. Cromwel being necessitated to keep the Interest of the Kingdom divided was likewise necessitated to keep up all Religions according to the Politicks of Julian p. 211. Of the Papists calling King James Julian ib. The Author inveigheth against the Calumny of any Protestants who call any one Apostate for the alteration of his Iudgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants ib. The Author's Reason why 't is foolish to fear that any Rightful Prince of the Roman Catholick perswasion that can come here will follow the Politicks of Julian ib. 'T is shewn that any Protestant Vsurper here must act à la Julian ib. The Vsurper Cromwel shewn to be a Fautor of Priests and Jesuites by the Attestations of Mr. Prynn and the Lord Hollis p. 212 213. The danger of Popery that would have ensued Lambert's Vsurpation p. 213 214. How true soever any Vsurpers Religion is he must be false to the Interest of the Kingdom p. 214. Observed that the Kings long Parliament by the Act for the Test did enjoyn the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to be taken ib. Those Oaths lay on the Takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors ib. Mr. Prynn's Book called Concordia discors printed Anno 1659 to prove the Obligation by those Oâ—hs to the King's Heirs and Successors commended ib. The Author mentions the Reasons that induced him to write Casuistically concerning such Obligation and promiseth to send that his Writing to his Lordship ib. The Author judgeth that he ought not to be severe to any Papist before he hath a Moral certainty of such Papists having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Pâ—pery that is unmoral or inhumane ib. The Author observes that few or no Writers of the Church of Rome have lately thought fit by their Pens to assert the Inheritable Right of Princes without respect to any Religionary Tenets they may hold p. 215. The Author thinks that for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Roman Catholick Prince of his Property and Right of Succession when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope employ their Pens for the preservation of such his property and right without respect to to any Religionary Tenets he may hold is like drawing against a naked man ib. D' Ossat affirms That the Pope and the whole Court of Rome hold it lawful to deprive a Prince of any Country to preserve it from Heresie ib. An Animadversion on a late Pamphlet concerning the Succession ib. Reflections on the House of Commons Proceedings in the Exclusion Bill ib. and p. 216. The Author gives an explanatory account of the tempus acceptabile he in p. 25 mentions p. 216. His Majesty's constant contending for the Protestant Faith celebrated and likewise his Iustice in preserving the property of the Succession in the Legal Course by all his Messages to the Parliament p. 217. The unhappy State of that Prince who shall for fear of the Populace do any Act of the Iustice whereof he doubts and much more of the injustice whereof he is fully convinced p. 217. at large The Caution to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia applied to such a Prince viz. Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take away thy Crown ib. at large 'T is not only Popery but Atheism in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion p. 218. King James disavowed the Act of his Son-in Laws accepting the Title of King of Bohemia ib. An Observation that in the Common-Prayer in King Charles the 1 sts time relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runneth for Frederick Prince Palatâ—ine Elector of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife ib. The Author observes that in the Assembly's Directory the Lady Elizabeth is styled Queen of Bohemia p. 219. An Account of the Governments avowed sence in King James's time that any of the Princes of England ought not by becoming Roman Catholick to be prejudiced in their Right of Succession to the Crown ib. The same sense of the Government in the time of King Charles the 1 st ib. The Parliament during the Civil War projected not any prejudice to the right of Succession on the account of any Religionary Tenets p. 220. Mention of somewhat more to confirm the claim of King Charles the 1 st to the Title of Martyr beside his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue ib. An account of the Protestation of the Nonconforming Ministers in the year 1605 relating to the King's Supremacy wherein they assert the Royal Authority inseparably fixt to the true Line whatever Religion any Prince thereof may profess p. 221. The Author peâ—stringeth the Protestant would be 's and new Statists of the Age that would for Religionary Tenets barr any of the
settlement of the same proving Abortive in several Parliaments ib. The French King in the last War did forbid the Importation of Sail-Cloath to England ib. A presage of the future happy State of England and the Authors Idea thereof at large ib. and p. 252. An account of the Rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-cloth and all other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax yearly brought into England and from what Countries deduced out of the Custom-house Books p. 254. All the Hemp and Flax sown in England is observed to be bought up by the years end p. 257. Almost as much Hemp and Flax yearly brought into Amsterdam as into the whole Kingdom of England ib. The Authors judgment of the effects of the necessity that will drive us on to the Linen Manufacture ib. An Account of the fine Linen lately made by the French Protestants at Ipswich and of the Flax by them sown ib. The Author's Censure of the excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery ib. His belief that the future State of England will make men ashamed of their pass'd fears of Popery ib. The Vote of the House of Commons for the recalling the Declaration of Indulgence carried by the Party of the Nonconformists p. 258. Most of the Papists of England in the Year 1610 computed to be under the guidance of the Jesuites p. 260. Many Popish Writers have inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decrets of the Canon Law ib. That Law never in gross received in England ib. Binds not English Papists in the Court of Conscience ib. A Tenet ridiculously and falsly in the Canon Law founded on Cyprian ib. Gratian's founding it on Cyprian gives it only the weight it could have in Cyprian's Works p. 261. Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith cited for Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claiming nothing of Faith and Bellarmine's acknowledging errors therein ib. One definition in the Canon Law and gloss held by all Papists ridiculous ib. The Author thinks he has said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope's Canon Law as they would wish said ib. He thinks himself morally obliged in any Theological Enquiry to say all that the matter will fairly bear on both sides ib. Heylin and Maimbourg cited about the firing of Heretical Villages in France p. 262. Parsons and Bellarmine cited by Donne for rendring some things obligatory that are said by Gratian p. 263. The Author expects that the growing populousness of England will have the effect of rendriâ—g men less censorious of any supposed Political Errors in the Ministers of our Princes p. 265. Mr. Fox cited for his Observation of many Excellent men falsly accused and judged in Parliament and his advice to Parliaments to be more circumspect ib. The Author minded by that passage out of Fox to reflect on the severity in a late Parliament in their Votes against the King's Ministers ib. The injustice of the Vote against the Earl of Hallifax p. 266. The Earl of Radnor occasionally mentioned with honour ib. The Constancy of the Earl of Anglesy to the Protestant Religion further asserted p. 267. Mention of his Lordships being injuriously reflected on in a Speech of Sir W. J. ib. The unreasonableness of the Reflections on the Lord Chief Justice North for advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions ib. The great deserved Character of that Lord Chief Justice p. 268. throughout A reflection on the popularity of Sir W. J. and on the â—â—â—essive Applause he had from the House of Commons after his Speech for the Exclusion-Bill p. 269. Sir Leolin Jenkins mentioned with honour ib. The Cabal of Sir W. J. observed to be full of fears of the Exclusion-Bill passing and their not knowing what steps in Politicks to make next ib. The Earl of Peterborough at large mentioned with honour ib. and p. 270. A further Account of the Authors prediction of England's future happy State ib. and p. 271. The Author observes that the most remarkable late Seditious Writers have published it in Print That they feared the next Heir to the Crown only as Chief Favourite to his Prince and that they judged that the Laws would sufficiently secure them from fears of his power if he should come to the Crown p. 271. An Assertion of his never having advised his Prince to incommode any one illegally and of his not having used his own power to any such purpose ib. The Author judgeth such Persons to write but in jest who amuse the People about being Lachrymists by that Princes Succession ib. The Author reflects on our Counterfeit Lachrymists for not affecting as quick a prevention of any future growth of Popery as was 〈◊〉 care of in Scotland p. 272. He observes that few or none in Scotland fear that Popery can ever in any Course of time there gain much ground ib. The Papists in that Kingdom estimated to be but 1000 ib. The Author believes that the fears of Poperies growth will be daily abated in England and in time be extinguished ib. More Popish Ecclesiasticks observed to be in Holland then Ministers in France and that yet none in Holland pretend to fear the Papists ib. The Authors judgment of the Dissenters Sayings being usefully published ib. Some Notes on the Geneva Bible seditious ib. The same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Popes Canon Law founded on the 13 th of Deuteronomy is chargeable on our late Presbyterians ib. The Assemblies Annotations cited to that purpose ib. The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine p. 274. Bishop Sanderson cited for that purpose ib. Calvin as to this point did blunder as shamefully as our Assembly-men p. 274. Several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines imbibed the error of Hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians ib. The Presbyterians here fired the Church and State with a Civil War ib. The Authors belief that there will never be any new Presbyterian Synod in England nor General Council beyond Sea ib. The Popes Pensions in the Council of Trent that sate for 18 years came to 750 l. Sterling per Month â—b The Author predicts the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty in England ib. The reason of such his Prediction p. 275. The Lord Hyde first Commissioner of the Treasury mentioned with honour ib. What the new Heaven and the new Earth is that the Author expects in England ib. The reason that induced false Prophets to foretel evil rather than good to States and Kingdoms p. 276. at large The same applied to our Augurs who by enlarging our fears and jealousies and their own fortunes thereby rendred the Genius of England less august ib. The Authors measures of the future State of England are taken only from Natural Causes and Natures Constancy to it self p. 277. A short account of several great Religionary Doctrines having naturally pierced through the sides and roots of one another p. 279. The
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
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
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
the City of London was burnt in the Year 1666 by the Papists designing thereby to introduce Arbitrary Power and Popery into this Kingdom they will not think it strange that they should not be permitted to live in any of our Cities again till they have shew'd how orderly they can live in one of their own And therefore I think we may without breach of Civility or at least violation of justice apply to them some part of the words which I find quoted by Dr. Bramhall Lord Bishop of Derry in his just vindication of the Church of England out of Gers. part 4. Ser. de pace unit Graec. as the farewell Speech to the Bishop of Rome when the Graecian and all other Eastern Churches parted from him whom they acknowledged only as a Patriarch Namely We acknowledg your Power we cannot satisfie your Covetousness live by your selves How it is in the case of the People of Switzerland Papists and Protestants living apart by themselves in several Cantons cannot be unknown to your Lordship Nor that the Protestants and Papists when they there made their League at first joyntly to maintain their Liberties against the House of Austria then agreed upon this also That if any of the Natives living in the Cantons of either side should change their Religion that then they should be permitted respectively to sell their goods and transplant themselves to the Canton whose Religion they embraced But I shall tell your Lordship That of late the Popish Canton Switz did break this agreement and would not suffer some of their Native Inhabitants to partake of this freedom and did confiscate the goods of some Families that changed their Religion and at the instigation of the Fryars and Iesuits they condemned some of them to death and others to the Gallyes which was the cause of a Commotion among them The Gentleman of Ireland who discourst somewhat to me of the Transplantation of the Irish Papists told me it was into the Province of Connaught and think into the In-land parts of that Countrey for to have trusted them to live in Maritine Towns there whereby they might have let in an invading Popish or other Forrainer were to have trusted them with the power of the Keys of the Kingdom And he further told me That the transplantation was managed with much satisfactory tenderness to those Papists and that as to English and Irish it had partly the nature of a bargain that gave content on both sides and secured them against each other after all the mutual exasperations that had passed and when 't was fresh in the memory of both English and Irish that 't was the promiscuous and scatter'd dwelling of the English among the Irish before the Rebellion that tempted the Irish to butcher them and made the English Sheep for the Slaughter and when it was not likewise forgot that in former Wars the partition or distinction of the English Pale did secure the English inhabiting within its district I askt the Gentleman if they were not stinted to a certain number of Priests and care taken that none of them should be Iesuits and that the chief Governour of the Countrey should know their Names and whether any Priests Natives of that Country were allow'd them as to which enquiries he did not fully satisfie me but I supposed that since all Religions have a Priest-hood that somewhat of that kind was allowed them and that since the Order of the Iesuits was invented in the Year 1540. by the Pope as a Poysonous Stumm to put a new fermentation into the Romish Ecclesiastical Rites and Discipline which were almost dead with age and like vina vetustate edentula and quite dispirited with the Thunder of the Doctrine of Luther and the lightning of Learning and Knowledg then flying through the World and that that Order of the Iesuits was as it were a Court erected to begin with execution and to confute gainsayers by cutting their Throats No Iesuits were permitted to officiate among those transplanted Papists and considering that the Priests Natives of Ireland were the known fomenters of that Rebellion that both English and Irish might rather consent to some Secular Priests bred in Holland or France being employed in the New Irish Colony and who had no knowledg of the Intrigues of the several Interests in that Country and would not by kindred or relation to any of the great Families there perhaps be tempted into Factions I have heard from that Gentleman of Mr. Peter Walsh a Fryar in Ireland and of his endeavours in the Art of Cicuration of some of the Romish Clergy Layety who there were Wolfes and that without Sheeps cloathing and reclaiming them to Principles and Practices consistent with civil society and what proficiency his Disciples have made therein I being a stranger to that Kingdom know not but according to that saying bonus est quem Nero odit have the better opinion of him for those endeavours of his having been Crown'd with the Popes Excommunications It was a noble saying I have heard of one of the House of Peers this last Parliament I hate not the persons of any Papists but I am an enemy to Popery In like manner I should be glad that all the Mercy were shewn them that were not Cruelty to the Public but they are to excuse any one that will not forget that when they begun the last outragious Rebellion in Ireland which no words need or can aggravate they enjoy'd there equal Priviledges with the English if not greater the Lawyers were Irish most of the Judges Irish and the Major part of the Parliament Irish and in all disputes between English and Irish the Irish were sure of the Favour and any one would be inexcusable to this Kingdom who forgot that King Iames's unparalel'd kindness to his Popish Subjects in suspending the execution of Penal Laws against them in sparing their purses in remitting the arrears of what they owed Queen Elizabeth for pecuniary penalties nay giving into their hands what money of theirs as his due was in the Exchequer was but the â—rologue to their intended Tragedy on the Fifth of November And what provocations they had to be ill wishers to the Life and Crown of the last King as appeared by the detection forementioned presented to His Majesty by Arch-Bishop Laud and a Charge given against them in Print by the Reverend Dr. Peter Du Moulin which he offer'd to make good and ad quod non fuit responsum let any one Judg who further does look on the Parliaments Addresses in Rushworths Collections And unless some of them had loved ingratitude for ingratitudes sake they would never have enter'd into that Conspiracy against his now Majesty whose Life is the delight of all Mankind but theirs And yet since according to that expression that God is not the God of the Iews only but also of the Gentiles so it being true that the King is King of the Papists as well as Protestants King of
the Irish as well as of the English and a common Father to them all it may be worthy of His Royal goodness and a God-like thing in him to distribute to them all the Kindness that would not undo themselves and others as the Divine bounty dispenseth itself to the Sinful yet with respect to the Government of the World. And as the love of an Indulgent Father may be measured more by the kindness he would shew an obstinate son were he qualified to receive it then by what he doth who tryes all methods to reclaim him by his Will Disinherits him and goes down to the shades below without revoking such a Will and yet in his life-time with the tenderest bowels and softest language he was constantly bemoaning that Sons being not a Subject fit or capable to participate in the Estate equally with his Brethren Thus too may the love of the Pater Patriae and of the Country it self be demonstrated to these our obstinate Brethren more by the Favour we do not afford them then by what we do having often seen the truth of what Solomon saith that the prosperity of fools destroys them But as I said before I would be glad that the Papists themselves would try to find out what way of security the Wisdom of His Majesty and His great Councel may acquiesce in so that any bitter way may not be prescribed to them by public Authority as perhaps this of Transplantation or some other may seem and that persons of innocent Tempers and Principles may not be carryed off with those of noxious ones as all strong purging Phisic disposesseth the body of some good Humours as well as bad and I therefore wish that they may rather satisfie His Majesty that they have transplanted into their minds some such Principles as are to be found not only in Protestant but Heathen Authors to incline men to be Gods and not Devils to one another and those Principles growing in the Soil of Nature when transplanted into the mind of a Christian are much more generous and improved like the Vines on the Rhine transplanted into the Fortunate Islands and whereby a Protestant King may Sit securely in His Throne and His Protestant Subjects sleep securely in their houses and walk securely in the Streets without fear of the fate of Sir Edmond Godfrey and Mr. Arnold pursuing them upon a declaratory sentence that they are Hereticks by a shabby Consult of a few ignorant Priests in a blind Cabaret without citing them to shew cause why they should not be knock't on the head by Villains who account themselves the Popes Sheriffs and at the worst that happens to them his Martyrs a fate of Proteâ—â—ants worse then they suffered in the Dog-days of Queen Maryes Reign that Canicula Persecutionis as Tertullian's phrase is for then they were not murder'd but after a Tryal for their Lives and Liberty granted to recant at stake Methinks when they consider the Popes Decree made at Rome the second of March 1679. condemning some Opinions of the Iesuits and other Casuists the which in Latin and English was printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1679. and see thereby that the Augean Stable of the Casuists being so full of Filth that it could hold no more the Pope to avoid the scandal of the World and danger to those Souls who by the practice of those Opinions were not at that time sent to the place from whence there is no Redemption though yet as the excellent Author of the Preface to that decree here printed judiciously observes That the Pope treats those Opinions very gently and mercifully and indeed doth not declare them ill in themselves or such a Nusance to souls that he could not dispence with and when they likewise consider that most of those Opinions if not all were Rules allow'd by Iesuits or other Casuists for Confessors and Penitents to go by in the securing of the great concern of Eternity till that time and that Guymenius with the approbation and permission of his Superiors in the year 1665. favours most if not all of those Opinions with a colourable gloss out of Councels Fathers School-men and Divines and endeavours to throw off the Odium from the Iesuits for them upon the whole Roman Church they should now be so awaken'd as throughly to examine both those and other points in that Religion supposing that some future Pope may declare the Souls left in the lurch that hold some other Opinions recommended to them by their Spiritual guides without their having obtained a papal dispensation to hold them My Lord though I believe your Lordship to have ever had as keen an Antipathy against Caballing with any Papists as good old Iacob shewed he had against that with Simeon and Levy of which he said O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their assembly mine honour be not thou united yet their necessary applications to your Lordship in your administration of the Privy Seal and their voluntary recourse to the hospitality of your noble and constant Table where any one in the habit of a Gentleman is allowed to be your Guest giving you opportunities of discoursing sometimes with Papists I suppose your advice to them to consult with one another in peace how to satisfie His Majesty that all bloody Consults being by them abandon'd he himself may enjoy the Kings peace and we his Subjects enjoy that Peace of the King which his very Wild Beasts in the Forrest enjoy as I said before and where any of the Inhabitants if they have lights in their Windows that may affright the Kings Deer are lyable to punishment by the Forrest law and that we being delivered from the hands of our Enemies may serve God without fear in holiness and righteousness all the dayes of our Lives and not be in danger of being in the Kings High-way knock't on the head like Weasels or Polecats by base Ruffians not worthy to feed the Dogs of our Flocks I say I suppose your Lordships advice backt with those reasons against Popery that you alwayes carry ready told may especially at this time when the ecce duo gladii or two Votes of the House of Commons in the last two Parliaments cannot be forgot by any of them occasion their offering that to the consideration of His Majesty and his great Councel that may render the Kingdom safe from any hostility of their Principles or Practises Your Lordship hath one advantage in giving advice beyond most men I know and perhaps no man is Master of that advantage more then your Lordship and that is your advice to any of Mankind is the advice of a friend for both by your natural temper and a habit that can plead the prescription of sixty years for its continuance in your Soul and a sharpe edge of Wit and Reason to justifie your claim to it so it is that you are in a constant readiness to shew your self a friend
