King is like to be Honored by all this I leave to all these Preachers to Judge Secondly Preaching against the Kings Religion must then be inconsistent with the Loyalty as before described when it is so managed as to beget in Men those Jealousies Censures and Suspicions as shall in any wise alienate their Hearts and Affections from him and their service of him When I consider this well and call to mind what a kind of influence irresistable I have observed in such kind of Preaching where the Kings Religion or the Government is any wise concerned to have had on the minds of Men. I cannot but pray our Doctors to consider well with themselves what prejudice they may do the King before they are aware and perhaps repent when it is too late As those London Preachers did Anno. 1641. 1642. who then extravagantly Preacht against the Liturgy Bishops and their Injunctions as our Church-Men have lately done against the R. Catholicks and I pray what followed but that fatal War whose sad effects we all to this day deplore The prejudices raised in Persons upon the account of difference in Religion are hardly possible to be related let me instance in Protestants only where the distance is not so great even according to the Church of Englands own acknowledgments as it is between the R. Catholicks and the Protestants and yet how have they carryed it one towards another as they have gotten power successively into their hands where let the Church of England come in for as great an Example as any of the rest have not they thought so hardly of their Non-conforming Brethren in the Ministry that could not comply with them in things which themselves say are but indifferent as that those that refused to wear a Surplice must be kept so poor as not to be able to buy a Shirt Ay! I might go yet a great deal higher did not the prejudice of many and those some of them zealous enough for the Church of England influence them so far as to conceive that because his Majesty was of the R. Catholick Religion he was not fit to be their King Church-Men may think of these things as they please but I am sure our wisest sort of States Men were of another Opinion as appears pears by what was enacted in the Parliament Anno. 13. Car. 2d who sensible of the ill effects such prejudices may produce where the King is the object of them made a Law That whosoever should publish or affirm the King to be an Heritick or a Papist or that he endeavoured to introduce Popery they should be disinabled to hold any Office or promotion Ecclesiastical or Civil making equal provision against either Catholicks or Protestants that might offend this way And the reason of this may be collected from the words of the Act it self which was because they knew the representing of the Religion of a King in a way of odium to the People was a thing tending to excite them to the hatred or dislike of his Person and Government Among other things I hear of as to this Preaching there is one dislikes me Exceedingly as having in it the most potent influence of any thing I know tending to the setting of the People in opposition to the King and that is those Sermons especially that intimate to them as if a time of PERSECVTION were coming on and the Obligation that lies upon all Persons to suffer whatsoever Persecution they meet with rather than to renounce any part of their Religion A Doctrine of excellent goodness in it self but I suppose now much mistimed unless we fear that Millions of Jews will invade us and set up the Mosaical Sacrifices again for I know not from whence Persecution can otherwise come if his Majesties Declaration as he desires be turned into an establish'd Law which I conceive none but the Church of England will endeavour to hinder While some Considering Men think with themselves how little this of Doctrine they have heard Preacht upon for twenty years before and now to be taken up since the King is come to the Crown and made the Common Theam of the Pulpit they know not how to interpret it otherwise than that the Preachers would have the people believe that their Religion is like to be denyed them and if they will stand to it they must expect to Suffer which that they may the better do it is necessary that they learn before hand how to behave themselves under such Providences And here again it would make a Man Smile to see how the World turns round I well remember that when the Dissenting Ministers were first displaced at St. Bartholomews 1662. Divers of them took their leave of their People the Sunday before in some Farewel Sermons divers of which were Printed by a good token that some of my acquaintance were soundly Punished for Printing them In these Sermons such Texts were chosen as from a Moral Prognostication they then made from the Conventicle Act they thought fittest to induce the People of a Patient Bearing of what was coming upon them I shall name only that of Heb. 10.14 about taking joyfully the spoiling of their Goods which was pertinent to the manner of their Sufferings since by that Act all their Moveables lay liable to the informers distresses The same course is now taking by Divers Church of England Doctors they have their particular Texts also fitted to what their Opinions are of the Times One Preaches upon taking up the Cross as if a new Persecution were indeed coming on Another calls upon us by his Text to contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered to the Saints as if a new Creed were to be immediately introduced A third forewarns us of the Apostacy of which St. Paul speaks and this is applyed to the R. Catholick Religion I mention these but as Specimens by which we may judge of the rest but here they would do well to take notice what some Men say of themselves viz. that they do the same things which they before condemned in others and for which they caused them to be punished which is so much the worse in them than in the Dissenters for the latter had some shadow of reason to Preach as they did when they saw a sharp Law newly made against them but for the Doctors of the Church of England to Preach thus who have all the Laws on their side and the Kings Declaration to protect them for them to do this and no other ground to proceed upon but their Misbelieving the Kings Word what else is it but a Disingenious Disloyalty and that of the highest kind Or what would they have the People think under all these things And how can they do otherwise than produce most desperate Jealousies The fatal Consequences whereof and the Resentments that a Royal Breast cannot but have of such Treatment I shall refer to the Judgment of King Charles the First to be informed of who in his Meditations
