not a syllable of advice or exhortation to Subjects to perswade them to a modest and peaceable behaviour towards their Superiours No though Kings and men of Courtly breeding and great Quality have or ought to have so much manners and civility as to condescend to their Inferiours and if one have got a cold to force them to be cover'd or if a man have an antipathy against any thing to be so civil as to refrain the use of it however not to press it upon the Person with many more pretty resemblances though as you inform us there is no end of similitudes and as you employ them no use neither But alas such mannerliness as this is not to be expected from men of private condition and breeding and if His Majesty be pleased to stand cap in hand to a high-shoon Clown though he have a cold who can blame the Boor if he have not so much Courtship and Ceremony as graciously to desire his worship to put on The Common People are to be pardoned their rudeness for their want of education and if at any time they behave themselves stubbornly and sawcily to their Superiours they will out of discretion connive at their infirmities and out of common humanity yield to their follies But no wise Prince will ever by unnecessary impositions disoblige his good Subjects and force them to rebellious practices for a trifle or an uncivil word And what a lump of History have you here presented to Kings to terrifie them from making too bold and being too sawcy with their people Pag. 244 5 6 And if we take away some simpering phrases and timorous introductions your Collection will afford as good Precedents for Rebellion and King-killing as any we meet with in the writings of J. M. in defence of the Rebellion and the Murther of the King But that which most of all betrayes the wretchedness of your design is that you throughout either misreport or equivocate so elaborately that you cannot but be fully convinced within your self that you have forged Relations to no other purpose than to represent the weakness of Government and the feasibleness of Rebellion as we shall have occasion to examine hereafter in the mean while be your idle stories never so false they are much more impertinent For what if wise Kings be taught by these examples to condescend to their Inferiours and to connive at the infirmities i. e. seditious spirits of their people for fear of daggers and revolts What if it be as dangerous for a Prince to take a man by the tongue as a Bear by the tooth What if bloody wars have been occasion'd by the difference of an accent or a syllable And a letter in the name of Beans and Goats have set a whole Province together by the ears And what if Empires have been shipwrackt upon a new word as Mariners split upon a rock This only proves that it is an unwise and impolitick attempt to hazard a Crown out of fondness to an affected word And though it may be an usurpation upon the Peoples Liberties yet certainly it is none upon their Consciences if the Sovereign Authority will take upon it self to define the signification of an uncertain and ambiguous phrase And that is the parallel of our Case viz. That whereas these men have from time to time and at all times raised such prodigious yells and clamours of Conscience against the determination of significant Ceremonies 't is enough to shew that their signification is of the very same use and nature with that of words so that people have no more ground of offence upon the score of Conscience against that than this And yet no mans Conscience howsoever tender or peevish can ever pretend to be aggrieved with defining the signification of a doubtful word and if it cannot then has he as little ground upon that pretence to complain of the determination of any significant Ceremony Though if the change of words may be of dangerous consequence to the Government of the State that is a consideration of another nature and that concerns not my Analogy between words and symbols that are in this debate to be consider'd only as matters of Conscience and not of Policy So that if a new and unpresidented word do not endanger the shipwracking of a mans Conscience that is enough to evince that neither is a new Ceremony a more splitting rock than a new word and is this may prove mischievous upon other scores viz. that it would render all Laws uncertain that it would defeat the Act of Oblivion that it would spoil the Declaration of Indulgence to tender Consciences and throw all back again into Anarchy and Rebellion Yet what is all this to the signification of Ceremonies that may be alter'd ten thousand different ways without making any alteration of the Laws So that howsoever impracticable and of whatsoever ill consequence the imposition of words may sometimes prove there is not the least shadow of ground from thence to conclude as you do that of Ceremonies to be no less pernicious And this I hope is enough to prove that you have been sufficiently impertinent though how learnedly you have been solsuppose needs no proof And yet after all this astonishment if it were to any purpose this very power of defining and circumscribing the signification of words that you fancy so splitting a rock has ever been used and chalenged by all Law-givers as an essential ingredient of the Soveraign Power in that without it it is very difficult if not altogether impossible to avoid ambiguity of Laws A man of your humour that had a mind to be learnedly impertinent might heap up innumerable instances to this purpose But if you have either will or leasure to consult the Civil Law Lib. 50 Digest Tit. 16. de verborum significatione you will there meet with three or four hundred particular examples I shall only trouble you that are or may be an English Senator with two or three out of our own Laws The first occurrs in an Act of Parliament Primo Eliz. for the Uniformity of Common-Prayer and Service in the Church and administration of Sacraments where it being enacted that the Book of Common-Prayer and no other form shall be used at all open Prayer the Act it self fixes and defines the meaning of open Prayer viz. that by it is meant that Prayer which is for others to come unto or hear either in common Churches or private Chappels or Oratories commonly call'd the service of the Church And in another Act as I take it of the same year it is positively defined that no matter or cause shall from that time forward be adjudged Heresie but only such as heretofore have been adjudged to be Heresie by the Authority of the Canonical Scriptures or by the first four general Councils or by any other general Council where the same has been declared Heresie by the express and plain words of the said Canonical scriptures or such as hereafter
Antisacraments to the prejudice of Christs own true Sacraments than which worse need not be said of the most Antichristian Church in the World And thus the Commissioners of the Worcester-house Conference obstructed his Majesties felicity and the Nations settlement because they thought it reasonable and convenient to stick to the present establishments of the Church till some proof of their unlawfulness was produced and because when none could be produc'd they would not condescend to that temper and moderation as to change all her Constitutions without any other reasonable Motive than to salve the reputation of the Presbyterians they must be branded for cunning and revengeful men And good reason too because the Non-conformists demand nothing but what is so far from doing us any harm that it would only make us better And yet all their demands are against our legal Establishments of which your worship is so enamour'd And as for the Act of Uniformity and that superfoetation of Acts that followed after it though they were all establish'd by Law yet were they procured by trinkling nay by Bishops trinkling and for that reason serve only to expose the Wisdome of King and Parliament to after Ages Another special commendation of the Church of England as by Law establish'd that its Legal Establishments are so foolish as to be a perpetual Testimony of the Law-makers Folly Find me out a Fanatique in Hungary Transylvania Bohemia Scotland Geneva Pin-makers Hall J. O's Congregation that may not boast his deep respect and reverence to the Church of England upon as good Terms as your self So that it is plain here you did but Personam induere of an honest Zealot for say what you will you must and shall know that all Zealots are not Rogues and Cut-throats And after all your counterfeit reverence you mean no body else by this particular Bran than the Bishops and the Clergy of the Church of England as 't is by Law establish'd Upon them it is that you dispense forth this sweet Character with so much bounty and in the very spirit of meekness And in the first place Arch-bishop Laud cannot lye quiet in his Grave but after a great many fair and foul words as consistent with themselves as the rest of your Book you are pleased at length to score all the miscarriages of the late Kings Reign and all the miseries of the late War upon his head and Conscience I suppose because he was a man so learned so pious so wise so studious to do both God and his Majesty good service you