to every Member of that great Body wishing his happiness as your own extending the arm of your beneficence as far as it can reach to the remotest object without hurting your self by the straining it with a pitying Eye and a tender Hand and forgiving Heart guiding unhappy men out of the very Labyrinths they had brought themselves into by injuring you accounting your mercy to be justice to Humane Nature adorning greatness both in your self and others with goodness in the case of the injur'd poor and weak making oft the great and the mighty asham'd of their oppression by your reason and alwayes with Language as soft as the yoke they intended was hard when you could not make them afraid of it by your power and blushing your self for the degeneration of Mans Nature when you saw any that shame could not divert from the turpitude of injuring their brethren of mankind and by your compassion alleviating that burthen of the miserable that they had sunk under but by your Fellowship in their grief and never dispensing either the Kings reproof or your own to offenders without moderation and respect to the frail state of Humanity and without that mixture of benign advice that gave the Malheurevs a plank after the Shipwrack of their Fame and very often running the hazard of drowning your self by helping to save those that were sinking in the Favour of the King and Court and when their fate was such that all the rest of the herd avoided them as a wounded Deer In a word they that know your Lordship know that by arguments hard to be answered and a softness of words and Temper almost inimitable you have Proselyted several Papists out of their pernicious Principles and have taught them goodness by your example and by your having that happy inclination that Hillel a Famous Jewish Doctor who lived a little before our Saviours Incarnation so well advised Namely Be of the Disciples of Aaron who loved Peace and followed Peace and who loved Men and brought them near to the Law. Your Lordship by your being so well vers'd in our Statute Laws and Histories is able to acquaint them with the Justice of our Ancestors in the making of many fresh additional capital Laws for sanguinary they ought not to be called since just against Papists upon the detection of several fresh horrid Treasons particularly those against Queen Elizabeth and King Iames and that our Ancestors then having a great and violent indignation against Popery and Papists made Laws with the dread of the Vltimum supplicium therein and further the anger of Man could not go But it cannot scape your Lordships observation that the violence of Passion not being capable of lasting long in its highest rage how just soever and especially in the brest of an English Man and a Protestant those hot Statutes made only as I may say a hizzing like a little fire thrown into Water and as to their Execution went out presently Nor have I ever heard of any one that apostatiz'd from the Church of England to that of Rome who was as those Statutes ordain punisht as a Traytor merely for so doing And indeed since no Stratagems are to be used twice and especially such as did not succeed once I am highly pleased that on the Discovery of the late detestable Plot there was so great a calmness in the minds so general a smoothness in the brows of the people such an universal Spirit of Patience forbearance and meekness every where visible in their Faces even greater then that which shone in the Minds and Faces of the Londoners when with composed looks they saw their City newly made ashes and had smelt the Incendiaries almost as soon as the Fire that none can imagine but who as eye witnesses observed And even on the fifth of November ensuing the Discovery of the Plot the two excellent Preachers desired to preach before the House of Lords and the House of Commons on that day when both an Old and a New Plot were staring the Nation in the Face happen'd to be with the Peaceable Genius of the Christian Religion and of the People in that Conjuncture inspired in the choice of that same part of Scripture that was their Text and contain'd the calm yet severe reproof given by the Founder of Christianity to some of his Disciples that would have been Commission'd to call for Fire from Heaven to consume the inhospitable Samaritans in one of which Sermons namely that of the Dean of Canterbury's 't is for the Honour of our Nation and Religion by him observed p. 31. of the Sermon that after the Treason of this day nay at this very time since the Discovery of so barbarous a design and the highest provocation in the World by the Treacherous murder of one of His Majesties Iustices of the Peace a very good man and a most excellent Magistrate who had been active in the Discovery of this Plot I say after all this and notwithstanding the continued and insupportable insolence of their carriage and behaviour even upon this occasion no violence nay not so much as any incivility that I have heard of has been offer'd to any of them Thus for the words of this good and learned man. He that loves not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen And the Religion that prompts them to destroy our bodies that they see makes them fearless in the damming of our Souls that they have not seen and even without giving us a minutes warning to make up our accounts with God and that too perhaps for extravagant lenity shew'd to some incorrigibles among them which was poor Godfreys case But the calm temper of the Protestants to them upon the Discovery of the Plot not breathing out any Cruelty or new Severity against their Bodies or Souls shall alwayes endear to me the Protestant Religion And though those two great Votes of the House of Commons may seem severe to the Papists yet are they warning pieces only if they please and not murdring ones and like the Arrows of Ionathan to warn David and not to hurt him And indeed only to warn them not to kill David and not to hurt themselves and in effect a reasonable request or petition of â—wo Parliaments to them only to make much of themselves and like the lenity that accompanied the Divine threatning of moriendo morieris restrain'd to their eating of one tree so that no Flaming Swords need fence up their way from the Tree of Life unless they please But though the Spirit of the people hath not on the occasion of the late Plot shew'd its angry resentments against the persons of the Papists by any outrage or rudeness and though our Parliaments have not on that occasion as those in the times of Queen Elizabeth and King Iames made the Anger of the Statute Book to swell with many Acts of Parliament against them they are not to infer that therefore
very gravely that when once he was vehement in prayer before a Crucifix at Naples he heard this voice bene de me scripsisti Thoma none likewise in that age laught at the Pope for saying bene de me scripsisti Moses The world then brought no quo warranto against the Popes Charter derived thus in his Canon Law from Moses nor that gloss on it which says Since the Earth is seven times bigger then the Moon and the Sun eight times bigger then the Earth the Papal Power must Consequently be fifty seven times bigger then the Regal dignity Our English World will no more allow of the logical Consequence of that doughty argument of Bellarmine Lib. 1. de Pont. ca. 2. sect denique sect sed There is one King among Bees therefore there ought to be one Commander chief Teacher and visible Monarch in the Vniversal Church then they would allow that argument of the Bees to give our neighbour Monarch a right to an Vniversal Temporal Monarchy The Popes vociferating of that Text Behold two Swords and while their adherents held so many Thousands in their hands might then pass muster for as good an argument of his right to Spiritual and Civil power as the words that the Lillies spin not did for the Salic Law with the help of another Army then one of Commentators The Renewall of the Popes Charter by Pasce oves was not then disallowed either for the fleecing of many Millions of Christians or killing some hundreds of thousands in the German Empire according to what has been observed by the famous Erastus in his Theses p. 72. propter excommunicatos Imperatores Reges aliquot Centena millia hominum trucidata sunt in imperio Germanico And perhaps the Popes plea for making the World a great Slaughter-house might then be admitted by the authority of the Text Arise Peter kill and eat Conculcabis super aspidem basilicum then went for a claim of Divine Right to make the head of the World to be trampled on by the foot of a bald-pated Fryar But if the Papacy the light that was in the World then was darkness as the Scripture Expression is How great was that darkness And as the Popes continued art was then to Conceal Nature so 't was not then held tanti for art in others to be Curious in following Nature when an Opinion was imbibed that the Pope could change the very Nature of things according to that saying I have been shewn in the Canon Law glo in C. proposuit de Conc. praeb c. 5. de trans◠ep Papa mutare potest rerum substantialia de Iustitia injustitiam facere mutando Iura corrigendo adeóque quadrata aequare rotundis et rotundis quadrata And for my part I should not have repined at the Popes assuming to himself the honour of the light that rules by day if he could have illuminated the World with the demonstration of the quadrature of the Circle which that gloss pretends to a great Knowable thing as Aristotle said tho not known and which secret all the penetrating Mathematicians from Archimedes down to Mr. Hobbs have wooed with very great passion and could not enjoy But during the Egyptian plague of darkness that many Ages then lay under our famous Countreyman Wicliff alarm'd the Lethargic World and he assail'd several gross Errors of Popery with its own weapons of Metaphysics and School Divinity and by means of the noise his Two hundred Volumes made in the World he dispers'd a great terror in that dark Age and as one saith Sir Iohn Old-Castle Lord Cobham and the Lollards being awaken'd out of their first sleep were desirous to rise before it was day and before the appointed time was Come for the Reforming the abuses in the Church and between that time and morning most men fell asleep again as fast as ever but yet long before the dawn of the Reformation the doctrine of Wicliffe had made such a fermentation in our English World that in the Year of our Lord 1422 that great States-man Chichley Archbishop of Canterbury in a Letter to Pope Martine the Fifth Complain'd That there were then so many here in England infected with the heresies of Wicliff and Husse that without force of an Army they could not be supprest Whereupon the Pope sent two Cardinals to the Arch-Bishop to Cause a Tenth to be gather'd of all Spiritual and Religious men and the money to be Laid in the Chamber Apostolic and if that were not sufficient the residue to be made up of Chalices Candlestics and other implements of the Church as the Acts and Monuments Attest And it is not unknown that long before viz. in Harry the Fifth's time Chichley foreseeing that a Storm was coming from the Commons on Church-Lands diverted it by engaging England in its darling popular War with France and caus'd the Clergy to contribute very liberally to it But that fermentation that Chichley said could not in the Year 1422 be checkt in peoples Minds otherwise then as aforesaid soon out-grew the power of any Army to allay for in less than Thirty years afterward the Invention of Printing came into the World by which one man could transmit more notices of things in a Day then another could by writing in a Year and which did as much out-do the publication of notions by the Goosquill as the invention of Gun-powder did the killing Force of the gray-goose-wing and which did as it were revive the old Miracle of the Gift of Tongues and Cloven too I may Call them for their being divided from the Sentiments of the Papal Holy Church and made Learning begin to fly like lightning through the World to the Controuling and detecting of the Popes Excommunicating Thunder and which shew'd the World its true face in the stream of time and shew'd the greet Fisherman of Rome dancing in the Nett and which was the true speaking Trumpet whereby a single Author could preach to the diocess of the World. And that great birth of Fate the taking of Constantinople within three years after the Invention of Printing occasioning the World's acquiring the knowledge in the West that it lost in the East and dispersing the Learned Greeks Theodore Gaza Iohn Lascaris Manuel Chrysaloras and many others to teach the Greek Tongue where they went the Press was thereby furnished with Glad tidings for the Curious World and Erasmus and many learned Papists did soon imbibe the knowledge of that learned Language and he complained in a Letter to the Archbishop of Mentz That the Friars would fain have made it Heresy to speak Greek So pleasant was it then to consider that that barbarous Generation instead of knowing Heresy to be Greek voted Greek to be Heresy and that they who had murdered so many thousands for being Heretics knew not what the very word in its original language imported The Sagacity of Erasmus could not then but easily see through the Cobwebs of the School-Divines totam Theologiam a
by some accidents be made to cast Anchor or they may be sunk but they cannot be forced to go back When a man hath long been compell'd to creep with Chains on him through a toilsome dark Labyrinth and having extricated himself out of it and being come to enjoy his liberty in the light of the Sun the persuasion of words cannot make him go back again My Lord I lately mentioned the Motto of the Royal Society of England of which your Lordship is a Member and I look on the very constitution of that Society to be an inexpugnable Bulwark against Popery In which Society many of our choice English Witts have shew'd as much subtilty and curiosity in the Architecture of Real Science and such as tends to the edification of the world as any of our Countrey men heretofore did in those curious but useless Cobwebs of holy Church call'd School Divinity And the constitution of that Society hath not only been useful in encreasing the Trade of Knowledge among its members by a joyned stock but moreover hath tended to the raising in the Kingdom a general inclination to pursue Real science and to contemn all science falsly so call'd and the Raising of this inclination I will call a Spirit that can never be Conjur'd down nor can the knowledge that depends on number weight and local Motion be ever exterminated by Sophisms or Canting or terms of Art Nor will they who have from this Society learned to weigh Ayre give up their Souls to any Religion that is all Ayre without weighing it or notwithstanding any hard name that may come to be in vogue ever forget that bread is bread His Majesty by the founding of this great Conservatory of knowledge presently after his Restoration wherein his great Minister then the Earl of Clarendon was an honourable Member did convey real knowledge and a demonstration of his being an Abhorrer of Arbitrary Power to all that can understand Reason and affect not the ridiculous Treasonableness of Bradshaw's Court to say that they will not hear reason for had he like the Eastern King 's affected Arbitrary Power he would have used their artifice of endeavouring to cast mists before the understanding faculties of his Subjects and to detain them from knowledge by admiration and to deprive them of sight like horses that are still to drudge in the Mill of Government by blind obedience But to shew that he abhorr'd both such obedience and implicit Faith and that he intended to establish his Throne as well in the heads as in the hearts of his Subjects he presently setled this Great Store-house of Knowledge that shew'd it was his desire and ambition by the general Communication of Knowledge in his Dominions to Command Subjects whose heads were with the Rays of Science crown'd within And therefore I think His Majesties Munificence to the Royal Society in giving them Chelsey-Colledge at their first institution was very Consistent with the Primary Intention of the erecting that Colledge which was to be a Magazine for Polemical-Divinity wherewith to attaque the Writers for Popery for the very planting of a general disposition to believe nothing contrary to Reason is the cutting of the graâ—s under Poperies feet and His Majesty providing for the growth of reason did apparently check the growth of Popery as well as of Arbitrary Power without the prop of which Popery can never run up to any height more then the Sun-flower without a supporter and the setling in men an humour of Inquisition into the truth and nature of things is as I partly said before an everlasting barricade against the Popes darling Court of the Inquisition That great and noble notion of the Circulation of the blood took its first rise from the hints of a common persons enquiring what became of all the blood that issâ—â—d out of the heart seeing that the heart beats above Three Thousand times an hour thô but one drop should be pump'd out at every stroke and if any one shall tell me that he believes that Popery with its retinue of implicit faith and ignorance can over-run us I will ask him what will then become of all that knowledge the vital blood of the Soul that hath issued from the heads of inquisitive Protestants and been Circulating in the World for above a Hundred and Fifty years and I doubt not but it will be in mens Souls as long as blood shall have its Circular Course in their bodies and maugre all the Calumnies cast on the Divines of the Church of England for being fautors of Popery I shall expect that our learned Colledge of Physicians will as soon be brought to disbelieve the Circulation of the blood of our Royal Society to take down the Kings Standard that they have set up against implicit faith as our learned Convocation the learnedest that ever England had be brought to believe the principles of Popery I know My Lord ' tâ—s obvious against this my hypothesis of the unpracticableness of Popery being here the State-Religion to say that in little more then Twenty years time Four great changes in Religion happen'd in England and that the generality of the people then like dead Fishes went with the stream of the Times but I ask if the generality of the people had been throughly enlighten'd in the rationality of the Protestant Principles Twenty years together would they have return'd to the belief of the Popish Will they now do it after the establishment of a Rational Religion for above a Hundred years together Can Popery now find the way into most Mens brains here presently after the whole Nation almost were Preachers and when all our great and little unruly disagreeing Sects yet agreed in this as a fundamental that the Bishop of Rome is the Antichrist If Printing had been free in Turky for a Hundred years and a libera Philosophia and Theologia had been there in fashion for a Hundred years and every man had been allow'd his Judgment of discretion so long about the sense of the Alchoran or of the holy Scripture and of all Books of Religion could ignorance even there come into play again or if the Turkes had drank Wine for a Hundred years together could any one Conjure the glasses out of their hands by telling them there was a Devil in every grape If that Law in Muscovy that makes it death for any Subject to travel out of that Kingdom without the Emperors Licence lest his Subjects having seen the freedome of other Countreys should never again return to the Arbitrary Power in their own again I say if that Law had been repeal'd for a Hundred years and multitudes of oppress'd mankind had thence found the way to breath in the ayre of Liberty like men could they be persuaded to return to the Yokes of Beasts again When a floating Island has been a Hundred years fixt to the Continent can any teach it to swim again Consulitur de Religione is likely to be the eternal
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
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
of her Seamen and the great event of the Confusion of the Armada that made the VVorld so willingly Tributary to her praise She was so far from giving it any umbrage of her claiming any Vniversal Empire of the Sea that she as semper eadem who some years before 88. as we have it in Cambden had on the Spanish Embassador's Complaining that the Indian Ocean was Sail'd by the English Reply'd That no Title to the Ocean belongs to any People or particular Man for as much as neither Nature nor regard of Publick Vse permits the Possession thereof Did likewise after 88 Notifie the same thing by her Embassador's Expostulation with the King of Denmark and that the Sea is free for all Men and that Princes have no such Dominion of the Sea that they can deny Sailers the use thereof no more then of the Ayre according to that saying of the Emperor Antonine I am Lord of the Earth but the Law is Lord of the Sea and she urged That Princes have no Iurisdiction of the Sea but of that which is near adjacent to their Territories and that only for the securing the Navigation from Pirates and Enemies and that the Kings of England never prohibited the Navigation and Fishing on the Irish Sea that is between Ireland and England tho they are Lords of the Coast on both sides No less then the Dane is of Norway and Izeland who challengeth this Right to him on no other account I intend not to awaken any Controversie about this matter that is asleep in the VVorld and if it were not do suppose that Loccenius's distinction in his De Iure Maritimo namely the Imperium Maris Vniversale Particulare and ancient usages and the Pacta Conventa of Princes and States might send it to rest I have only spoke of the Fact of the Point in Queen Elizabeths Story who probably foresaw that her great example of advancing Navigation would oblige the VVorld to follow it and that the claiming an Vniversal Empire of the Shoar would not have sounded harsher then the pretending to such an one of the Sea an Empire as easily drawn in a Poets Imagination as a Ship usually in a Geographer's Map and with the like proportion since if the Ship were Measured by his Scale of Miles it would appear perhaps two or three hundred miles long Thus the samed Venetian Poet Sannazarius long since in an Epigram of six Verses that begins with Viderat Adriacis c. put the Complement of the whole Empire of the Sea on the City of Venice and was rewarded by the Senate with about a 100 of our Nobles for every Verse but they knew better things then to espouse more of the Sea then their own Adriatick and of that too a Pope once demanding the Original of their Right they returned him an answer very like Poetry That their Charter for it was enrolled on the back of Constantine's Donation of which the Record was in his Custody They knew that the enclosing the Common of the whole Sea would have been too chargeable an Adventure and that the Dominion of their Adriatick was no sine cure but brought its Load of Obligation with it and particularly to protect their Subjects and Allies there and to purge it from Pirates and punish Delinquents therein Nor could it be a remote Consideration to our Queen and her whole Council that the securing her particular Interest even in the Brittish Seas was liable to difficulty and uncertainty in regard of the uncertain humor of the Seamen her Subjects and of the aptness of all Marriners to change their Quarters and Embarque in Forraign Service sometimes on a Capricio of their reputing themselves disobliged at home and at other times on their expectance of better Pay abroad And accordingly the said Remonstrance from Trinity-House sets forth That in a little above 12. years after 88. the Shiping and Number of our Seamen were decay'd about a 3d. part But tho the World has no Universal Empire yet Seamen by the moveable Scenes of their Lise and their being every where useful and welcome have the Previledge of being Universal Subjects and are easily tempted to seek good Entertainment in other Countreys if they find it not in their own What I have before observed concerning the Influence of Numbers on the Government of the VVorld will make it appear to any man of ordinary thought and sense that the Science of the encrease of the People is not a nice Speculation or an expedient in knowledge to salve Phaenomena but is indeed of much more use to the Body Politick then the discovery of the Circulation of the Bloud is to the Body Natural And I may add That men's now gravely proceeding just in those tracks of Policy that they have read and took notes of out of the Classick Authors who writ when there were not so many Millions of Readers and Observers in the World as are now would be as absurd as is Astrologers taking the measures of their Predictions now from the Tables of Ptolomy since whose time the Equinoctials and the whole Systeme of Heaven are moved from the Position they then had among the fix'd Stars a whole Sign or more and as is some Astronomers pertinacy in following the error of Aristotle who asserted the unalterableness of the Heavens because in so many Ages nothing had been observed to be altered when the many Experiences of new Stars have since confuted the Reason that moved Aristotle to thing as he did Princes and States will now in the Administration of Publick Affairs find themselves obliged to mend their pace and no longer travel so unconcern'd through the World as formerly while now they see the new tides of Generation coming in so fast And no doubt but the great example of the French Monarch and his admirable exact proportioning of his Receits with his Expences the which was so remarkable in that active and expenceful year of 1673. that then his Receipts came to 8,232,709 l. Sterling and his Expences exceeded that total but by 25548 l. Sterling and the strong Current of his successes will enforce Political Arithmetick on the World as the overflowing of Nile did Geometry And it will be but Natural for us to Conclude that the great encrease of the Number of the People here and abroad in the World must of necessity be Fatal to the Papacy which has been so long as importunate Candidate for a fifth Monarchy of the World But 't is now too late for any one Man to be a precarious King of Kings and particularly to think that after the necessity and populousness of the Northern Principalities has made them resume their former Donations of Land to the Bishop of Rome's Hierarchy that those Countries that before broke the old Roman Yoke by force will now when better peopled and stock'd with better brains be again brought under a New Roman one by fraud and that the omne Malum ab Aquilone will not be able
