may be unquestionable with a City-Rout a crowd of credulous Fools or resolute Knaves But if ever the Countrey has an occasion for a Triumvirate to write Paradoxes Lyes and Forgeries it will wisely pitch upon Mr. Baxt. Mr. H-t and this Person of Quality You are willing to lay a great Obligation on his Majesty from his Act of Oblivion but yet ungratefully forbear to mention your Party so much as oblig'd Then you address your self to the King's Friends and their Friends the Papist together I thought your Lordship could not allow Roman-Catholicks any relation or acquaintance with men that love the Religion of the Church of England and King of it as in common Charity my Lord some of us at least may be thought to do But why must we and they be thought such Intimates It no way appears upon Record my Lord as the Familiarity of your Party with the Jesuits neither has Mr. Oates sworn that they frequent our Churches as he testifies they do your Conventicles therefore without being such Favourites to them if you please we will obey your Injunctions and Consider what Promises Declarations and Engagements the dissenting Protestants had both of his Majesty his Lords and Bishops at the time of his coming over and how they have since been used and with what Submission and Loyalty they have carried themselves And now must tell your Lordship having considered and weighed every jot and tittle of it I can answer you to every Punctilio first that the Promises your dissenting Protestants had have certainly been made good to them perhaps above their bargain and expectation I am sure beyond their merit and desert not only the Laws when in full force against them and such Offenders have been seldom executed but for a while wholly suspended with a general Toleration although that I confess they will by no means grant to have been done in their favour notwithstanding it seem'd extorted by their own clamors and importunity and was the Counsel and Advice of some that are now the greatest Patriots and Bigots of their Cause And 't is very notorious that this dissenting Protestant all the time of that Indulgence resented it as an Act of Grace and Favour though I confess never the nearer won to Peace and Conformity with such a condescention but had their tender Consciences as much harden'd and steel'd with the Lenitives of Moderation as ever they could have been in the hottest flames of a real Persecution But as soon as ever they came to be bridled again by the Law with a seasonable restraint the Wretches that at best but flatter and dissemble when they command any thing in the Government presently arraign'd it as a design of introducing Popery though it truly promoted nothing more than the growth of their own Faction and made the Beast insolent and unruly by giving it the reins whom the curb of a severe Discipline might have made more gentle and tame And now I would have your Lordship tell us a way of satisfying so froward and perverse a Sect that is clamorous till it is indulg'd and then is discontented at its own Indulgence But beside all this your Lordship very well knows that they were not only conniv'd at in their Religious Schisms and sanctified ways of violating the Canons of the Church and the Laws of the Realm but some of them were advanced to Places of Honour and Profit and far'd once altogether as well as those that had more faithfully served the King and dutifully conform'd to the Discipline of the Church But granting these Promises and Declarations were not so punctually perform'd is the Government pretently to be upbraided for it And his Majesty almost told in plain terms that had you thought he would have fail'd you so he should never have got in the Throne so easily and can these grumbling and discontented Wretches be call'd the Restorers of his Majesty that would capitulate with their Prince for his Birth-right stand upon Terms and Articles like Rebels in a Garrison before they will surrender and are now sorry they had not made him compound for his Kingdoms at a dearer rate Your Lordship knows all this to be as true as the Suggestions of their hard usage are false and malicious would you have the greatest Laick of your Faction made the greatest Minister of State too that has been done already and your Noble Peer himself advanc'd to the Mace would you have some Head of your canting Priests preferr'd to be the Head of our Church and a thing put for the Pillar of it that has twice endeavour'd to undermine it why somewhat of this has been offer'd too and we have Mr. Baxter's own word for it that he refused a Bishoprick and now for God's sake my Lord what usage would you your self advise to be shown to such Miscreants whom neither Honour or Profit can perswade so much as to suffer the Government to remain undisturb'd Thus much for our Promises and Usage now my Lord for their Loyalty and Submission which you so vainly extol and magnifie but I wish your Eloquence a more copious Theam when-ever you have a mind to write a Panegyrick or else you 'l want indeed a great deal of Invention or