thought he was better able to bear it than some others whose reputation was not altogether so clear and unquestionable But poor Bishop Laud this is hard measure that when never any man's Innocence clear'd it self so gallantly from all the assaults of Malice and Calumny his venerable ashes should be thus insolently arraign'd by every bold and Fanatique Blockhead For notwithstanding the vigour and activity of his mind his zeal for the settlement and prosperity of the Church his care to reduce Religion to sober and justifiable Principles his Interest in the Kings favour and Counsels yet was he so wise and so pious in the conduct of all his affairs that when he was devested of all Power and Protection when he was exposed to the violence and outrage of the people when Calumny was let loose upon him when he was treated not only without mercy but justice and common civility when Libels and Petitions against him were rewarded when tumults and clamours were invited when he was even overwhelm'd with the number of Slanders Jealousies and Accusations when he was prosecuted by some with the utmost Fraud and Artifice by others with an unheard of malice and violence when his Murther was decreed with an absolute Doom before his Trial when his impeachment was drawn up in the most heinous and aggravating terms when the Evidence was managed with an unusual vehemence and animosity yet after all this his Innocence appear'd so clear and his Integrity so unblemish'd that not only his Judges but his very enemies were convinced and ashamed of their own Accusations For when the particular Articles of his Charge came to be examined they proved after the expence of a great deal of time and wit and eloquence so trifling and silly that they durst not venture to proceed any farther against him in way of legal Tryal and so were forced to condemn him and he was the first and last that was ever so condemned by Ordinance of Parliament without any other Formality than bringing him once to the Commons Bar for fashion sake that he might not be condemn'd unseen as he was unhear'd but condemn'd he was for no other Crime than that of cumulative Treason that is what you please and by this Impudence they might take away the life of any innocent man if either they hated him or he liked not them But the Remarque that his Historian has made upon the review of all their proceedings against him is so just and observable that all Circumstances consider'd it will appear the highest Act of Malice and Impudence that ever was before committed for since it has been outdone by any Age and under any Government in the World Viz. That as the predominant Party in the united Provinces to bring about their ends in the death of Barnevelt subverted all those fundamental Laws of the Belgick Liberty for maintenance whereof they took up Arms against Philip the second So the Contrivers of this mischief had violated all the fundamental Laws of the English Government for maintenance whereof they had pretended to take up Arms against the King It was said they a fundamental Law of the English Government and the first Article in the Magna Charta that the Church of England shall be free and shall have all her whole Rights and Priviledges inviolable Yet to make way unto the condemnation of this innocent man the Bishops must be voted out of their place in Parliament which most of them have held far longer in their Predecessors than any of our noble Families in their Progenitors and if the Lords refuse to give way unto it as at first they did the people must come down to the house in multitudes and cry No Bishops no Bishops at the Parliament doors till by the Terrour of the Tumults they extort it from them It is a fundamental Law of the English Liberty That no Free-man shall be taken or imprisoned without cause shewn or be detained without being brought unto his answer in due form of Law Yet here we see a Free-man imprisoned ten whole weeks together before any charge was brought against him and kept in Prison three whole Years more before his general accusation was by them reduced unto particulars and for a Year almost detain'd close Prisoner without being brought unto his answer as the Law requires It is a fundamental Law of the English Government That no man be disseized of his Free-hold or Liberties but
Misdemeanours notwithstanding the Act of Indemnity and therefore if Ceremonies and Sibthorpianism were the Cause of the War the guilt of all that blood that was spilt in it must lie upon their heads and the King may bring them to Trial for all the Miseries they brought upon his Kingdoms for the Murther of his Father and the loss of an hundred thousand Subjects and all for Sibthorpianism and Laud. Is this your Gentleman's memory to remind his Majesty of things too old for an Act of Oblivion so old that if you would let them alone they would be forgotten of themselves without it And though you would oblige him as he is a Gentleman to forget that ever the Presbyterians rebelled against his Father and took away his Crown and Sovereignty to forget that ever the Independents beside that took away his Life to forget that they and all the other Sectaries join'd forces to expel himself out of his own Kingdoms and keep him in banishment for ever and that he was restored in spite of all their zeal and malice and lastly to forget that since the time of his Restauration none of them ever had the Grace to ask Forgiveness for their former Leasings or to give him any Assurance of their future Allegiance A man had need learn the Art of Gentlemans Memory to forget all these things that are so fresh in the minds of men but yet notwithstanding all this you your self do and would have him remember some old Gentlemen of those times that are still alive that were the cause of all our miseries that deserve to be brought to condign punishment and that his Majesty may at any time do it any thing in the Act of Oblivion and Indempnity notwithstanding And now upon review of all these stories that I have told you of former times you would as I take it have done much more wisely if you had altogether let them alone and minded your own business And thus far have I vindicated the wisdom and the honesty of the Clergy of all Ages from Noah's flood through all the four Empires quite down to the late Rebellion the fatal consequences whereof a wise man would have thought might have served as sea-marks to direct them to avoid the Rocks but the former Civil War it seems cannot make them wise nor his Majesties happy Return good-natured but they are still for running things up unto the same extremes So that by their behaviour ever since his Restauration they have given him no encouragement to steer by their Compass with a great many more sad stories that represent them as such fierce and cruel Beasts of prey such inhumane and hungry Canibals that one would expect to hear how they every where eat up their Parishoners Children as fast as the Presbyterians do the Race of Capons But these are no more than general words that any man may throw out against any man I against you or you against me or a third against us both and a fourth against him and so on eternally eternally in infinitum and therefore they signifie no more than all the rest and as little need as they deserve any Answer But beside these you have given us in some of their particular misdemeanours and them I shall a little consider and because it is time to have done run them off with all possible speed and brevity First then it has been observed that whensoever his Majesty hath had the most urgent occasions for Supply they have made it their business to trinkle with the Members of Parliament for obstructing it unless the King would buy it with a new Law against the Fanatiques And hence it is that the wisdom of his Majesty and the Parliament must be exposed to after Ages for such a superfetation of Acts c. But this concerns not me let the King and Parliament answer it as they will clear themselves from the imputation of folly and if they have no more wit than to be over-reached by being trinkled yet certainly they have more than to suffer you to call them fools for it for they tell me that none but fools expose their wisdom But pray how do they trinkle the King and the Members Do the Bishops play with him at Picquet in the Parliament House and give the sign to each other If they do they do it among themselves and then neither you nor I are privy to their under-hand dealings and their false play and so can give no competent account of the course of the Game At least I think it better becomes us both to leave these things to the Gamesters themselves and I am sure it is not done like a Gentleman that has had his breeding in the Ordinaries when he is no more than a By-stander and has not so much as a Bett at stake to raise quarrels among the Gamesters by throwing in his own impertinent jealousies and suspicions of foul play Had you gon but half a Crown with King and Parliament and then have given the sign when you spied the Bishops trinkling you might have done very honestly but yet very ungentily But when you were quite blown up long since by the Dignitary and have now nothing