great vehâ—menâ—â— and Master-like in the Councel about two hours proving that the Power of Iurisdiction was given wholly to the Pope and that none in the Church besides â—ath any spark of it but from him and that while Christ liv'd in the flesh he govern'd the World with an absolute Monarchical Government and being to depart out of the World he left the same form appointing his Vicar St. Peter and his Successors to administer it as he had done giving him full and total Power and Iurisdiction and subjecting the Church to him as before to himself That in Councels be they never so frequent if the Pope be present he only doth decree neither doth the Councel any thing but approve and therefore it has been always said Sacro approbante Concilio yea even in Resolutions of the greatest weight as was the Deposition of the Emperor Frederic the Second in the General Councel of Lions Innocent the Fourth a most wise Pope refus'd the approbation of that Synod thaâ— none might think it to be necessary and thought it sufficient to say prâ—sente Concilio How comes the Case now alter'd when we behold the Iesuites now crucifying the Decree of their King the Pope after all their former Hâ—â—anna's to him while he was mounted on the World as his Ass and after all their deaâ—â—ing of the World with Blessing him in nomine Domini and see them now putting but a reed of Infallibility in his hand and see his Scepter in theirs and see their fourth Vow to the Pope annull'd and what performance then can Hereticks expect from any Promises they make to them and might not the Iesuits wiâ—â— the salvo of a Protestation against the Inquisition or with a thousand Expedients if they had pleas'd allow'd Receipts from the Inquisition to rid the World of a Pestilence as frankly as Protestants use the Jesuits Powder against Agues and without intending more Honour to that Court than the Sacred Writ did to the Devil in recording for our instruction several things by him spoken And have not we a candid account of this Arcaâ—um in a very Ingenious Discourse lately Translated into English and call'd The Policy of the Clergy of France to destroy the Protestants of that Kingdom and writ in the way of a Dialogue between a Parisian and Provincial where p. 67 and 68. Le Cheise and the Iesuits Party are said to have effected the suppression of the said Decree in France upon pretence that it issued from the Tribunal of the Inquisition and that in the Draught of an Order of a Parliament in France for the suppressing the Publication of this Decree these words were put viz. Tho that these Propositions are justly Condemned and that Father Le Cheise caus'd these words to be raâ—ed out and has put in their stead That even the good things which come to us from the Tribunal of the Inquisition ought not to be receiv'd But if upon occasion of what was discours'd by that Author it be further said that the setting up of those unmoral Casuistical Tenets in France was the erecting a Pillar of ignominy against God I will ask if one who is revera an incompetent Iudge shall go to demolish any such Pillar set up against my Father and I have already own'd that that Iudge doth infallibly know the bounds of his Iurisdiction and have obliged my self to him by the foremention'd fourth Vow that what thing soever he shall Command that belongs to the profit of Souls and the Propagation of the Faith I will without any tergiversation or excuse execute as far as I am able for this is the Jesuits fourth Vow to the Pope shall I then be active in the hindring a Decree of this Nature given by this Judge from being executed at the same time I Protest against it shall I make no Protestation for the honour of my Father And do you think in this Inquisitive Age the Cheat of an Inquisition will elsewhere pass long since that Court that is used by ordinary Inquisitors for the torturing the Bodies of Christians and mutilation of the Image of God cannot be allow'd to shew severity to the body of Sin to the Image of the Devil in depraved Minds and that while your unerring Iudge of Law and Fact is in Person there praesiding Are not you that surpreâ—â— the Dictates of your own Vniversal Pastor such unreasonable Men as we may well pray to be delivered from All our Jesuited Papists must still expect Expostulations of this Nature Their Head was before at Rome and their Brains too but if they now make a Schism from the Pope himself they will come under the Denomination of Acephali the Name of some ancient Heretics that is the People without a Head unless they will own the Hydra of the Jesuits for their Head which it seems the Hercules of Rome could not subdue I believe many of them will consider what sure footing they have where they are while they see their Moses flying from his own Staff when made a Serpent I mean his Order of Jesuits and see the Collusive or Sham-Serpents of the Jesuits devour those of their Moses and Juglers by Deceptio Visus and lying to impose on the eyes of the World against the sence and reason of Mankind and even of the Pope himself and 't will be very ridiculous for them who have been cheated out of their own Religion to think that some who are the Jesuits Bubbles can cheat us of ours and that while they are grown Seekers they should make us loose our Church and that when the Spiritual Monarchy of the Pope is in a manner Run Down by the Republic or Society of the Iesuits they should think to cheat us of our King and Church and that our Religion can be run down by such Spiritual Outlaws and Rebels against the Pope himself and such as perhaps the Pope may in time be induced to oblige the World by suppressing after their Injuring all Morallity and the most vital parts of Christian Religion and the great avow'd use of his Power in the whole Christian Common-wealth by their Suppression of his said Decree I hope while the Fan is in his hand he will throughly purge his floor and esteem the Disposals of rich Benefices in France to be poor Regalia sancti Petri for him to vindicate in Comparison of the lives of the Souls of his Flock that he and all ingenuous Knowing Mankind Know must be destroy'd by such Casuistical Principles and without his doing which he cannot in the least deserve the Title of his Holiness For the determining the truth about such Principles he need not say as one of his Predecessors did about the Iansenian Speculations that he had no skill in Divinity A very little skill in Natural Divinity and such as may be had by the Reading a few Lines in Tully's Offices would accomplish any one with what would demonstrate the things allowed by the Casuists to be unworthy both of the Divine and
and Honourable Actions of his numerous Ancestors being made by the hand of Heaven to point at him as the Centre and their being fixt so in his Memory that we cannot well think of his thinking of any thing but Honour that must make other Subjects pay the greater Veneration of his High Birth It is so hard a matter even for the flights of imagination with the exquisiteness of Art to produce thoughts of Kings and Princes any way proportionable to their real Figure that I have observed that our old famous Dramatists of the former Ages could hardly in any Scene give us the Character of a King done up to the height of a Monarchs Glory and as the Characters of Kings in those days were expressed it was but necessary that the Rule in Theaters should be that the Kings should enter there with loud Musick that so their Quality might that way be understood It is then no marvel if so many in the present Age who are not made è meliore luto and whose Education was low and whose Souls are narrow cannot comprehend the honour of the great part that God calls Kings to Act on the Stage of the World and are especially Strangers to the great thoughts that are to be supposed to Crown the Souls of Kings when they espouse a Religion But in that great particular Concern of Princes owning their Religion we are morally bound to think of them with all the honour we can nor to repine at that our Duty to them since in the Concern of Religion and as it is a Principle of the Divine Life we are to honour our Inferiours and cannot without profanation and usurping on Gods Right judge them rashly We are not to think that our honouring all men and the necessary parts of that duty are recommended to us by way of Council in order to a more perfect life and as not sub peccato obliging any but those who have by Vow bound themselves to the practice of the same but we are to esteem them Precepts and properly so called and universally binding and as necessary parts of that Holiness without which no man can see God. And therefore when I see any man after much labouring of his thoughts to have changed the Profession of his Belief of any Tenets controverted among Christians and particularly one who was in the Communion of the Church of England to own the belief of Transubstantiation Purgatory and the Doctrine of Iustification according to the Sense of the Council of Trent or other such points and shall find that most certainly that it neither was nor could be for Gain or respect to Temporal advantages that his judgment appeared thus altered nor yet out of levity and natural inconstancy and that his habitual constancy and steadiness in all measures relating to Persons and things long by me observed have assured me that no such change could thence proceed and shall further observe in such Person a greater tenderness in his regard to second Table Duties than before and that his inclinations of Beneficence to all Mankind and particularly to his former friends now differing in judgment from him have not been tinctured and discoloured by any alteration of his Notions I shall think my self under various Moral Obligations to honour such a Person tho perhaps erroneously opining I will honour him for his discharge of his Duty in trying all things and having spent time in examining the truth of Religionary Speculations and taking up a Religion not by chance as most Orthodox Religionaries do but by choice I will honour him for following that which Sanderson in his Lectures of Conscience calls the next and immediate tho not the adequate Rule of his Conscience the light of his mind for the time present a Light that I see so many Orthodox Religionaries playing with or endeavouring to extinguish I will honour him for the great Sacrifice I think that he honestly intends to truth and to offer which to it I see so many Persons who erred so reluctantly brought to its Altars I mean the Pride and Glory of the Humane understanding by a Recantation of its former Sentiments a Sacrifice that to him who consults with Flesh and Blood may seem as unpleasant as the offering up of Isaac did to Abraham And since to presage well of men is to honour them I will thus in the Case of such a Person who hath thus honoured God by taking up his â—ross and taking shame to himself believe that God will honour him and judge that tho he may in statu viatoris have mistaken Error for Truth in his way he will not mistake Hell for Heaven at his Journeys end Moreover since to speak rashly to or of any men is a dishonour to them I will not only not dishonour such a Person by determining that his Error is voluntary which whether it be so I can never know and which if it be not I do know it can be no Sin but will pay him the just honour of my judging it to be involuntary as knowing that neither he nor any one else can command his own