rather another part of Rhetorick plain Hyperbole to make amends for the barrenness of the Subject You talk of the difficulty of finding a parallel Instance but all the while don't instance in one single act of this unparallel'd Submission and you vindicate your own Party just at the same rate as you vilify all others only with general Assertions but your Lordship shall see I will more fairly demonstrate their Treasons and Insurrections than you have done their Loyalty and Submission His Majesty was hardly settled in his Throne before these submissive Villains began to disturb it in 61. Venner and his Crew were plotting on the Government discovered and executed for High-Treason about 62. Phillips Tongue Gibbs and one Stubbs with another were arraigned for a Plot as Hellish altogether as this of the Papists the latter of which confesses the Fact before his Tryal the other four abiding it were upon full evidence condemned and executed In 63. we have one Captain Oates mustring up his Regiment of Traytors In 66. Another little Mutiny and Rebellion of a parcel of discontented Officers and Souldiers lately Mr. Colledge that with his last breath profess'd himself a dissenting Protestant condemned and executed for a more unparallel'd piece of Treason than any incomparable Instance you can give of Dissenters Loyalty and last of all for a head to this Comet this long train of Rebellion out comes the treasonable Scheam of Association and alarms the Kingdom with the fearful Presages of a second War Thus much my Lord for the submission of English Dissenters since the Restoration and now for the Loyal deportment of your Scottish one How many Field-Preachers since 60. have been executed renouncing with their last breath all Allegiance and Supremacy Kid and King
strengthen'd their Party by the weakness of a young Duke It was they made the profess'd Religion a pretence for all the Desolations that attended a miserable War It was they drew up the primitive Association and were the first Founders of an Holy League Lastly 't was they fell a cutting the Throats of the poor Hugonots and distinguish'd themselves in the bloody night at Paris with a white Scarf on their Elbows And by your endeavouring to remove Guards one would think you design'd the same way to cut off Popish Abhorrers and make your green and blew Streamers serve for the same purpose they us'd their white And so we may ee'n conclude this Paragraph with an bearty Prayer as well as your Lordship does his with a faint Wish That God would preserve the King and keep us out of the hands of all bloody Papists and as cruel and inhumane a sort of Protestants Your Lordship has not only the Subtilty of the Serpent but the Venom too and that you spit forth all now here in this place in arraigning the best Actions of the Duke for the worst Plot and Conspiracy and making his passing the Test in Scotland a fair step to the destruction of the Protestant Religion Is the swearing to preserve the present establish'd Religion the way to subvert it Are not the Bishops there as competent Judges of what will undermine the Church as your Lordship who profess your self a Friend to Protestant Dissenters and such as would blow her up And han't they thank'd his Majesty for his sending his Royal Brother and testified their satisfaction of his Zeal for our Church But these you will say are all bless'd with a Torish Humility as your new phrase has it though upon other occasions you can dignifie them with their old Appellation of proud Prelates But my Lord do you think that the Field-Preachers there to whom you must be a Friend if to the dissenting Ministers here do you think I say they show what is more expedient for the good of the Church in refusing the Test than those spiritual Lords did in passing it Do you think that the Rebels at Bothwell-bridge did not make a fairer step to the destruction of the Protestant Religion than as you maliciously suggest his Royal Highness and the Parliament have done since But we must give people leave when they are nettl'd with Passion and Revenge to be transported into Lyes and Absurdities and Malice is alway the greatest Enemy to Truth and Reason Your next Paragraph falls foul again upon Abhorrers whom you look upon as a pitiful Faction when all honest people take them for true Loyalists But waving the absurdity in calling them factious which none can reasonably apply but to such as oppose the Government in Church and State their Numbers are not so small as to be pitiful or contemptible two or three thousand Free-holders are said to subscribe that of Derby and then more I am sure by much than could be gotten out of any County in England to your Petitions And could your Lordship but get the favour and opportunity to consult the List you would find them more numerous and much to your dis-satisfaction and also amongst them many persons that have serv'd their Countrey in Parliament and been Members of that Honourable Assembly to whom you pay so great a Deference But it is a little harsh Censure for you to suspect all