left to be cheated of and cannot have the least concern how the Game goes unless it be now and then to pick up a Barato or so for such an one as you I say to meddle is an insufferable piece of impudence and ill-breeding and had you done the same ill office between Gentlemen at an Ordinary as you have between the King Parliament and Bishops you would have been kick'd out of doors But as for my part I dare not touch any thing that is done within those walls though as for their behaviour out of the house I could never perceive but that they are very honest and wel-bred Gentlemen and you have nothing to object to the contrary but that they are a little uncivil to the Non-conformists in that they will not allow them the liberty of having their own Wills though they know how much their nature and constitution requires it Especially when they demand nothing that you know of but what is so far from doing us any harm that it would only make us better You know what they demand If you do you know more than themselves or at least more than they would ever yet declare This is but an idle thing still to give us your peremptory opinion of things in general without abetting it with some particular proof or instance If you had undertaken to tell us what alterations they do demand and then shewn that they would be so far from doing us any harm that they would only make us better you had done something to some purpose but otherwise you have only declared your own opinion as any confident man might have done as well as you and if he had he might as well have held his tongue too But now by the leave of your Insolence though
a Jest or a Quibble in its confutation You are a right Champion for the Fanatique Cause that can confute any Argument with face and confidence There is no disputing such an Adversary without an head-piece This is only tilting of foreheads where the hardest skull not the fullest must get the victory Away you trifling Wretch talk you no more of Ecclesiastical Policy and hereafter never pretend to any knowledge that pretends either to Reason or Modesty for had you any sense of the former you would never have been so silly as to be so seriously scared at such an innocent and undeniable proposition or any of the latter you could never have been so impudent as to bray forth such a confident and heinous censure against it as if it were notoriously evident without proof that it directly subverts all the Principles of Religion and Government And therefore I would fain know in good earnest what your meaning was in making your first onset upon this Grand Thesis If you intended its Confutation why have you not discharged so much as one semi-vowel of exception against it If you did not to what purpose is it to trouble your self and the world with its Quotation A man in my Opinion had as good altogether unless he be very idle keep his mouth shut as gape and yet say nothing If this be the Grand Thesis in comparison whereof the rest of my Assertions as you inform us are to be reckoned no better than sneaking Corollaries and if I bottom all the foundations of Government and Religion upon it and make it more necessary to the support of the World than the Pillars of the Earth or the eight Elephants one would think this if any thing should have been battered down with knocking and dead-doing Arguments and here if any where one would have expected you should have given an hot and fierce alarm and have drawn up all your squadrons of vowels mutes semi-vowels and liquids and by the next Gazet to have heard of a sorer and more dreadful battel than ever was fought in your Grammar-War or my Roman Empire Now after all this Threatning and Preparation what a disappointment must it be to the Readers and Spectators to see so proud an He that bore up so bravely and with such a manful Confidence come off with this soft and gentle Rebuke Verily and indeed now it is a naughty Proposition ay and all that Thou a Rat-Divine thou hast not the Wit and Learning of a Mouse when thou endeavour'st to bite thou canst not so much as nibble Thou talk of Government of the Crowns and State of Princes to School Truant mind your Push-pin and con your eight parts of Speech and presume not hereafter to cavil at things that are above the capacity and concern of Boys and Girls and sucking-bottles And yet to the same purpose that is to none at all is that tedious train of Quotations that you bring in at the tail of this without passing any smarter remarque upon them than the same general censure of Malignancy though if they are chargeable there was no need of your Edition for they were in print before and therefore it is but sit you should be endited for a scandalous Plagiary to transcribe so much of my Book to no other purpose than only to make up 6 pages towards your full tale of 326. I believe it will be found against the Laws of the Stationers-hall for your Book-seller to print so much of another mans Copy after it is enter'd according to Order without his leave and consent and I hope M r Martyn will seek his remedy against the Assigns of John Calvin and Theodore Beza They are bold and sawcy fellows as it is the nature of every thing to be so that relates to Geneva But you and I will not concern our selves in their Controversies they know without our information as well as any Vermine in Christendom how to manage their own Affairs by the intrigues and mysteries of their own Trade At least it more concerns me to keep close to your self for they tell me that if a man will keep continually running after a mad dog it is the only way to secure himself from being bitten Tell me therefore quickly in answer to the Grand Thesis do you seriously believe that his Majesty has no Power in matters of Religion What then becomes of all your Acts of Parliament against Popery ever since the Reformation nay what then becomes of the Declaration it self for Indulgence and Liberty of Conscience in which his Majesty declares that he therein only makes use of that Supreme Power in Ecclesiastical Matters which is not only inherent in the Crown but has been declared and recognized to be so by several Statutes and Acts of Parliament Beside do you not think it possible for men to create publique disturbances under pretences of Religion Was there never any Rebellion carried on by popular Zeal and Reformation Did you never hear of any men that set up Christs Standard in defiance to their Princes and that fought against his Person at least only to carry on the work of the Lord and that have murther'd and banisht Kings only to dethrone Antichrist and the Whore You so great a Traveller and did you never hear the Countrey people tell stories of the merry pranks of John of Leydon and the Anabaptists of Germany You so great an Historian and never read of any Kingdomes and Empires some time or other embroil'd or destroyed by Arts of Religion You would be an Historian indeed if you could but name any one Nation in the World whose Annals do not afford us variety of sad stories to this purpose And then after all this dare you be so confident as to declare it is absolutely unlawful and in all cases for any Prince to claim or exercise any Authority over Conscience or Religion If you dare not but allow a necessity of Coercion in some cases then after all your confidence you grant the truth and justifie the innocence of the Grand Thesis viz. That it is necessary to the Peace and Government of the World that the Supreme Magistrate of every Common-wealth should be vested with a Power to govern and conduct the Consciences of Subjects in affairs of Religion An Assertion so obvious and so harmless that never any People in the World had so little brains or so much forehead as to deny it to all Intents but only the salvage Anabaptists of Germany and they indeed claim'd an absolute exemption from the Civil Power for themselves and that only upon the priviledge of Saint-ship but then they equally cancell'd all Government and protested against all manner of Subjection either to Secular or Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction But excepting these inhumane Canibals this Grand Thesis that you suppose to be so grosly absurd that barely to name it is enough to expose the person that shall maintain it as an open enemy to God and Man is so granted and undoubted