the being of a Deity saith Nec sanè multum interest uâ—rum id neget an Deos omni procuratione atque actione privet mihi enim qui nihil agit esse omnino non videtur He there moreover acquaints us with the origine of the word Superstition saying that Non enim Philosophi verùm etiam Majores nostri superstitionem à Religione separaverunt nam qui totos Dies precabantur immolabant ut sui liberi sibi superstites essent superstitiosi sunt appellati quod nomen patuit posleà latiùs qui autem omnia quae ad Deorum Cultum pertinerent diligenter pertractarent tanquam relegerent sunt dicti Religiosi ex religendo c. But those things that those antient Heathens carefully discriminated many Modern Christians as carefully Confound namely Superstition and Religion and by the innate pride of Humane Nature leading men to worship the Gods that they make rather then the God that made them and which enslaved the ancient Jews almost with a Continuando to the Adoration of stocks and stones and to the neglect of the worshiping the God that delivered them from the House of Bondage degenerate Christians adore the Births of Religion in their own fancies and having there Model'd a Deity do Act over the old Superstition with Anxious wishes and Formal Prayers that those their monstrous Births may out-live them and do outgo all examples of the heathen World in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immolating Nations by War to those Children of their imagination and thus Popish Superstition within our Memory turn'd Ireland into one Akeldama and Enthusiastick Superstition converted England into another and as Lipsius tells us that the gladiatory Combats did in some one Month cost Europe 30000 mens lifes to divert the old Romans so fanatical have some that call themselves Protestants been as to afford sport and diversion to the new Romanists and even the very Iesuits by Superstition having made so many of us Gladiators against one another and as if we were Brute Animals we give them the recreation of seeing us like Cocks attacking each other with the keenest anger when they please and give the Arbitrary Power to the Iesuits to make our Land their Cock-Pit But the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of the superstition of Popery here being come and the worst thing in Popery being its Fanaticism and Holy Church being the great Asylum of that as our Learned Dr. Stilling fleet hath taught the World in his Book of the Fanaticism of the Church of Rome 't is in vain for Popery or Jesutisme to save-themselves from the blow of Fate by standing behind Presbytery The Conclusum est contra Manichaeos before mention'd that is now the Vox populi doth with its full cry pursue Presbytery as well as Popery for the making duo summa Principia in States and Kingdoms and claiming an Ecclesiastick Power immediately derived from Christ and not dependant on the Civil and 't is in vain for any Principle that an awaken'd World pursues as a Cheat to try to save it self by changing its name There is no observation more common then that Popery and Presbytery that seem as distant as the two Poles yet move on the same Axle-tree of a Church Supremacy immediately derived from Christ and Mr. Hobbs his Leviathan might have passed through the World with a general Applause if no Notion had been worse in it then in Chap. 44. The making his Kingdom of darkness to consist of Popery and Presbytery The measures that the Genius of our Nation inclines it to take of things from experiment will Naturally Perpetuate its aversion from Presbytery as well as Popery For tho the Divines of the Protestant Churches abroad that are fautors of the Presbyterian Form of Church Government own not the doctrine of Rebelling for Religion and tho thus on the occasion of a Iesuite's formerly Printing somewhat in defence of his Order and alledging that several Protestant Writers had allow'd the Rebelling of Subjects against their Princes and instanceth in Buchanan and Knox yet Rivet the Professor of Divinity at Leiden in his Answer to that Jesuite saith that all other Protestant Writers Condemn that doctrine and he ascribes the Rashness of Buchanan and Knox praefervido Scotorum ingenio ad audendum prompto and tho the persons who in Holland and France live under that Form of Church Government have pretended to no authority from Christ to resist Soveraign Powers and that the Loyalty of the French Protestants hath been so signal under all their Pressures that D'Ossat in his Letter to Villeroy from Rome Ianuary the 25 th 1595 having discoursed of the horrid attempt against the Life of Harry the 4 th acknowledgeth Concerning the Hugonots il's n'ont rien attenté de tel ny contre lui ny contre aucun de cinq Roys ses predecesseurs quelque boucherie que leurs Majestez ayent faite des dits Huguenots i. e. They have attempted nothing of this Kind either against him or against any of the five Kings his Predecessors notwithstanding the butchery or slaughter that their Majesties made of those Huguenots yet is it too notorious to be denyed that that sort of Church-Government having in Scotland in the time of our former Princes been accustomed continually to hold their Noses to Grind-stones which was a preparatory way to have brought their Heads to Blocks and that Nation invading us with a Covenant the very entring into which and the imposing it without leave from the King so to do and much more against his Command was a thing that perhaps to the Associators themselves seemed illegal and contrary to the Petition of Right which provides against the administring of any Oath not warrantable by the Laws and Statutes of this Realm there was by that means a Coalition between the Presbyterian Divines of our Nation and theirs in principles of Enthusiasme and Rebellion Principles that our Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time here abhorr'd for in the Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by those Ministers and Published Anno 1605 the conclusion of their 4th Tenet is That the Supremacy of Kings is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it and their 9th Tenet is We hold that though the King should command any thing contrary to the Word unto the Churches that yet they ought not to resist him therein but only peaceably to forbear Obedience and sue to him for Grace and Mercy and where that cannot be had meekly to submit themselves to the Punishment and their last Tenet is We hold it utterly unlawful for any Christian Churches whatsoever by any Armed Force or Power against the will of the Civil Magistrate and State under which they live to erect and set up in publick the true worship of God or to beat down or suppress any Superstition and Idolatry that shall be
Reign of the Royal Martyr their Numbers decreased faster in many active Conjunctures of time then they encreased in any lazy one The Author of the Regal Apology and supposed to be Doctor Bate the Physitian saith in p. 39. It is well known there are not 24000 Papists Convicted in all England and Wales And if we should suppose the Number of the Papists then not Convicted to be double to that of the Convicted yet would such their number appear considerably dwindled from what it was swoln to in any Conjuncture before in King Iames's Reign And I believe if our Civil Wars had not happen'd one Canon even of the Convacation of 1640 as ill as that Convocation heard among many I mean the third Canon would have effected the extermination of Popery from England in the Reign of the Royal Martyr The Title of the Canon is for Suppressing of the growth of Popery No doubt but a little before that time Popery did again lift up his head as if its Redemption were to draw nigh in Ireland and England and therefore the Convocation then with great conduct and skill did lead up our Ecclesiastical Hierarchy to confront its growth and I do not remember to have found that Phrase of the growth of Popery which has in later days so filled our Mouths used in any Author before the writing of that Canon and do think that all the Committees that have been appointed to prevent the growth of Popery or Books of that Subject have not produced to the World any means or expedient so likely to make Popery have done growing here as is the excellent Scheme for that purpose drawn in that Canon and which when ever it shall be with vigour executed will make our fears grow out of fashion either of the number of the Arguments of the Papists or of the Argument of their Numbers That since that Restoration of our King and Laws and of the discipline of our Church a Conjuncture hap'ned that made the barren Womb of Popery here fruitful of Numbers none will deny who consider how all our great Divines of the Church of England did so lately lift up their voices like a Trumpet against it as I before observed In the account of the Numbers of the perswasions in Religion in the Province of Canterbury that Dr. Glanvile said he had seen and which is contained in a Sheet of Paper among the nine Preliminary Observations the first is That many left the Church upon the late indulgence who before did frequent it I believe by the many there are meant those that veer'd toward Popery and I suppose that few had for several precedent years repaired thither from fear of the Penal Laws We have a Remark given us by that Learned States-man and Noble Confessor of the Church of England the Earl of Clarendon in his judicious Animadversions printed Anno 1673 on Cressy ' s Book against Dr. Stillingfleet That the rude and boisterous behaviour of some of the Roman Catholicks here disturbed the happy Calm they all enjoyed and the vanity and folly of others made that ill use of the Kings bounty and generosity toward them that they endeavoured to make it believ'd that it proceeded not from Charity and Compassion toward their persons but from affection to their Religion and took upon them to reproach the Church of England and all who adhered to it as if they had been in a condition as well as a disposition to oppress it and to affront and discountenance all who would adhere to it and so alienated the affections of those who desired they should not be disquieted and kindled a jealousie in others who had believed that they were willing to attempt it and had more power to compass it then was discerned c. and this mischief the wisest and soberest Catholicks of England have long foreseen would be the effect of that petulant and unruly Spirit that sway'd too much among them and did all they could to restrain it c. And afterward saith As if they could subdue the whole Kingdom and so care not whom they provoke A friend of mine in the Kings Loyal long Parliament wrote to me for News after one of their Sessions that the Speaker of the House of Commons Mr. Seymour opening according to the customary manner in a publick Speech to his Majesty in the House of Lords the nature of the Bills then ready for the Royal Assent spake thus concerning that sharp one that will forever here cut Popery to the quick viz. And for the severity of this Bill to the Papists they may thank their own petulant insolence The word petulant being very significant and importing sawcy malepert impudent reproachful ready to do wrong one would suppose that those two great observing persons would not apply it to any body of men without just occasion It seems the House of Commons at their next Session in an Address to the King October 31. 1673. had this Clause That for another age at the least this Kingdom will be under continual apprehensions of the growth of Popery and the danger of the Protestant Religion and in an Address to his Majesty November the 3 d 1673. Speaking of the Popish Recusants they have these words whose numbers and insolencies are greatly of late encreased c. It was then high time for that Great Minister of the King the Earl of Danby when he saw that of all Dissenters chiefly the Popish ones had sascinated so many with a belief of their Numbers to cause that great enquiry into them to be made and it was his fortune by the very enquiry to strip the Papists of many of their valued number for the very next observation to that I before mentioned is this The sending forth these Enquiries has caused many to frequent the Church Alsted in his Chronology ventures to say p. 112. David ex merâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 numerat populum and the thing perhaps done with an ill intent was punish'd with a Plague from God but the Fact of our Noble and Profound States-man did abate the Plague of the late Conjuncture of pragmatical insolence and too the Plague of the fear of Papists that was then so epidemical among Protestants and did in effect console us as with the words of Elisha viz. Fear not for they that be with us are more then they that be with them and indeed the numbering of people in the Bills of Mortality who dye of the Plague is not more necessary to the State then is the numbring of the Souls infected in any Conjuncture with destructive opinions and the omission thereof in a publick Minister when ever it should be as necessary as at that time it was would appear in him a Lethargy that would be as Penal as a Plague to a Kingdom That useful undertaking of his Lordship as it was worthy of his very great abilities and vigilance for the publick so was it of the great power he had in the Government and
for the establishing to himself a firm Monarchy in the World and therefore ought to be guarded against and punished by the Magistrate not as errors in Religion but as destructive to the Government The Author of Omnia comesta à Belo as great a Calculator as he would go for was yet but a Blunderer in respect of the Author of this discourse in which there is so much smoothness of words and plausibleness of notion that if it were possible he would deceive some of the very Elect and that too of their Established Maintenance But whatever the Sentiments of that Author were I must affirm that as ample as the Revenue of the Church of England shews if compared with that of other Protestant Countries it is yet so far from excess in its proportion as to ward off all inconveniences from the State of mens getting by Religion The over ballance of Land here was so much on the Churches side in the times of Popery that it was then in our Provincial Constitutions sulminated as a Menace to the Layety that in case of some particular Contumacy none of their Children should be admitted into the Clerical Calling for three Generations But how Nugatory would such a threatning now be There are few or none of the inferiour Clergy but might have in inferiour Callings arrived at greater Incomes and with less charge of Education and the most envied of our dignified Clergy might in the other two of the great professions viz. in Law and Physick raised their Estates and Families on better and easier terms then they now can And that the Men of the most eminent natural parts would be losers by Religion I mean by the Clerical Profession but for the encouragement of these Dignities we have an indication from the quality of the Divines in the late times who were generally so unlearned that Learning it self then seemed to have retreated from our Vniversities to the Colledge of Physitians in London Notwithstanding the great Sums of Money by the Usurp'd Powers employ'd in the Augmentations of Livings one may well suppose that all of the 10000 Livings in England except 600 needed for that was the number of the Livings in England as beforesaid averr'd to have afforded a Competent maintenance for a Minister the dearth of Learning and Learned Men still continued insomuch that the teeming press then brought forth few Learned Discourses relating to the faculty of Theology but what was published by Dr. Hammond Dr. Taylor Dr. Sanderson and some other Divines born and bred in the Sunshine of the Church of England And I do believe that in Holland the Livelihoods for their Parochial Divines are better then those that our Livings at a Medium yield especially considering that the Dutch Ministers Widdows have 40 l. a year paid them during their Viduity but for want of such encouragement as our Dignities afford for the Educating their Natives in Learning they are constrained as Mr. Philip Nye observes in his Book called Beams of former light p. 152. To send to Forraign Parts to men to be their Professors in their Academies And I account that nothing less then the hopes of being Dignitaries could in the flourishing condition of the Church of England make so many of our Learned Divines take up with the poor generality of our Livings which are such that the Answer to the Abstract published by Authority in the Year 1588 mentions in p. 27 That surely if a Survey were taken of all Parish Churches and Parochial Chappels in England I dare affirm that it would fall out that there be double or treble as many more Livings allotted for Ministers under the true value of 30 l. a year ultra omnia onera reprisas as are above that Rate And that our Divines in the late Times look'd on such a yearly Sum as an uncomfortable pittance for a Minister we have an instance in the Story told in a History of the late Times in Print where a Patron desiring one to recommend to him a godly man for a Living of 50 l. a year he then had void was answered That a godly man could not be had to accept of a Living of so small a value It is moreover a lamentable thing to consider what an Excisum hath been put on the value even of our poor Livings by the Simoniacal Practices of Lay-Patrons and in their hands the greatest part of the Impropriations hath been computed to be Sir Benjamin Rudyard a Famous Parliament-man of the last Age in a Speech of his in behalf of the Clergy spoke in Parliament and Printed at Oxford Anno 1628 speaks there of the Scandalous Livings we have of 5 l. and 5 Mark a year and Cites Bishop Iewel for complaining in a Sermon before Queen Elizabeth That the Simony of our Lay-Patrons was general throughout England and that a Gentleman cannot keep his House unless he have a Parsonage or two in farm for his Provision And how generally a Simoniacal disposition hath continued to infect our Gentry appears by the vile Bonds that have been so much by Lay-Patrons imposed on the Ministers they presented viz. to resign their Livings again to them at pleasure and it is for the lasting Glory of the Lord Chancellor that he hath in Court declared that he will on occasion Null all Bonds of that sort and no doubt but the accidental encrease of the poverty of the Gentry which hath tempted them to sell the same Land twice and to sell the same Living once will tend to the encrease of Simony Moreover when it shall be considered that the Case of a Minister is such that tho Lay-men are secured by the Great Charter from being punished for Contempt of the King's Commands otherwise then with the saving of their Contenement and Free-hold yet that he holding Virtute Officii is lyable by the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws even for those things that in the Layety are no offences to be deprived of the Free-hold that the Law supposed him as Parson or Vicar to possess and that he by the Artifice of the said Bonds hath had the benefit of his Free-hold in effect during the Patrons leâ—eplacitum and further that every New Political Conjuncture threatens him with New Subscriptions from the Magistrate and New Nic-names from the Mobile and that on any change of Religion he is sure to be put in the forlorn hope and that he tho continually thinking of Divinity which is his profession hath not yet that freedom to speak all his Sentiments of the controverted part of it which a Lay-man enjoys and that he is still exposed by constant thinking to prey on the Membranes of his own Brain to find Notions for sensless people methinks after he has all his life before been constrain'd to take these bitter Pills as they are in themselves none should repine at their being gilded for him in his declining age and if among Ten thousand of these twenty six shall in their old Age have the Revenue of Bishops
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
the World will never be quiet till its allay from the true Silver be separated by melting it down and it takes the name of Religion only when it deserves it What is more ordinary then for Clamour to raise this question Will you punish any man for his Religion and will you have any man lose by his Religion and I see no end in the disputes of the question but by this Answer and by this it must find a Period viz. I punish no man for his Religion for that Tenet that I quarrel with him about is not and indeed cannot be Religion It is pure and rank Sedition and Rebellion and if any Papist or Presbyterian shall write or speak to make the Kings Power a bubble blown up by the breath of the People and so dissolvable I shall esteem him fit to be proceeded against by the new Statute of the 13 th of this Kings Reign against Sedition and as a Subverter of the Fundamental Laws and do suppose 't will be ridiculous for any one to plead his Religion in bar of that Indictment and he doth moreover deserve to be punish'd as a Cheater for abusing the World and himself and Religion too by calling such a particular Tenet Religion or a Complication of many Tenets by that Name where the vertue of them all is not strong enough to correct the Poyson of one The Scripture doth punish those with a denunciation of a Wo who call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness and in this particular Point of the calling any of the Idolatries or Impostures of the Heathens or others by the name of Religion I remember not any instance in holy Writ tho yet in other Cases 't is not infrequent for the inspired Pen man to speak cum vulgo I observe that in the New Testament the name of Religion is several times applyed to the Iewish after the World was freed from the Obligation of it but one of the holy Pen-men speaking in one Chapter of false Apostles useth the Style of hating the Deeds of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrine of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrines of Balam And another of the Amanuenses of the Holy-Ghost speaks of Doctrines of Devils If any man shall offer to my consideration a Scheme of Doctrines that relate to Theology and I find it is too subtle for my understanding to penetrate I shall yet be so evil as to allow the Propounder to call it a Religion and thus if Papists or Protestants would agree to call Dr. Gibbon's Scheme a Religion or demonstration of it I would not oppose theit calling it any such thing and the rather since it enjoyns not to me any thing that would break my own or the Worlds quiet but when Popery doth enjoyn so many Tenets to be believed that are incredible to a rational Man and some things that are clearly impossible to a Moral Man I will call Popery in the gross any thing rather then Religion just as Tully saith of those Law-givers who did perniciosa injusta a populis praescribere that they did quidvis potius ferre quam leges I find not that since the year 1605. Popery hath so discriminated it self by any alteration for the beter as to overthrow the weight of King Iames's saying then to both his Houses of Parliament viz. That as it is not impossible but many honest men seduced with some Eâ—rors in Popery may yet remain good and faithful Subjects so on the other hand none that know and believe the grounds and School conclusions of their Doctrine can ever prove good Christians or faithful Subjects There is one Tenet in the Doctrine of Popery that your Lordship shewed me once discust in Print by a Canonist and by whom I was directed to trace it both to the Gloss and Text in the Canon Law that I having discours'd of to a Pious and Learned Neighbour of mine who is a Roman Catholick he obliged me to write to your Lordship that you would please to let any of your Amanuenses transcribe and to send hither to me the Resolution of that Lawyer and determination of the Pope in his Law about it and hath declared to me that he will joyn issue with me in the Plea about Religion in that being a Tenet or Principle approved by the Church of Rome and your habitual inclination to afford any one tho a stranger to you lumen de lumine will I doubt not make it easie to you to gratifie my request in his behalf He grants to me that if that Tenet can be shewn to be one approved by the Church of Rome that he believes there will be no occasion for disputants any more to attaque the Roman Catholick Religion and that as an Independant Author in the late times writing a Pamphlet against Presbytery had this Title for it An end of one Controversy it might be supposed that a Sheet of Paper that without strain'd Inferences could fasten that Tenet on the Doctrine of Popery would with better success make an end of that Controversy My Lord this Point discussed in Print that I refer to is as I find it in the Notesâ— I took thereof in your Lordships Study in Gundissalvus his Tractatus de Haereticis Question 24. before which the Summarium is thus 1. Civitas in quâ aliqui insunt haeretici an tota possit igne exuri aut alias destrui 2. Civitas quando dicatur haeresim committere ut universa destrui possit 3. Vniversitate punitâ de haeresi an singuli quâ—que puniti videantur ita ut amplius puniri non possint The Gentleman being of a nice tenderness of Conscience and having a quick sense of any thing that looks like gross impiety was at the very nameing of the first and second Question surprized with a kind of trembling and was somewhat more discomposed when I told him that upon consideration of the whole matter it appear'd even from the most moderate of the Canonists that a whole City might lawfully be destroyed with Fire if the Majority of it were Hereticks and that there were the Judgment of the Church in the Case and like a Man of a large and candid Soul he said that he was sorry that Humane Nature could in any men so far degenerate as to deliberate about such their destroying a whole City by Fire but would reserve his judgment on the Point till he saw it before him in the Quotations out of the Canon-Law as well as Canonists What the Event of his Judgment will be I know not and I confess I have been very sparing of my time in discoursing with Roman Catholicks about any Point of the Doctrine of their Church since I read it in Cardinal Tolets Inst. sacerdotum lib. 4. cap. 3. and 7. p. 612. and in our Countryman Holcot a Famous Schoolman in lib. 1. Sententiarum Quest. 1. ad sextum principale in replica That if he hears his Prelate Preaching
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