the Countrey-Sheriffs for ill men and their under-Sheriffs for Rogues Could we but get an indifferent person to decide the Controversie he would with more reason judge your City-Officers for such Gentlemen commonly vers'd in the jugling Tricks of Buying and Selling and all the methods of a priviledg'd Knavery such as first set about packing of Juries and alarming the Nation with an obstruction of Justice And won't you allow the King and his Council to be as honest and wise and as fit to prick the one as your City-Rout and Rabble who chooses the other I can't imagine what you mean by this elaborate task and all this fruitless pains you take to prove the number of Abhorrers so small and insignificant unless your meaning be only this to show plainly that you contend for a Party and have sent abroad your Muster-masters to take a List of all your Voluntiers or else have got your Association to stalk about the Kingdom incognito and now upon comparing the Subscribers of that with those of our Abhorrences find your selves the stronger by a million or thereabouts but I fancy were this really so you would never suffer this Abhorring and Protesting to go on so quietly Yet my Lord I 'le debate though not the truth yet the Reason of this Matter still more fairly with your Lordship Give you all that the prejudic'd Party can desire and for a while suppose this Paper of Association a meer Sham and a piece of Forgery or in your own phrase A red Herring trail'd through the Kingdom to make a noise yet still why must all those that detest and abhor it be traduc'd as Popish only because they dislike a Paper that is in it self treasonable and which your own selves presume unwarrantable at least by your seeming to renounce it There is every year a Zeal as hot as the Flames themselves shown against his Holiness in Pasteboard and in God's Name let them still in that Matter express their Resentment But you would think it a hard Censure my Lord to traduce all that innocent Rabble in Fleetstreet for Puritans and Fanaticks only because they express such an Abhorrence to that painted Effigie when all this while this is but a Pope of their own making And why then must all those be vilified as Tories Hounds and Popish Abhorrers that only dislike declare burn and protest against a paper'd Idol of a Common-wealth in whose Forehead is writ Treason as well as Abomination in the others Now when I have been so fair as to yield to your Lordship in his own Postulatum and yet the Corollary deduc'd will detract much from that Reasoning and Modesty you pretend to what will become of those Pretensions when it appears a demonstrable Proposition that this Scheam of Rebellion was drawn by your own Party and truly found where it was sworn to be And therefore for those Considerations tender'd to us in the beginning of your Book let us offer these to you toward the end of ours Consider this Engine and design how much it looks like the Workmanship of your State-Projectors And though the end seem'd somewhat honest pretending to unite a divided Nation consider it will never be compass'd in animating a factious and a zealous Crew 't is a Work only now for Omnipotence it self to heal our Breaches and cure our Divisions and the Union of God's people will never be perfected by your Protestant Ioyners and such Agents of the Devil Consider how likely that Faction is to contrive such an Association which has been so well vets'd in drawing up so
an unbias'd man believe the justice of his Courts corrupted and his Judges Arbitrary because it is the opinion of some perhaps that have a mind to sit on the Bench Are those fair and competent Asserters of an Arbitrary Power and good Witnesses of their Princes Tyranny only because they are banish'd the Court and could see nothing of it when they sate in the Council Lastly can he truly fear Popery that is of no Religion at all and be an impartial Judge of the Temper of the Duke of York that is his avow'd and mortal Enemy neither the Civil Law or Common will admit of any prejudic'd Evidence And for God's sake let the King and Government when they are arraign'd have as fair play for it as one of your Joyners or Coblers a Colledge or an Hewson would expect Next my Lord you would prove the Queens Association to have been carried on without her knowledge from a certain Speech of hers to her Parliament but whether the Quotation be false or true we won't dispute at present but this seems to me a plain sort of owning the Paper of which your Friends are accused only you would say somewhat for your selves in not acquainting his Majesty with it a little sooner by telling the Kingdom his Predecessor Queen Elizabeth knew nothing of such a Combination any more than himself and that she look'd upon it as an obligation from her Subjects to find so many hands unknowingly subscrib'd but granting they agree in this circumstance that such a Loyal Design as well as a Treasonable one may possibly have been carried on in the dark Can you imagine my Lord She would have taken it for an Obligation too had