understanding and that the nature of the understanding is such that it can no more apprehend things otherwise than they appear to it than the Eye see other Colours in the Rain-bow than it doth whether those Colours be really there or no. Moreover altho I know that no Law binds without a Promulgation and that that Promulgation of Divine positive Laws may by reason of mens diffent Abilities of understanding be sufficient for one man that is not for another and so that the erroneous opinion of one man may be a Crime and another mans holding the â—â—me opinion may be innocent yet I will not dishonour the understanding of any man for his not believing the Controverted points of Christian Religion that I observe other men of great intellectuals profess the Belief of and do consider that as the Wind bloweth where it lists so the influx of the Divine Spirit on men is not confined to the excellence of their understandings and that God doth not always reveal his mind to men according to the Proportion of their Gifts and Graces and that when the Book of the Law was found and read before Iosiah Hulda the Prophetess was sent to and consulted tho there were Prophets in the Land at that time and that that was Revealed sometime to Nathan that was not to David who was in all points his Superior I will according to what was cited out of Ames Interpret every thing of him in the better part that is doubtful And tho men do naturally think themselves equally wise I will according to the Morality enjoyned by that place in the Philippians Esteem him better than my self since a great part of Wisdom consists in the proportioning of the means to the end I will out of the knowledge of my own frequent Omissions in that kind account that we both having designed the same end of Eternal
convellere and it may well be supposed that I having partly grounded my Conjectures of the happy Future State of England on the former fashion of Polemical Writing being passed away could not be much tempted to Controversy The Iesuites and Casuists may still hold the 23d Tenet branded in the Pope's â—ecree as long as they will without any disturbance from my Pen viz. Faith in its large sense only from the Evidence of the Creation or some such Motive is sufficient for Iustification and so likewise the 46th Tenet there viz. frequent Confession and Communion even in those that live as Heathens is a Mark of Predestination and many other Tenets there relating to Religion and which the Pope with so great a Pastoral Sollicitude hath damned as at least scandalous and pernicious in Practice and hath prohibited to be defended by any under the pain of Excommunication ipso facto But there are other Tenets by him in that Decree condemned that I have in this Discourse dilated on as Convulsive of Humane Society which the Pietas in patriam occasioned in me such transports of passion against that I wished he had signalized with sharper words of Censure than those beforementioned and that I thought the Excommunicatio Major with the Ceremony of lighted Torches too little for and even an ordinary Anathema in their case to be a Complement or a kind of sham censuring them as abominable and not good or somewhat like the Censure pro formâ shot off against the Munster Peace and I supposed that if he had Sentenced them to be absolutely in themselves evil he would have satisfied every one that he had put the World out of their Gun-shot by his putting it out of his power to dispense with them However finding that Decree of great moment to Christendom and yet by the generality of Papists or Protestants to have been not much more regarded than are the Copies of the Dialogues between Pasquin and Marphorio that come here I have deliberately Surveyed it and done it what right I could And by occasion hereof do here call to mind a Remark on the Papacy I met with in a Pamphlet of one of our Dissenters viz. That if the Pope were a good man he might do a great deal of good Tho for sometime after I had begun this Discourse I was somewhat a Stranger to the great Character of the present Pope and so continued till reading the Preface of Dr. Burnet's very learned Book of the Regale I sound he there Celebrated him in these words viz. That he is a man of great probity and that on his advancement to the Papacy he conceived a very ill opinion of the whole Order of the Iesuites I since found cause from the Universal Concurrence of all Impartial men about the same to have the firmer opinion of the quiet of England and do expect from the influences of such a Pope on the Loyalty and Religion of the Roman Catholicks of England some advance of its happiness Tho most men may have only little Ideas of the Deity as of somewhat above the Clouds that as a great Cypher only surrounds the World yet the wiser few who have particularly observed the watchful Eye of Providence over the Critical passages and windings and turnings in their own lifes cannot but be sensible that in the designation of persons at stated times to be at the Helm of the Church of Rome and who are necessarily to have so great a share in the External and a much greater in the Internal Government of the World the great Governor of it and preserver of men is no unconcerned Spectator It is I think most highly probable that at a time when the World being filled with the Jesuites Principles and Casuistick distinctions Vertue it self was grown an empty Name and the Casuists Project of finishing Transgression and making an end of Sin in a subtle way and contrary to the plain Method intended by our Saviour had in a great part of the World almost finished the most Vital part of Christian Religion I mean plain and downright Morality and at a time when some Virtuosi in Italy and elsewhere half-witted and half Atheists taking it for granted that in what hearts soever the Jesuites and Casuists Religionary Model had prevailed the simplicity of the Gospel was extinguished were observed to talk of Albumazar's fond prediction of the Christian Religion lasting but about 1460 years and Criticising of the time from whence its promulgation and likewise the promulgation of those Casuistical Tenets bore date did prophanely insinuate their Miscreant-Conceptions of the Christian Religion not lasting till the time assigned in the Scripture for Christs surrendring his Mediatory Kingdom to his Father I say it is most highly probable that at such a time and when the Jesuites Interest too had so much Prosperity as to tempt them to think that the Mountain of their Religion should never be moved that nothing less than the great Vertue and Courage of this Pope appearing by his said Decree could secure Vertue it self and the true Christian Morality and give the World occasion to say with some Alteration of the Question put to Esther viz. Who knoweth not that he is come to Rome ' s See for such a time as this is The Mountainous heap of Rubbish in the Iesuites and other Casuists Principles and even in the Canon Law appears very stupendious to the World but considering the Christian Heroical Acts of this Pope and who for his severity against the abuses of Indulgences hath been by some Papists called the Lutheran Pope as I said and for his anger against the Jesuites Principles been called the Iansenist Pope by others I think another great Question in the Prophet Zechary may be here not improperly applied viz. Who art thou O great Mountain before Zerubbabel Little did the Iesuites think that when they Crowned the Papacy with a double Crown I mean of its infallibility in Law and likewise in Fact a Crown much more glorious than its Triple one any Pope would ever uncrown their Principles and expose their baldness to the World and little do they who fear that ever this Pope will occasionally dispense with any mens practising these Principles think of the security they have against the same from his inflexible Virtue and perfect Antipathy to injustice and which are judged to be so inherent in his Nature that I shall here occasionally say that as I was somewhat a Stranger formerly to the Character of this Pope so I believe some of the Plot-witnesses were that reflected on him so ignominiously for undoubtedly had it been understood by them they would never have thought their Credibility could have out-lived their first attacquing it It may possibly be here objected by some Critical Inspectors into the late Papal Transactions that Alexander the 7th as this Pope observes in the beginning of his said Decree did first damn some of the Iesuites Principles viz. in the year 1665 and that
formerly ib. The Author shews that none need be afraid of any Roman Catholick Prince who was formerly a Protestant from p. 174 to 177. Non-Conformist Divines not scrupling the lawfulness of what the Conformists do but were ashamed to confess their error p. 175. 'T is a shame for such Divines to censure the belief of Religionary Notions in a high born Prince p. 176. By the falsity of such Divines Principles as many hundreds of thousands were here stain as were bare hundreds put to death in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary ib. A Confutation of one Argument brought for London's being desigâ—edly fired by many Popish Persons p. 181. The Author's Iudgment that the fermentation that hath been in the Kingdom will not prove destructive but perfective to it p. 183. The Author's Iudgment that all Policy Civil or Ecclesiastical will be accounted but Pedantry that Postpones the Consideration of the building Capital Ships and their Maintenance and Equipage p. 184. That Religion-Traders are really of the Trade of Beggars p. 184. More concerning the breaking of the Trade of Beggars and of Court-Beggars ib. The reason why our English Mininisters of State have not writ their Memoires as those of France have done p. 185. The Author of the present State of England observed to say in Part 2d that the yearly Charge of his Majesty's Navy in times of Peace is so well regulated that it scarce amounts to 70,000 l. per Annum p. 185. What the Lord Keeper Bridgman in his Speech to the Parliament in the year 1670 saith that from the year 1660 to the late Dutch War the ordinary Charge of the Fleet communibus annis came to 500,000 l. per Annum and that it cannot be supported with less ib. The Author believes that the ordinary Naval Charge hath in no years since amounted to less than 200,000 l. per Annum besides the vast Charge in building new Ships and rebuilding old and the Charge of Summer and Winter Guards and of Convoys and Ships against Argier p. 186. Since the year 1669 the King hath enriched the Kingdom with a more valuable Fleet than it had before ib. The manifold payments to the Vsurpers amounted to one entire Subsidy in each Week of the Year and what the Kingdom paid before exceeded not usually one Subsidy or 15 th in two or three years space ib. The nature of our old gentle way of Assessments called Subsidies ib. Instead of the demanding of 5 Members from the Parliament above 400 were forcibly secluded from it ib. Taxes afterward levied in the name of a House of Commons when there were no Knights of the Shire for 26 English and 11 Welch Counties and but one Knight of the Shire in other 9 Counties and only the full number of Knights of the Shire for 4 Counties and when York Westminister Bristol Canterbury Chester Exeter Oxford Lincoln Worcester Chichester Carlisle Rochester Wells Coventry had no Citizens and London 1 instead of 4 and Glocester and Salisbury alone had there full number and when by a parcel of about 89 permitted to fit the whole Clergy as well as Layety of England was taxed ib. and p. 187. The Vsurper by his own Authority only laid a Tax of 600,000 l. per Month on the Nation p. 187. He afterward had a giving Parliament that Calculating the Charge of the Nation found 400,000 l. per Annum necessary for the Navy and Ports and settled on him in all 1,300,000 l. per Annum ib. Their helping him into the Power to break the Balance of Christendom as he did hath entailed on the Nation for ever a necessity of labouring hard to support the publick Government ib. A Descant on the saying of Dulce bellum inexpertis from p. 187 to p. 189. A Calculation of the number of the People now living who are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War and a Calculation of what numbers of those who lived in 1641 are now dead and what proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War and of the number of such inexperts in Ireland and Scotland p. 188 189 190. The Vsurpers seized into their hands about a Moiety of the Revenue of the Kingdom p. 190. 