when Mr. Prynn could not have forgot what had happen'd to those Conspirators and that the very Principles of many of that wild Sect are for the legitimating the most desperate Out-rages and Rebellions imaginable but out of Justice to Humane Nature will never render any man ill upon ill Proofs and such as are contrary to the Nature of things as for example one Argument which is so prevalent with many for their concluding that London was designedly burnt by many Popish Persons namely because it was apparently true and not denyable that the Flames did break out in several places of the City at the tops of several houses which were at a considerable distance from the Fire doth not in the least move me so to conclude for 't is obvious in Nature that as the heat of an ordinary Fire will put combustible light matter that is at a small distance from it into a flame a heat proportionably greater must do the same thing at a greater distance and this appear'd in Fact conspicuous to Thousands while the Fire then broke out from the Timber-work in the Tower of the Old Exchange when the great Conflagration was a quarter of a Mile distant from it Nor yet would I venture in discourse with any Papist about the aforesaid Tenet to call it either Tenet or Principle chargeable on the Church of Rome as approved by it if it were only deducible in the way of Inferences from other Tenets as for example If one should say the Papists hold that 't is lawful to burn the persons of Hereticks and much more therefore to burn their Houses and to burn the Nest as well as to kill the Bird and that the Goods of Hereticks are ipso iure confiscate and therefore their Houses and accordingly I told my Roman-Catholick friend that I would never raise this Principle of Fire against his Church by Collision of Arguments but by the help of your Lordships Quotations referring to the Canon Law as well as Canonists shew him the Pope claiming the Power in terminis terminantibus to fire whole Cities as aforesaid and that long before his Power received so much accession of Territory as I may call it of Prerogative by those great Students of Crown-Divinity and Assertors of his Fifth Monarchy the Jesuites I do intend to entertain only this my particular friend at this Season with the Passages I shall receive from you concerning this Tenet because 't is in me an habitual temper not salem nitro superaddere or to afflict any afflicted Lay-Papists who may retain some unsound Notions of Religion and yet be sound Members of the State and I shall not desire either by words or writing to imitate the ungenerous Practice of the Sons of Iacob toward the Sichemites in attacking them when they were sore And moreover reason is thrown away on men in Passion and during the Paroxysme of Passion in either any Papists or Dissenters there is no frighting them from an absurdity by Arguments for there can be nothing more absurd then their very Passion and while that lasts they are as insensible of the wounds that are made in their Principles by objections as some in a Battel are of wounds they receive there But I am not without hopes of a more pacific Conjuncture that may come wherein our Vn-Iesuited Lay-Papists may discriminate their Principles and Notions from the troublesome ones of others of them that vex the knowing part of Mankind with their Implicit Faith like Flies blind in one Season of the year getting into Mens Eyes and when all empty Religion-Traders will no more like the Merchants of Tyre pass for Princes of the Earth after they had with a bulk of words so long enslaved the World and its Princes and themselves too and made Religion but the word as I may say to discriminate Parties in War and to know who and who are of a side and that by the Mutual Consent of reasonable men of all Parties the word Religion will not be put on what is really Irreligion and that a handful of men will think it in vain to strive to keep up the acception or signification of any word or words when the currency of the age and that justly too hath damned the former sense thereof and that all men must speak in the Sense of the Rational Age or not speak intelligibly and as he who seems to be Religious and bridles not his tongue his Religion is vain it will be in vain too for him to think to have ought call'd Religion against the sense of the World and as the Licence was vain and ridiculous granted to a Book of Physick wherein the Licencer said Nihil reperio in hoc libello fidei Catholicae contrarium quo minus typis mandetur so likewise will the Vogue of granting any Liberty to any thing of Catholick Faith that has Treason and Sedition in it be as worthy of Laughter and then will the Publishing of this Tenet be prevalent probably with Papists and prove like a word in season and tend to the abolishing the abuse of the word Religion when they shall be argued with in the cool of the day as our first Parents where after the fall and their Fiery Principles be then exposed and then may each of them whose Religion so call'd excited their angry Prophets to desire the destruction of Heretical Cities as the Choler of Ionah at last animated him tho not to destroy yet to wish the Destruction of Niniveh be as he was seasonably expostulated with dost thou well to be angry and dost thou well to be angry with others who will not call thy firing their houses Religion when thou seest the World begin to laugh at the impertinence of the calling it so The Author I cited before of the great Question to be considered begins his discourse with a Patriotly kind of Sagacity thus viz. That this Nation and the Nation of Scotland and Ireland concerned with it are at present in such a posture and under such Circumstances as give just reason both of fear and care more then ordinary both to Rulers and People is so without doubt that it needs no Proof and that we are in a dangerous Feaver in regard both to our Civil and Religious Interest all in their wits must know which Disease albeit it be now in the opinion of most come to a Crisis yet few can determine whether it will end in a natural cool or prove a distemper yet more dangerous and deadly But when I consider the great number of those in the Kingdom who are at their ease therein either by substantial Fortunes or Professions or Trades and who would account it both trouble and shame to get by Religion as an adventitious Trade as much as a great first-rate Practitioner in Law who had a Receit for the Curing the Tooth-Ach or Gout would to get Fees thereby and to have a Mingle of Clients and Patients together and which sort of Mankind that by
we are told it in townsend's Collections very great masterly skill was shewn in Debates as to the proportioning the Taxes and particularly by those great Masters Sir Walter Raleigh Secretary Cecil Mr. Francis Bacon and when Cecil accurately Calculated in the house how much a Levy came to wherein the Respective Quota's laid on Land and Goods were mentioned by him and more skill was really shewn in Proportions and Estimates of the Publick Money to be raised then has by some Parliaments in this Age been endeavoured after or perhaps so much as pretended to The long Parliament of 1640. seem to me in their Taxes in London and the Associated Counties to have provided only that their concern in the Kingdom might vivere in diem but hath occasioned the disproportionate and immoderate weight of the Taxes in some places of those Counties to be perpetual And the prodigious Taxes laid on the Inhabitants of London during the War after 41 did not end with it insomuch that Lilly the Astrologer in his vile Book of Monarchy or no Monarchy in England Printed in the Year 1651. saith in p. 92. My proportion in the Ship-money was 22 s. and no more but now my Annual Payments to the Souldiery are very near or more than 20 l my Estate being no way greater than formerly In the Parliament in Anno Domini 1605. and Anno Reg. Iac. 3. there was passed an Act for the granting 3 entire Subsidies and six fifteenths and tenths granted by the Temporalty to his Majesty with the Reasons why granted and the great advantages his Majesty hath been to the Kingdom And in the Act it is inter alia said A first and principal Reason is that late and monstrous Attemps of that cursed Crew of desperate Papists to have destroyed your Excellent Majesty the Queen and your Royal Progeny together with the Reverend Prelates Nobility and Commons of this Land assembled in Parliament to the great Confusion and Subversion of this Kingdom The barbarous Malice in some unnatural Subjects we have thought fit to check and encounter with the certain demonstration of the universal and undoubted love of your Loyal and Faithful Subjects not only for the present to breed in your Majesty a more confident assurance of our uttermost Aids in proceeding with a Princely Resolution to repress them and to furnish your Majesty against Hostile Attempts both by Sea and Land but also for the future times to give their Patrons and Partakers to understand that your Majesty can never want in this Kingdom means of defence of your Rights Revenge of your Wrongs and support of your Estate They had immediately before said We do further think fit to add and express these reasons special and extraordinary which have moved us hereunto lest the same our doing may be brought into precedent to the prejudice of the State of our Country and our Posterity As hidebound as King Iames found Parliaments afterward for as I said he in his Speech in Parliament Anno 1620 mentioned That in all his Reign he had but 4 Subsidies and six Fifteenths yet their Belief of that Popish Gun-powder Plot fired the Zeal of their Supplyes and as I may say too made their Money burn in their Pockets and pass with speed into the Exchequer and with a Salvo to the Caution about not drawing that Act into a President c. Had I been in the Parliament that sate after the Discovery of the last Popish Plot I should have moved that the belief of that Plot might have shewn it self by works of supply to the King especially considering that the Protestant Interest was then abroad inter sacrum saxum and do hope that the belief thereof will so shew it self in any Parliament his Majesty shall call that we shall that way Expostulate with the quare fremuerunt Gentes abroad against the Protestant Religion And such a golden Age do I expect for the Crown from future Parliaments that I believe that nothing of Prerogative that safeguards the Kingdom will be ask'd as the price of any Supplyes and that as I thought it very absurd in a Country Fellow when he called for a quantity of an Opiate Medicine his Doctor had prescribed to ask angrily shall I have no more for my Money when as if he had had more it would have poysoned him it will generally appear as absurd on any Supplies to swallow up so much of the executive part of the Regal Power as would prove in effect destructive to the Body Politick We shall have so much occasion to come for shelter under the Branches of Regal Power that we shall not be tempted by any leisure to lay its roots bare And considering that even in Republicks both Ancient and Modern there hath been a Parenthesis of Dictatorian or Monarchic Power in times of War and that all the times that all the living now in Christendom are to be fencing with all the way in their March to the Grave may perhaps be times of War I may well account that the Sir Politics will every where appear ridiculous who shall trouble the World with Models of Republicks Agrarian Laws and Rotations and spending time in the contrivance of Ballotting Boxes and raise a dust in mens eyes with the Ballance of Land at home when we shall be forced still to look out sharp to keep the ballance of Power exact in the whole World abroad and shall think time better imployed in notions of the building great Capital Ships to defend our Interest in and by the Ocean then in furnishing such little wooden ware for a Fantastick Oceana and shall essay from an Oceana or Vtopia to introduce an Establishment of one Assembly only to propose and another only to Enact such things as the other shall propose a thing that an English House of Commons would naturally as much loath as to be tyed from eating any meat but what a House of Lords should chew for them and yet is this divided or double-bottom Supream Power of the two Assemblies by our Airy Dreamers made essential for the preventing the Divulsion of their Government I lately mentioned the proponentibus legatis to be the thred of Controversie that ran through the whole Council of Trent and he who reads all Father Pauls History of it will find that question to animate the whole and to be there tota in toto and as it were all in every part of it The chiefest of the Cardinals were the Popes Legates in that Council and they were by their Interest tied sufficiently to propound nothing but what should promote the Papal Power but in Book 6th 't is said That the Pope had advice from his Nuntio in Spain that the most Catholick King was much displeased with the Style of Proponentibus legatis allowed in the first Session and that the Pope excused it as introduced without his privity but that however he would not quit it nor have it permitted that every turbulent person there might propound what
the taking the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and thereby the laying on the takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors that was to outlast the Life of the King and without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors Of the Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors arising from those Oaths Mr. Pryn in his Concordia Discors Printed in the Year 1659. hath writ usefully but because since the time of the late fermentation many Pamphlets have been writ pro and câ—n of the Political part of the Question relating to a Popish Successor and none that I have heard of has professedly writ of the Casuistical Part thereof and particularly with relation to those Oaths and because I have heard that in some discourse about the same in some good Company where the Obligation by those Oaths to the Kings Heirs in point of Conscience hath been asserted some good men have been blundered but of their apprehending the same by mistaking the saying in the civil-Civil-Law that nemo est haeres viventis and likewise some things obvious in the Common-Law and I did fear that it might thence grow a common and vulgar error that there is no such Obligation resulting from those Oaths and that as a Supine neglect of the use of means to find the true sence of the same would be very culpable so that a serious and dispassionate representing the same would to all men that regard the weight of an Oath be very acceptable I have with as much recollection of thâ—ught as I could faiâ—ly and impartially writ my opinion thereof Casuistically and shall very shortly send it your Lordship for your perusal And indeed as I should not think I dealt candidly with any person of the Popish perswasion if I should be severe to him before I had a Moral Certainty of his having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Popery that may be called unmoral or inhumane so it would especially seem to me somewhat like the drawing on a naked man for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Popish Prince of his legal Property when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope draw their pens for the preservation of such his property without respect to any Religionary Tenets he may hold What the Pope did to obstruct King Iames's Succession I have mentioned and what favour any Protestant Prince can hope for from the Holy See may appear out of D' Ossat's Letter to Villeroy in the Year 1598. Book 4th where having spoke of the Artifices used to the Pope to make him believe that if Harry the 4th recovered the Marquisate of Salusium it would be Commanded by Hugonots he thereupon adviseth the King to declare the Contrary to the Pope and adds I would not interpose to write this to you if I did not know that the Pope and all this Court hold that to maintain the Catholic Religion in a Country and to preserve it from Heresie his Holyness may and ought to deprive the true Lord and Possessor of it and give it away to any other who hath no property therein and who shall be more able and willing there to preserve the Catholic Faith. I met with some passages lately in a Pamphlet that concerned the Succession where the Author having liberally descanted on the words Heirs and Successors in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy saith as I will not take up Arms without the Kings Commission nor enter into any Association to commence in his life time against his Consent c. so any one by whom or for whom any resignation of his Majesties Power shall be extorted shall not reign over me and there was another very course expression there applyed to a very fine Person and one so every way truly great that every Age doth not produce viz. That the House of Commons conned little thanks to George Earl of Hallifax c. but according to the licence of Speech used by that Author I shall venture to declare that where ever I have a Suffrage in the Choice of a Parliament-man if any Candidate shall tell me that he served in the place before and was for an Exclusion Bill rather then the Kings Offers and without advising with his Country would have any one of the Royal Line Secluded from his Title to the Throne on the account of any Religionary Tenet for our English Antiquities afford Footsteps of Parliament-men on some weighty matters consulting their Towns or Counties that chose them such a one if I can help it shall never represent me and moreover he who doth not with acknowledgments of Honour and Gratitude to the Earl of Hallifax mention that Bill that he brought into the House of Lords in order to the extermination of Popery that I spake of before and with it lodged in our Statute Book that man if I can help it shall never represent me I am not so rash in my efforts against Future time as perhaps that Author was and can cite a great Name for the reasonableness of Representatives advising with those they represent in matters of great moment to the State and to this purpose the Lord Viscount Falâ—land Secretary of State in a Printed Draught of a Speech concerning Episcopacy c. saith p. 4. Mr. Speaker Tho we are trusted by those that sent us in Cases wherein their opinions were unknown yet truely if I knew the opinion of the Major part of my Town I doubt whether 't were the intention of those that trusted me that I should follow my own opinion against theirs and thereupon his Lordship advised the House of Commons not to do any thing against Episcopacy and at least to stay till the next Session and consult more particularly with their Electors about it And if according to the example of that great man any of our Contenders against Popery had thought fit to consult with those they represented about the meeting those Royal and Frank offers with hearty embraces they would perhaps have found the generality of those they represented zealous for their so doing and if they that perhaps with a well intended Gallantry of Courage and scorn of Popery threw out the Bills that came from the Lords in the Year 1677 should ask those they represented if they do not now wish those Bills had then passed into Laws I believe they would say they did and if they were asked whether that Bill I mentioned before that was brought in by the Earl of Hallifax had not likewise passed into a Law I believe they would wish it had I presume not to inveigh against any of our late Loyal Parliaments whatever slips in Politics were by any there made or Arbitrary Votes there passed against particular Persons and am as impatient when I hear any inveigh against our Representatives who in the contention of Popery exerted all the strength of the faculties of their minds what
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
here and of their strenuous endeavours to free the Kingdom from it had nothing in their Famous 19 Propositions to bar the right of any Heir to the Crown for the being a Papist The exact Collections afford many instances of their declaring That they would provide for the greatness of his Majesty and his Royal Posterity in future times and in which there was no Proviso respecting any Religionary Tenets they should profess It appears in Mr. Pryns memorable Speech in that House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the Kings answers to the Propositions of both Houses whether they were satisfactory or not in the Isle of Wight Treaty that that Parliament that was concern'd for the saving of their own Credit as well as the Souls of the People to make that Treaty to end with the extermination of Popery from England did not in the application of the most proper means for that purpose judge the debarring any Popish Prince here from his Inheritance of the Crown any proper or necessary one For in p. 58. of that Speech ' t is said As to any danger to our Church from Religion there is as good Security and Provision granted us by the King as we did or could desire even in our own terms First He hath fully consented to pass an Act for the more effectual disabling of Iesuites Papists and Popish Recusants from disturbing the State and deluding the Laws and for the prescribing of a new Oath for the more speedy discovery and Conviction of Recusants Secondly To an Act of Parliament for the Education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion Thirdly To an Act for the due Levying the Penalties against Recusants and disposing of them as both Houses shall appoint Fourthly To an Act whereby the practices of the Papists against the State may be prevented the Laws against them duely executed and a stricter Course taken to prevent the saying or hearing of Mass in the Court or any other part of the Kingdom whereby it is made Treason for any Priests to say Mass in the Court or Queens own Chappel Fifthly To an Act for abolishing all Innovations Popish Superstitions Ceremonies Altars Rayles Crucifixes Images Pictures Copes Crosses Surplices Vestments bowings at the name of Jesus or toward the Altar c. By all which Acts added to our former Laws against Recusants I dare affirm we have far better Provision and Security against Papists Iesuites Popish Recusants c for our Churches and Religions Safety and States too then any Protestant Church State and Kingdom whatsoever so as we need not fear any future danger from Papists or Popery if we be careful to see those Concessions duely put in Execution when turned into Acts and our former Laws And afterward in that Speech p. 110. he shews how dear the Kings consenting to pass five such Acts cost him for saith he The Iesuites understanding that the King beyond and contrary to their expectation hath granted all or most of our propositions in the Isle of Wight and fully condescended to five new Bills for the Extirpation of Mass Popery and Popish Innovations â—ut of his Dominions and putting all Laws in Execution against them and for a speedier Discovery and Conviction of them then formerly c are so inraged with the King and so inexorably incensed against him as I am credibly informed that now they are mad against him and thirst for nothing but his Blood. Mr. Pryn had mentioned in that Speech before that some Jesuites and Jesuited Agitators had engaged the Army to dissolve that Treaty with the King and 't is no wonder if that prying Order who knew the Kings Aversion to Popery as well as the most stupid of his Enemies did when they saw him consenting to pass five such Bills was the more brisk in executing its Designs against him and that as Mr. Pryn saith in his perfect Narrative a Priest present at the Kings death flourished his Sword with an exclamation That now the greatest Enemy we had in the World was gone But this by the way I had not mentioned how dear the consenting to those Bills that would have been so fatal to Popery and have prevented the Phrase of its growth from being used at this time of day but that some persons not vers'd in the passages of those evil days seem to think that there was nothing of Religion to support that Kings Title to Martyrdom but what concern'd his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue In the very solemn League and Covenant its takers declared they had before their Eyes the honour and happiness of the Kings Majesty and his Posterity And I have seen a printed paper of the Presbyterian Divines of one of the Associations in the late times wherein they do expresly affirm and argue it that any of the Royal Posterity here ought not to be debarr'd from their Hereditary Right to the Crown by being either Papists or Idolaters If we look so far back as the great Conjuncture in the beginning of King Iames ' s Reign namely in the year 1605. we shall find that there was then a Paper before mentioned published in Print called a Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by the Nonconforming Ministers which were suspended or deprived that year and that the first Paragraph or Tenet in that Protestation is this We hold and maintain the same Authority and Supremacy in all Causes and over all Persons Civil and Ecclesiastical granted by Statute to Queen Elizabeth and expressed and declared in the Book of Advertisements and Injunctions and in Master Bilson against the Iesuites to be due in full and ample manner without any limitation or qualification to the King and his Heirs and Successors for ever c. And the 4 th Paragraph in that Protestation part whereof I have before recited is viz. We hold that though the Kings of this Realm were no Members of the Church but very Infidels yea and Persecutors of the Truth that yet those Churches that shall be gathered together within these Dominions ought to acknowledge and yield the same Supremacy to them And that the same is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it And in the 18 th Paragraph they say That if the King subjecting himself to Spiritual Guides and Governors shall afterward refuse to be governed and guided by them according to the Word of God and living in notorious sin without repentance shall willfully contemn and despise all their Holy and Religious Censures that then these Governors are to refuse to Administer the Holy Things of God to him and to leave him to himself ond to the secret Iudgment of God and wholy to resign and give over that spiritual Charge and Tuition over him which by calling from God and the King they did undertake And more then this they may not do And after all this we
