Repeal them Which is not only such a piece of Chicannery in it self but such an Assault upon the Legislative Authority that it is hard to speak of it without more than usual emotion of mind and the having ones indignation strangely excited and enflamed However all I shall allow my self at present to say shall be only to advise all sort of persons to take care what they do there being no Dispensing power lodged in the King in reference to Penal and much less in relation to the Test Laws Of this we have a clear and uncontrollable proof in the proceedings of the Parliament 1673. when the House of Commons voted the Declaration of the late King for Liberty of Conscience to be both a violation of the Laws of the Land and an altering of the Legislative power Which is the more remarkable in that it was not only done by the most obsequious Parliament that ever any King of England had and of which many of the Members were his hired and brib'd Pensioners but that they did thus adjudge both after the King had acquainted them by a solemn Speech at the opening of the Session that he was Resolved to adhere to his Declaration and had endeavoured to Hector them into a departure from their Vote by telling them in an Answer which he made to one of their Addresses that they had questioned a power in the Crown which had never been disputed in the Reign of any of his Predecessors and which belonged unto him as a prerogative inseparable from the Soveraignty Yet notwithstanding both all this and his applying himself in a Speech to the House of Lords to have engaged them to stand by him against the Commons he was necessitated upon the Commons insisting that there was never any such Dispensing power vested in the Crown nor claimed or exercised by any of his Predecessors and that the assuming it was a changing of the Constitution and an altering of the Legislative Authority and upon the Lords declining to stand by him and their advising him to give liberty by way of Bill to be passed into a Law I say he was necessitated to take his Declaration off from the File tear the Seal from it and to assure both Houses in a Speech he made to them March 8. that what he had done in taking upon him to Suspend the Penal Laws should not for the future be drawn either into consequence or Example In brief if the Papists will not so far consult their own interest and comply with our safety as to be contented with an ease from Penalties and an Indulgence to be ratified into a Law for the private exercise of their Religion it is the indispensable duty of all Protestants of what party or perswasion soever they be to unite together in withstanding their endeavours and attempts for obtaining more We have a laudable example in the carriage of all that pretended to Christianity when they were brought into a condition somewhat parallel with ours in one of the first Centuries For tho the Orthodox had been persecuted by the Arrians under Constantius and some of the Arrians harshly enough treated at least as they thought for a while under Constantine yet upon Julian's coming to the Throne both parties were so far from embracing his offers in order to revenge their wrongs upon one another that they resolved at that season if not wholly to silence their Disputes yet to forbear all those harsh Terms that had enflamed their heats and animosities To which I shall add but this one thing more and would beg of the Dissenters that they may seriously consider it namely that as the Donatists were the only party of Christians that made Addresses to Julian and received favours from him so they thereby became infamous and were often afterwards reproached with it Thus Sir I have studyed to do what you required of me and if it be my misfortune not to have acquitted my self answerably to your expectations yet the doing it as well as the being bound up to an Author that administers so little occasion for valuable thoughts would allow gives me the satisfaction of having approved my self SIR Your Obedient Servant
had so unwisely and unrighteously managed Nor can our Author deny but that since they took on them the Ruling Authority they have exercised it with all the moderation that can be expressed And have been so far from returning to the Roman Catholicks the like measures which themselves had met with that they have in no one thing given them cause to complain unless they should quarrel that they are kept out of capacity of doing the mischief their priests would otherway's be ready to excite them unto and which their Religion would countenance them in But it is now time that I should proceed to the fourth thing for which I promised to call our Anonymous Answerer to an account And were he not of a singular Forehead and of a peculiar complexion from all others he could not have had the impudence to endeavour to deceive the world into a belief that the Protestant Dissenters in England stand listed by their Highnesses into the same rank with the Papists and that they are hereafter to expect to be shut up into the same state and condition Certainly he must either have an Antipathy woven into his nature against all truth and sincerity or else thro having long accustomed himself to the misreporting of persons and to the giving false representations of things he must at last have acquired an incurable Habit otherwise it were impossible to prevaricate to that degree from truth in every thing he medleth with and which he undertaketh to say For Mijn Heer Fagel having declared that the reason why their Highnesses can not agree to the Repeal of the Test Laws is because they are of no other tendency than to secure the Reformed Religion from the designs of the Roman Catholicks and that they contain only conditions and provisions whereby men may be qualified to be Members of Parliament and to bear publick Offices Our Author hereupon tells us That the Nonconformists as well as the Roman Catholicks do apprehend that they receive a great deal of damage by those Laws and do account them extremely prejudicial to their Persons and Families And whereas Monsieur Fagel had said that he would