'T is observed that presently after the discovery of the Gun-Powder Treason the Parliament gave King James 3 Subsidies 7 Fifthteenths and 10 ths of the Layety and 4 Subsidies of the Clergy and what they amounted to The Author shews how just and natural it was for the Parliament believing that Plot so to do p. 191 194. An intimation of the reason of so much hatred in France against the Earl of Danby p. 192. The Authors belief that the future Warlike State of Christendom will necessarily prompt all Patriots instead of studying to make men unwilling to promote publick supplies to bend their Brains in the way of Calculation to shew what the Kingdom is able to contribute to its defence and how to do it with equality ib. The judgment of Sir W. P. that if a Million were to be raised in England what quota of the same should be raised on Land Cattle personal Estate housing ib. The Iudgment of the same Author cited for the second Conclusion in his Political Arithmetick viz. that some kind of Taxes and publick Levies may rather encrease than diminish the Common-wealth p. 193. An account of the exact Roman Prudence in the equality of Taxes under the Ministry of the Censors appearing from the Civil Law ib. The great care and exactness of the leading men in Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments to Calculate the Levies and to render the same equal ib. The disproportionate Taxes laid by the Vsurpers on the Associated Counties and others have caused the weight thereby to aggrieve many of those places ever since ib. Lilly the Astrologer complaining that whereas he was Taxed to pay about 20 s. to the Ship money he was in the year 1651 rated to pay about 20 l. annually to the Souldiery ib. The Author's belief and reason about Republican Models necessarily growing more and more out of fashion p. 194 195. Observations on the great Clause of proponentibus legatis in the Council of Trent p. 195. The preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and the Priest and with respect to number weight and measure under the times of the Gospel agreed on by Divines to be referred to by Ezekiel in Vision from the 40th Chapter to the end of his Prophecy p. 196. How Augustus his great Tax or Pole helped to confirm the Christian Religion p. 197. The Author's opinion that future legal and equal Taxes will have the effect of strengthening the Protestant Religion ib. Observed that the Parliament may be justly said to be indebted to the Crown for that great
by his dying breath to make it evaporate for ever There was no guile found in his mouth and his followers were only then wise as Serpents while they were innocent as Doves and the first Crying in the Cradle of the Puer Hebraeus of the holy child Iesus was as Thunder to strike the old Equivocating Oracles Dumb that had so long cheated the credulous World. When he branded the Scribes and Pharisees with sharper language he calls them Hypocrites He alarms us of false Prophets coming in the Masquerade of Sheeps clothing tells us That he who calls his Brother fool shall be in danger of hell fire and therefore he may much more fear that danger who makes a Fool of him and plays the Knave with him he Commands us not to Calumniate or kill but to bless those that curse us which is more than to praise them as I said before of blessing being the tribute due to Men heroically Virtuous To shew that he intended nothing of Artifice in the Propagation of his Doctrine a hated Publican and a few poor Fishermen and a Tent-maker are used in his Embassy to the World men not likely to be able Mentiri pro patriâ coelesti if such a Commission as Go Cheat all Nations had been given them And lest it might be thought that with Oratorical Harangues that he or they led Men by the Ears as an implicit faith is said to lead them by the Nose he us'd no hony of Phrase or sting of Epigram no Politic Remarks nor scarce more lenocinium of words than is in He that hath an ear to hear let him hear He tells us That for every Idle word we must give an account and therefore certainly abhorr'd Equivocation which makes all words and speech Idle and of no effect and since as I think 't was truly said Eloquentia non nisi stultos Movet Eloquence moves none but Fopps he did as I may say put that generous Complement on mens understandings not to Commission his Ministers to try to sooth men out of one belief into another by bribing their imaginations with the excellency of speech or the inticing words of man's Wisdom but the contrary He thought it worthy of God to be worship'd by the world in Spirit and in Truth and not to encrease the number of his Homagers by Lies Legends and Impostures It was for the honour of the Christian Religion that the Son of God chose to take flesh in the time when Augustus Reign'd when the Roman World being freed from a long Civil War had leisure to â—â—ltivate the Arts of Wit and Reason and had brought them to their highest Perfection and took not the advantage of a dark and barbarous Age to surprize the World in as afterward both Papism and Mahumetanism did and 't is therefore no Marvel if either of those two Hypotheses of Religion did in one Point so much resemble the Christian Religion in so soon with its ferment levening so Great a lump of the World. But the Christian Religion came not into the World like a Fireship with prepar'd smoke to blind mens eyes as it was assailing them No for to the end that the Christian reveal'd Doctrine might like a great Pyramid be conspicuous to the whole world and last together with it and reach from Earth to Heaven the Divine Providence was long laying its Foundation very deep in Nature and very wide in the world I mean Iustice and Reason so agreeably to Humane Nature then at their height appearing in the Laws of the Roman Empire and its subjugating the World and its reducing Mankind to the Law of Nature first imprinted on Man's heart were by the Care of Heaven used as previous in qualifying the World to receive the Glorious Superstructure of the Christian Religion the which would certainly not have been so much as res unius aetatis if at that time when the Roman Laws inculcating the Natural Cognation between all Mankind and placing Actions that wound Piety or Reputation or good Manners in the Number of things Impossible and intimating their abhorrence of Collusion Combining Circumvention and Disanulling things done thereby and branding of those acts that do fraudem facere legi and rendring that to be but a pittiful innocence that is but as good as the Law requires and making him in the eyes of the Law to be still in Possession of any thing who is actually trickt out of it quia pro possessione dolus est providing against Calumny by an Oath in all litigations and when a person is render'd to do a thing infamously expressing it by dolo facit having the regard of Pudor verecundia Humanitatis ac Religionis ratio and other such words of the like charming signification which were like Trees in the Body of the Roman Laws planted as thick by one another as they could well stand the Christian Religion had in the Congruity of its Precepts to Humane Nature come short of those of the Romans who as Cicero says did not Calliditate ac Robore sed Pietate ac Religione omnes gentes nationesque superare and especially if in those against Calumny Fraud and Circumvention the Christian Faith had not reach'd as high as the bona fides of the Heathens and much more if the Model of Christian Morality had been in that Knowing Age like that of the Jesuits in this But certainly since it hath often proved fatal to the Ministers of Kings to be or seem wiser than their Masters the Iesuits by affecting in their Platforms of Morality to be wiser than him who in the style of the Scripture of God is made to us Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification and Redemption may easily take a prospect of their ruine and as the Serpents trying to out-wit Heaven and its Poisoning the Morals of our first Parents with its subtlety made the Scene of its motion to be in the Dust and it to be more accurs'd than any brute Animal such is likely to be the fate of this Serpentine Order after they have been by their subtle Casuistical distinctions so long nibbling at the Sacred word a thing the old Serpent did and tempting Men in a fool's Paradise according to their several Palates by their Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil I mean the Experiments of Vice by their pretended Moral Theology but what is so far from deserving the Name of Theology that if it were imagin'd that a general Counsel of Devils were by their Chief call'd to debate of a Model of credenda and agenda for the world 't is likely they would unanimously agree to set up this and no other for no doubt they would pass no Article to deny the existence of a God for they believe that and tremble nor yet any Article that might be controul'd by Natural light or of which any Matter of Fact would be over-rul'd by Authentic History but they would among the unwary Judges of things and such whose Judgments are choak't up with the fumes