the Relief of his Great Auditory for those poor Hugonots did characterize them as such of whom none was ever suspected to have machinated any thing against their King's Person or Government or to have attempted the burning of his Metropolis I have granted that the Puritan and the Popish Petitioners did both in the beginning of King Iames his Reign offend Contra bonos more 's but if any should ask me which Sect was the more peccant by such incivility I will say that in one regard the Puritans were so for that they were bred to the Knowledge of better things but that in another regard the Papists most certainly were so if Thuanus may be believ'd who in the place I last cited out of him relating to the Gun-powder Plot by which it appears that their Petitioning was but a stalking-horse or as I may say a Trojan Horse to hide and enclose armed Men further shews That the Iesuites in England employ'd one privately into Spain in the Name of the Catholics with Letters of Commendation to Creswell the Iesuite there residing to negotiate with the Government there to send an Army into England in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth ' s Reign and that afterward one Wright was sent into Spain upon the same Errand and that then likewise Guy Faux was by some of the Iesuites sent thither to Creswel to hasten the Design and that Faux was instructed to take Care that it should be signify'd to the King of Spain that the Condition of the Roman Catholics would be worse here under King James than it was under Queen Elizabeth and that it might be effected that Spinola should then Land an Army in Milford Haven And then saith the great Historian they not being able to effect that proceeded to the Plot of the Gun-powder Treason The Popish Petitioners then did essay how they might flectere superos and Acheronta movere at the same time But in truth as in Whale-fishing 't is customary for Marriners apprehending Danger to the Vessel from the greatness of the Whale to throw out an empty Barrel into the Sea for the Whale to toss about on the Waters and to receive some diversion from it that while he is so diverted they may the more securely wound him with their dead-doing Irons thus did the Papists throw out their empty Petitions to that King only to divert and amuse him that they might surprize him with the â—ate they intended him Yet now if any one should put the Interrogatory to me which Person I had the least Kindness for namely a Non-Conformist that favour'd the Doctrine of Resistance or a Papist that believ'd the Grounds and School-Conclusions of the Doctrine of Popery as King Iames's before mention'd Expression was and which whoever did he said could neither be a good Christian or a faithful Subject I shall by way of Answer crave aid from a Judgment given by Philip of Macedon who having heard the Merits of a Cause or Complaint that happen'd between two lewd Persons gave the Decree That one of them should presently fly out of Macedon and that the other should run after him as fast as he could But against any Seditious Protestant I would wish more severity exercised than against such a Papist for the former doth not only rebel against his Prince as the latter but doth according to Iob's Expression more rebel against the light and is guilty of the Simulata Sanctitas and so according to the Expression before mention'd out of the Apocalypse Reward her as she has rewarded you and double unto her double c. deserves to be doubly punish'd for his duplex iniquitas and shall magnifie the Justice of the King's Ministers done to their Prince and Country and to themselves when in any Conjuncture they shall find any call'd Protestants turning Gods and the King's grace into wantonness and Religion into Rebellion they shall level their most solicitous endeavors with all the sharpness of the Law against such nominal Protestants for then the salus populi will engage them as the Physicians say to mind the Vrgentius Symptoma and for which they have a Rule that Cum diversae repugnantesque inter se committuntur indicationes parendum est omnino fortioribus 'T is fit I should recompence the trouble I have given your Lordship by what I have said of this Question by diverting you with the News of another Question that among some Company was lately bandy'd in Discourse here between a Papist and a Non-Conformist and 't was a much more termagant Question than the former namely Whether Popery or Mahumetanism be the woâ—st I was sorry to find the Non-Conformist to give his Judgment as he did in a gross and undistinguishing manner that the Impostures of Mahomet were fitter to be embraced than several Tenets he named in Popery which tho erroneous yet are denominable as Tenets of Religion but did for a while forbear giving my Opinion in the Case or relieving the Papist with any notion of mine tho I found the Non-Conformist as somewhat the better Disputant pressing too hard on him gave me occasion to have done it than if I would I calling to mind how the Papists of old have so often decided it that Heretics are woâ—se than Turks or Infidels and that they have ranked our Religion of the Church of England with Atheism since I allow not of works of super-erogation would not super-erogate in being too hasty in moderating in the Dispute Thus Maldonaâ—e on St. Iohn saith Qui Catholici sunt Majore odio Calvinistas caeterosque omnes Haereticos prosequuntur quam Gentiles And thus Stapleton in his Oration or Speech against the Politicians saith That the Heretics are worse than Turks And Mason in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae Lib. 1. Cap. 1. p. 8. cites Gulielm Reinold in his Calv. Turcis l. 1. c. 7. and l. 4. c. 11. for saying Religionem nostram meaning that of the Church of England ipsâ Turcicâ esse deteriorem Mason further brings in Bristo saying Religionem nostram nullam esse ipsâ Experientiâ probâ—ri And cites another Popish Author for saying Protestantes nullam habent fidem nullam Spem nullam Charitatem nullam Poenitentiam nullam Iustificationem nullam Ecclesiam nullum Altare nullum Sacrificium nullum Sacerdotium nullam Religionem Christum nullum and quotes Cardinal Alan for saying Nostram liturgiam sacramenta Conciones istiusmodi esse quae fine dulio aeternum afferunt exitium The well meant pains of the Compilers of our Liturgy in inserting there some good Prayers out of the Mass to render it more agreeable to the Papists was it seems all lost and that perhaps occasion'd that angry Exclamation of Mr. Cartwright of old That in Ceremonies we ought to comply with the Turk rather then the Pope I acquainted the Discoursers that Mr. Fox in the Edition of the Acts and Monuments printed together in one Volume in London in the Year 1596 doth Combat this mighty Question
employed to feed perhaps about 20 pair of the hurtful Carnivorous Beasts nay which is more that Heaven should permit such great slaughters of its little Flock to feed the very vitiated fancies of the worst of men as was before insinuated But who can without shame for depraved Mankind and a heart inwardly bleeding think of the result of the Popes Gift of America to the King of Spain where so many Millions of the poor Natives having had no promulgation of the Law of Christianity and were accountable to God only for the violation of the Law of Nature were so unnaturally murthered by the Spaniards that it would seem incredible that God having made of one blood all Nations as 't is said in the Scripture and there being a natural Cognation between all Humane kind as the expression is in the Digests they should depopulate that part of the World of a greater number of Souls than is now living in the flourishing Kingdom of France if that Famous Spanish Bishop Bartholomaeus de las Casas hath made a true Estimate of the Spanish Cruelty in the West-Indies namely that in about 45 years the Spaniards by several monstrous Cruelties put to death 20 Millions of Indians At this rate of murderous Mankinds thus outraging one another the World would seem to be likely to end before it was as I may say to purpose begun I mean the purpose of God Almighty But the thought of the shame of being outwitted by our Neighbour Nations and the fear of being outdone by them in strength populousness and riches and our certain knowledge as was partly before hinted that toward the latter end of the World by the growing populousness of Mankind we must naturally and without any eye on prediction in Scripture more and more hear of Wars and rumours of Wars and the shame of our encouraging a few Traders in Contraband Religions to hope they can ever destroy the Peace and Trade of the Kingdom again must supposing Heretics to be men naturally make the former Mode of killing them appear not more barbarous then ridiculous Sir W. P. having in his excellent Manuscript called Verbum sapienti made excellent Computations of the wealth of the Kingdom and of the value of the People and of the several expences of the Kingdom and of its Revenues and in his last Chapter there considered how to employ the People and with what great industry doth like a Noble Philosopher conclude it with these two Queries and their Answers viz. But when should we rest from this great industry I answer when we have certainly more Money than any of our Neighbour States tho never so little both in Arithmetical and Geometrical Proportion i. e. when we have more years Provision aforehand and more present Effects What then should we busie our selves about I answer in ratiocinations upon the Works and Will of God to be supported not only by the indolency but also by the pleasure of the body and not only by the tranquility but serenity of the mind and this exercise is the natural end of man in this World and that which best disposeth him for his Spiritual Happiness in that other which is to come The motions of the mind being the quickest of all others afford most variety wherein is the very form and being of pleasure and by how much the more we have of this pleasure by so much the more we are capable of it ad infinitum And thanks be to Heaven we have no Isthmus in Nature to dig through which yet by our many hands might be done 'T is but the removal of the broken Fence and bowing Wall of a Religion-Trade which we can well look over and easily see through as now broken and bowing and which is the more loath'd for having so long and so much debarred us from real Trade and real Knowledge and too from real Religion and this flowry Coast will be as free to the feet of us Northern Heretics so called as 't is now to our Eyes and we through the effects of our populousness and being necessitated to industry be secured from any fear of sharing in a Prophetick Calculation that might be called The Burthen of the North made by a late Author of a Discourse of Trade That the French without the use of their Iron will command all the Silver of the North and sweep it away thence by the over-balance of Trade But after all the Souths raillery on the North they will find that the Northern half of the World hath more Earth more Men more Ships and Sea-men more Stars more day and more light of the Gospel and I may add more good nature and frankness more bodily strength and fewer Plagues and Earth-quakes then the Southern And where most people are 't is no Heresy nor Enthusiastic Prophecy to say that there will in time be most Trade which appeared by England's not being afraid to throw the Die of War against both France and Spain in the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr As the over-balance of Trade is insensibly lost in any Country it is likewise so regained and in time will appear regain'd and like health in the body of a man of a strong Vitals after his being seized by and recovered from a Chronical Disease and of the time of the beginning and ending of which by unforeseen Accidents no shadow of a Dial or sound of a Clock could give the indication I shall assign an instance of this in our own Kingdom The Author of Britannia languens calculates 2,50000 l. per Annum to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years brought into England by the balance of its whole Trade in the World. Committees of Parliament have worthily laboured in several Sessions to model and draw Bills for the making us wear our own Woollen Manufactures and many who have writ Books and Proposals about Trade have very honestly endeavoured to perswade us so to do But as the saying is accidit in puncto c. an Accident too low for our States-mens consideration hath for several years caused England to gain more then it did by the aforesaid Balance of Trade viz. the said 2,50000 l. at a Medium for 76 years and this Accident is the general fashion of Womens wearing Crape And because I have conversed with none who has observed the effect of this Accident and which tho seeming small is very momentous and appears as many things in Trade do like great Weights hanging sometimes on small Wires I shall divert your Lordship by Calculating en passant what England gains thereby in such a way as the Nature of the thing will bear and may passable serve to have it done in A pound of Wooll makes 15 yards of Crape Each Female one with another may be supposed to wear about 10 yards of Crape in her Apparel There are in London probably about 100,000 Females that wear Crape It may be supposed that in all England and Wales there being
told me he knew well enough that the Canon Law did not as such bind all Papists in foro conscientiae but he would stay in no Church that he should find to be built in any Akeldama or Field of Blood that is a Church that approved of Tenets destructive of Civil Societies or condemned not Tenets that where any other Religion than the Popes was would Condemn men like Nebuchadnezor to grasing and to solitude or if they would live in Towns or Cities make them live there in Houses under Ground as Dr. Browne in his Travels saith He saw some Towns in the Turkish Dominions where Christians so lived like the Troglodytes and subterraneous Nations about Egypt and which might be occasioned by many Armies marching that way and burning of Towns en passant and that till the Pope disclaimed this power and damned such Tenet in his Canon Law that hung up there a Light conspicuous to the World for the lawful kindling of the Torches that should set fire to Heretical Cities such Cities as he called Heretical would be in fear of their being incendio delendae and that in the mean time the Iesuites who assert the plenitude of his power would implicitly obey his Commands and their Emissaries execute theirs without considering whether Gratian as a Fool or a Knave misapplied Cyprian and he granted that if as an Universal Censor morum the Pope did Command the Iesuites or others to inflict spiritual Censures in Cases of Sin or Non-belief of any Religionary Notion and those Censures were not to operate beyond the Soul that Civil Societies might yet be maintained but to give the Pope power to issue out Orders to burn the Cities and Towns where the Roman Catholick Religion is not professed is said he to give him Arbitrary Power over a great part of the World and to leave it to his Arbitrage whether there shall be any Political Government and Commerce in the States and Kingdoms of Hereticks and the World might suffer Confusion by the Papacy's having this power de facto as much as if it had it de jure and that several places have been burned as Heretical and when certainly they had a right not to be so served and particularly the Heretical Villages at the Massacre of Merindol of which Dr. Heylin in his Geoghraphy in Folio makes mention saying that in the Year 1560. there were above 1250 Churches of the Hugonots in France which cannot in such a long time but be wonderfully augmented tho scarce any of them have scaped some Massacre or other Of these Massacres two are most memorable viz. that of Merindol and Chabiers as being the first and that of Paris as being the greatest That of Merindol happened in the Year 1545. the instrument of it being Minier the President of the Council of Aix for having Condemned those poor people of Heresy he mustered a small Army and set fire on the Villages He directed me further for the proof of that Fact to Maimbourg's History of Calvinism Book 2d where he mentions the Decree of the Parliament of Aix to which Heylin refers and saith Maimbourg of it Par le quel il Condamn ' par Contumace dix neuf de Ces Heretiques à estre brasléz c. ordonne que toutes les Maisons de Merindol qui sont toutes remplies de Ces Heretiques soient entierement démolies renverses de fond en comble c. He further said that there was another guess Fire projected by the Jesuites as was before mentioned out of Thuanus and which was abetted by the Pope which shewed there was another Pope beside Eugenius that thought the burning of Heretical Cities lawful and meritorious and he referred it to the Consideration of the Criticks in Gun-powder how far so great a quantity of it lodged in a strait Vault might have tended to the demolishing of the Heretical Cities of Westminster and even of London if the experiment of the Gun-powder Treason had took effect for said he the utmost power of Gun-powder was never yet tryed He told me that Osborn in his King Iames having spoke of the Gun-powder Treason saith I never met two of the like conceit concerning any effect or extent this Powder might have reached had it not failed of success some men confining it to the Circle it lay in and no farther whereas the judgment of others no less experienced delivered at least the whole Isle to the fury of it and then he quotes it as the more probable Conjecture then that it could not but work dire effects on the City it self He further discoursed that in this Case of securing Protestant Cities from Fire at the Popes pleasure Pere Veron's artifice in making the Church of Rome chargeable with nothing to be believed but what is proposed by the Catholick Church in her general Councils or by her Vniversal Practice to be believed as an Article or Doctrine of Catholick Faith or any Papists in this Case joyning with Protestants to decry the Canon Law is but trifling away time as to any giving light to our understandings or keeping Fire from our Cities for if each Pope believes he hath this power and the Jesuites too believe it the Notion of a things not being de fide will not be sufficient to save our Cities when the Incendiaries even by the Doctrine of probability may save their Souls and when they shall have such Doctors as the Pope and Gratian and as they may think Cyprian for the opinion of burning the Nests of Heretical Hornets He moreover mentioned how Bellarmine as to the Tenet of all Christian Monarchies owing subjection to the Pope said the contrary to it is Heretical tho he well knew that no definition of the Church ever made it Heresy and might as well have called the denial of this Incendiary Power of the Pope against Heretical Cities to be Heresy Moreover he told me he had read Bellarmine cited in that Book of Donne p. 277. for writing against a Doctor who had defended the Venetian Cause against the Popes Censures and reprimanding that Doctor in these words viz. It is a grievous rashness not to be left unpunished that he should say the Canons as being but Humane Laws cannot have equal Authority with divine for this is a Contempt of the Canons as tho they were not made by the direction of the Holy Ghost and yet saith Donne citing that Doctor that impugned the Canons those Canons that he referred to were but two and cited but by Gratian. And that Donne further in that Page observed that when Parsons is to make his advantage of any Sentence in Gratian he uses to dignify it thus that it is translated by the Popes into the Corps of the Canon Law and so not only allowed and admitted and approved but commended and commanded canonized and determined for Canonical Law and authorized and set forth for Sacred and Authentical by all Popes whatsoever Treat of Mitag ca. 7. ◠42. That moreover tho we
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
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
particular Law hath declared the Militia to be solely in the King I most humbly take my leave of your Lordship at present and am My Lord Your Lordships most Faithful Servant To the Right Honorable THE LORD MARQUESSE OF HALIFAX MY LORD ACcording to the Common Civility of Ships paying a Salute to the Forts on the Coasts they come near the Course of my handling the following Subject necessarily giving my Thoughts an approach to the Considering the great use that Providence not long ago made use of your Lordship's great Abilities as a Fortification for the Defence of the Hereditary Monarchy I have held it here but common Iustice to Congratulate to your Lordship your heroical Loyalty and great Success therein on one MEMORABLE Day It pleas'd God in whose Book the Members of Mens Bodies and Talents of their Minds are written then to call forth your Head and Heart and Tongue your flowing Elocution your fixt Iudgment your great Presence of Mind and Thought your comprehensive Knowledge of the past Publick Affairs at home and abroad and even the generous ferment in your Blood and to put them all to signal use in preserving the whole Body of the Kingdom Your Lordship's Goodness was herein the more God-like for that as the great benign Father of the Creation was pleas'd with being a Benefactor to such whose Ingratitude he foreknew and to some who would render him as negligent of the Concerns of his Creatures and to others who would represent him as unjust in his Prescriptions and cruel in his Designs and taking pleasure in the Destruction of Souls so your Lordship was resolv'd on your Beneficence to your Country in the black Conjuncture of our Fears and Iealousies and you were then Communicative of the brightest Beams and sweetest Influences of your serene and great thoughts to it when you knew that by some of the People for your so doing you would be maligned and mis-represented as an hostis Patriae I shall Presume to give your Lordship no further trouble then by the syncere Profession of my being My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE OBLIGATION Relating to the King's Heirs and Successors In point of Conscience discuss'd As resulting from the OATHS of ALLEGIANCE and SUPREMACY and the Takers of those Oaths proved to be thereupon become bound to bear Faith and True Allegiance to those HEIRS and SUCCESSORS in the Due and Legal Course of DESCENT I Shall without Proem or Passions here approach to the Great Areopagus of the Court of Conscience and having stated the Question of what Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors results from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in point of Conscience shall deliver my judgment of the same in some Conclusions and answer Objections that may occur I shall here take Notice that the word Obligation from being Originally a Band or Ty of the Law for Payment of Debts hath been since frequently applied to the discharge of Moral Offices Obligatio est juris vinculum quo necessitate restringimur alicujus solvendae Rei Instìt de Obligationibus And pursuant hereunto men may be properly said to pay their Allegiance to Princes in discharge of their Natural Obligations and their Oaths But here I consider not the extent of the Obligation of the Natural Allegiance that English Subjects owe their Monarchs nor yet their Obligation to Allegiance from the Divine Law positive nor from the Lex terrae tho yet I account it very plain that we are on all those accounts bound to pay them Allegiance but do choose to confine my discussion of the Obligation to Allegiance as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and as mentioned in our Statutes in relation to our King's Heirs and Successors and most particularly from that CLAUSE in the Oath of Allegiance viz. I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and him and them will defend to the uttermost of my power against all Conspiracies and Attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity c. And THAT in the Oath of Supremacy viz. And do promise that from henceforth I shall bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King's Highness his Heirs and lawful Successors and to my power shall assist and defend all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors c. And I here enquire how far the Obligation resulting from those Clauses in those Oaths in Relation to such Heirs and Successors may be judged in point of Conscience to extend As to the Question thus explained and stated I shall lay down these following Conclusions First That those Oaths and indeed all others do respect a Duty to be performed in the Future time that is at the least some time tho perhaps a very small one after the Obligation contracted as is well open'd by Sanderson in his first Lecture of the Obligation of Oaths and where he shews that this happens in every Oath assertory as well as promissory for whoever sweareth obligeth himself ipso facto to manifest the truth in that which he is about to say whether it be in a matter past or present by an Assertory or in a Future matter by a Promissory Oath Secondly That by that part of an Oath Promissory contained in the forementioned Clauses of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy as likewise by all other Oaths Promissory the Party swearing is bound to endeavour for the Future as much as in him lieth by his Deeds to fulfil what he hath sworn in words and this Sanderson in his second Lecture hath well asserted as to an Oath Promissory viz. That he who endeavours not to perform that which he hath promised is guilty of Perjury in the Court of Conscience 'T is plain that in an Assertory Oath if I took the same with a wellcompoâ—ed mind and have given my Testimony truely I have discharged my Duty and have my Quietus from my Conscience for the same But in an Oath Promissory and particularly in the Promissory part of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I am not discharged by the sincerity of my intention in my promise I have engaged my self to Action and have lanched my self into a Sea of Business from that time forward till the end of my life and as there is occasion and opportunity I am to DO what in those Clauses I have promised to the King and his Heirs and Successors And thus the Style of DOING runs in Numbers 30. 2. If a man swear an Oath to bind his Soul with a Bond he shall DO according to all that procedeth out of his mouth Thirdly That those Oaths and all others are to be taken in the sense of the Imposer For the Oath being taken that the Imposer may be assured that the promise of the Person swearing shall be effectually made good to him there would be no assurance thereof in