of the minds of men from the Jurisdiction of Humane Power and so to confine their Government to the Empire of mere Conscience Now from this assertion that our secret thoughts are subject to Conscience only to infer that Conscience has no Power but only over our secret thoughts is a conclusion too absurd for you to make either in good earnest or through mere mistake This is your Answer if you are not satisfied with it you know my mind and my weapon Your last and lowdest hoop and hola is at my Censure of the Clause in the Act of Parliament quinto Eliz. and you make every where an horrid noise about it and I am consident you have in more than twenty places of your Book rended your throat against this presumption But be that as it will the aspersion you would fasten upon me from it is so silly that I am not at all concern'd to wipe it off however I have discoursed enough already to satisfie nay almost to surfeit any reasonable man and if that will not suffice you I am resolved I will not be impertinent to gratifie your Clownishness I will only challenge you and all your party of mankind to maintain That whoever enacts a Law with this Proviso that it shall not bind in Conscience enacts no Law For if it does not oblige that it obliges nothing Whether therefore the Clause were added by Cecil or by the Parliament I am not concern'd and though you should throw in the Queen and Convocation and all I care not I must and will declare they were all miserably out in their Divinity And as for what you intimate that I have endeavour'd to prove a whole Parliament Coxcombs that is Language rough enough for your Mouth For I express'd my self modestly enough and though I observed how manifestly through this mistake they abated the obligation of the whole Law yet I hope it is no Crime against the Privilege of any Protestant Parliament to suppose it fallible in any speculation of Divinity I know their meaning was that they did not intend to enjoyn that Fast upon a Religious Account but that was their Mistake in that all Laws Civil as well as Ecclesiastical equally oblige the Conscience so that no Law-giver can make a Law with an intention not to oblige that and though he do it is in vain in that his Laws are bound upon it by virtue of the Divine Command and not his own But they were then so amused and confounded by the Clamours of the Papists on one hand that Conscience was only subject to the Church and by the Puritans on the other that it is only subject to God that they durst scarce own the proper Obligation of their own Laws and so through mere Modesty clapt in this blind Proviso And now as for all these goodly slanders when they were first vented by J. O. they were little more than an unkindness to my single self and though it argued a fair deal of Considence in that precious man to load me so briskly with so many so great and so ungrounded Calumnies yet it was a sign that he had some little sense of humanity left that he could desist when his forgeries were so laid open as to leave the Rat no Craney of excuse or evasion But after such an ample discovery of his wretched Cheats and Leasings for you to stand in them with such a Brazen Brow is a palpable Affront both to the understanding and ingenuity of Mankind What soft and changeling sots must you suppose the people of England to be imposed upon and born down by such wrank and bold faced Impostures Did they all walk with their Legs scambling in and their hands dangling down you could not have more presumed upon their silliness than you have by going about to abuse their Credulity with such shameless and unpalliable Lyes The Title of your next Comedy is the Publick Conscience I suppose in imitation of the Publick Faith And here all your Plot too is borrowed from J. O. and the great subtilty of it lies no deeper than only in representing what I have determined in the Case of a doubting scrupulous and unsatisfied Conscience as if I had intended it of Conscience in general in all matters and as to all events This is pretty well for Legerdemain and cleaverly enough performed and the People have swallowed it with a glib and round Assurance that I have exhorted them to disgorge their Consciences instead of their Scruples and to renounce all Obligations of Vertue and Religion but what are tied upon them by the Laws of the Common-wealth and to know no other Rule or Measure of their Duty but the will and Pleasure of their Prince and when once the outcry is taken 't is to no purpose for me to plead that this is the very Divinity of the Leviathan that I have labour'd to oppose with greater Zeal and Vehemence than I have modern Orthodoxy and Fanaticism it self so as to prove and that I am confident past all Contradiction that those men who profess to own no obligations of Conscience but what are laid upon them by the Commands of their Governours own none at all and that without a sense of Duty to God it is impossible to bring any subject under a sense of Loyalty to his Prince But whoop and hola what is that to them if I contradict my self Now what should a modest man do in this case should I betake my self to your refuge of Dulness that when you have nothing else to reply appeal to the day of Judgment That indeed is a Trial I hope hereafter to stand by and it is comfort enough to support an upright man that then at least his integrity shall be for ever clear'd but alas I have too tender a sense of my present Reputation among good men to be willing that so great a Blot were there any way to wipe it off should lye so long upon my Innocence And therefore Sir you must pardon me for once if I dispense with a point of friendship and leave your credit at pawn to redeem my own For after you have given in this heinous Charge against me it is not in my power to salve both our Reputations If I am guilty I do confess it I am a very Secret one if I am not I will be so civil as to give you the Choice of your own Title The case then is plainly this that next to the Paganism of Symbolical and the Popery of Latine Ceremonies the two grand Pretences or rather excuses of Non-conformity are Scandal and an unsatisfied Conscience The first is the shelter of their Leaders who being at length ashamed of those Scruples and little Principles that scare the People though they themselves at first set them up to fray them away from the Communion of the Church of England pretend now to comply with them only out of good Nature and Condescension For they would not by any means be thought
shall be adjudged Heresie by the high Court of Parliament of this Realm with the assent of Clergy in their Convocation And within our own memory there have happened Cases in which the Parliament have ventured to define not only the signification of words but the nature of things as you know they determin'd not long since without advising with the Royal Society that Brandee belongs properly and formally to the specifick Essence of Spirits So that it seems this Power has sometimes been reduced to practice without throwing all into Rebellion and Anarchy and shaking the Crowns of Princes and reducing the World into a second Babel Though such an exorbitant and arbitrary exercise of it as was chalenged by your Presbyterian Long Parliament was enough to dissolve all Governments and break up all societies in the World For they had the impudence to impose such bold meanings upon words as flatly contradicted their common and customary signification Thus could they make such sentences to be just and legal as were not fit to pass into Precedent in the like cases that is to say such as themselves confess'd by their own provision to be unjust and illegal in that there can be no hurt or danger in lawful Prescriptions Thus could they make a new and unheard-of sort of Treason call'd cumulative Treason that is a great many no Treasons to make up a Treason Thus a Delinquent signified any man that they had a mind to cut off for his Loyalty and thus to make open preparations for Rebellion was to put the Kingdom into a posture of defence against all the Kings enemies whether foreign or domestick i. e. against the King himself and all his friends and Allies But the dismal Calamities and Earthquakes that followed thereupon were the Consequences of the abuse of this Power not of the Power it self and so all Power of what kind soever if stretch'd to the same degrees of Tyranny is as naturally productive of the same effects of Confusion And now after all these nice and stubborn speculations about the abstracted and metaphysical Idea of symbolicalness and after the Champions of your cause have for so long a time kept up this Ball or rather Bubble of Contention even from Cartwright down successively to the present Age you would like a cunning Rook turn the Tables upon us and charge us as the Aggressours in this ridiculous dispute i. e. after you have played the Children so long with this hard word that signifies nothing and now too late perceive your folly in raising such an inveterate and implacable War upon such a slender pretence you would just as you dealt with his late Majesty when you rebell'd against him lay the War at our doors and upbraid us as if we had made all this stir about this wretched trifle as if it were our Sir Solomons sword our dead-doing Tool wherewith we flatter our selves to have done so much execution upon the Puritan Cause and as if I my self had set up this hard word on purpose to be my Opponent And thus would you cunningly slide your own wooden Dagger into our hands when it is manifest that we are altogether on the defensive part and are so far from using any weapons of offence that we never so much as employed a Shield to ward off your Thrusts but have always put them by with neglect or a mere denial and have scorn'd and pityed your simplicity in laying at us so fiercely with such a wooden tool The Church of England was never so idlely employed as to concern it self to determine the nature of Symbolical Ceremonies whether it be Sacramental or not It has indeed defined the number of such Sacraments