Resort as I call'd it of their use and application of their erroneous or rather diabolical doctrine of Calumny must certainly be fatal to them according to that Proverb in the Gospel about the last error erit novissinus error pejor priore The High Priests and Pharisees came to Pilate saying Sir we remember that that deceiver said while he was yet alive After three dayes I will rise again Command therefore that the Sepulchre be made sure till the third day lest his Disciples come by Night and steal him away and say to the people he is risen from the dead So the Last error shall be worse than the first and they Judged right enough of the Last error Confounding more than the First as it is the force of the Last motion from a Precipice that breaks a man in pieces and this effect of the last error was presently exemplify'd in themselves for they having caus'd the holy Sepulchre to be very strongly guarded and the Door of it to be barricado'd with a very great Stone and that Stone to be seal'd and the Lord of Glory after all this over-powring the Grave and Guards they had a Consult and gave the Guards Money to spread that Shamme in the World that his Disciples did steal him away while the Guards slept and saith St. Mathew this is reported among the Iews to this day And lo as Christ did rise for our Iustification so did this Subornation used by those Impostors justify the truth of his Resurrection which else could not so well have confronted the Worlds incredulity for if after his Resurrection his Disciples believed not Mary Magdalen Ioanna and the Mother of Iames who told them that he had appear'd to them and if the two Disciples that told the Rest that he had appear'd to them going to Emmaus were not believ'd by them and if when he appear'd in the midst of Ten of them at once and shew'd them his hands and his side they believ'd not for joy and if when he appear'd to the Women and bade them tell the Disciples and St. Peter that according to his Promise they should see him in Galilee and if the Eleven Disciples went into Galilee to a Mountain which he had appointed them and yet when they saw him there they worship'd but some doubted and if Christ almost in his Last words upbraided them with their unbelief because they believ'd not them who had seen him after he was risen the Pagan and Iewish World would not have been brought to easily as they were to the belief of his Resurrection the great hinge on which the Christian Religion turns and without which the Preaching of the Cross would not so much have seem'd foolishness as been madness Thus did that last Jewish error prove most fatal to Judaisme and as Heaven was extracted by the Divine Power out of the Hellish act of Murdring the holy Iesus so was the propagation of the truth of his Resurrection out of the Calumny Subornation and Bribery used to suppress it those artifices being so odious in the eye of the Law of all Nations that they make any that uses them to gain infamy and loose his Cause and to make sure of the hatred ofone very Considerable Enemy namely Mankind and justly for against that great Body is every one that professeth Calumny an aggressor and has proclaim'd War. And Granting that Nature is Constant to it self and that conslusions of the working of the Passions in humane Nature in future times may be made from the pass'd Our Quintadecimani thô their Order seems in many political Principles to be close compacted like the scales of Leviathan by the publishing of the Tenets before mentioned and constant practice of them have brought themselves into the shallows and they are like Whales on ground gazed on by the Critical World and there labouring under the fatality of their own weight It has been observed by that deep Enquirer into Nature Monsieur Descartes that Le bon sens est chose du monde mieux partagè c. Nothing is more equally distributed by Nature among Meu than Vnderstanding and Reason for every Man thinks he has enough and of this opinion was Mr. Hobbes in that Chapter in his Leviathan of the Natural condition of Mankind Where he saith That as to the Faculties of the Mind there is a greater equality among men then that of strength for prudence saith he is but experience which equal time bestowes on all men in those things they equally apply themselves to That which perhaps makes such equality incredible is but a vain conceit of ones own wisdom which all mortal men think they have in a greater degree than the Vulgar that is then all men but themselves and a few others whom by fame or for Concurring with themselves they approve for such is the Nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledg many others to be more Witty or more Eloquent or more Learned yet they will hardly believe many so wise as themselves for they see their own witt at hand and other mens at distance But this proves rather that men are in that Point equal than unequal For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of any thing then that every man is Content with his share Admitting this great observation of those two great Masters of Witt and Philosophy to be true One would suppose that Nature did not in vain implant in men such a general notion of their equality in Wisdome nor without an intent of promoting the good of humane Society thereby The God of Nature hath not only not given us any members of our bodies but not the very hair of our eye-browes nor even the hairs of our eye-lids in vain for our eye-lids are fortify'd with those little stiff bristles as with palisado's against the assaults of Flyes and such like bold animalcula and I may say that that general Notion doth defend the Eyes of mens Minds from being too easily imposed on by particular Notions and Shammes occurring to us from any And as to that notion so universally planted in mens Souls by Nature one may well imagine that what a Gardiner plants in every bed of his Garden is no weed and perhaps one great End of Nature in the general implantation of this principle in men may be The shewing them the folly and danger of their attempts who think to engross that great Staple Commodity of the intellectual World call'd Wisdome and to force others to buy that Commodity of which they think they have enough of their own by them and especially when they see that others would force a trade on them by counterfeit Wares and have been already branded for so doing The truth is every man's life who pretends to a greater share of Wisdome than his Neighbour is in the better state of security by this Notion before-mentioned for if a man thought others by their Wisdom could render his ineffectual for
most vital part Sincerity hereby in danger to be exterminated For as 't is a thing well known to Merchants and Goldsmiths and Mint-Masters that if the Par as they call it or exact Proportion between Gold and Silver be not observ'd in any Country either the Gold will carry all the Silver out of it or the Silver all the Gold so it may be affirm'd too That if there be not a Par or Proportion observ'd as to Religion and Profit or Wealth either the Religion of a Country will carry out all the profit or Proventus of it or the profit will carry out or exterminate Religion I will not therefore here Prophecy that the World will never but say that it can never be fixed in a quiet and orderly State and free from the Importunity and Sedition of Hypocrites till its Present State be such that Men can neither get nor lose by Religion And till the World recovers this Golden Age namely that Gold cannot carry out our Religion and People us with Hypocrites or our Religion Gold the World will be but a great disorderly House and scarce worth any Mans being Monarch over it As the Irish call their last Rebellion by the name of the Commotion so some have happen'd to call the Present State of Peoples Minds in England which is so disorderly by the name of a Fermentation and this Fermentation can never be over in our English World till there shall here be neither profit or loss by Religion and that no Man shall be more or less Rich by more or less Combining with any Party to cry up or decry any Religionary Tenets or Propositions One would wonder that since Religion and particularly the Christian with its Credenda doth Crown the reason of Man and likewise annex by the exuberance of the Divine benignity a Crown of Glory hereafter to the Believers that any Men should for their belief of Propositions not contrary to reason and wherein the credit of the propounder was supported by Miracles expect to be rewarded in this World a humour that hath been regnant even among Christians from the time of our Saviour's being on Earth to the present Age and a humour that so poyson'd the Iews of old that they thought it not Tanti to have their minds freed from the slavery to Error unless the Messias would have deliver'd them from the servitude of the Romans and because he did not and did decline the being made an Earthly King when the Iews with their Hosannas were tempting him to it they Accused him Capitally for saying That he was a King whenas it was not he but they that said it and they put him to Death reverà because his Kingdom was not of this World and a humour that would not quit the Stage when the first Christians did but boldly still faced the World as appears by the notion of the Millennium having been so much applauded by all the Fathers of the Church and the Christians before the first Nicene Council But methinks from the Example of the Christians of old who did Ambire Martyrium to such a degree that St. Gregory saith Let God number our Martyrs for to us they are more in number then the Sands as if the work had been too hard for another Archimedes with his Arenarius to Calculate the number of the Martyr'd Christians and one Author accounts that excepting on the first of Ianuary there is no day for which Records do not allow 500 Martyrs at least and that for most days they allow 900 and who did ennoble the Christian Religion by shewing to the World an Example of Contempt of Death and even of Life beyond that of the Ancient Romans I say from the Example of those Christians who did in shoals dye daily for their Religion Ours may if they please be taught the modesty not to expect daily livelihoods from it and to account they have very fair play if they do not lose their livelihoods by it 'T is moreover observable that under the Iewish Theocracy Providence had then so ordered things that no Man should get or lose by Religon The Tribes had then their shares of the good Land by lott and the Levites only had that affluent proportion of the Proventus of the other Tribes that I have before Calculated and which would have tempted many of the other Tribes to have march'd over to the Officium and Beneficium of the Priesthood had not God their Monarch provided against that by the confinement of the Administration of the Priesthood to one Tribe and its descendents by natural generation But as to the notion of getting or losing by Religion I shall recommend to your Lordships reading a small Pamphlet printed in two sheets of Paper in Folio and call'd The great Question to be consider'd by the King and this Parliament c. to wit How far Religion is concern'd in Policy or Civil Government and Policy in Religion c. On the disquisition of which a sufficient Basis is proposed for the firm settlement of these Nations to the most probable satisfaction of the several Parties and Interests therein and subscribed by the name of Philo-Britanicus Who the Author of it was I cannot learn but do easily find by the Book that he is a Man of great Acumen of thought and that Matters of Religion and State especially relating to this Kingdom have been very much thought of by him and that the Author was certainly neither Papist nor Presbyterian and so far from being a favourer of the Church of England that he doth interminis make the publick Maintenance of the Clergy to have been the Bone of Contention in these Nations p. 8. and there saith It will be found to stand on the same foot with Abbies and Nâ—â—neries and their Lands and there further as a propounder would give all the Church-Lands to the Crown and the Tithes to the People and then tells us That all Fears and Iealousies and Animosities on the account of Religion will be pluck'd up by the Roots That Author in p. the 5th doth very acutely observe That Popery hath two Parts the one is that which is meerly Religious that is which relates properly to Religion or Conscience and which is peculiar to them such as the believing of Transubstantiation Purgatory Adoration of Saints and Images yea and the superiority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churchmen all which and those of this kind may be believed and professed without prejudice to Civil Society and as being matters relating to Conscience come not properly under the Magistrates Cognizance the other part is the opinion of the Pope's Power over Princes and States his obsolving the people from their Obedience his giving them dispensations to kill Princes and destroy them and allowing them not to keep faith to Hereticks and such like which as they are destructive to Government are truly no part of Religion but a politick contrivance long hatch'd by the Bishop of Rome and his dependants