be glad to hear one good Reason whereby a Protestant fearing God and concerned for his Religion could be prevailed upon to consent to the Repealing of these Laws which have been enacted by the Authority of King and Parliament and that have no other tendency save the providing for the safety of the Reformed Religion and the hindreing Roman Catholicks from being in a capacity to subvert it Our Author in way of reflection upon this tells us that it is not only a Childish demand but that it is to be hop'd that the pensionary will from hence be brought to acknowledg how trifling and weak all those Reasons are by which he would preclude the Nonconformists as well as the Roman Catholicks from publick Employments So that by these and many other passages equally false and disingenuous in our Author 's pretended Answer which for brevity's sake I forbear to mention it is apparent that he endeavours to perswade the world into a belief that the Dissenters are stated by their Highnesses in the same rank and condition with the Papists and are to expect to be treated in the same manner in case it please the Almighty God to bring Their Highnesses to the Throne One would wonder at this sudden and strange change in the opinion and conduct of the Papists towards the Nonconformists that they who were represented by them a while ago ' as unfit to live in His Majesties Dominions should now come to be accounted the Kings best and most Faithful Subjects and worthy to be advanced to the chief Trusts and Employ's 'T is but a few years since that all the Laws enacted against them were judged to be too few and gentle and therefore they had Laws executed upon them to which the Legislators had never made them obnoxious but now the Roman Catholicks are become so tender of their ease and safety that out of pure kindness unto them if any will be so foolish as to believe it they must have Laws abrogated which in the worst times and during the most illegal and barbarous procedures against them they were never affected with nor suffered the least prejudice by And whereas it was the only way for persons heretofore to make their Court at St. James's by declaiming against the Dissenters as Rebels and Traitors and by putting them into a salvage Dress to be run upon as beasts of prey it is now grown the only method of becoming gracious at Whitehall to proclaim their Loyalty and to cry them up for the only people in whom his Majesty with safety to his Person and Crown can repose a confidence But under all the Shapes which the Papists do assume they may be easily discovered to retain the same malice to the Reformed Religion and only to act those various and opposite parts in order the better to subvert it And the Dissenters being harassed and oppressed before and indulged and caressed now was upon the same motive of hatred unto it and in subserviency to its extirpation The method's are altered but the design is one and tho they have changed their Tools yet they remain constant in the pursuance of the same End While they of the Church of England were found compliant with the ways which the Factors for Rome thought serviceable thereunto they were not only the Favourites of the Court and of the whole Popish party but were gratified at least as was pretended with a rigorous execution of the Penal Laws upon Dissenters But there remaining several steps to be taken for the introduction of Popery and the extirpation of the Reformed Religion which they of the National Communion would not go along with them in they are forced to shift Instruments and to betake themselves to the Nonconformists whose assistance the better to engage they have not only suspended all the Penal Laws to which the Dissenters were liable but have endeavoured to fill them with jealousy and apprehension of danger from the Test Acts tho at the same time they know that Nonconformists never either did or could receive prejudice by them Only they are sensible that if they could work up that easie people into such a belief they should thereby not only obtain their concurrence and abettment for the rescinding of those Laws that are at present the only great remaining Fence about our Religion and upon the abrogation whereof nothing could hinder the Papists from getting into a condition to extirpate it but make them a formed and united Body with themselves against the Prince and Princess of Orange who have with so much Wisdom Courage and Integrity declared that they are against the having them repealed And as the Dissenters cannot have so far renounced all regard both to honesty and to a good name as to be fond of being herded with the Papists or thank our Author for it so they must be
to insist upon the infinite Murders committed by the Inquisition the most Devilish Engine of Cruelty that ever the World was acquainted with nor to reflect so far backward as the Parisian and Irish Massacres or the infinite Slaughters perpetrated heretofore in France Germany and the Low Countreys c. seeing we have such fresh and doleful evidences of the mercy and gentleness of the Papal Church in the ungrateful inhumane perjurious and salvage persecutions executed so lately in France and Piedmont If it be the effect of Royal and Paternal affection in the King of England to his Subjects that all he endeavoureth is to treat them as becomes a common Father without making any distinction between one and another as our Author is pleased to call it in his Testimony concerning him what cruel Parents must many Princes of the Roman Communion be who act with that difference towards their people that while they cherish and embrace some they tear out the Bowels and suck the blood of others And if no Society destitute of such tender and Christian affections can merit the name of a Church we hence learn where to fasten the character of being the Mother of Harlots In that we not only know whose Doctrine it is that whom She cannot convert She ought to destroy but that we have observed her to have been in all Ages drunk with the Blood of Saints All the commendations our Author bestows upon the King of England are not only