as are necessary to Salvation that is to say such as are instituted by Divine Authority as the perpetual Pledges and Symbols of the Christian Faith And if men have a mind to any more Sacraments they may for her have as many as they please provided they pretend not to Divine Institution And whereas you often insult upon some great Prelate that you say wrote a book of seven Sacraments though there was never any such book written he might if he had nothing else to do have written one of seven hundred for there is nothing in nature that may not in the Puritan notion be applied to a Sacramental use i. e. be appointed as a pledge and signification of something or other Keep then your impertinencies to your selves you shall not pin them upon our sleeves and when you have worn this fools Coat so long till you have worn it threadbare think not that we will then suffer you to put it upon our backs Neither tell me of setting up an hard word for my Opponent when it is your own scarcrow and withall such a despicable and woful pretence that at last I scorn'd to dispute against it I only despised its intolerable silliness and exposed it to the contempt of your own Herd It is below the seriousness of an argument And if it be an hard word that signifies nothing blame not me for mumbling and mousling it till I have made it contemptible for it is your own and you know I was so little fond of it that I offer'd to exchange it for Syncategorematical because it is more frightful by three or four syllables and rattles through the throat with a bigger and more terrible accent and any other hard word that sounds bravely and signifies nothing and that no body understands would serve the turn as well and I am content if you are hereafter to call them by common consent either flying Dragons or Usinulca's Keep your Goblin-nonsense to your selves we have nothing to do with it but to despise your folly And if it be Taplash as you call it it is of your own brewing and is both the first and the last running of your brains but hereafter let us hear no more of it for shame such thin and spiritless stuff as this as it is not worth keeping so it can never hold tilting And now upon review of this whole matter it is well worth our observation how the state of the question is changed with the state of affairs The controversie is not now as it has been heretofore between the holy Discipline and the establisht Government of the Church of England that contest has put an end to it self but whether men of rebellious spirits and Democratical Principles shall under counterfeit shews of tenderness of Conscience be suffer'd to work the Common People into a disaffection to the Government For it is notorious that the most zealous Agents and Patrons of the Cause are so far from being seriously scared with their own pretended scruples that they have given the world too many undeniable proofs of their being above the most avowed Principles of Justice and common honesty and withall that they have been and still are for any evidence they have given to the contrary the most vehement and implacable enemies to the present
is it not a sad thing that a well-bred and fashionable Gentleman that has frequented Ordinaries that has worn Perukes and Muffs and Pantaloons and was once Master of a Watch that has travell'd abroad and seen as many Men and Countries as the Famous Vertuosi Sorbier and Coriat that has heard the City Lyons roar that has staved and tail'd to the Bears of Bern that has eaten of the Race of Capons at Geneva that has past the Alps and seen all the Tredescin rarities and old stones of Italy that has sat in the Porphyrie Chair at Rome that can describe the method of the Election of Popes and tell stories of the tricks of Carnivals that has been employed in Embassies abroad and acquainted with Intrigues of State at home that has read Playes and Histories and Gazets that I say a Gentleman thus accomplisht and embellisht within and without and all over should ever live to that unhappy dotage as at last to dishonour his grey hairs and his venerable Age with such childish and impotent endeavours at wit and buffoonry Thus having coursed you through eleven beginnings from the Preface into the Ecclesiastical Polity from thence into the Defence from the Defence back again into the Preface from that into Bishop Bramhall anon into the Preface to the Ecclesiastical Polity and streight back again into the Bishops Preface and from thence away to Dr. Thorndike the Friendly Debate Mr. Hooker to Mr. Hales for 10 pages of Rithm to Ism thence to J. O's discourse of Evangelical Love and Unity from p. 127 to the end and then from page the first to page the 127 th and so backward and forward to the conflagration of London the burning of the Ships of Chatham St. Pauls Church and Diana's Temple Ben. Johnson Horace the 5 Chap. to the Galatians and the 5 Epist. to Marcellinus After all this I thought I might begin to expect a little rest and to hope that we need not despair that you began to design to conclude to begin to draw an end of beginning to begin as knowing that all raving fits usually end in a Lethargy and it began to succeed just according to my wishes when I heard all on the suddain Mr. Bayes good night But whether it is that some body has strewed Cow-itch in your Bed or that your Conscience is very restless or that you only slept dogs sleep immediately in the very next line I am awaked with good morrow Mr. Bayes and am teased as freshly for a certain Preface shewing what grounds there are of fears and jealousies of Popery as if this had been our first salute and we had never exchanged word before And here to borrow one of your Schemes of Speech it seems that England is no stranger to rumours of Popery it seems that it has been the Puritan Artifice ever since the Reformation to possess the People with these panick fears it seems the Church of England has perpetually been traduced by them as Popishly affected It seems I vindicate the Church from this aspersion by pregnant and undeniable instances of Religious Loyalty and Obedience it seems I have charged the Rebels as justly and undeniably with the direct contrary Principles and Practices It seems I do not recriminate any designs of Popery to the Non-conformists but charge them most righteously with a constant and boysterous opposition to the Church thereby creating dangerous disorders and disturbances to the State It seems Atheistical and Irreligious Caitifs out of a peculiar hatred and most exquisite malice to the Church and Church-men are never wanting to promote and abett these mischievous disorders It seems if crafty and sacrilegious Statesmen joyn in the Confederacy they are apt enough to run the Kingdom into such miserable necessities that there is no support of their interest without rapine and sacriledge It seems that if the Church of England should ever be hereby destroyed no other Religion can be establish'd in lieu of it but Popery because Fanaticism is so wild and untractable a thing that it is uncapable of any settlement upon any Principles It seems all this either is or for any thing you are able to oppose to it may be as true as Gospel and though it seems you dare not answer it because you cannot yet it seems you have the confidence to deny it all and confute it with abundance of censure and cavil and more it seems you could have done were it not for falling under the penalty of a certain Act of Parliament against spreading of false news even as you durst not answer what you had quoted out of my Eccles. Pol. for fear of bringing your self within the Statute of Treasonable Words Sweet Gentleman What a misfortune it is when a Godly Loyal tender Conscience bearing so much awful Reverence and soultry affection to the Supreme Magistrate should in all his Disputes so cross with Authority that he dares not speak out his mind plainly only for fear of being hang'd But were it not for the Statute against Treasonable Words you would make me an Example to all Generations But yet though you dare not Reply for fear of these sanguinary Laws against Treason yet you can do what is more serviceable to your purpose you can take occasion to raise calumny enough from my Discourse to render my Self and all the Clergy odious to all Interests within the Kings Dominions And first you begin with the King himself and discover that after all it was neither the Book-seller nor Geneva nor the Trouts nor the Sprats nor the Race of Capons nor Presbyterians nor Millecantons of Fanatiques nor B. Bramble nor Usinulca nor the Hobgoblins nor J. O. nor Non-conformity nor Hungary nor Transylvania nor Bohemia nor Poland nor Savoy nor France nor the Netherlands nor Denmark nor Sweden nor Scotland nor Germany but the King was the person aim'd at from the beginning And it now sufficiently detects my malice to His Majesty to stir up matter of such dangerous and seditious Discourse Though not above a page or two since he was abundantly assured and satisfied of my Loyalty and we were all three very good Friends and yet here you tell His Majesty nine times over how I bear an evil eye to him and his Government that I publish Manifesto's against his Indulgence that I make his proceedings odious c. by raising a publick and solemn Discourse through the whole Nation concerning a matter the most odious and dangerous that could be exposed When your Self and all your Readers both know that most mens heads were fill'd with these jealousies and all mens mouths with these Discourses before my Preface was publish'd or thought on and withall that I am so far from adding any encouragement to the fears and jealousies of the people that my only design was to shew that it was a thing impossible in it self ever to be brought about by any other means than the folly of the Nonconformists So that whatever designs the Popish