he pleased And there in Book 7th 't is said That the Pope on further application from the Ambassadors of Princes that that Clause might be damned as contrary to the liberty of Ambassadors and Bishops in propounding what they thought profitable those for their States and these for their Churches the Pope gave them good words about it but did nothing and Book 10th The Spanish Ambassador desiring the Retractation of that Clause and that otherwise the Council could not be called free and that its freedom was to be dated only from the time of such Retractation and that the Emperor insisted on its abrogation and that by reason of that Clause no German had yet come to that Council yet nothing was effected for its revoking and still the Proponentibus legatis stood as a Rock and all their Addresses dash'd themselves in pieces producing nothing but the froath of excusatory words from the Pope about it and in fine all that could be gained was in the end of the Council after that Clause had had its full effect and done all its Execution against the freedom of the Council and particularly of the Ambassadors and Bishops there and was like a Post-horse ridd to his Stage and had brought all the Cloak-bags with the Holy Ghost from Rome to turn it to grass with a Formal Declaration or Protestation contrary to Fact that the meaning of the Synod was not by that Clause to change in any part the usual manner of handling matters in general Councils c. A crying Con licensa to the Bishops and Ambassadors after the cutting of the Throats of their Liberties And now can any Opiniatre yet further think that a Representative of English Commoners will ever think those Republican Projectors of liberty who do bare faced cut them off from the freedom of their share in Enacting any thing but what another House shall propound and that nothing shall have the Sanction of Law but what enters the Stage with a proponentibus Patriciis or by the Proposition of any other House the Style of one of Cromwels two Houses and who do set up for Inventors in Politics by reviving the exploded Constitution of the Athenians among whom Anacharsis observed Wise men did consult and Fools determine But the days are pass'd and gone that gave People of subtle and uneasie Brains the leisure of digging in Politics further than the Center which whoever doth digs not downward but upwards and that Center I account the ancient lex terrae to be and he who hath got beyond that doth digging upwards destroy the real Foundations of Churches and States while he is laying imaginary ones But since according to the saying in hieme nil movendum men of Sense who love to be tampering with Physick in other seasons will in that be averse from stirring the humours and trying Conclusions on themselves and in the churlish State of the World abroad that is in prospect all State Empirics that would any where advise a change of Fundamental Governments will find an unruly Patient of the World and all our sober Political Virtuosi will be necessarily inclined to study how to maintain and support our old Government instead of projecting any new one And in order to the support of our old one I dare say that there will be no more suspension of Royal Aids on the account of the Arminian Controversie or the freedom of our Wills while we are busied in preparing to defend the freedom of our Estates and Bodies from Forraigners and securing both Prince and Peoples not being predestinated to ruine by them The Extinguishing the maintenance of the Clergy will not pass for a new Evangelical Light but the exactest provision for the Enabling Crown'd Heads to support their Civil Government and their Clergy and with the observance of equality and proportion in the same respecting the State of their Kingdoms will be worthy the thoughts of the most illuminated Doctors for as among the Divines it is on all hands agreed that from the 40th Chap. of the Prophecy of Ezekiel to the end of that Book the thing chiefly designed in the Portraiture of the great Vision of the Prophet is to represent the figure of Church and State under the Gospel so there is great proportion kept in the same and not only the curious colouring but the exactness of draught and design required in a great Historical Painting and no wonder if the same appeared so express'd on the Table of the Prophets imagination when God himself was pleas'd there to paint it partly after the exactness and proportion of the Iewish Oeconomy and with many Additions of Curiosity and to which tho a litteral interpretation is not applicable and on which tho no expectance of the Erection of another material Temple at Ierusalem or in Iudea is to be founded or of 12000 Reeds of Land for the Temple and Priests yet may it thence be naturally inferred that the preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and Priest and with respect to number Weight and Measure in the Future times of the Gospel was then the care and design of Providence The 45th Chapter that doth so nicely assign the Portion for the Prince and Priest ordains or rather predicts a Royal Patrimony for the Prince in the way of a ballance of Land as 't is said in the 8th Verse In the Land shall be his Possession in Israel and my Princes shall no more oppress my People and the rest of the Land shall they give to the House of Israel according to their Tribes The consideration of this may probably reforme the men of curious imagination who are still making the Metal of Government more fine than the Standard and thinking to leave out there the necessary Mixture of the baser allay that the frail State of humanity requires to make it currant and without which it would be too brittle for use and projecting how to make the Government of Church and State with ease to live upon nothing or on Taxes in a confused and blundering manner laid when the thought of an inspired Prophet in this Vision relating to the time of the Gospel the which is called by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews the time of Reformation applied all the exactness of Mathematics to the supporting both the Crown and use of the Keys by an ample and certain Revenue And as the great Tax of Augustus on the Roman World or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of Capitation or Pole near the time of our Saviors Birth served to confirm the Christian Religion in the accomplishment of the Prediction of Christs being born in Bethlem and to cause Ioseph and Mary's going thither a resembling effect in the Confirmation of the most rational kind of the Christian Religion I mean the Protestant do I expect from our Future Legal and Equal Taxes and as I mentioned my Lord Bacon's saying of the Parliaments being yet in debt to the Church since
Papal World must be surfeited with it at last And indeed the experience Popish Polititians have had of their success by dividing us formerly as was said would tempt them to omit other courses and to persist still in that if it were not now generally seen through 'T is in viridi observantiâ how our Famous great Usurper Cromwel who founded his Dominion in pretended Grace or Religion and was afraid of Thunder from every Cloud of Enthusiasme he saw over his head and was awed likewise by the Serene and Rational Religion of the Church of England had no other Game to play in order to the dividing the several Religionary Parties but by in some manner tolerating all according to the Mode of Iulians Politics The Papists were the first who miscalled any of our English Princes by the name of Iulian and that they did in the Case of King Iames as appears in his Learned Apology for the Oath of Allegiance printed Anno 1609. where being much concerned for his being so termed and that too by no meaner a man then Bellarmine he doth with great strength there largely prove that that name was congruous as his words are in no point save one that is that Julian was an Emperor and I a King and indeed 't is a very impotent humour of Calumny in any Protestant to call any one an Apostate or especially the Apostate merely for the alteration of his Judgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants and which are denominable by the name of Religion and 't is a great folly to cherish immoderate fears that any English Prince who possibly may happen in such Controvertible Points to change his perswasions in Religion will if a Papist attempt á la Iulian to plant Divisions among his Subjects by the Instrument of Religion for that their being kept undivided and all of a piece will be essential to the life of the Kingdom as the State of Christendom is likely to continue nor is it probable that any such Prince can ever think in the single course of his life to make this Nation all of a piece or united under the perswasion of Popery For if any one would suppose it possible that in the Reigns of three or four Successive Princes of that perswasion the nature of things might be so far forced as that Millions of men might by artifice be made to abandon a Rational Religion and one that is framed to support the Government for one that is not so such one Prince must be supposed to have acquired the gift of long life that Ante-diluvian Patriarchs had and to extend the Span of his life to that of three or four Princes It is a known Rule relating to Mathematics That there is no reconciling time and force and he who would have one man do as much as four must allow him to be as long a doing it as four one after another But the surviving Experts have seen too much of the effects of the shaking all Civil and Ecclesiastical Polity by a Protestant Usurper ever to wish for another in any Case and to have the ballance of Christendom again broken and the Kingdom be again divided to preserve his Families interest and to keep that entire which is notorious to have happen'd under the aforesaid Usurper both of Religion and the Kingdom and the name of Iulian is most properly applicable to him or any Protestant Usurper and who will be necessitated to follow him in his Track of Politics and the notion of which Ammianus Marcellinus lib. 22. set us right in where he shews that Iulian that he might weaken the Power of the Christian Religion which he feared knew no way so easie as to endeavour to do it by it self and therefore recall'd the Bishops banish'd by Constantius and gave them and the People leave to be Christians tho himself was a Heathen Nullas infestas hominibus bestias ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus i. e. because he had never found Beasts so cruel to one another as he had most Christians and therefore as he travelled through Palaestine cryed out O Marcomanni O Quadi O Sarmatae tandem alios vobis inquietiores inveni Thus did the Usurper promote the Animosities among Religionary Parties and was enforced thereby to weaken the Kingdom to strengthen himself some indulgence he shewed to Congregations where