there was such a meaning I have a great Compassion for men that are trick't into Perjury by the artifice of any Casuists and as I have mentioned a Crafty Counsel at Law to be justly odious and a Crafty Councellor of State to be more so do account a Crafty Casuist to be most abominable What effect that Pamphlet hath had in debauching the Consciences of the Non-Conformists in thus distorting the natural sense of that Oath by a calumnious and fraudulent interpretation and whereby such mens tenderness of Conscience may have become Armour of Proof against all Oaths I know not The Paper mentions its being design'd for the edifying of others and that word of edifying minds me of the saying of Qui judicat contra conscientiam aedificat ad gehennam and the which too is justly applicable to a Protestant Casuist that giveth Judgment for equivocation And it may with a pious horror be thought of that if Christianity and its Morals should happen to be generally depraved by such Sophisms and Chicanery as that Pamphlet is stuffed with there may be cause of fear that the Son of Man at his second coming will not find so much as the old bona fides of the Heathens on the Earth That any Non-Conformists of the present Age may see how much the Casuistical Theology of that Pamphlet hath degenerated from the Rule about the interpretation of Oaths that was in vogue among those of the former I shall refer them to the Learned Casuistical works of Ames a Pious and Learned Independent Divine of that Age printed at Amsterdam in the Year 1631 and where in his 4th Book Chap. 22. De Iuramento he very learnedly inveighs against the use of Equivocation and Mental Reservation in Oaths and maketh it to be Equivocation Cùm verba ipsa quae usurpantur sunt ambigui sensus illo sensu accipiuntur à jurante quem audientes cupit celare ut alio sensu ab ipsis accipiantur and coming to determine that Question viz. In what sense ought the words of an Oath to be taken he answers viz. In that sense that we judge they who hear us will conceive that is regularly in that sense that the words have in the common use of men because the signification of words depends on mens use And he there afterward coming to this Question viz. Are the Words of an Oath always to be taken strictly as they sound answers That an Oath by reason of the danger of Perjury is of strict right and interpretation so that it may not admit those larger Explications which in other Facts and Sayings often take place Fourthly As a Humane Law forbidding a thing simply evil or commanding a thing in its own nature good doth induce a new Obligation in Conscience so doth the Addition of an Oath imposed by the Law for the avoiding of that thing so simply evil super-induce a farther Obligation to avoid it and therefore the Persons who take the Oath of Allegiance invoking God as Witness and Revenger that they do plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear according to these express words by them spoken and according to the plain and common sense and understanding of the same words Without any Equivocation or mental Evasion or secret Reservation whatsoever and heartily willingly and truely upon the TRUE FAITH of a CHRISTIAN are under a more especial and particular Obligation to abhor all subtle and cavilling interpretations of the sense of the said Oath Fifthly As the plain and common sense and understanding of the words in the Clauses respecting the Future time of bearing Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty c. do lay an actual Promissory Obligation on the swearer to bear the same to him during his life so reddendo singula singulis they lay an actual Promissory Obligation on the swearer to bear the same to his Heirs and Successors afterward in the Due and Legal Course of Descent The Promise in the Clause of the Oath of Supremacy runneth thus viz. and DO Promise that FROM HENCEFORTH I WILL bear Faith c. And words could not express an actual Obligation incurr'd and to have some Operation in the next Moment of time both in relation to his Majesty and his Heirs and Successors more clearly than those have expressed the same And the Promise sworn in the Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. I will bear Faith c. doth likewise after the Oath sworn immediately operate in its Obligation to the King and his Heirs and Successors in the next Interval of Time imaginable however the word henceforth be not there used as in the former Oath for the Clause of the Oath of Allegiance binding me not only to preserve the King but the Hereditary Monarchy I could not be effectually enough by the Oath obliged to the same without being obliged in the shortest time afterward not only to forbear prejudicing any right that belongs to the King and his Heirs and Successors but to defend the same The pointing of men to an ordinary Lease where the Lessee at the perfecting thereof enters into an actual Obligation both in Law and Conscience to pay his Rent to the Lessor his Heirs and Assigns that is as it shall become due to each respectively shews a present actual Obligation incurr'd of discharging any Future Dues successively and as I said reddendo singula singulis to be familiar enough to common thought and vulgar apprehensions and likewise the word Heirs to be so too The many who take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy have spent enough time and perhaps too much ventured eternity in thinking of and providing for their Heirs and who commonly as landed men know that by virtue of right either immediately or mediately derived from the Crown they are only enabled to say They are seized of this or that Land in their Demesne as of Fee and which is as much as to say It is their Demesne or proper Land after a sort because it is to them and their Heirs and that such Fee doth vi termini imply Fealty and Fealty sworn and the thought of which would on the turning of the Tables make them sufficiently apprehensive of their danger if there could be any ambiguity in the word Heir or the Crown granting Land to them and their Heirs forever I shall here take occasion by the way to reflect on an Antimonarchical saying I met with printed as spoke in Parliament by a great Demagogue some years ago viz. That the Cottager here holds his right by the same Tenure that the Crown holds its For it is false that our King or the Crown oweth Fealty to any Superior but God only The King's Throne is the Throne of God and the Style of Crown'd Heads is Dei gratiâ and by him Kings Reign But to proceed If there could be Ambiguity in the word Heirs the worth of our Magna Charta would soon be depretiated and it would be but Res unius aetatis and particularly where
dâ—bent ut aliquid operentur and that verba cum effectu sunt accipienâ—a And as 't is said in the Civil Law Semper in stipulationibus in caeteris contractibus id sequimur quod ACTVM est and as actus is there taken for a general word sive re sive verbis quid AGATVR here is an ACT of the Swearer done in relation to such HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and he is promittendi reus in the Civil Law Phrase and as he is there called Reus qui debitor est omninoque obligatus ex quavis Causa and as he who hath promised any thing is said Reus debendi and so Reus constitutus dicitur qui se obligavit ff Quod met Caus. l. 14. § Labeo But on the whole matter our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy contain in them nothing impossible and nothing ambiguous and do ipso facto or in plain English oblige us as soon as taken to be ready to pay our Allegiance to the King and afterward to his Heirs and Successors as respectively due according to the Legal Course of Descent And if any one be frightned with Sir W. I's Day-Dream of Treason viz. in being immediately upon the taking of the Oaths under some Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors let him repair to our Statute-Book and he will there find as good Bail provided for him in the Case as Heaven and Earth can give for in the Preamble of an Act of Parliament the King and three Estates tell him of the Duty that every true and well affected Subject not only by BOND of Allegiance but also by the COMMANDMENT of Almighty God OVGHT to perform to his Majesty his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS 7 o Iac. c. 6. In fine I shall hereupon affirm that should any English Subject who hath taken these Oaths live to the age of Nestor and in the course of Nature â—ee several of our Kings Heirs and Successors in the due and Legal course of Descent Succeeding one another and should such Subject be never call'd on to reiterate those Oaths in the Reign of any of them he would yet by these Oaths before once taken continue obliged to bear true Faith and Allegiance to them all Successively And thus in the first faederal Oath we read of the Father of the faithful obliged himself at once in relation to Abimelech and his SON and his SONS SON and we know how afterward God was pleased to oblige himself at once to Abraham and his SEED and how after that God was pleased to oblige himself by his Oath and Covenant made to David and his SEED as to their Succession in the Royal Throne of Iuda And 't was to this the words in the Psalms ONCE have I Sworn c. refer And therefore this Scriptural Representation of God after the manner of Men condescending in the Government of the world to bind himself ex gratiâ as aforesaid may well inculcate to us the reasonableness of our becoming ipso facto bound by our Oaths to pay the debitum Iustitiae to his Vice-Roys and their HEIRS and SUCCESSORS To proceed therefore I shall lay down this as a 6 th Conclusion and genuinely deducible from the former one viz. That by Virtue of those two Clauses the takers of those Oaths do particularly bind themselves not only against the Aiding and Assisting or Abetting any Rebellion or any Vsurpation of the rights of his Majesty's Heirs and Successors that can happen but to the aiding and assisting of the Crown and preserving its Inheritable Rights on all Emergent occasions Sanderson in his 4th Lecture of the Obligation of Oaths puts the Case concerning the Person to whom an Oath was made viz. Whether he who hath Sworn the performance of a thing to another the Party to whom he Sware being deceased be bound to make it good to the Heirs and Successors of the said Party And his words are I answer ordinarily he is It is certain that the Party Swearing is obliged if he express'd that he would perform the Oath unto the Heirs of the other It may also be taken for granted that he is bound tho he expressed it not if the Oath taken relates to DIGNITY because DIGNITY varies not with the change of Persons Whence if any Subject or Souldier Swear Fidelity to his King or General the Oath is to be meant to be made unto them also who succeed to that Dignity Yet Ames our Learned Non-conformist in his Case of Conscience 4th Book Chapter 22. viz. De Iuramento as to the 11th Question and about the Obligation of an Oath Ceasing saith Quum aufertur ratio juramenti juramentum cessat ratione Eventus qui casus est eorum qui jurarunt se obedituroâ— Domino aut Principi alicui qui postea cessat esse talis But perhaps had the Case of so strict an Oath as that of Allegiance to our Prince and his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS layn before him he would have writ otherwise of its Obligation For as the Consideâ—ation of the forâ—mentioned Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy did sufficiently prevail with the Ejected and Persecuted Divines of the Church of England and most of its Lay Members to avoid all sinful Compliance with the late Vsurpation and Vsurpers so it did likewise with many of the Presbyterians and others to avoid the same and particularly to refuse the taking the ENGAGEMENT set up by the Republicans and even to Publish in Print their holding themselves obliged by those Oaths so to do I shall instance in two that did so Mr. Pryn in his Book before cited mentions those OATHS as in direct words extending not only to the late King's Person mentioning King Charles the 1 st but his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and Inviolably binding the Swearers in perpeâ—uity in point of LAW and CONSCIENCE so long as there is any Heir of the Crown and Royal Line in being and that upon many Vnanswerable Scriptural Precedents and Legal Considerations c. He had before charged those with apparent Perjury who had taken those Oaths to the King and his HEIRS and yet repute those few Reliques of the old Parliament then sitting forcibly secluding the Lords and Majority of their Fellow Members to be a lawful Parliament within the Statute of 17 Car. Cap. 7. or submit to any Oaths Taxes or Edicts of theirs as Parliamentary or Legal I refer the Reader to the Book and which because somewhat Scarce I think to have reprinted The other Person of the Presbyterian Communion I shall refer to for this is the Author of a learned Tract in 4 to printed in the year 1650 called An EXERCITATION concerning VSVRP'D POWERS wherein the Author very substantially proves that by virtue of the Obligation to the King's HEIRS and SUCCESSORS resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it is not lawful to give up ones self to the ALLEGIANCE of an VSVRP'D Power and saith very well in p. 16. If I should do that I should yield assistance to the
Vsurper in his wrong Doing and Vsurpation and so become a partaker of his Sin. Obedience to one as the Supreme Magistrate is a Comprehensive thing and includes many duties toward him as a Power viz. of receiving Commission from him for Offices or Acts otherwise not competible to me maintaining and defending him in his Power by Pay Counsel and Intelligence Arms and Prayers all which I am bound to yield the Usurper to my power if I resign my Allegiance up to him and how shall I do these things and not 1. Support and have Communion with him in his wickedness 2. Combine against betray and resist the right of the injured dethroned Magistrate 3. And make my self uncapable of Obedience or being a Subject to the lawful Power hereafter The Author doth in p. 19 and many other places in this Book assert the forementioned Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy as binding clearly plainly and in terminis to an Allegiance over-living his Majesties Person and pitched upon his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS so that the Swearer is not free from the Oaths at his Majesties decease c. and that those Oaths intend by his Majesty's HEIRS and SUCCESSORS the same Persons joyning them together with the Copulative AND and not using the Discretive OR and the former Oath twice comprising both in the following Clauses under the said Term or Pronown viz. THEM THEIRS so that according to these Oaths his HEIRS are of right his SUCCESSORS and none can be HIS SUCCESSOR but HIS HEIR while he hath an HEIR and that if any Conspiracy or ATTEMPT be made to prevent his HEIR from being and continuing his SVCCESSOR or to make any one HIS SVCCESSOR that is not HIS HEIR if he hath one the subject is sworn by this Oath to continue his Allegiance to HIS HEIR as the right SVCCESSOR and to DEFEND HIM in that HIS right to the uttermost and that the Term LAWFUL annext to SVCCESSORS in the Oath of Supremacy manifestly excludes all CAVIL of a distinction between HEIRS and SVCCESSORS the word LAWFVL whether you interpret it of LEGITIMATION of BIRTH or PROXIMITY of SVCCESSION in regard of LINE according to the Law of the Land entailing the Crown on his Majesty's Issue or rather both the latter including the former restraining SVCCESSORS from meaning any other than HIS HEIRS and that both these Oaths bind the Swearer to assist and defend to his uttermost Power against all Attempts the Course of SVCCESSION in the Race of his Majesty expressed by many-Terms to wit THEIR Crown and Dignity all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences and Authorities granted to the King's Highness HIS HEIRS and SVCCESSOR and united to the Imperial CROWN of this Realm How then can he yield Obedience to them that are not HIS HEIRS nor LAWFUL SVCCESSORS c. how can he not oppose and withstand them in the assistance and defence of the right of his Majesty's HEIRS and LAWFVL SVCCESSORS That judicious Author did like a substantial Confessor of the Obligatoriness of those Oaths relating to the King's HEIRS and SUCCESSORS during that Vsurpation very satisfactorily shew that the SAME Persons were meant by both and held himself obliged in Loyalty the rather so to do because in that Conjuncture the plain Sence of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy were usurp'd upon and particularly by the Book called THE LAWFULNESS OF OBEYING THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT then published and the Fallacies in which he Learnedly Confuted and shewed how ridiculously that Book outraged the sense of the Law-givers in those Oaths whose end was to support the Crown in a just Lineal Succession and could therefore intend by Successors only such as were de jure so and that therefore that Book 's taking Successors for such who were so de facto tho very unjustly was 1. Inconsistent with the nature of an Oath which must be taken in Righteousness Jer. 4. 2. That is to oblige only to that which is just 2. With the word HEIRS which being placed first in the Oath must first be served 3. With the Oath of Supremacy which binds us to the lawful Successor 4. With the Law of the Land which appointeth Succession to the Heir 5. With a possibility of keeping the Oath for if Heirs and Successors mean divers Persons how can the Oath of Allegiance and defence of the Regal Dignity be observed Thus it seems as the Fantome of haeres viventis hath frighted many out of their Natural Senses and the Natural sense of their Oaths in the present Conjuncture the word SUCCESSORS did formerly and when they who interpreted it of actual Succeders as saith my Author that it might favour the USURPERS forgot what was the Object of that Succession viz. a CROWN and Regal Dignity wherein by virtue of that Oath those Successors are to be defended whereas those or the Republicans for whom the Book pleads have not only put by the rightful Successor but abolished the CROWN and Regal Dignity it self May this instance of Heavens uncrowning the understandings of those Republicans of common reason and sense and when in the Course of their injudicious minds they were abandoned to the most despicable sort of Counterfeit Witt called Quibbling and to the vilest sort of Quibbling and double entendre of words I mean in that which concerns the tremendous Obligation of an Oath after they had Dethroned their Prince and excluded his Heirs and Successors serve in all Future times as a Monument of the Divine Dereliction and of Heavens scattering the Proud in their reasons and imaginations of their hearts and rendring them unfortunate beyond the fate of the common saying of Eventus stultorum magister I mean by condemning them to a stated infatuation and let none hereafter value any Vsurpation on the Credit of the last as Mr. Ienkins in his famous Petition to the Vsurpers did and set Gods Seal to it on the account of the Event when the Event was what I have now mentioned Any one who will cast an Eye on the Title de verborum significatione in the Civil Law will there find the word Heir to be necessarily made Comprehensive of SUCCESSORS viz. Haeredis significatione omnes signifiâ—â—ri SUCCESSORES â—redendum est etsi verbis non sint expressi and Succession is under that Title of the Law made a part of the definition of inheritance viz. Nihil est aliud haereditas quam successio in universum jus quod defunctus habuit And the identity of the thing in the words of Heirs and Successors doth quadrare with that saying so frequent among the Civil Law Writers that Plura quando copulantur ad unum effectum loco unius habentur and with another that the word sometimes stat declarative inter duo idem importantia I should account it somewhat like Pedantry to cite any Latine Authors about Heirs and Successors signifying as here in our Case the same thing but that other Seditious Books beside that impugned by the Exercitation have endeavoured to sow
omnium and who in the 12th Chapter there Critically descanting on the nature of the Defence granted by Protectors saith That verbum protegere necessitatem defendendi cum armis importat and that protector si in defensionis promissione jaramentum appositum fuerit etiam non requisitus clientibus succurrere tenetur and that defendere non videtur qui in totum non defendit and that éffectum defensionis non dicitur consummatè implere qui non omni tempore auxilio suo ac defensione praestò est He there likewise tells us that subditi tenentur defendere honorem Regis and that DEFENCE is too performed by Words as well as Deeds and mentions how in solenni fidelitatis juramento vasallus se ad id obstringit quod vitam honorem famamque Domini non solum non violare sed contra aliorum conatus pro viribus defendere ac propugnare velit But none need look abroad for the genuine importance of the word DEFEND for any man of common sense who hath taken the Oaths knoweth by the Recollection of his ordinary thoughts what it is to DEFEND himself and how natural it is for the hand to liâ—t up and expose it self to defend the head from danger and knoweth by the Call of the Magistracy when and where and how by Arms to defend his Prince and natural Logick tells him that he who in these Oaths hath bound himself to ASSIST hath certainly bound himself not to RESIST and that defendere qui tenetur offendere non debet and that therefore whoever hath taken the Oaths and alloweth the Doctrine of Resistance is a real Heretick and Self-Condemned and that according as it is neither deniable nor denied by those who talk of haeres viventis the Taker of these Oaths hath bonâ fide and in the good faith of a Christian promised the same vigorous defence of the Rights of those Heirs and Successors in the first moment of the descent of the Crown to them that is to say immediately on the King's Decease that he is to perform as to the Rights of the present King and that here being a Promise of Defence to the King and his Heirs Promittens duobus vel pluribus dicitur promittere separatim cuilibet pro virili and that the Rights of the Prince Regnant are not in the least prejudiced by this Promise for that obligatus duobus in solidum est obligatus secundo salvo jure primi and that verba sunt intelligenda habito respectu rei personae ad quam referentur And the word BELONGING i. e. All Iurisdictions Privileges c. Granted or BELONGING to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors as it sufficiently ensures our Obligations of defending the same to our Kings in Case of Usurpation made against them how prosperous soever it may be so it ensures our Obligation of the defence to his Heirs in the due Course of the Descent and holds our hands from paying Allegiance to any Vsurper The Law of God and the Land sufficiently shew to whom those Iurisdictions c. BELONG that we have sworn to defend and the Civil Law doth here appositely tell us that Possessio etiam animo retinetur and doth account the very fraud that may exclude a right Heir to be Tantamount to a Possession Quia pro possessione dolus est And according to that Law Qui actionem habet ad rem ipsam rem habere videtur and habere quilibet dicitur quod jure petere potest sive de quo actionem habet And on the whole matter if the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy are Lawful Oaths as all except Roman Catholicks grant it must likewise be granted that the Takers of them are indissolubly bound to the uttermost of their Power against all Vsurpers and Vsurpations to defend all Iurisdictions c. BELONGING to the King his Heirs and Successors as aforesaid and the very same Arguments that were prevalent with the Takers of those Oaths formerly not to take the Engagement nor to pay Allegiance to the then Vsurpers do militate and are very cogent and concludent for others who have took those Oaths not to pay it to any but to the King and to his Heirs and Successors in the Due and Legal Course of Descent and for the defence of all Iurisdictions c. respectively belonging to them for according to the words in the forecited Exercitation The manifest drift of the Oath of Allegiance being the continuance and assurance of the Crown upon concession of his then Majesty's just Title to his Heirs in Succession after Him and ONE ANOTHER lineally and the defence of them therein against all OTHER Corrivals and Opposers it is plain that the defeating the Succession in its Due and Legal Course of Descent in any one Case will be an Vsurpation not only of the Right of the Lawful Heir and Successor according to the Proximity of Blood but of the Right of the Hereditary Monarchy it self sworn to be defended as aforesaid It is therefore no marvel that some of the Learned and Loyal Writers of the Succession have judged that any such defeating of the Succession as aforesaid would be Criminal in the same kind as the late Vsurpation was It may be well supposed that many mens so seldom and so superficially thinking of those Oaths occasioned their Miscarriages during the former Rebellion and Vsurpation Unthinking men generally take those Oaths as Pills only to be swallowed down and pro formà only and when gilded over with an Office of Gain But to a loyal and rectified mind the frequent sense of the Moral Offices resulting from those Oaths is as pleasant as any thing can be to the Taste and according to that saying in Iob For the Ear tryeth words as the Mouth tasteth meat a man loyal to the degree required by those Oaths will not only nauseate all Principles of Sedition as rank Poyson but will be able so critically to try the words in any Sayings that sound popularly and that are used by Demagogues as to find out what in them is wholsome and what poysonous and accordingly as for example the excellent Sanderson did in the Maxim of salus populi suprema lex and did make the salus populi to include that of Kings And to this purpose if any will by the Touch-stone of this my 6th Conclusion try that Maxim that among all Demagogues so much passeth for currant Coyn he will find it not to be Sterling viz. That People were not made for their Kings but their Kings for them and this saying is partly favoured by what Tully saith in his Offices viz. Vt tutela sic procuratio Reip. ad utilitatem eorum qui commissi sunt non ad eorum quibus commissa est gerenda est But after any one hath seriously weigh'd this Maxim he will find that Kings and their People were made for and are under natural Obligations to one another and accordingly as it may be said