Party might at that or any other time have upon our Religion we had no great reason to apprehend any danger from their attempts were it not for that advantage that is given them by the giddy and incessant opposition of the Fanatique Faction to the Church of England So that it is manifest by this that you intended nothing but cavil and wrangling thus to charge me with stirring up this odious Discourse of Popery when as to that all the Nation are able to convict you of notorious falsehood and leasing and whether the Discourse of that occasion'd my Preface no body can know beside my self but this they all know that my Preface never occasion'd that Discourse And now after all it seems there was more danger than you or I dreamt of by that Alarm that the King and Parliament have taken upon this matter I know you and your Party will never acknowledge that my Preface was the cause of this new Act against Popery and yet you may do it much more safely than to make it the original of that publiok and solemn Discourse that run through the whole Nation upon this Argument in that the Act was enacted since my Preface and the Discourse was publique before it And now you would do well to charge the Parliament as you have done the Bishop for being enemies to the State in raising all this din and obloquy and disquieting His Majesties good Subjects with such fears when there was no danger But you are never concern'd either as to the truth or the ingenuity of your Cavils so they do but reflect some odium upon the Clergy and I have very good reason to believe that as much as you have magnified the Declaration for Indulgence and decryed all dangers and suspicions of Popery yet had you been a Member of this present Parliament you would have been as forward as he that was most so in remonstrating to the Declaration and voting for the Act. And now you see what reason you have given the Publique to have any great opinion of your Integrity Should I have prevaricated at this rate with the world have been so inconsistent in all my actions have thus cut and shuffled in all my words and have clapt on so many disguises and contradictory Apologies upon every thing I say I must confess I have not face enough to presume so confidently upon the dulness and simplicity of mankind as to flatter my self with any hopes of escaping without discovery and discrace every body has wit enough to see through such stupid and inartificial Leasings But had you been Solicitour-General to the High Court of Justice you could scarce have been more dexterous than you are at framing and aggravating Inditements out of nothing they were forced to amass together heaps of accusations to make up one cumulative crime but you can hang a man for his Courtship and extract Treason out of a Complement Thus because I suppose it possible for his Majesty to dye before the day of Judgment and then that some Prince may arise in after Ages endued with less Wisdome and by consequence possess'd with less kindness to the Church of England that is so admirably accommodated to the interest of the Crown beyond all other Churches in the World This say you is pretty plain dealing 't is to take the pillow from under his head you should have thought it better Courtship in a Divine to have said O King live for ever What a Miscreant am I sure I can be no less than another John Chastel or Ravillac What draw the Pillow from under my Princes head that is dispatch him by fraud or violence before the course of nature brings on the period of his dissolution Search the Villain his pockets are full of poyson'd Daggers and screwed Pistols for how else could he foretell that the King must one day dye unless he were resolved to fulfill his own Prophecie for otherwise if it please God the King may live for ever Does this Language become a Subject much less a Divine to his Prince O King you are mortal and must dye like other men Is not this to upbraid him with his Mortality and to beat down his esteem with the people by informing all the Nation that he is no more than a man At least is it civil or dutiful thus unseasonably to shew him his winding sheet and mind him of the day of Judgment to spoil the wit and cheerfulness of his Conversation by forcing him to baulk good jests for fear of an after-reckoning for idle and profane words This sufficiently detects your malice and ill intention to his Majesties Government for all your Sleights and Legerdemain to take this occasion altogether foreign and unseasonable to raise a publick and solemn discourse throughout the whole Nation concerning a matter the most odious and dangerous that could be exposed That no man can pass by a Book-sellers Stall but he must be minded of the Kings Mortality These are the marks and Characters of your displeasure against him whilst you were pleased to vouchsafe him your favour and countenance you were not wont to talk after this rate but now because he will not take up Arms upon your Becks and listen to your implacable and sanguinary Counsels and tear in pieces the sacred Act of Oblivion and Indemnity there is no remedy but dye he must whereas otherwise the complement had been O King live for ever This is almost as heavy an accusation as the rudeness you have upbraided me with against Queen Elizabeth when suddainly with undaunted Courage down goes your Gauntlet in her Majesties quarrel for though she were dead some years ago yet it seems she was much disobliged to be thought old and if any body call'd her so could not for her heart stay till the day of Judgment but must up and at 'em And therefore to revenge this Affront you have let fly at me seven pages of Latin and English which had you rendred into Italian or Spanish might as well have revenged King John of the Pope and Scanderbeg of the great Turk for they concern us all alike But certainly never were any Princes wont to be thus irreverently treated by their Subjects heretofore as to have the least suggestion whisper'd either of their Age or their Mortality And yet you are not content to bring me into disfavour with his Majesty and Queen Elizabeth but you must expose me to the displeasure of the Privy Council and make bate between the Civil and Ecclesiastical Politicians For really he doth speak of King and Counsellors at such a rate and describe and characterize some men so whomsoever he intends that though I know there are no such I dare not touch it is too hazardous You tell us I remember upon another occasion that every similitude must have if not all yet some likeness that is to say every likeness must have some likeness though it does not follow that if it must have some
began from some sparkles that flew out from a late Discourse and caught hold of your chimneys Neither is the Wretch satisfied to lay your City in ashes but he makes himself sport with your Calamities And though that sad Accident is yearly by Act of Parliament observed with due Humiliation and Solemnity yet he turns all into mirth and derision and bids you the next time your City takes fire to blow up the Thames to quench it c. And then in all your foam and froth you stand astonish'd that I am not afraid of the fury of the wild multitude and that I dare after my late Severity against Tradesmen so much as touch the fire c. What a ridiculous and discomposed rage is here raised out of nothing did ever Sophist or Impostor counterfeit such a mad and foolish melancholy on purpose to try how brutish and driving the passions of the Rabble are Had I been convicted of setting the City on fire you could scarce have raised more fierce and frenetick Rants than you have upon this slight and frivolous occasion The Oration of the Old Fellow that I remember I have somewhere read of I think in Apuleius if it had been as serious would have been much less ridiculous than this your bruitish bellowing when he came forth with all the solemnities of sorrow and a discomposed mind to declaim in the presence of the whole City against a little Boy And as soon as he could for sighs and groans begins with weeping tears to let them know that he had something to communicate that required all their attention as they tender'd the preservation of the Common-wealth and so proceeds to conjure them by all things both sacred and civil by their Altars and their Chimneys not to let the Murtherer escape unpunish'd and having screwed the peoples expectations even to impatience he was vehemently desired to declare the crime that so they might attone the anger of the Gods which otherwise they might expect upon