what has been done this way before and universally approved of without being any wise called in question may I 〈◊〉 be 〈◊〉 of without offence to any That which I aim at in this is only to note how when something of the same nature was passed by the late King Charles the Second dispensing by his Proclamation with two distinct particulars enjoyned by Act of Parliament as firmly as any of our Penal Laws about Religion can be not a word was ever objected against it as that it could not be done without a Parliament The one was for prohibiting of Spices from being brought into England otherwise than in English Bottoms and the place of their growth The other about the form of Cart and Waggon Carriages for the preservation of the Roads in both which Statures his late Majesty made a suspention and yet was never questioned in any Session of that or future Parliaments or by any of the Judges or Lawyers of the Kingdom which to this day continues still without any mans making the least noise about it Though no Parliament ever since gave that proceeding any confirmation as being Judged to have been done firm enough by the power that made the alteration This quarrel therefore is very unhandsome as it denies this King that Power in matters of Religion which they allowed the former King in things civil and is so much the worse in this Case as it questions His Majesties Prerogative in Ecclesiastical affairs which the Laws of the Kingdom have ever acknowleged to him in a peculiar manner In that very Act which was last made against Conventicles A Clause was put in as a special proviso c. That nothing in that Act shall make void his Majesties Supremacy in Ecclesiastical affairs but His Majesty his Heirs c. shall injoy the same amply as himself or any of his predecessors have done nevertheless the said Act. Undoubtedly when this proviso was made the Parliament did acknowledg that the King was not bound up by that Act so as that he could not grant any Liberty against its injuctions or suspend the Execution of the Law it self when it was wholly made upon an Ecclesiastical Account It must certainly be so also with the Vniformity Act for his Prerogative is not less in that because the like proviso is not made there no nor to the Test about Capacitating Men for holding of publick Offices since the matter of it relates chiefly to propositions that concern matters of Religion Of all Men in the World a Man would think our Clergy Men should forbear so much as to have the least thought of Questioning His Majesties Power touching what he has done by His Declaration when as Praying for him in their Pulpits they constantly present him to God as being over all Persons and in all Causes as well Ecclesiastical as Civil Supream Governor and Moderator For them therefore upon this small and first instance of his Moderatorship to call in question this his Supremacy either by preaching or speaking against what he hath done must give the People very strange Suggestions for while they do so what will the giving these Titles to Him be looked upon otherwise but as Hypocrisie towards God or a kind of Mock-Complement to the Kings Supremacy let them therefore either acknowledg the Power he hath exercised or else I know not how they will be able sincerely to say Amen to their own Prayers There are divers other things I had thought to have added to these Discourses but I fear what is writen already is more than many Mens leisure will allow them to read therefore I shall now forbear going any further and rather because it is like I may meet with some answerers or at least some better opportunity than I have at present which may draw them forth until which time I shall bid my Reader heartily Farewel FINIS
Loyalty than to Write or Preach against Rebellion or cry up the Doctrine of a meer external Non-resistance always believing that Men may be guilty of high Disloyal Acts even to the introducing of a Rebellion while themselves declare they abhor it This I learn'd from the Writing of King Charles the First Vide Page 18.30 as you will meet with in its place If any think I have written more favourably of the Roman Catholick Religion than becomes a Protestant I must reply to him I have written nothing at all either for or against one way of Religion or other but rather Refer as I said just now to such matters of Fact relating to the Three perswasions of the R. Catholicks The Church of England and Protestant Dissenters as were necessary to carry on what I intended and if in doing so and in comparing some things or practices of the Church of England with the Church of Rome I find that the Church of England hath upon its Protestant Principles made Laws for the punishing her Protestant Dissenters producing as bad Effects as those of the Church of Rome and thereupon say that the Protestants Sufferings from the Church of the England were in their Extent harder upon them since the last Settlement of their Uniformity than they can be said to have been under Queen Mary it doth not follow from hence that I Write for her Religion but rather that I am one that desire to Write