that Parents and Children were made for one another and to defend one another and to this purpose the Psalmists words are Lo Children are an Heritage of the Lord and the Fruit of the Womb is his Reward as Arrows are in the hand of a mighty man so are Children of the Youth happy is the man that hath his Quiver full of them they shall not be ashamed but they shall speak with the Enemies in the Gate But in my further enquiry into the Obligation relating to his Majesty's Heirs and Successors that results from those Oaths my 7th Conclusion shall be that the Takers of these Oaths are bound thereby against attempting or endeavouring by any new Law or Constitution to interrupt the Succession of the Crown in its Due and Legal Course of Descent I do account that the foregoing Conclusion hath cut the Grass under the Feet of any who have taken those Oaths and yet would have thus interrupted the Succession and makes such interruption of its Course not only unlawful but to be a nugatory ridiculous and unaccountable thing For since by the known Rights of the Crown the next Heir to the Crown is in the next Minute after my King's decease actually King and I am necessarily and indispensably bound to pay actual Obedience or Allegiance to him then and have already sworn that I will then expose my lise in his defence and the defence of his Crown and Dignity it is manifest folly in me to attempt the interrupting the Succession by excluding the Right Heir whom I have thus indispensably bound my self to defend and to obey and who perhaps by the Course of Mortality and Kings who are nominal Gods coming to die like men may within a few Minutes after my having taken the Oaths be entituled to my born and sworn Allegiance Dolo facit qui petit id quod mox redditurus est But a sorry and pitiful trick it is and as remote from the subtility of the Serpent as the innocence of the Dove that any Swearer would put on himself who attempted to injure any Prince by going to exclude him from the Allegiance that he is to pay him perhaps the next Moment We are well minded by Sanderson in his second Lecture That simplicity becomes an Oath and that the Swearer is to endeavour to perform what he hath promised without fraud deceit double dealing or simulation and he elsewhere questioning whether the words by my faith are an Oath saith That tho by the Custom of some Countries or the intention of him who speaks they may be an Oath yet necessarily by virtue of those words an Oath ariseth not but only an asseveration or an â—btestation and he had before mentioned how Soto did judge the words by my faith to be an Oath but the words in faith to be none But others have judged that when on the word fides the which is justitiae fundamentum the word CHRISTIAN is built as an Addition the compleat Fabrick of an Oath is thereby raised and with the weight of those great words before referred to the Oath of Allegiance concludes viz. And I do make this Recognition and Acknowledgment heartily willingly and truly upon the true FAITH of a CHRISTIAN So help me God which sheweth that those words did not casually nor indeed without profound deliberation there come in When the true faith or the bona fides of a Roman did so much scorn to put a trick upon a Law doth not the true faith of a Christian more abhor to put one upon an Oath I have in my second Conclusion asserted it in general that the Taker of all Promissory Oaths is bound to endeavour for the Future as much as in him lieth by his Deeds to fullfil what he hath sworn in words and here applying the same particularly to the King's Heirs and Successors I will ask if it be congruous to bona fides i. e. Common honesty if I am bound by Law to pay a Debt and have promised and sworn to pay it for me to endeavour by any new Law to evade its payment I have heard of a Will made void by Act of Parliament but after the Executor had sworn to execute it well and truely and to pay the Debts and Legacies of the deceased as far as the Estate extended could he bonâ fide and with a Salvo to Conscience endeavour to quash it by the Legislative Power Nihil ita fidei congruit humanae quà m ea quae placuerant custodii i. e. Nothing is so sutable to common honesty as that those things that have been once assented to should be observed is a known saying in the Civil Law and so is that of Vlpian in the Digest Bonae fidei non congruit de apicibus juris disputare and it being a Rule of Law there that Cum quid unâ viâ prohibetur alicui ad illud aliâ viâ non debet admitti i. e. that which cannot be done one way or directly must not be done indirectly or by another and it being construed that whoever acted contrary to this did fraudem facere legi do I to the uttermost of my Power and on the true faith of a Christian defend his Majesty his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS against all Attempts which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity and assist and defend all Iurisdictions Privileges c. belonging to the King's Highness his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS if afterward to the uttermost of my Power I endeavour to dis-inherit the lawful Heir and to exclude him from the benefit of his inherent Birth-right by an extraordinary means Is not the attempt or endeavour to effect this to be accounted fraud according to that Rule of Law viz. Fraudis interpretatio semper in jure Civili non ex eventu duntaxat sed ex consilio quoque desideratur and which follows after the Rule viz. Generaliter cum de fraude disputatur non quid habeat Actor sed quid per adversarium habere non potuerit considerandum est 'T is a true old saying that fallacia pactorum dolum semper habet adjunctum and omnis calliditas fallacia machinatio ad circumveniendum fallendum decipiendumve alterum adhibita are made to integrate the definition of dolus malus by Labeo in the Digest And is it not a known Rule among all the Writers of Defence that Defensio bonâ fide praestari debet and that Promittens aliquid facere quod contrarium illius non sitâ—facturus promittere censetur and that defensionem promittens non tam laesionem illatam avertere quam inferendam praecavere debet And can I without outraging the true faith of a Christian and the Christian simplicity and sincerity and singleness of heart and the Apostles Precept that no man go beyond and defraud his Brother project any Law to exclude those from their Birth-right whom I have promised in express words to defend When the Morality of Cicero extended to the inclucating it in one of
Acquaintance as to judge them free from any Complication of the belief and practice of any irreligious Principles with the Principles of their Religion and particularly from the owning any Principle of Disloyalty or the Iesuites Doctrine of Calumny or the Obligatoriness of the Lateran Council will not rashly pronounce any other particular Papist guilty of the belief or practice of such Principles Nor is it any great honour that I have done to any men of extraordinary Vertue in thus judging that they cannot believe or practise such Principles for that it being true in the Course of Nature what Machiavel said that next to the being perfectly good 't is the most difficult thing to be perfectly bad the World hath had thereby some Garranty against the belief and practice of such Principles and by necessity of Nature must still have But since Mankind in general may expect to find in our esteem the benefit of the presumption of Law viz. That every man is presumed to be good and that the high Births and Educations of Princes and the great Examples of their Magnanimous Ancestors may well pass as strong presumptions of Nature against their doing any low ungenerous Acts of Cruelty and since in Gods great Ordinance of Magistracy an especial Divine presence may by Virtue of Holy Writ be presumed to accompany the very Magistrates appointed by Sovereign Prinâ—es according to that in 2 Chron. 19. 6. where after it was said to the Judges Take heed what you do for yee judge not for man but for the Lord the following words are Who is with you in the Iudgment and that therefore as Christ is said to be present with those Officers he appointed in the Church because there is a special Virtue and Efficacy of Christ manifest in their Ministry there may likewise be expected a special presence Divine in the Administration of Magistracy from the like manifestation of God in his Wisdom Power Goodness c. for the Well-fare of Societies as Mr. Ny observes and since Kings and Princes are an Oâ—dinance of God or Medium by which in a more special and peculiar way he communicates his Goodness to Christians according to the Style of the 13th of the Romans the great Sedes materâ—ae of Loyalty for he is the Minister of God to THEE for good it may well be thought profaneness and Sacrilege for men to bode and presume ill of the future Acting of any Heirs to Crowns and particularly as to their believing or practising any thing pernicious to their Realms What Roman Catholick Prince doth not deride Innocent the 3d under whom the Lateran Council was held for telling it in the Canon Law that the Papal Power is as much greater than the Imperial as the Sun is greater than the Moon and at the Marginal Note there for saying That the Papal Power exceeds the Imperial no less than 7744 There is a Prince whose Emblem is the Suâ— and whose Power exceeds the Papal in every ones account to more than that Proportion And is it not therefore but according to reason and common sense that we should believe that of all men in any Realm the Prince will be the latest brought to the belief of that Papal Power so categorically asserted by that Council That Kings may be Excommunicated by their own Bishops for not obeying the Pope and their Subjects in such Case be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance Do not all the French Kings notwithstanding that Council claim the liberty of so much freedom from the Papal Power that Popes can neither directly nor indirectly command or ordain any thing concerning Temporal Matters within their Dominions and that neither the French King nor his Realm nor his Officers can be Excommunicated or interdicted by the Pope nor his Subjects absolved from their Oath of Allegiance As I have therefore in my Writing to a Noble Lord one of his Majesty's Ministers who was barbarously accused by one of the Plot-Witnesses for being a Papist and designing to advance the Papal Power said that I would be the last man in England who would believe he could be a Papist meaning it as impossible that he could believe or practise any irreligionary Tenet of Popery I will account it more impossible that any Roman Catholick Prince now living in the World should favour the Usurpation of the Papal Power however any of the Popish Clergy or Layety in his Realms might perhaps be addicted to favour the same That great Affair of the Munster Pâ—ace wherein so many great Roman Catholick Crown'd Heads agreeing perhaps in the Lateran Council being a General one did yet certainly agree together in the Year 1648 for Lutheran and Calvinistick Princes and States and their Subjects quietly possessing forever their Properties both in their Religions and Estates hath afforded the World an important Instance of Heavens so far influencing the understandings of those Crown'd Heads that they thought not themselves obliged to put the Decree of that Council in practice by exterminating Hereticks but to the contrary And because the Affair of that Peace and the great Pacta Conventa therein for the effect aforesaid have been scarce more taken Notice of here than the Transactions in China and that the notification of the same may advance the measures of our Duty by Internal Communion and help to un-blunder some of our Nominal Protestants in their fancying it so necessary for the quiet of Christendom that Christian Princes and their Subjects should agree in the belief of the Speculative points of Religion I intend to take an opportunity to publish some Account of the same I account my having thus largely dilated on the Moral Offices as aforesaid hath tended to corroborate this my 8th Conclusion I am here conversants in the great Court of Conscience the Court whose Seat is in the Practical and not Speculative intellect and the great things of which it holds Plea are as Sanderson tells us Actus morales particulares proprii and therefore particular urging of Records against which lies no averment is not more pertinent in Courts of Law than of Moral Offices in this And moreover I observing in this Conjuncture when many mens zeal hath been so hot against the Speculative points of Popery which disturb not Civil Society that yet they have believed the more pernicious Tenet of it and would have practised the same viz. The founding Dominion in Grace and that tho they have been altogether neglectâ—ul of their Actus morales particulares proprii they have both presumed to judge dishonourably and rashly of the Actings of others and to trouble the World not only with their Anxiety about the Acts of Kings and Princes but the Actus Dei and his illuminating Princes understandings with the Heavenly Mysteries I have thought this discoursing of our Moral Offices as aforesaid the more a Propos and seasonable as tending to fortify the rationality of this 8th Conclusion by exposing the absurdity of a respective or conditional Loyalty a
41 I shall answer him that its weight hath in this present Conjuncture of 81 afforded Loyalty so great a Compensation by that late Act of Parliament there acknowledging and asserting the Right of the Succession c. and which begins thus viz. The Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Royal Power from God Almighty alone do succeed lineally thereunto according to the known Degrees of Proximity in Blood c. that as Historians tell us how in the dark barbarous times many hundreds of years since men repaired from all Countries to Ireland to learn the Liberal Arts and Sciences I shall say that they may now profitably go to Scotland to learn Loyalty and I doubt not but that Kingdom which is so notorious for its mortal or immortal hatred of Popery call it which you will and even of that very part of it which I call the Religionary one of it having thus by the Exterminium of that irreligionary part of it viz. That Dominion is founded in Grace taught us Loyalty in the establishing the Hereditary Lineal Succession may be as instrumental in giving Loyalty in the Body of the People here its temperamentum ad pondus as it was formerly in oppressing us with its weight as a gravamen and be an occasion of blessing our Land with such a joyful Conjuncture of time as ensued after King Iames's Succession as I have before mentioned and to the Consideration of which I shall return England that had formerly by reason of the uncertainty of the Succession being like the Erratica Delos a floating Island and that too in Seas of Blood and did then appear like it afterward fixed and blessed with a Pacifick and Oracular King and as strong a Foundation for the Hereditary Monarchy as could be wished was shortly after in danger of being again unfixed by the Outrage of the Gun-Powder Treason and the Principles that legitimated that practice being really believed and practised and an account of the practice of which Treason we have in the Statute of 3 o Iacobi c. 2. as likewise of the fiery Principles that animated the Actors to it in Thuanus and in King Iames his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 10. a general reference is made to the violent bloody Maxims that the Powder-Traytors maintained and by occasion whereof after the designed outrage against the Lineal Succession of the Prince and the Hereditary Monarchy being in danger while such bloody Principles and Maxims were not exterminated it was in ordinary prudence requisite to apply the extraordinary Remedy of the Oath of Allegiance to rivet that Fundamental Maxim of the Crown the stronger in Nature viz. That the King never dies And the Addition of those words in the Promissory Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. HIS or THEIR Persons THEIR Crown and Dignity and which words were not in the Oath of Supremacy was a plain indication of the intention of the Law-givers to tye Mens Souls to the Hereditary Monarchy in the Due and Legal Course of Descent And moreover with a prospect to mens having a conscientious regard to the King's Heirs and Successors the Fathers of our Church then probably in the Preface of the Collect in the Common-prayer for the Prince and the King's Children as overjoyed with the sight of King James 's being enriched with a most Royal Progeny as the words in the Act of the Recognition are did cause these words to be inserted Who art the Father of thine Elect and of their SEED The Preface to the Act requiring the Oath of Allegiance hath in it the expression of Loyalty and Allegiance unto the King's Majesty and the CROWN of England and mentions the design of the Gun-powder Treason as tending to the subversion of the whole State and therefore if in the ancient times of Popery and when the Pope was generally revered here as a 13th Apostle upon any emergent Papal Usurpations which gave just cause of apprehending future ones intended and particularly in the Case of the Pope's Mandates or Bulls which were called Gratiae expectativae or provisiones and pretendedly issued out of the Pope's pious care to see a Church provided of a Successor before it needed our Kings did think themselves obliged to provide Statutes against Provisors whereby the Ius patronatus was secured to them and their Subjects and by Statutes of Praemunire did as it were build Forts before the Enemies coming the Premuniment of the Hereditary Monarchy by the Oath of Allegiance was most necessary to prevent any Papal Gratiae expectativae of the Crown and the Popes impious care to provide a Successor to its Hereditary Rights The Premuniment of some Laws by others is no new thing nor yet a new word however some idle Criticks have accounted the word praemunire in our Statutes to be barbarous for Grotius in his De jure belli c. l. 2. c. 5. § 14. speaking of some Laws of the Iews saith In quarum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Hebraei loqâ—untur praemunimentum additae sunt leges caeterae and according to the sense of some taking praemunire for praemonere the constant premonition of Heavens great Monitor called Conscience and which is the pulse of the Soul and like the Pulse is Fidelis nuncius vitae aut mortis to warn men by this Oath to defend the Lineal Succession of the Crown was no less necessary and King Iames's setling the Premonition in the minds of his own Subjects was but naturally previous to his Premonition sent abroad to Foreign Princes and States And how far Harry the 7th's Statute by which no Person who should serve the King for the time being c. should therefore be attainted or impeached might induce the Government to secure the undoubted Rights of Succession by the Oath of Allegiance being framed as it was and rooting our Loyalty thereby the deeper into our Consciences and by the fear of our being justly impeached in the Court of Conscience in omnem eventum if we defended not those Rights of Succession is obvious to Consideration As I have thus in this Conclusion shewed that it was the Law-givers intention particularly in the Oath of Allegiance to oblige us to pay our Allegiance not only to the King but to his Heirs and Successors in the Legal Course of Descent so I might here further Ex superabundanti dilate on such intention being to secure the same without any respect to the Religion of such Heirs and Successors A Prince of such profound Learning and Observation as King Iames could not be ignorant of what hath been since by the Loyal Writers of the Succession so clearly and strongly asserted viz. That the Succession to the Crown is inseparably annext to the Proximity of Blood by the Laws of GOD and NATVRE and That Statute-Laws contrariant to those are null and void and That the Hereditary Monarchy was indisputably founded on inherent Birth-right according to the Style of the Act of Recognition
and not any Religionary Regeneration and That the accession of the Crown purgeth all Obstructions And that that Prince did by the Oath of Allegiance design only to twist the Band of our natural Allegiance the stronger an Allegiance tyed not to Princes Faith of the Cross but to their Crown appears throughout his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance He likewise in his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 9. doth with some warmth of words reflect on the Malice of some who impudently affirm That the Oath of Allegiance was devised for deceiving and entrapping of Papists in point of Conscience and saith That tho the House of Commons at the first framing of the Oath made it to contain That the Pope had no Power to excommunicate me which I caused them to reform only making it to conclude that no Excommunication of the Popes can warrant my Subjects to practise against my Person or State c. so careful was I that nothing should be contained in this Oath except the profession of Natural Allegiance and Civil and Temporal Obedience with a promise to resist to all contrary uncivil violence From thence it appears that what looked like the Religionary part of Popery namely the Pope's exercising a Spiritual Power against him or the Notion as Aquinas delivers it That there is Potestas in summo Pontifice puniendi omnes mortales ratione delicti he intended not to whet the sharpness of the Oath against but only against the Irreligionary part of Popery beforementioned and as to which he might rationally depend on the Zeal of any Heir or Successor tho Roman Catholick concurring with his therein He having in the foregoing Page mentioned how that Parliament that was to have been blown up made some new Laws against Papists saith So far hath my Heart and Government been from any bitterness as almost never one of those sharp Additions to the former Laws have ever yet been put in Execution The Execution of some Laws of pecuniary Mulcts on Papists who in that Conjuncture believed the irreligionary part of the Papal Power might seem to carry such a Face of Justice with it as the practice of the Custom-house doth pursuant to the 13th and 14th of Harry the 8th c. 4. Whereby any English man or born Subject of England who shall swear Obeysance or live as Subjects to any Foreign Prince shall pay Aliens Customs but 't is a madness to think of any Prince's abdicating his Temporal Power and swearing Temporal Obeysance to any one and no man but he who has Laesa principia can suppose that King Iames who avowed in his Premonition That no man in his time or the late Queens ever died for his Religion nor yet any Priests after their taking Orders beyond Sea without some other guilt in them than their bare coming home and who p. 16. of his Apology avows and maintains to his own knowledge that Queen Elizabeth never punished any Papists for Religion but that their punishment was ever extorted out of her hands against her will by their own mis-behaviour could ever intend that by the withdrawing of Allegiance from any of his Heirs in the Course of their Lineal Succession on the pretence of any of their Religionary Notions or other pretence or ground whatsoever there should be a solutio continui or political death inflicted on the Hereditary Monarchy by the preserving of which the lives of all the People of England could only be preserved He in his Premonition and Apology discharged the Moral Offices of honouring all men with relation to Papists his Subjects and judgeth some of them to be of quiet dispositions and good Subjects and in p. 3 4. 46 47 48. of his Apology he makes a difference between many of his Popish Subjects who retained in their hearts the print of their naturâ— l Duty to their Sovereign and those who were carried away with that Fanatical Zeal the Powder-Traytors were and useth the expression of quietly minded Papists and Papists tho peradventure zealous in their Religion yet otherwise civilly honest and good Subjects and acknowledgeth That his Mother altho she continued in that Religion wherein she was nourished yet was so far from being superstitious or jesuited therein that at his baptism tho he was baptized by a Popish Arch-Bishop she sent him word to forbear to use the spittle in his Baptism which was obeyed and in his Premonition speaking to Roman Catholick Princes and wishing them to search the Scriptures and ground their Faith upon their own certain knowledge and not on the Report of others since every man must be safe by his own Faith but leaving this to God his Merciful Providence in his due time he further wisheth them to imitate their Noble Predecessors who in the days of greatest blindness did divers times courageously oppose themselves to the encroaching Ambition of Popes and acknowledgeth That some of their Kingdoms have in all Ages maintained and without interruption enjoyed their liberty against the most ambitious Popes c. and saith That some of those Princes have constantly defended and maintained their lawful freedom to their immortal honour and concludes his Premonition with earnest Prayers to the Almighty for their prosperities and that after their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth they may live and Reign in Heaven with him forever This Learned King did sufficiently thereby Proclaim himself an Enemy to the Papal Tenet of founding Dominion in Grace as to those Foreign Popish Princes and could not therefore but more abhor the effects of it in the Case of his Hereditary Successors and he having judged that those Foreign Princes who owned the Religionary Tenets of Popery did yet constantly defend and maintain their lawful freedom from all Papal Vsurpations to their immortal honour and with so devout a Charity pray'd for their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth and that they may live and reign in Heaven afterward could not but suppose that any of his Heirs who might be of the Roman Catholick Communion would yet disown any Tenet of Popery that was irreligionary and would Exterminate all Papal Vsurpation and that they might here expect a happy Reign on Earth and a happier in Heaven hereafter leaving it to God to open their Eyes as aforesaid in matters Religionary and to render them fafe by their own Faith. King Iames in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance doth incidenter prop up the Justice of the Oath of Supremacy and in p. 49 50 51. doth insert 14 contrary Conclusions to all the Points and Articles of which the Oath of Supremacy consists to denote the absurdity of the opposing that Oath and which Conclusions tho many Clerical and Lay-Papists among his Subjects might maintain yet he might well think it Morally impossible for a Roman Catholick Prince here to do so and he gives a very good reason for the inducing any one so to judge of his measures viz. That those Conclusions were never concluded and defined by any compleat General Council