their City if they should suffer such an horrid villany to pass unrevenged At last after he had moved all this indignation he produces three Bottles broken all to pieces by the young man here here sayes he behold the cruel murtherer At which you may suppose all the Audience fell a laughing then as all people do at you now only with this difference that then they laughed at themselves for being abused into so solemn a passion by a trick whereas now they laugh at you for endeavouring with so much seriousness to raise as furious a passion out of such a nothing But thus have you after your rate of Oratory done my business both with the King the Council the Nobility the Gentry and the Citizens and no doubt but they all take you for a most incomparable Booby I have laid all these Articles of Indictment together only to let the Reader see the forces of your Ingenuity because as they lye scatter'd at a distance they are not altogether so observable to every ordinary understanding Having been thus shrewdly handled for traducing his Majesties Government by stirring this dangerous and Seditious Discourse concerning the Return of Popery the very next words you produce against me are that for my part I know none Was there ever such an unhappy Caviller as you to arraign me of ill intentions to the Government by aspersing it with jealousies and suspicions of Popery and yet in the very next breath laugh at me for saying that I know none And if there be none and that were the design of my Preface to prove that there were none I would fain know which way that can be improved into a reflection upon His Majesties Government Both these Cavils can never pass they run a-tilt at one another and yet notwithstanding that they are contradictory they have the ill fortune to be both false for if these fears and jealousies had over-run the whole Nation I hope I might concern my self to lay them without any ill intention to the Government and if they were causeless I might without any impertinence or absurdity prove that they were so But your trifling in this period I have shewn already by cutting it off in the middle and confuting the first part before you proceeded to read the second for I no where say that I know none but that I know none beside the Non-conformists boisterous and unreasonable opposition to the Church of England And therefore to railly me for saying absolutely that I know none and then to cry me mercy three or four pages after for taking me short is such a Scheme of writing that I dare say is peculiar to your self and without precedent in any Writer in the world But however this would serve turn as you then thought to throw odium upon the Bishops and that is all you aim at viz. because they gave the word and deliver'd Orders through their Ecclesiastical Camp to beat up the Pulpit Drums against Popery That they might do and yet have no ill intention against His Majesties Government as I am sure now you dare not deny but if any of them did issue out any such Orders I am as sure it is more than you know so that in you it is an impudent lye to lay such an action to their Charge without any proof only because as you then supposed it might be thought to bring them under some suspicion of ill-will to His Majesties Government and whatever they did they are sufficiently justified But this is right Fanatique Ingenuity to bring the Bishops into a Praemunire for their zeal and watchfulness against Popery you are true Gibellines rather than not spite them you will side with Antichrist it self the slander has hitherto been that they are Popishly inclined but now their crime is because you imagin'd it might do them a mischief that they are the very men that oppose Popery And so for Ingenuity give me a Puritan Gibelline But here upon supposition of this Alarm you raise such a fearful clattering of Arms and Armour as if the Bishops of Munster Colen and Strasburg were come over to the assistance of the Church of England And what the reason of it is I know not your fancy runs upon nothing but wars and fighting and turns every thing into battels and blood-shed One while what a din do we hear of Duels Hectors giving the Lye Brothers of the Blade blemishes of Honour Challenges Quarrels Combats Villain thou lyest sending the length of the Weapon naming Seconds appointing time and place gaining the Enemies Sword making home-thrusts and dying upon the spot By and by what a dreadful noise do you make with Camps Magazins Carasses Habergeons Culverins Steel-bonets Swords Muskets Bandaleers Match Bullets Powder Back Breast and Helmet taking Alarms fortifying Trenches guarding Approaches marching up into Counterscarps ranging Forces in Battel placing Cannon sounding the Charge giving the Word falling on fighting through Squadrons beating whole Armies single mowing down whole Countries killing
great promises of Assistance and Supply and these being still diverted by endless Disputes about Liberties and Priviledges and bold demands to abate the Powers of the Crown he saw plainly as himself declares That they only made use of the necessities grown upon him by that War to inforce him to yield to Conditions incompatible with Monarchy So that despairing of any good from the Seditious Spirits of that Parliament he dissolves them And in the interval his necessities growing upon him by a new and sad disaster that had befallen his Unkle the King of Denmark He commands his Council to Advise by what means and wayes he might fitly and speedily be furnish'd with Monies suitable to the importance of the undertaking Hereupon after a Consultation of divers dayes together they came to this Resolution that the urgency of Affairs not admitting the way of Parliament the most speedy equal and convenient means were by a general Loan from the Subject according as every man was Assessed in the Rolls of the last Subsidy Upon this Result the King issues out his Declaration accordingly but assuring the People that this way to which he was forced by the urgency of his Occasions should not be made a Precedent for the time to come to charge Them or their Posterity to the prejudice of their Just and Ancient Liberties enjoyed under his most Noble Progenitors And promising them in the word of a Prince first to repay all such summs of Money as should be lent without fee or charge so soon as he shall be any wayes enabled thereunto And secondly that not one Penny so borrowed should be bestowed or expended but upon those publique and general Services wherein every of Them and the body of the Kingdom their Wives Children and Posterity have their personal and common Interest When the King and his Council had Voted the Loan they commanded Laud then Bishop of Bath and Wells to draw up certain Instructions to be communicated to the Arch-bishops Bishops and the rest of the Clergy of the Realm to stir up and exhort the People to express their Zeal to the true Religion their Duty to the King and their Love to their Countrey by a chearful complyance with his Majesties Commissions And in this was represented the Afflicted Condition of the Princes and States of the Reformed Religion in all parts of Christendom some being over-run some diverted and some disabled to give assistance The distress of his Unkle the King of Denmark the great danger of losing the Sound and thereby the Eastland and the Hamborough Trade the Confederacy of the Pope the House of Austria and the French King to root out the Protestant Religion the great Fleets both of France and Spain at that Instant endeavouring to block up Rochel together with their Land-forces on the Coast of Brittain ready to invade us And what more important Motives could have been press'd to perswade thePeople to a ready and chearful Contribution What more powerful and plausible Arguments could have been put into the mouths of the Clergy to win their Auditories to a dutiful Compliance both with his Majesties Desires and Necessities And this among other things brought forth Sibthorp's Sermon and the man did well and as became his Function to perswade the People that they ought in point of Conscience and Religion chearfully to submit to all such Taxes as were imposed upon them by Royal Authority without murmurs and disputes But if he intermedled as it is said he did with the Kings Absolute Power of imposing Taxes without Consent of Parliament according to the Laws and Constitutions of this Kingdom he went both beyond his own Commission and against the Kings Declaration For what had he to do in the Pulpit with the Rights of Sovereignty and the Priviledges of Parliament It was none of his business to adjust the disputes of his Superiours and he had no Authority either from God or the King to interpose in Affairs of State his Office was to recommend the Piety and the Necessity of their Contributions and though possibly they were not under any enforcements of Complyance by the Constitutions of this Realm yet to urge it upon their Consciences from the Common Principles and Obligations both of Nature and Christianity that could not but effectually enforce their complyance with so good a King in so pious and necessary a work But if he exceeded his Commission by taking upon