impartially Or if while I see the Church of England Ministers either in their Printed Books or Sermons exposing as they have done of late some Doctrines or Practices of the other Church more to a Popular Contempt than for an Edifying Information of the People as they formerly dealt by the Dissenters and take occasion from thence to shew them in some particulars how very many of their own Practices and Doctrines may be in the same manner exposed I hope I may not be the worst Protestant for so doing If I reverence that Divine Principle viz. That Conscience in the matter of Gods Worship is not o the forced I am not to be blamed until I be otherwise convinced no nor if I Write against those who oppose His Majesty in settling the Kingdom upon that Principle in a Freedom from those Distractions which the practices of many upon the contrary Principles have ever since the Reformation brought upon it The principle is such as I cannot but value and love with all my Heart because I know it to be so agreeable to the Sence of every Mans mind That no Man who knows what belongs to the Sincere worshipping of God dare allow himself to be unwilling in any part of his Life to live otherwise than under its Benefit when I am otherwise convinced I may recal much of what I have Written but until then I am like to go on in the same way I am in If my Stile or way of writing be offensive to you as any whit too sharp I must crave your remission of that if you judge it to be a fault and for my excuse must say I unhappily learn'd it from the Church of Englands chiefest Doctors He that shall Read their Controversal Books and Sermons as I have done written against the Roman Catholicks and Protestant Dissenters will tell you it is next to an impossibility not to imbibe the Faculty of their way of Writing Gentlemen I have no more to say here but wish your Citty all imaginable happiness and each of your Selves and Families the Blessings of this World and that which is to come Some necessary Disquisitions and Close EXPOSTULATIONS WITH THE Clergy and People OF THE Church of England c. HOW highly the Church of England hath valued Her Self both upon the account of Her Loyalty and the super excellency of Her Constitution and Administrations is so well known among us as no Man needs my telling him any thing about it This is that Her Preachers and Members have so much boasted of as if in the point of Loyalty they were the only choice Persons in all his Majesties Dominions and in the case of Church Excellency they were the best and purest of all Churches in the World If all this were true it is pity they should have ever done any thing that might in the least wise lose or darken the Glory of such Excellencies or to make any Persons think otherwise of them than they think of themselves But I am in great doubt that if the People of England were divided into four Parts more then three of the four would be found to be of another Mind not only as to the excelling goodness of their Church but from some things they have lately done as to their Loyalty too In the former it is apparent for why else have such a Multitude of intelligent and well disposed Persons as to Religion with-drawn themselves from Her choosing father to bear all sorts of Afflictions then to be held in its Communion Not only a great number of Catholicks for so we commonly in compliance with their own phrase call those who hold to the Religion of the Chruch of Rome but even among Protestants also far greater numbers are found Zealous Dissenters from Her which surely must be from something they both of them find to give them great Dissatisfaction And as to their Loyalty I could likewise with that they had given no occasion to considerate Men to find as much defect in that as the other being such as in many Mens Opinions hath drawn upon it so great a Blemish as will not easily be wiped off especially while they cannot but take notice of two things The one is for so many of Her Clergy Mens Vehement Preaching against the Kings Religion The other is of the Irreverent Speeches and Censures many of Her Members have been found to express against His late Declaration I must acknowledge they have had the Advantages heretofore of tendring their Loyalty very specious when as all the Kings after the Reformation were wholly of their Perswasion and yielded themselves very much to be led by them but now when we have a King from whose Religion they considerably differ their Loyalty seems to be like that of those Mens which they formerly Condemned I do not say they take up Arms but as some Men have ordered the matter they have done that themselves which heretofore did in others too much lead the way unto such bad practises When I first observed that strain of Preaching in which many of them run immediately upon his Majesties coming to his Throne I must confess my self amazed at it for I saw him no sooner proclaimed King but all on a sudden we had such ratling Sermons both in City and Country against his Religion as if the Preachers had seen in a Vision that the Religion of Rome had been to be set up here in the first Month of his Reign Their hearers also and among them some of the chiefest ranck as to external