they tender'd her a Paper that would have sworn her out of her Supremacy and lodg'd it in the major part of her House of Commons and with what face could ever any Subject offer a scheam of Rebellion to his Soveraign and desire of him the liberty to commence a Rebel and a Traytor only for his defence and preservation The Story of the Queen of Scots which you would make so plain a Parallel is in my judgment as little to the purpose First Did the Queen of England shew her self as vigorous in opposing the disinheriting of her next Heir as our King has been both kind and just in asserting the Rights of his Brother and Successor Secondly Do you think if she had really declared her self against the proceedings of her Parliament in that Affair her Subjects would have enter'd into an Association to have done it by themselves No no your Lordship is too good an Historion not to know that things were then carried on with her Majesties Connivance and tacit Approbation and that she acted her part of the Tragedy like one of Matchiavel's Monarchs behind the Curtain and for which even Writers very favourable to your own Party and no Causines have justly condemn'd her And it seems all your own factious Crew don't agree with your Lordship in thinking the Proceedings against that unfortunate Queen so fair and honourable for very lately a certain Protestant Buffoon has prov'd it plain Murder in his second part of a thing call'd a Speculum or the View and Reflection of a Chimera half Droll half Author and half Ass and from that very Case this Hotch-potch Animal proves King-killing to be the Doctrine of the Church of England but I hope you will agree with me because he differs from you in this point that this his Argumentation is like the rest of his Stuff very ridiculous but as for his abusing the Church-men there you may shake hands again for he paints them out very pleasantly like Fools Anticks and Jack-Puddings and you draw them out terribly all in blood Governours of the Popish Interest revengeful implacable and such as never forgive so that between you the Clergy may be pretty well secur'd of an Odium when you can expose them even in the two several extreams But would a Jew take such to be Christians that vilify the Church of which they would seem to be and ridicule the very Religion they are thought to profess And here I can't but observe a Barbarous as well as a Malicious hint of your Lordships who when you have represented how violent the Parliament was against the Succession of the Queen of Scots with a cruel and emphatical Malice cry out Nay and against her Life too We know my Lord the Parliament help'd the Grand-Mother to the Block and you saw another made the Father stoop to it But would you have your Associated Baalites sacrifice the Blood of the Son too This is stretching up a private Revenge to vye even with the Vengeance of the Almighty and an angry God only visits to the third and fourth Generation Your Lordship in this Insinuation shews a great deal of Inhumanity not to be parallel'd but by that of your Friends the Dissenters in their Association or the Cannibals of the West-Indies which as some say infest our Plantations there and refresh themselves in nothing more than in the Blood of an Enemy These are the bloody Measures which your Passion transports you to and not your Judgment directs People look through these transparent Politicks like Water and see nothing but Malice and Revenge at the bottom Your last politick Observation is That his present Majesty is the first Prince that ever was perswaded to be so willing to settle indubitably the Title of his presumptive Heir But why perswaded Has he not natural Affection enough to be willing himself And would he not much rather be thought the first should he humour your Faction that ever unnaturally disinherited a kind Brother and his Heir apparent And I believe nothing grieves you more than that his Majesty's Consent must be requir'd and could a Parliament be gotten once to act again without him no doubt but the Bill of Exclusion would be the first Act of the Session But the Law of Nations ever since the Time of Justinian the Laws of the Kingdom down from the Conqueror have happily placed the Sanction of every Law in the Will of the Prince and you and your Friends must be contented my Lord till you can perswade the King to give you his Le Roy Vult and the Crown and Scepter to the Bargain And seeing you are pleas'd to call the D. of Y. but a presumptive Heir and seem to lay such a stress and Emphasis upon the new-coin'd word we will discuss this Business a little further My Lord if I mistake not your Friend you pretend to vindicate was the first that applied this pretty Distinction to the next Heir of the Crown It looks like a piece of State-Sophistry and your noble Friend some say was fam'd for a fine distinguishing Logical Head when a young Academick and a body would almost swear this Vindicator the Vindicated and the noble Peer differ only like the little Man with three great Names who still makes but the same person