him to teach the Laws of the Land and determine the Rights of the Prerogative though he cannot be justified yet he ought as circumstances then stood to be in a great measure excused because he did it at a time when the King could not in the usual Parliamentary method obtain sufficient supplyes to preserve his Honour and Safety but by Concessions shamefully contrary to both and that might provoke a warm man to lavish out beyond the bounds of prudence and discretion And as for Manwarings Case I need say little to it in that it was the very same with Sibthorps only it is observable that his Prosecution was carried on with all eagerness by such Members as Pym and Rous men that took advantage of such imprudences only to give countenance to their own clamours and confirm the jealousies they had blown into the People against the King by the indiscretion of a Countrey Vicar though if there were at that time any designs of absolute Government it was to be imputed to their Impudence for when they assaulted the Royal Power with their bold and unreasonable demands they forced it to stand upon its own guard and then it was none of the Kings fault if he were necessitated to act sometimes by vertue of his meer Prerogative because there was no other way left to preserve himself or his Government in that they had brought things to that pass that nothing must be done unless he would either grant away all his Power to them or keep it all to himself for they would not share the Sovereignty with a single Person and under pretence of priviledges of Parliament assumed the Royal Supremacy and as soon as they had Power and opportunity it is well known how confidently they put in practice the very same courses which they resisted as Acts of Arbitrary Government in the King so that if He were at any time to have recourse to extraparliamently proceedings it was not from his own choice or inclinations but purely from the rudeness and insolence of their demands which were so insufferable that the case was plain that he must sometimes govern without them or not govern at all And what is to be done in that case the Law of self-preservation determines I know this may be pretended where there is no such necessity but that I cannot help if men will abuse a just pretence to authorize unjust actions It is enough to my purpose that it is plain in the case of the last King that he never made use of his Prerogative till the
Parliament began to challenge it and then he could make use of nothing else and the dispute then was not whether the Prerogative should govern but whether it were vested in him or them and that brought forth the War they fought for the Crown and when the Parliament had won it they were resolved to wear it and exercised all the Jurisdictions of Sovereign Power by vertue of their Parliamentary Supremacy But to return to Manwaring it is a great instance of the Presbyterian Humanity that though the poor man had begged their pardon with all the expressions of sorrow and humility yet no less punishment would appease their fury but to be imprisoned during their pleasure i. e. for ever to be fined a thousand Pounds to be suspended three Years and to be made uncapable of any farther Ecclesiastical preferment with many other heavy tokens of their displeasure and all this only for his too eager Zeal and forwardness in the Cause of Loyalty and so his Majesty understood it and therefore punish'd him with preferment accordingly to defie their pragmaticalness and to encourage such as promoted his and the Kingdomes service though they might fail in a point of Prudence But as for those persons that openly refused the Loan and affronted the Kings Commissions and would rather suffer Imprisonment than comply in so easie and reasonable a Demand they plainly shewed they had forgot that respect they owe to their Prince and that duty they owe to God who so severely requires them to obey not for their wrath only but for Conscience sake so that it was a manifest and unpalliable Breach both of Loyalty and Religion Especially when it was so very manifest that the King was forced upon all extraordinary courses purely by the stubborness of Presbyterian Parliaments and when they had such unquestionable assurance both from his own Temper that he could do nothing but what was just and honourable and from his Royal word that he would be always as tender of his Peoples ancient and just Liberties as of the Rights of his Crown and Soveraignty In these plain Circumstances as things stood between him and his Parliaments punctilios of Law were superseded For when it was so manifest that their demands were disloyal and unreasonable and withal that on one hand their designs were worse than their Declarations and on the other that his Majesty never intended any thing but the Peace and prosperity of his Kingdomes that was sufficient motive to overrule all good Subjects and ingenuous men not to endanger all by standing too curiously upon precedents and and niceties of old Custome But when these men first put the King upon his necessities and then defeated him of his supplies and so forced him upon extraordinary courses and then resisted his Authority and affronted his proceedings and animated the people to stand it out against his Commissioners and raised a disturbance and discontent through the whole Nation and all this when they knew his Majesties occasions so urgent and his designs so just and pious I dare determine that whatever they were by the Laws of the Land they were most notorious Rebels by all the Laws of the Gospel though what they proved afterward we all know it being these very men I mean as many of them as persisted in their stubborness for some of them were converted to a more orderly temper by the mere power of shame and modesty that were the great Authors and Ringleaders in the Long-parliament Rebellion The next fatal Rock upon which this man so learned so wise so pious ruin'd both King and Kingdome is the Rock of Arminianism for it seemed he and the Bishops had in order to setting up a new kind of Papacy of their own here in England provided themselves of a new Religion in Holland Arminianism which though it were the Republican Opinion there yet now they undertook to accommodate it to Monarchy c. But I beseech you Sir that are so deep a Statesman to inform a poor sucking Divine which way Arminianism is concern'd for or against Monarchy As for its Orthodoxy I have not a word to say especially when it has been so sufficiently determin'd by the Synod of Dort and the Assembly of West-minster i. e. all the Modern Orthodox Divines of Hungary Transylvania Bohemia and so downward to Pin-makers Hall though how it should at all conduce to Popery I must confess it is beyond my comprehension when the controversie has been always more or less disputed in all Nations under all Governments by all Sects and all Religions and is bandied as much by the Divines of the Church of Rome as by those of the Reformation And therefore when you upbraid us that in the late beating up the Pulpit Drums against Popery some were so ignorant as to fight the Papists with Arminian Arguments you would have done well to tell us the Ear-mark of an Arminian Argument I always thought they had been equally concern'd with other Protestants against the Pope and that the Arminians howsoever otherwise heterodox agree no more with some Papists in some things than the Calvinists agree with other Papists in other things so that their differences have no relation to their common Cause against Popery But to what purpose is it to talk to a Gamester of matters of Divinity For you understand none of these things but write purely by roat you find grievous outcries of Arminianism in the Long-Parliament Speeches and Declarations and you thought you might serve your turn of it as they did theirs It was an hard word that the people understood not at all i. e. as little as themselves did the thing only they taught them to hate and abhorr it as Children do Bugbears and Hobgoblins So that in those days Arminianism and Popery went always hand in hand and if they had a mind to blast any mans Reputation it was but sticking this name upon him and his business was done and among other Artifices to give better Countenance to the Cheat a counterfeit Letter was framed to the Rector of the Jesuites in Bruxels in which they inform him with what Art and success they had planted here the Sovereign Drug of Arminianism to purge the Protestants from their Heresies and to make a Party against the Puritans that were their only dangerous enemies with abundance more of the like impudent stuff though by whom it was written it was never yet discover'd yet by several passages in favour of the Puritan Faction it is evident enough to all sober men that it was a mere Gullery of their own devising And agreeably to this they were always very liberally bestowing their stroaks upon the Monster of Arminianism I desire Mr. Speaker that we may consider the increase of Arminianism an errour that makes the Grace of God lackey it after the will of man yea I desire that we may look into the very belly and bowels of this Trojan Horse to see if there be not men