Divines of the Church of England worship God in the way of its Church yet permitting none to have Benefices but such as were of the Presbyterian perswasion generally and among such and the Independants he distributed his Donatives of preferment in the Universities and he took care that no form of Church Discipline or particular Church might preponderate by his being a Member therein He made some Lay-men and some Divines differing in Judgment about Presbytery and Independency to be Tryers of Ministers fitness for Livings and Commissioned many ignorant Lay-men in the several Counties to be Judges of the sufficiency of Ministers for their continuing in Livings The press was open to all unlearned Wranglers about Religion Many of his Military Preferments he placed on Anabaptists and did suffer many of the Fifth-Monarthy Religionaries to disturb the Apocolypse and the World thereby gave freedom to Muggleton the Impostor to set up for a Prophet and one of the two Witnesses and was a particular Patron to Manasseth ben Israel and in treaty with him here to introduce the Iews and tolerated Biddels Congregated Church of Socinians further likewise so far giving an occasion to Mr. Marvels Writing a Book then of the Growth of Popery that Mr. Pryn in his Book called A true and perfect Narrative of what was done c. Printed in the Year 1659. saith in p. 57th That Sir Kenelm Digby was his particular Favourite and lodged by him at White-hall that Maurice Conry Provincial of the Franciscans in England and other Priests had his Protections under Hand and Seal and that he suspended Penal Laws and Executions against Popish Priests and Iesuites tho sometimes taken in their Pontificalibus at Mass and were soon after released and that he endeavoured to stop the Bill against Papists the very Morning he was to pass it by his White-hall Instruments who moved its suspension for a time as not suting with the then present Forraign Correspondencies against whom it was carried by 88 Votes that it should be sent up with the rest then passed and that he writ to Mazarine to excuse his passing that Bill as being carried on by a violent Presbyterian Party much against his Will and that yet it should not hurt them tho passed c. And I suppose an Author more profound in his Observations than Mr. Pryn doth in a Loyal Pamphlet Printed in the Year 1656. Called a Letter from a true and lawful Member of Parliament c and generally conceived to be writ by the late Lord Hollis there in p. 58. and the following ones charge Cromwel home for the
it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender Branch thereof will not cease tho the Root thereof wax old in the Earth and the Stock thereof die in the Ground yet through the Scent of Water it will bud and bring forth Boughs like a Plant and the hand of the God of Nature kept her hands from extirpating it and the irrigation of Nature wrought more powerfully than her Fiâ—es and the Scent of Water made Sagacious Loyal Protestants with their Lachrymae verae and lachrymae antiquae presage the growth of Protestancy but as our Laws now are and likely forever to be Protestants here may not only take their measures of the natural duration of their Religion from the similitude of the sublime Prophet viz. as the days of a Tree are the days of my People but from the stability of the Lex terrae and the very Earth I have before spoke of the Papal Power ending in England under Harry the 8th per simplicem desinentiam and by the power of Nature and without the Midwifery of the trouble of his Conscience or any Artifice in troubling the Divines and Academies of Christendom about his Marriage with his Brothers Relict the birth of Fate would by necessity of Nature have I think happen'd as it did Alas His Marrying her who had been his Brothers Wife was only against the Iudicial Law of the Iews and I am sure was not against the Law of Nature as all granting the Law of Nature to be indispensable and the necessity of Cain and Abel Marrying their own Sisters and Gods Commanding them to increase and multiply and God's calling Sara Abraham's Wife who yet was his Sister when as that Matrimonial Contract if it had been against Nature had been null and granting likewise that God who never commanded any thing against the Law of Nature did yet in the Levitical Law Command a Brother to take his Brothers Wife to Marry her and to raise up Seed to his Brother must grant I therefore concluded that without Harry the 8ths either having any Conscience or any Trouble in it the weakest pretence in the strong hand of Nature would have been an effectual Weapon to have then beat down the Papal Power in England It was Nature that did as I may say raise up that strong Seed at that time both in England and Germany and elsewhere that ended in the Divorce of England and many Territories from the Papal Power And to resume the Comparison of the Seed of Plants 't is obvious to us to consider that while our Ships Royal were formerly made of the Oaks in our Forests that were generally self-sown that is such as sprang from Acorns dropping from Trees or that Birds in their flights let fall it may be said that those materials for rearing the Walls of the Kingdom were themselves reared by the hand of Nature and that those Seeds falling in a Soyle proper for them and by the Forest Laws guarded at first from the feâ—t of Men or Beasts and by the Autumnal Rains naturally beaten into the Earth and defended by the procerity of many other Trees from the injuries of the Wind and Sun were by the Husbandry of the God of Nature brought within the high Style of Arbores Dei as the Psalmist's expression is And moreover while it many times happens that we see one Timber Tree grow out of the Body of another and particularly an Oak out of a Beech and which may be well supposed to have so happened from an Acorn dropt by a Bird into the hollow part of a decaying Beech and there meeting with a reception from the putrid parts of the Beech and the Rain there furthering its passage downward and the Dews there watering it from Heaven and the Beech fencing it conveniently from the Wind and Sun the Stem of an Oak doth there naturally shoot up and as naturally pierce its way for its strong Branches through the sides of the Beech and work its Root into the ground through the Root of that Tree and in time causeth it as certainly to be thrust out of Nature as it could have been by any extirpation and when a decaying Oak is thus powerfully vanquished by the Seed of a less famous Tree as to this purpose we are told by Mr. Evelyn in his excellent Discourse of Forest Trees that persons of undoubted truth have asserted it that they have seen a Tree cut in the middle whose heart was Ash-wood and the exterior part Oak we may justly say that Nature did produce all these effects And the Energy of nature thus casually causing one Tree to penetrate through another into the Earth and there without noise forever to displace it is as perfectly applicable to Religionary Tenets and Doctrines and thus as I may with a running view observe the Seed of the Christian Religion being tho from some mean and obscure hands dropt on the decaying great Trees of Iudaism and Paganism presently wrought it self through their Bodies and Roots and afterward the nobleness of the temper of the Primitive Christianity decaying in the World that Religion whose heart of Oak had lasted so long and outbraved all the Storms of Persecution was yet pierced through by Arrianism and Arrius perplexing the simplicity of the Christian Religion with such Intrigues of vain Philosophy that instead of converting mens hearts turned their brains and even Constantine's own as appeared by his banishing Athanasius and then recalling and then banishing him again and when the Christian Divines vexed every vein of his heart more than they did Iulian's and very laudably in his Council of Nice presented him with Lampoons one against another and Christianity so soon proving top heavy when 't was made the State Religion of the World and Athanasius himself was at length the only sober Party and when the Arrians happened to be the first Christians that persecuted men for Religionary Tenets and as Grotius in his De Iure belli l. 2. c. 20. tells us In Arrianam haerâ—sin acriter invehitur Athanasius quod prima in contradicentes usa esset Iudicum potâ—state quos non potuit verbis inducere eos vi plagis verberibusque ad se pertrahere anniteretur and did bastinado People into Conversion and when the Orthodox Christians had groaned longer under the Arrian Persecution than they had done under the Pagan and when the Christian Religion whose Precepts do so nobly transcend the Morality of all others did shortly after appear in the World with such a Figure of a Dotard Tree as gave Salvian cause to exclaim Praeter paucissimos quosdam qui mala fugiunt quid est aliud omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum it was but congruous to â—ature that those rapacious Birds of prey the Mahumetans dropping the Seed of their new invented Religion on the Christian as decayed by Arrianism that it should so soon work it self through all its parts and roots in Asia and Africk and that the
that I affirm therein we have obliged our selves to by our Oaths is so incomparably asserted in a long Speech of that Great Man of the Church of Rome Reginaldus Belnensis Arch-Bishop of Bourges in France I shall refer any one to it as printed in â—huanus The Speech was spoke in a Famous Assembly and on a great occasion for to make way for the quiet Reception of Harry the 4th of France while a Protestant into the Throne and it was framed with such profound thoughts of Loyalty and with such extraordinary Learning referring both to the old and new Testament and to Fathers and Church History and Civil and Canon Law and with such close and nervous argumentation to evince the Divine Right of Allegiance due to Princes and particularly without any respect had to their Religion that it may pass for one of the best Bullwarks of absolute Loyalty I know of next to the 13th of the Romans and other things contained in Holy Writ And because I think no serious Christian who reads â—t will ever find in his heart afterward to ridicule passive oâ—edience or make ridiculous Platforms of Conditional Loyalty I do intend to Translate and Publish it Moreover because there is in that Speech one Noble peculiar Character of the Moral Offices of Loyalty wherein it is pity that the proverbial English good nature should in any men come short of that of the French Civility and any Protestants Loyalty of a Roman-Catholicks I mean that Arch-Bishops honouring the Mind and Soul of his Prince who was not of the Communion of his Church and even then vindicating him from Heresy and saying That he ought not to be thought a Heretick and propping up his honourable thoughts of his Prince with a Quotation out of St. Austin viz. That he was not to be reckon'd among Hereticks who without pertinacy defended his opinion tho erroneous c I think the hanging up so great a Picture in publick view wherein that Man of God did with such exquisite draught design and colour thus paint his Princes Character and that of his own Loyalty to Eternity may be variously useful and the very sight of the great Colours in which cannot methinks but raise the little ones of Blushes in any Nominal Protestants who do with such foul and hard hands handle the Religionary Concernments of Kings who are