either so many accusations of His Majesties insincerity in the Papal Faith or infallible indications that both the King pardon the expression and his Minister are Hypocritical Dissemblers but they are stabbing and twinging Satyr's against Mother Church and the Holy Father and against his Brittanick Majesties dear Brother and Ally the French King Nor can we be guilty either of Crime or Indecency in the worst we can say of the Church of Rome and the Most Christian King seeing we have in equivalent Terms a President for it both from so good a Catholick and so wise a Minister of a great Monarch as our honourable Author is And tho I begin to grow weary of conversing with so impertinent a man yet I am bound to wait upon him a little longer and while the Reader can reap no advantage by any thing he says to see whether it be not possible to lay hold of an occasion from his Ignorance and Folly to communicate things that may be more solid and instructive The sixth thing therefore whereof I accused him and for which I promised to call him to an account is his egregious ignorance in relation to Government Laws Customs and matters of Fact Mijn Heer Fagel tells us that the Test Laws being enacted by King and Parliament for the Security of the Reformed Religion and the Roman Catholicks receiving no prejudice by them but being meerly restrained from getting into a condition to subvert it therefore Their Highnesses could not consent to their Repeal And he further adds that there is no Kingdom Common-wealth or any constituted Body and Society in which there are not Laws made for the safety thereof which not only provide against all attempts that may disturb their peace but which prescribe such conditions as they judge necessary for the discerning who are qualified to bear Employments To which he again subjoins that there is a great difference between the conduct of these of the Reformed Religion towards Roman Catholicks which is moderate and only to prevent their getting into a capacity to do hurt and that of those of the Roman Catholick Religion towards the Reformed who not being satisfied to exclude them from places of Trust do both suppress the whole Exercise of their Religion and severely persecute all that profess it And he finally adds that both Reason and the Experience of the present as well as past Ages do shew that it is impossible for Roman Catholicks and those of the Reformed Religion when joyned together in places of Trust and publick Employment to maintain a good Correspondence live in mutual peace and to discharge their Offices quietly and to the publick Good Now from these several passages which carry their own evidence along with them our Author takes occasion both to vent his foolish and ridiculous Politicks and to proclaim his ignorance in History and of the most obvious matters of Fact However we shall have the patience to hearken to what he hath been pleased to say and shall examine it piece by piece as we go along And the first thing he does is to acquaint us with a mighty Mystery of State and which none but so great a Minister could have been able to have revealed namely that tho the King and Parliament upon the first Revolution with respect to Religion and the introducing and setting up the Reformed Religion thought fit to make those Laws which they judged necessary for its preservation yet that it does not follow that his present Majesty and a Parliament would be of the same mind but that they might enact Laws of a differing Nature from the former and re-establish Religion into the same State in which it was before the Reformed Doctrine and Worship was set up We are much obliged to our Author for this discovery though I must add that this it is to trust a Fool with secrets for he will be sure to be blabbing For tho he subjoin that he will not say that matters would be pushed so far yet he hath already told us enough to make us understand both what his own hopes are and what is designed by the Papal party if they could compass a Parliament of a Complexion and Temper to their mind But there are two fatal things which lye in their way One is that neither progressing nor closeting bribing nor threatning can prove effectual to give them the slenderest ground of confidence of their obtaining a Parliament of that mould and constitution And the second is that all the Members must take the Tests before they can be a Legal Parliament and then there is little probability that they who can make the Declaration required in these Laws will be inclinable to Repeal them especially at a season when their own safety as well as that of the Protestant Religion renders it so necessary to have them maintained Whatsoever any Body of men by what name soever they be called or within what walls soever they assemble shall attempt to do without first having taken the Tests is ipso facto null and void in Law and will serve to no Legal purpose but to make themselves obnoxious to the severest punishments which the Justice of a provoked and betrayed Nation can be able to inflict upon them So that we do not doubt what the King would do for the re-establishing Popery and banishing the Protestant Religion could he get a Parliament to his mind but our hope is that he will not and the better to prevent it we will endeavour to keep our Test