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
Philosophical Axioms and such as Non entis nulla sunt accidentia but it were a Solecism to deny that the Takers of these Oaths have become bound at that time to the Haeredes viventis who were then nondum vivi or that a Lessee is bound at the perfecting of his Lease to pay his Rent to the Heirs of the Lessor tho then not in nature If the Style of the King of the Romans can in an Elective Government and during the Emperors life be Ego N. Rex Romanorum futurus Imperator is not the next Heir of the Crown in an Hereditary Monarchy to be styled the certain and undoubted Heir of the Crown as long as he lives I find not the term of apparent joyned to Heir in any Books of Law or History but of our Country but God making Heirs and especially the Heirs of Crowns the inherent Birth-right by Proximity of Blood is the id ipsum to be regarded and if Haeres viventis QVATENVS such must be a Solecisâ—â— according to Sir W. I's insinuation then the Quotation usually brought out of Sir E. Coke by Writers of this Subject That the Heir apparent is Heir before the death of his Ancestor must be a Solecism too according to the known Rule in Logick of A quatenus ad omne c. I shall studiously avoid the embarassing the Question with needless Points of Law and do consider that iâ— in Courts of Law we are above the Apices verborum we are much more above them in the Court of Conscience And here I must say it that if in the interpretation of Princes savours and Concessions we are allowed to go by the Rule that in them Exuberantior fides requiritur and that therefore promissio in dignitate Regali factà aequipollet juramento and that a Sovereign Prince appealed to about the Rights of Subjects is Morally bound to proceed therein Vt DEVS qui soli veritati innititur and according to the Style of the Judges delegated by Sovereign Princes Solâ rei veritate inspectâ and throwing off the Formal Rules and Solemnities even of positive Laws themselves it may be well inferred that the Divine Law of Nature obliging us to Gratitude we are Morally bound in the preservations of the Lives and Rights of Princes tho we had not been sworn to them yet to regard them as God and not to obscure their Rights with Formalities and subtilties of Law and much less with tricks of words but especially in the interpretation of our Oaths to them to use the greatest simplicity therein that is sutable to the Law of Nations Nature and Christianity and to abhor what the Lawyers call a Subdola juris interpretatio and what may be called as the expression is in Iob a darkening of Council by words without knowledge and a gloss that corrupts the Text and is directly contrary to the Right of Kings and Princes for the securing of which and removing all doubts or strife about the same these Oaths were made And should any one tell me of the effect of that saying Nemo est haeres viventis in our common-Common-Law and that Land being given to A. for life and the remainder to the Heirs of B. and that A. dying while B. lives who hath at that time a Son that Son shall never have the Land because of Non est haeres viventis but it shall go back to the Donor if alive or if dead to his Heirs I will ask him if the Donor should be bound in Justice and Equity by a certain future time to Lett the Heirs of B. have the Land and had voluntarily sworn that B's Heirs should then have the same whether the Donor then could with a Salvo to Conscience keep the Son or other Heir from the same by Virtue of the Non est haeres viventis But we are to be tender how we compare the Inheritances of private Persons with that of the Crown which is of a higher Nature and without a Metaphor differs from them Toto Coelo and is so much above them And how regardless were they then of the Birth-right of the oldest Monarchy in the World and particularly of the present Glorious Royal Line that would not allow it the Privilege of being plainly understood as they do to private Inheritances and as to which William the Conqueror in that part of his Charter to London is allowed to speak intelligibly enough viz. And I wyll that ich Child be his Faders Eyer But I am weary of this Wild-goose chace of the Haeres viventis among old Books and my pointing back any one to my 3d and 5th Conclusions may save my labour of speaking here much more of it It is sufficiently set forth in the third in what sense the words of Oaths are to be taken and where I mentioned Ames saying That they are regularly to be taken in that sense that the words have in the COMMON use of men And to this purpose we are well told by Vaughan in Shepbard and Gosnald's Case That were the penning of a Statute is dubious long usage is a just Medium to expound it by for jus norma loquendi is governed by usage and the meaning of things spoke or writ must be as it hath constantly been received to be by common acceptation But I have shewed the word Heir to be no doubtful word and as I have mentioned it to be a word that the Glory and Power of our Saviour is expressed by I may add that our Noble Privilege as we are Christians being so often represented in Scripture by the word Heirs c. we are Morally bound to guard the word from the Assault of any new interpretation that would outrage it with doubt and ambiguity I have shewed that as our Oath is part of a Statute-Law if there could be any doubt of it the Iudges are to interpret it and our Ancestors were so far from trusting private men to interpret Statutes that they have not allowed the Court Christian judicially interpret the very Statutes that concern the things there conusable And as some Papists do vainly sometime tell us That we by our Religion damn all our Popish Ancestors it may here with truth be said that any by finding out a new sense of the word Heirs do condemn the understandings of those and their Morals in not observing the Oath by the measures of that interpretation and I may as truly say that we venture on damning our selves by Perjury if while we venture on a new sense of the Oaths both contrary to the common sense of the words and of the Imposer we do not particularly take the Oaths with our Protestation of that new sense and much more if reserving that new sense in our minds we shall further in one of these Oaths viz. That of Allegiance declare That we have sworn every thing therein according to the PLAIN and COMMON sense and VNDERSTANDING of the same words without ANY Equivocation or Mental Evasion or secret Reservation
whatsoever It is a certain Rule about Oaths That Iuramentum non extenditur ad ea de quibus cogitatum non est and so is this other viz. Non licet nobis interpretatione taciâ—â comminisci conditiones nisi quae vel publico jure receptae sunt vel ex re ipsa aut verbis quibusdam manifestè colliguntur and I may add another That Minimè mutanda sunt quae interpretationem certam semper habuerunt But as it hath appeared to all a superfluous thing ever to have the Judges consulted about any being Heirs to the King in his life-time and wherein there is no Dignus vindice nodus so likewise tho Contra captiones ex actu ambiguo nascentes remedio est protestatio quae declaratione intentionis actum madificatur jusque in posterum competens conservat yet no man was ever found so ridiculous as to make any Protestation at the time of his taking these Oaths concerning this new sense of the word Heirs and what is a greater reflection on our Excluders as to their Non-observance of the Promissory Clause relating to the King's Heirs is that the Excluders were embarqued in their Exclusion and half-Sea over in their prosecution of it and had thrown away their Compass of the common sense of the Oaths before the new one of Haeres viventis was found or heard of an interpretation that I believe the very Author of the Sheriffs Case would have held scandalous and which indeed amounts not to so much as a Scruple of Conscience or to more than a Quirk of Law. It hath long been the Custom of Spain not to make any men Iudges who have been Advocates as supposing that their straining the Law as Practitioners for their Clients might make them the less Candid in their Judgment of the Law on the Tribunal but the truth is the giving Judgment in the Court of Conscience that this new-found interpretation of the word Heirs would in that Court indemnify the Takers of the Oaths may well seem unworthy of the dignity of any Iudge or Counsellor or conscientious Attorney and any one of those whom the old Comaedian calls the Leguleiorum faeces decemdrachmariâ— not wholly steer'd by Trick As great a Iudge in that Court as ever our Nation or perhaps Christendom bred I mean our Bishop Sanderson having in his 2d Lecture of Oaths said That we become guilty of the hainous Crime of Perjury if a milder interpretation of an Oath chance to deceive us doth well mind us of the profitable Rule which in doubtful matters commands the choice of the safer part And thus the Casuists generally giving us that Rule that in all doubtful matters we are to incline to the safer side and that therein 't is safer to think a thing to be Sin than not and in order to the great EXCLVSION of Perjury telling us That Cum de ancipiti perjurio in futurum quaeritur illa est benignior sententia quae Conscientiae tutior atque ita quae crimen interpretatur ut excludat and that when ever we recede from the literal sense of an Oath to the intention of the Law-giver we ought to be very sure of that intention if we will be saâ—e from the danger of Perjury I think that new interpretation so clearly contrary both to the literal sense of the Oath and the intention of the Law-giver as I have shewn was a very unsafe trick for men to put upon their Consciences But as the word Heir is a plain word so it is likewise as plain that some men by the Haeres viventis would put a Trick on the State for let any one go to dissect all the meaning that can be in the Haeres viventis in plain English and it will be neither better nor worse than to make the sense of the Imposer of the Oaths be that men should observe the Promissory Clauses relating to the King's Heirs and Successors only on the terms of the Objection of Rebus sic stantibus which I have before mentioned and fully answered Nor can any men evade their being by the Oaths obliged to defend the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and thus prop up such their new interpretation of Heirs by Virtue of the expired Statute of the 13th of Elizabeth which some have raised such dust with that made it Treason to affirm That the Laws and Statutes do not bind the Right of the Crown and its Descent Limitation Inheritance or Governance It is not an expired Statute nor any one in being can make the Obligation of our Oaths to the King's Heirs and Successors to expire We were in Conscience and by the Law which is by some termed Communis sponsio Regni obliged before our Oaths taken to defend the Rights of the King's Heirs and Successors in all just ways but if any men should be so vain as to think that we were not before obliged to them on the account of the Hereditary Monarchy yet it is most certain that an Oath doth often induce an Obligation where there was none before and we are not now considering what WAS Treason but what IS Perjury An Act of Parliament may inflict the Vltimum supplicium on that which perhaps is not Malum in se as for example The Exportation of Wooll tho when we have a glut of it nay by the 28th of Harry the 8th c. 7. touching the Succession of the Crown the not taking of the contrary Oaths is made Treason But I need not here say more than that if any in the 13th Year of Queen Elizabeth had took the Oath of Supremacy enjoyned in the first Year of her Reign and did not observe the Promissory Clause therein they did offend God and their Consciences thereby But I have mentioned it that Arch-Bishop Hutton notwithstanding that 13th of Elizabeth made it a Praemunire to speak of any Person being her Heir and Successor except the same were the natural Issue of her Body did publickly in his Sermon before her discharge that Promissory part of the Oath by asserting King Iames his Right to succeed her and was publickly by her thanked for it On the whole matter we are not bound by these Oaths to look backward on other mens actings but to look forward on our own Enough has been said of too much that was done to oppose King Iames's Succession and of the necessity of the Oath of Allâ—giance to secure England to the Royal Line and by it and the providing of the fortius vinculum on the emergency of the Gun-powder Treason was but sutable to the general prudence of all States and the expression of Allegiance to be paid to the King's Heirs and Successors when Kings and Queens of this Realm which was in some former Oaths was not in this necessary nor yet in the Oath of Supremacy because of the great Fundamental Clause in both before mentioned viz. The King IS the only Supreme Governor c. he IS ONLY Supreme and so none co-ordinate or equal to
of his Mind that he would never consent to any such thing must necessarily appear to the considerate a Scruple fit to be thrown off Much more then must it appear to such to have been a vile Scruple to have fancied it lawful to pronounce men Enemies to the Kingdom because they so loyally defended the Hereditary Monarchy according to their Oaths in that HOT Conjuncture wherein the Air of mens fancies was so generally infected And as in any long Intervals of extreme hot or cold weather not to participate with the generality of mens bodies in some sensible effects of it would argue somewhat of distemper in ones Constitution so in the late heat of the Populace against Popery it was inconsistent with the soundness of Loyalty not some way to partake of the effects of that heat and as I have sometimes perhaps too much with many other Loyal Persons done I remember to have read it somewhere in a Print full of Wit and Loyalty said with gayety of humour to this purpose viz. That while a whole Nation was drunk meaning I suppose intoxicated with the belief of Witnesses telling incredible things and the Populace being thereupon drunk with Anger and Rage against the Persons of the Papists it was to little purpose for any one man to be sober The Notions that men had of a Plot were very various Some then were so far gone in Credulity as like the Fool that Solomon saith believeth every word they were resolved to believe every thing the Witnesses had said or would say The Loyal generally acquiesced in the Notification of it as published by the Government and thereby discharged part of the Moral Obligations of the Oaths I have discoursed of whereby they were to defend all the RIGHTS and Privileges belonging to the King his Heirs c. and one of those Rights and Privileges is what is allowed by the Law of Nations to all Sovereign Princes namely To have faith given to their publick attestation of any Fact. Yet Religion allowing men the use of the judicium discretionis about the sense and importance of the Writ divinely inspired they modestly employed their Discretion in considering what by the Dii nominales was published and if any thing therein seemed above their reason and not contrary to it their faith rested therein But the Loyal soon found that the fears and jealousies of Popery began more and more to turn into fears and jealousies relating to the Witnesses Veracity and they could not without a profound horror and astonishment reflect on the intoxication of a gaeat Body of Men believing some incarnate Devils in accusing one that had appeared to Christendom as great a Saint of her Sex as the steady practice of all Moral Vertues glorifying a heavenly mind on Earth could render her and who with such a Character must shine as a Star in the History of the Age. That many of the Popish Clergy about that time vainly endeavoured to have their Religion Paramount and had hopes to get their Lands again none will think impossible who have since seen some of our Schismatical Pastors so infatuated as to think it practicable for them again to thrive by their old Religion-Trade And that such particular Persons as were by the late Earl of Clarendon in his Book against Cressy printed in the Year 1673. remarked for the petulant and unruly Spirit that swâ—yed too much among them might continue in the year 1673. no wise man doubted for the said Earl there said The wisest and soberest Catholicks of England did all they could to restrain that petulant and unruly Spirit Many sagacious Protestants who knew the irreligious Principles that the Iesuits Writings swarmed with were apt to fear that there were then endeavours to have some of them practised by some ill men who were Bigots or Paupers and whom necessity might prompt to be mercâ—nary in making disorders in the State. The Iudicious and Learned Bishop Morly was observed then to have some Notion or Idea of a Popish Plot peculiar to himself And as then many had their various Conceptions of the noised Plot so many loyal and serious thinking Persons supposing it to be very unreasonable and barbarous to involve the whole Body of a Religion in the guilt of some particular Persons and on any pretence to bereave them of that freedom in the profession of their Religion that both the Law of the Land and of God allowed them did employ their thoughts and fancies for the reclaiming the Age from the humour of severity then shewed to the Persons of Papists in general The Earl of Anglesy one of his Majesties Great Ministers publickly moved him in the hot Conjuncture to release all Papists and even Priests out of Prison who were not charged with any thing of a Plot. And the Disloyalty of many Nominal Protestants then appearing in their many published Prints it seemed very horrid to all ingenious men that the lives and liberties of Loyal innocent Papists should be sacrificed to feed the humours or appetites of any Beasts of Prey in the Ark of the Protestant Church I speak with Allusion to those thousands of harmless Sheep in Noahs Ark employed in feeding about 20 pair of Carnivorous Beasts there I thank God that while I was a sharer With many of the Loyal in the hatred of the Irreligionary Principles formerly maintained by the Court of Rome and many of its Churchmen and particularly of those of the Iesuits which that Court hath lately disclaimed I have likewise shared with them in the Disclaiming of hatred or enmity to any mens Persons whether Iesuits or Iesuited Protestants and I desire to live no longer than I shall with the most perfect hatred abhor the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace and endeavour to perswade all pretended Protestants but real half-Papists so to hate the same but likewise with a perfect Love to love the Persons of their Brethren-Papists And it is with Justice to be by all men to our Popish fellow-Subjects acknowledged that whatever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of or of any ambitious design of making too great a Figure in the internal Government of the Nation yet that the deportment of the generality of them hath of late appeared with such a face not only of Loyalty but Modesty and Complaisance with his Majesties measures in employing the hands and heads of Protestants of the Church of England in the Management of the great matters of State as is necessarily attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion and the rather for that we have seen at the same time many Factious Anti-Papists to have made a greater Figure in the internal Government of the Kingdom than ever any Papists did in the Reigns of King Iames and the Royal Martyr and to have thereby given disturbance both to the External Government and the Hereditary Monarchy I did observe for some Considerable time after the Plot-epoche somewhat of a becoming Humanity and Gentleness in many Anti-Papists relating
only attacked and whereby you have that fastness where one-a-brest can keep down a Multitude is power Your affability and good Nature that endear you to so many is power and makes the hearts of men to be your Pyramids And all these sorts of power in you which make every party wish you to be theirs make up so bright a beauty in your mind as may well cause jealousie in that party that by loving you think they have Right to be again beloved by you I mean the English Protestants who court you and to whom you have so long engaged your self and especially when they shall find their Rivals boast of the kindness you have for them and that too at such a time as this when the Protestants seem to have the concern of one that is playing his last stake and which only can make him fetch back all he has lost a time when any one who pretends to a cold harmless neutrality doth really intend an exulcerated hatred a time wherein he that is not with us is against us however it may have hapned that in some lazy conjunctures when Papists and Protestants were half asleep both here and in the Neighbouring Continent that then he that was not against us was with us a time cum non de terminis sed de totâ possessione agitur A time wherein as in that of the tempest that happen'd to the Ship that carried Iona among the heathen Mariners we see almost all namely the Papists calling on their God and the Church of England likewise and the dissenters in the several persuasions on theirs with this difference that no man is now asleep but all in it are waking some at work to save the Ship and others to bore holes in it as if they were concerned to have it cast away as being not owners in it and as if they had secured their own merchandize in it which they purchased by the money they took up at Bottomry from Rome or its agents and knew how to secure themselves in the Cock-boat We have had dull and lazy conjunctures of timeâ—heretofore insomuch that many years ago a Divine seemed to begin a Sermon on the Gun-powder Treason day before a great Academick audience as it were yawning and in his sleep with these words Conspiracies if not prevented are rather dangerous then otherwise And thus the ingenious Comedy tells us of a Hero that as he was in the height of his passion with the greatest zeal making Love instantly dropt down into a deep sleep but 't is no time for yawning when the Earth begins to yawn under us And tho times have been heretofore influencing the Protestant cause like the Sun in March that could only raise the vapors of Popery in the body of the Nation and not dissipate them 't is now supposed to be otherwise and as I have heard that the Earl of Hallifax in his Speech in the house of Lords having spoken of his hatred to Popery excellently well added somewhat to this effect And we may now exterminate it if we will. And therefore with that now I think the ecce nunc tempus acceptabile festina salvare may be applyed to the Kingdom And if as the School-men tell us Angels may dance upon the point of a Needle we may imagine many both good and bad ones dancing on this point of time 't is on this moment the Nations eternity depends Every one now is as good a Conjurer as Friar Bacon and can make a Brazen head say time is by which words I believe the learned Roger Bacon meant only that in the vessel of Brass wherein the exquisite chymical preparations for the birth of gold were laboured the nick of opportunity was to be watched under pain of the loss of all the fire and Materials and art and labour according to that of Petrus Bongus Ibi est operis perfectio aut annihilatio quoniam ipsa die immò horâ oriuntur elementa simplicia depurata quae egent statim compositione antequam volent abigne as I find him cited by Brown for it in his vulgar errors where he further saith Now letting slip this critical opportunity he missed the intended Treasure which had he obtained he might have made out the tradition of making a brazen wall about England that is the most powerful defence and strongest fortification which Gold could have effected My Lord my opinion was askt in a letter from a very honest Gentleman and much your Lordships Servant Whether you should not do your self and your Religion a greatdeal of Right by printing in this juncture some of the excellent and large discourses you have formerly writ against Popery and the substance of the answer I gave him was to this effect That tho I would not diswade your Lordships now publishing any thing relating to the tenets of that pretended Religion that might import Protestants to understand more cleerly then they did in which way they have been advantaged by the Bishop of Lincoln's Book against Popery yet that I thought the great bulk of Popery could no more be destroyed by notions and arguments then a capital Ship could be sunk with bullets for that supposing they did all light between wind and water the Papists have thousands of Plugs ready to be clapt in there and thousands of men in that great vessel ready to apply them and tho I thought there was a time for writing of Books it was when there was a time for reading them that is when people had time to read them but that now the most curious works of Whiteakers and Iewels and Rainoldses would be no more regarded then attempts of shewing the longitude would be to Navigators while under the attack of a Fire-ship as I said or while they were making their way through the body of an Enemies Fleet. I know that 't is said to be an old Sybilline Prophecy that Antichrist shall be destroyed by paper viz. Antichristum lino periturum but alas that way is now as insignificant in the case as to think that the dominion of the Sea can be built up by Seldens Mare Clausum or destroyed by Grotius his Mare Liberum or any way but by thundring Legions in powerful fleers Indeed our paper pellets that the press since its licence hath shot against Popery I mean the innumerable little sheet-pamphlets that have come out against it may find time to be read and to give us diversion but the Papists looking on their Church as a great First-Rate Mann'd with Popes and Emperors and Princes and Fathers and Councels and innumerable Souls there embarqued in the Sea of time for the great Voyage of Eternity do account our little Protestant honest Sheet-authors firing at them daily to be only like the Yacht-Fan Fan's attacking De Ruyter But my Lord there is another Reason why a person of your Lordships great Power and Abilities should not at this time embarrase your self with writing No not those defences of your
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-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