Nominal Gods and make no difference between the danger of Heterodoxy in Subjects and in Princes I have mentioned it that there is less danger of any Princes believing or practising what may favour the Papal Usurpation than of such Belief or Practice in a Subject and it were an easie matter to instance in many erroneous Religionary Tenets which as held by Parties among Subjects may cause general apprehensions of danger but from which as held by a Prince it would be ridiculous to fear any ill or to imagine that the Prince can imbibe the dregs of those Tenets as they discriminate discontented Parties as for example how can any one fear that a Prince by believing that Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years would hurt his own Government or that a Prince by â—eing a Socinian â—ould hold the Tenet of the unlawfulness of Defensiâ—e War or that a Prince who favoured the Order of the Iesuites would approve of their Teâ—ets of Calumny and Equivocation c. and several of their vile Casuistical Tenets or that any Magistracy would permit some of their Apologies and particularly that of Guymenius to be so much as published in the Laâ—guage of the Country But the truth is we are Morally bound to make a great difference in our Demeanor toward our Princes when supposed to erre in opinions about Religion from the Measures we are allowed to take in relation to our â—ellow Subjects so erring Error is a part of Humane frailty and Subjects are Morally bound to conceal the frailties of their Kings and not to censure or publish them to their dishonour and are to be more ready to Apolâ—gize for their Princes on all occasions than for their Parents Sâ— Peter in that Verse where the Duty of honouring all Men and loving the Brotherhood is mentioned subjoyns a particular Precept of honouring the King. We are never to think of the hearts of Kings but as being in the hâ—nds of God nor of any Mists of Errors that may be in their heads without thinking of the Rays of the Divine Power that like a Glory surrounds theirs and which in the usual Concourse of Providence do dissipate all danger from any Errors within them Tho in mens beliefs who are Subjects Religionary Errors are often complicated with Irreligionary ones yet we are to think of the Oyl of the Lords Annointed as uppermost and appearing above such latter Errors and suppressing the Fumes of them in the minds of Princes and are to fear no more harm from the Persons of our Princes than from our Guardian Angels differing from us in many great Religionary Speculations and are to think with honour of our King as an Angel of God to discern between good and bad Religion and Irreligion and it is an absurd thing for any not to imitate the Popish Arch-Bishop aforesaid in clearing his Prince tho of another Communion from Pertinacy since such a Moral defect is a humour of positiveness that of all men Kings are most naturally free from and whose becoming dissidence of their own understandings how great soever is Conspicuous by the wearing away so much of their lives in hearing the advise of their Council And when ever Passive Obedience is called for by Princes and must be readily payed as a due Debt we are even then to strain our most improved thoughts to find an honourable Interpretation of our Princes Actions in like manner as some of the Loyal Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church have done as appears by a Great Observation in their Book called the Policy of the Clergy of France a Book that Maimbourg in print hath acknowledged to be the best lately published by their Party viz. That their Princes never made any great Assault on the Papal Power but what cost their Protestant Subjects dear This This is Loyalty worthy the name of Christian and after all if yet any men will make wanton Suppositions of the beliefs or practices of Sovereigns being never so contrary to Religion let those know that an absolute and irrespective Loyalty is that which by these Oaths they have obliged themselves to and that therefore it is an absurd thing to attempt to exclude any Heir of the Crown from his Birth-right on any pretence of his Religion or other pretence whatsoever since we must pay an absolute Obedience and Allegiance to him immediately on the Descent of the Crown to him and accordingly as by these Oaths we have obliged our selves to do Having thus in these Conclusions asserted the Obligation relating to our Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the plain and genuine Sense of the
Popery but some of their old stock Tho some Presbyterians have not hitherto learned that Modesty and Policy from the Papists as to leave off their unjust valuing themselves on their Numbers yet as I know not of any number of Gentlemen that would choose to live in any Parish in England under the severity of that Church Government and who would not rather desire to be exterminated from their Native Country than to live in it with Presbytery Paramount so neither do I believe that Presbytery would be endured by many of our illiterate Mechanicks now more than heretofore if they were taught its rigour And tho likewise another Sect of Dissenters more Gentlemanly than that of the Presbyterians I mean the Independants do in the little Pamphlets they write trouble us much with proclaiming their Numbers and as if they were not only the sober but the major part of the Nation they are very ridiculous in trying to make themselves that way dreadful contrary to what is in Fact true I believe that the number of those who in the late times listed themselves in the particular gathered Churches and subjected themselves to their Laws and Contribution to their Pastorage was always inconsiderable and as an Argument of that 't is in this Discourse mentioned that the Pastors of the most Opulent of those Churches in London did most readily quit their Posts when they could obtain Head-ships of Colleges and that in a Conjuncture when Independancy was in a manner the form of Church Government owned by the State. These Churches were always very few in the Country and are now fewer and scarce visible unless we will call the Bands of Quakers by the name of Churches and a name I do not hear they think fit to use I am of opinion that under the Christian Religion so much â—uller of Mystery than the Pagan Iewish and Turkish its Divine Planter did necessarily make Christians loving one another the Characteristical Mark of their being such and under the noble freedom allowed by the Protestaâ—ts Religion to try all things and to trust no Religionary Tenets but what they have tryed a Heterodoxy as to some speculative supposed Tenets of the Church of England may among some inquisitive persons have long gained ground and still do so There was in London an Independant Church under Cromwel's Government and Mr. Biddell was their Pastor and among other Tenets denominable as those of Religion they owned these following viz. That the Fathers under the old Covenant had only Tempâ—ral Promises and That the Vniversal Obedience performed to the Commands of God and Christ was the saving Faith and That Christ rose again only by the Power of the Father and not his own and That justifying Faith is not the pure gift of God but may be acquired by mens natural Abilities and That Faith cannot believe any thing contrary to or above reason and That there is no Original Sin and That Christ hath not the same body now in glory in which he suffered and rose again and That the Saints shall not have the same body in Heaven that they had on Earth and That Christ was not Lord or King before his Resurrection or Priest before his Ascension and That the Sainâ—s shall not before the day of Iudgment enjoy the Bliss of Heaven and That God doth not certainly know Future Contingences and That there is not any Authority of Fathers or General Councils in determining Matters of Faith and That Christ before his death had not any Dominioâ— over the Angels and That Christ by dying made not satisfaction for us and 't is possible that such Religionary Tenets as these which are far from being de lanâ caprinâ and are contrary to the Articles of our Church may not be extirpated tho yet I believe there will never be any Fermentation in our Church or State produced here by them if in course of time any of them should happen to be the Sentiments of any of our Princes and much less that any Prince if so opining would consute others as Hereticks with Fire and Sword and as Calvin coâ—futed Servetus There was likewise in our Metropolis another Independant Church of which Mr. Iohn Goodwin was the Pastor and by which Church the Tenets of Arminiâ—s were received and which tho they have ceased to ferment the State yet the opinions of men equally pious and learned will in all likelihood be always different about the same and as to these Tenets the Questions are not such as are called Questiones Domitianae or of catching of Flies But there is a sort of Questions that is little better and that in our busie World will not usurp the time they have done and that is such as are of the Nature of that I have spoke of toward the Close of this Discourse that made the fermentation in a Church of Separatists that went hence to Amsterdam namely Whether Aron's Ephod were blew or Sea-green and tho I have asserted it That mens liberty of professing Religionary Tenets may be reckoned as a part of their Purchace by Christ's Blood yet methinks to make the Son of God leave the Bosom of his â—ather and take a Journey from Heaven to Earth to impress on it right Notions about the lawfulness of signing Children with the Cross or of mens kneeling at the Sacrament or standing at the Creed or bowing at the name of Iesus or of placing the Communion Table in the East or of wearing Surplices Tippets Lawn-sleeves or square Caps or of keeping of Holy-days or singing Psalms to Organs and to resolve the World in some plain points as namely Whether the Soveraign Power may not lawfully enjoyn the observance of the external Circumstances of Divine Worship which every man doth in his own Family or Whether it be not as lawful for the Sovereign Power to enjoyn kneeling at the Sacrament as 't is for private Persons to command their Flocks not to kneel and the resolving who doth most hurt by Christian Liberty either the Magistrate who commanding me to kneel telâ—s me the thing is in its own nature indifferent and that he doth not and cannot change the nature of things in themselves or my private Pastor who shall tell me That my not kneeling is necessary to salvation and the resolving the Question Whether I may lawfully â—oyn in a set form of Prayer with a Congregation when 't is plain that another man 's conceived or extempore Prayer is as much a form to me or to another as any printed Prayer can be or the resolving what Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots calls a frivolous Question as made by some Separatists viz. What Warrant have you to use this or that Form of Prayer or to pray upon a Book and to which he answers That it is Warrant sufficient that we are enjoyned to use Prayer Confession of Sin and Supplication for Pardon c. No set Form thereof determined therefore any fit Form warrantable this Form that we