to have had allowed unto them And that we may the more fully have an Idea of their unthankfulness we are to consider both the extent of that Liberty which Their Highnesses were contented to have had bestowed upon them and the obligations they would have come under for the rendring it hereafter inviolable And all this not only at a season when many of the Papists carry it so undutifully towards their Highnesses but at a time when they of the Reformed Religion are so unhumanely persecuted by several Popish Princes in other parts of the world It had not been an unreasonable desire that before the Papists had been so importunate to have all Penal Laws against them in Protestant Nations rescinded and taken away that they should have declared themselves and improved their interest for the Abrogation of all such Laws as are in force against those of the Reformed Religion in Popish Countries And if their Highnesses had insisted upon such a stipulation before They would have given their consent for the Repeal of the Penal Laws against Roman Catholicks in England it had been no more than what was agreeable to the Rules of Wisdom and Justice But their Highnesses not thinking it fit to suffer their own mercy to be restrained by reason of the want of Christian bowels in others took the first opportunity put into their hands of testifying their readiness to consent to the Repeal of all those Laws against Papists in England Scotland and Ireland by which they are made liable to fines or other punishments And that those which they can not agree to the rescinding of are only such by which the Reformed Religion is covered from the designs of the Roman Catholicks against it and by which they are restrained from getting into a condition to overturn it One would think that this should have been received as a most special favour and have obliged them to very hearty acknowledgments Especially when the Prince and Princess were willing to confirm both this and a Liberty for the private Exercise of their Religion with their Guaranty But in stead of any symptoms of gratitude there is nothing to be heard of from many of them or to be met with in our Answerer but what proclaims their dissatisfaction anger and revenge For besides all the ill returns we have already taken notice of in this wrathful and unthankful man he tells us that all which Their Highnesses declare themselves ready to consent unto amounts only to the abolishing some cruel Laws by which Romish Ecclesiasticks stood condemned to death for no other reason save their being Priests and in the vertue of which other persons were banished and deprived of their Estates meerly for being Roman Catholicks all which was a higher degree of barbarity than was ever practised among the most salvage Nations Now not to trouble my self about what kind of entertainment Romish Priests and Lay Papists have met with among those Nations which our Author stiles Barbarous tho it will be found infinitely more severe than any thing that was ever inflicted upon them in England Scotland or Ireland by reason of their Religion or upon the score of any Ecclesiastical Character I would only know of this modest and veracious Gentleman what he thinks of the barbarous and innumerable Cruelties that were perpetrated in all ages and places heretofore and which are at this day committed upon peaceable and sincere Christians for no other crime but that they could not and to this day cannot believe as the Church of Rome doth nor continue in Communion with so idolatrous and villanous a Society Whatsoever measure of severity hath been any where exercised towards Papists it was but according to the President themselves had set in their dealing with them whom they stile Hereticks and in which the Copy comes vastly below the Original But then that which wholly alters the case is that whereas the Papists persecute and destroy Christians meerly upon the account of Religion there were never any severe much less Sanguinary Laws enacted against them save by reason of their Crimes against the State and for being Enemies and Traitors to the Government Popery was never persecuted in England as it is a false and erroneous Belief but as it binds men to the owning of a forraign usurped and unlawful Jurisdiction 'T is neither for their believing Transubstantiation nor for their Worshipping Images that Papists are adjudged to penalties or death but because they adhere to a forreign Enemy and are treacherous to their Countrey Could they have been but good Subjects their being bad Christians would never have prejudiced them And indeed while they continue to hold that the Pope can depose Protestant Soveraigns and absolve Subjects from their Allegiance to them and that it is lawful to cut the Throats of all whom they stile Hereticks and that all Laws made for our security are null and void as being enacted by an incompetent and unlawful Authority it would seem according to the exact measures of wisdom and reason that all lenity and favour towards them were not only a supererogating in Mercy but an indiscretion in Policy But then to let such into the Government were plainly to betray the State and wilfully to abandon both it and our selves to be destroyed and ruined Nor is there so much danger in advancing Robbers and Newgate Fellons to Employments as there would be in preferring Papists especially if Jesuiced and Bigotted into Civil Offices in a Reformed Kingdom And therefore seeing they will not thankfully accept and quietly acquiesce in what is offered and that rather from an exurberancy of Generosity and Mercy than from Maxims of prudence and obligations arising from duty it is best to leave them to steer their own course and to pursue those Methods which will infallibly issue in their disadvantage to say no worse All ways of Gentleness and Moderation towards them do only encourage their making the bolder claims and the proceeding further in their usurpations The giving them an inch provokes them to take an ell and they grow enraged because we will not tamely suffer it If they act as they do while the Chain hangs still about their necks what are we to expect if it should be wholly taken off they left loose to exert the malignity which their Religion inspires them with For not being contented to invade and usurp all sorts of Employments and places of Trust in defiance of the Test Laws they have assumed that confidence as to make those very Laws which were intentionally enacted and designed to keep Papists out of Office and Power the ground and occasion of incapacitating and shutting out Protestants And whereas none are by Law to be admitted into Employments without making the Declarations contained in the Tests none are now to be continued save they who shall both refuse to take them and withal promise to give their votes for the Election of such persons into Parliament as shall be willing to Abrogate and