in that concern What the discourses of the Church of England People have been and still are upon this Subject I have mentioned already I am not so in love with repeating ill Languages as to name it over again It is no wonder the People should talk at the rate they have done while they hear and see what has been said and done by their Leaders in the Clergy The Declaration was no sooner dispersed about the Kingdom but Doctor Stillingfleet Re-prints his Sermon called the Mischief of Separation Preacht before the Lord Mayor of London against the Dissenters Worship in as sharp a manner as his wonted Oratory useth to do towards those he hath a mind to lash of which he may hear more at another time What he intended by the new setting it out himself best knows I inquire not after it I shall only inform him that this Act of his is looked upon by many as a direct affront to the Declaration as if he would have the People to believe that His Majesty had tollerated a Mischievous thing The Oxford Clergy do as good as call it by the opprobrious Name of a Suspected Artifice for when their Liocesan moved them to make some publick Testimony as a few others of their Church had done of their thankful sense of what the King had declared touching their being protected in their present Station and Worship they excuse themselves by making it one Reason of their refusal that by doing so they should forfeit their Reputation with the Nobility Gentry and Commonalty of their Cummunion and that it may tempt those Persons to disgust them for their rash Compliance with suspected Artifices Language I should have scarce expected from the greatest Clown in the Country however I perceive they resolved to speak their thoughts Freely by which we may a little know their Minds From the Preaching I spoke of before the People were taught how to form their Jealousies against the King as that he would alter their Religion and these Men now tell them the Declaration is the Artifice they suspect for the bringing it about If they say I strain this too far and put upon it a sense they intend not I must then pray them to explain their own sense more fully and tell us what it is that in that Expression they do intend for until they do I cannot understand them otherwise than I now Write there being such a near Relation between the Peoples Addressing to the King and the Declaration it self from whence they take the occasion as none can hardly say the one is a Suspected Artifice but they must say the other is so too But there are other strains not inferiour to this I have last named They will not thank the King by an Address because forsooth it will make the Exercise of their Established Religion to be Precarious As if when a Father shall say to any Son at his coming to Age SON Care was taken upon the Marriage of your Mother to setle an Estate upon you which now you shall injoy so far from any interuption from me as I promise to give you the best protection I can in your possession of it The Son shall say Sir I must not thank you for any thing of this least I make my Title to what I have too Precarious I wish they come not at last to say we must not thank Almighty God for the Spiritual Blessings he bestows upon us by his Covenant of Grace since that Covenant was made and Established with our fore Fathers long before we had a being and that in a firmer manner than all our humane Establishments can pretend to be I cannot believe otherwise but that all subordinate relations stand bound upon every signal Testimony of Special Favour they receive from their Superiors to make their acknowledgements of thanks whatsoever Obligation they may conceive their superiors might have before-hand put themselves under while it was in their Power to have done otherwise with us if they had pleased nor do I see any thing in all these Doctors Arguments that is like to alter my Opinion Had all the People in England told me four or five years ago that I should have seen and heard such things as these and others I have lately met with from divers of our Church Men towards the King I do professedly declare I should never have believed them I hear also they have Question'd or Disobey'd rather his Orders in disposing of some Places which his Majesty would fill up or where he thinks it convenient to make an Alteration Ay! is it come to this alreeady will they thus dispute it with their King if they begin thus I know not where they will make an end as Men when once but of the way of their Duty no body knows where they will Stop There is one thing more in these Oxford Mens Reasons for their Non-Addressing with their thanks to the King which I cannot pass by without some Remark They say they do not offer those Reasons as the sense of their own Minds only but undertake to affirm them to be the Opinion also of the best part of the Clergy of the Kingdom by the best I presume they mean the greatest part but how they came so soon to know each others Minds in so great a Kingdom as this is unto many no small wonder I hope they are not hatching another Association for securing the Protestant Religion as that which they so much exploded in one of the late Parliaments if they are much good may do them I intend not to be of the Fraternity but supposing them to have this intelligence one from another more then I am aware of I may still wonder how they undertake so far for the Nobility and Gentry as to know their thoughts so much in the case while they seem to fear that thanking the King for his promised Favours will forfeit their Reputation with them as Men that had too rashly complyed with suspected Artifices I think by the Carriage of many both of the Nobility and Gentry towards the Kings Person and his afairs in the Court and Country I may reasonably conclude they give them no grounds for such a Conjecture In my apprehension therefore this looks too much like a Substile insinuating their own dislikes into those that are in that honourable Station that thereby they may be pre-ingaged against his Majesties proceedings than any real ground they had to fear their displeasure if they should have returned the Kings thanks for the assurance he hath given of his protecting and Supporting their Church To say no worse of the matter it is no fair dealing towards persons so much their betters nor hath it so much as one spark of Loyalty in it towards the King How the people should avoid the being ensnared in their Loyalty by such bad Examples as these I no waies apprehend my fears I must profess are not a few and I shall crave so much leave as to