use not unfit otherwise this Form thereof allowable And let a man demand of one of them when he prayeth what Warrant he hath to use that Form that he then useth he can answer no otherwise So for a Book the means of help are not determined and this one among others this therefore not unwarrantable And if one of them should be asked how he proves it warrantable to use a printed Book to read on at Church he shall not be able to make other answer than as before and further hereupon the resolving of another Question viz. Whether one man eminent for Piety and Learning or perhaps eminent for neither is able without premeditation to make as fit a Prayer for the People to say Amen to as a hundred Persons eminent for both are able to frame with lâ—ng study I say to make an Elias and much more the holy Iesus to come down from Heaven to solve such doubts as these is an extravagance Parallel with the Error of those old Poets who would on all occasions introduce Gods to end doubts that were never fit to be begun by men and wherein there was not dignus vindice nodus and against which the judicious Poet gave the known Caution of Nec Deus interfit c. The holy Iesus by his Tacit Rejection of Questions as impertiment that the World thought of more moment than some such as are above named when he forbore to give his thoughts of Pythagoras his pre-existence of Souls upon the Question put to him viz. Who did sin this Man or his Parents that he was born blind shewed he thought it not for his honour to have it supposed that it was part of his Errand from Heaven to set the World rightin Speculations of Philosophy and so he threw that famous Notion off as a Titivilitium Chemnitius in his Harmony taking notice of our Saviour's reprehending in the Pharisees their use of Oaths and thereby invocating God as a Witness in the Occurrences of their common talk and Conversation saith In re levi ne magnum quidem virum in testem vocare auderemus as I find him cited by Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots and wherein he doth so learnedly confute the superstitious conceit in some of the unlawfulness of the use of Cards and Dice in recreation as likewise the other of mens being obliged to count every thing unlawful that they have not a Scriptural Warrant for Yet since his writing of those Books of Lots thousands of such our superstitious Protestants have not â—crupled to throw the Dye of War and to appeal to the Lord of Hosts by the Decision of Battel to signalize the truth in some of those nugatory and others of those plain points before-mentioned and our Land groans under the guilt of the Blood of hundreds of thousands of Subjects as well as of the Royal Blood by Questions on which an ingenious man would scarce think a drop of Ink necessary to be spent But I have in this Discourse express'd my belief That the fierceness of our Dissenters humour of quarrelling about such little Ceremonial matters will be naturally reclaimed by the influence of the Civility appearing in the many French Protestants here into a Complaisance with our King's and Church's enjoyned Ceremonies that all the learned Books of our Divines have not been able to work in them the Civility of the French humour making it natural to those Protestants as I â—ave remarked not only to comply with Princes but even their Fellow Subjects in the use of all Ceremonies they expect and as I have in many places of this Discourse and particularly in p. 239 expressed my thoughts that the sicarious Principles of the Iesuites will naturally evaporate by fear and shame so I have in the following Page that all Rebellious Principles of any Nominal Protestants will by fear and shame in our populous English World be abandoned and do think That to the shame of quarrelling about little matters the shame of doing it before Strangers being super-added will prevent our future disquiet thereby Let them ask those Protestants who are fled hither from Persecution the Circumstances of which are with great Judgment stated by Dr. Hicks in his Excellent printed Sermon on that Subject if in case their great Monarch had excused them from Conformity to the Gallican Church in the points of Praying in an unknown Tongue and the Worshipping the Host and the Forbidding the Cup to the Layety and the other momentous Religionary points controverted between Papists and Protestants and had enjoyned them only such things as our Religion by Law Established doth whether they would have with the hazard of their lives made a migration hither from the best Country in the World their Native Soil or have made their Monarch and his Ministers at home uneasie by Complaints of Persecution and by raising of any dust about unnecessary Questions as aforesaid Leo After tells us that the Inhabitants of the Mountain Magnan on the Frontiers of Fez have not thought fit to be at the Charge of any settled Judicature or Parade of the Law to support their Polity but to the end their Controversies emerging may be decided and that impartially they stop some Travellers passing that way to give Judgment in the same and that himself in his passage there was detained many days to perform the Office of a Judge and that his performance of the same was rewarded by the Inhabitants defraying the Charges of his Stay and some of those People were ashamed perhaps to trouble him a Stranger with vilitigation or querelles d' alleman And thus perhaps may those Protestant Strangers that Providence hath sent hither prove to our Religionary branglers useful itinerant Judges and their patience in their Judicature will in my opinion deserve to be well rewarded and for the greatness of its burden from the minuteness of its Controverted Causes and whereby Strangers are imposed on by as needless trouble as Travellers would be if in the several Territories they passed through the Inhabitants should desire them to weigh their Air. But I hope the Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church will find those to ours ashamed to entertain them here with the Crambe of old Controversies of Ceremonies and things Indifferent and that those Strangers will not find themselves invited hither by Nature as to a Theatre where they shall only see our digladiations with Air or beating of the Air as the Scripture Expression is and much less where they shall see any Dissenters implicitly swallowing the Doctrine of Resistance and weighing nothing but Air. It was I think a little before the Migration of so many French Protestants here that some of the Faex of our Dissenters were so shameful as to Nick-name our Clergy But I do account that the inquisitive and Philosophical Temper of the Age shining with so much lustre in our English Clergy and which temper is as naturally accompanied with the gentle warmth of Charity for the Persons of different
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any Intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the municipal Laws of their Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
to every Member of that great Body wishing his happiness as your own extending the arm of your beneficence as far as it can reach to the remotest object without hurting your self by the straining it with a pitying Eye and a tender Hand and forgiving Heart guiding unhappy men out of the very Labyrinths they had brought themselves into by injuring you accounting your mercy to be justice to Humane Nature adorning greatness both in your self and others with goodness in the case of the injur'd poor and weak making oft the great and the mighty asham'd of their oppression by your reason and alwayes with Language as soft as the yoke they intended was hard when you could not make them afraid of it by your power and blushing your self for the degeneration of Mans Nature when you saw any that shame could not divert from the turpitude of injuring their brethren of mankind and by your compassion alleviating that burthen of the miserable that they had sunk under but by your Fellowship in their grief and never dispensing either the Kings reproof or your own to offenders without moderation and respect to the frail state of Humanity and without that mixture of benign advice that gave the Malheurevs a plank after the Shipwrack of their Fame and very often running the hazard of drowning your self by helping to save those that were sinking in the Favour of the King and Court and when their fate was such that all the rest of the herd avoided them as a wounded Deer In a word they that know your Lordship know that by arguments hard to be answered and a softness of words and Temper almost inimitable you have Proselyted several Papists out of their pernicious Principles and have taught them goodness by your example and by your having that happy inclination that Hillel a Famous Jewish Doctor who lived a little before our Saviours Incarnation so well advised Namely Be of the Disciples of Aaron who loved Peace and followed Peace and who loved Men and brought them near to the Law. Your Lordship by your being so well vers'd in our Statute Laws and Histories is able to acquaint them with the Justice of our Ancestors in the making of many fresh additional capital Laws for sanguinary they ought not to be called since just against Papists upon the detection of several fresh horrid Treasons particularly those against Queen Elizabeth and King Iames and that our Ancestors then having a great and violent indignation against Popery and Papists made Laws with the dread of the Vltimum supplicium therein and further the anger of Man could not go But it cannot scape your Lordships observation that the violence of Passion not being capable of lasting long in its highest rage how just soever and especially in the brest of an English Man and a Protestant those hot Statutes made only as I may say a hizzing like a little fire thrown into Water and as to their Execution went out presently Nor have I ever heard of any one that apostatiz'd from the Church of England to that of Rome who was as those Statutes ordain punisht as a Traytor merely for so doing And indeed since no Stratagems are to be used twice and especially such as did not succeed once I am highly pleased that on the Discovery of the late detestable Plot there was so great a calmness in the minds so general a smoothness in the brows of the people such an universal Spirit of Patience forbearance and meekness every where visible in their Faces even greater then that which shone in the Minds and Faces of the Londoners when with composed looks they saw their City newly made ashes and had smelt the Incendiaries almost as soon as the Fire that none can imagine but who as eye witnesses observed And even on the fifth of November ensuing the Discovery of the Plot the two excellent Preachers desired to preach before the House of Lords and the House of Commons on that day when both an Old and a New Plot were staring the Nation in the Face happen'd to be with the Peaceable Genius of the Christian Religion and of the People in that Conjuncture inspired in the choice of that same part of Scripture that was their Text and contain'd the calm yet severe reproof given by the Founder of Christianity to some of his Disciples that would have been Commission'd to call for Fire from Heaven to consume the inhospitable Samaritans in one of which Sermons namely that of the Dean of Canterbury's 't is for the Honour of our Nation and Religion by him observed p. 31. of the Sermon that after the Treason of this day nay at this very time since the Discovery of so barbarous a design and the highest provocation in the World by the Treacherous murder of one of His Majesties Iustices of the Peace a very good man and a most excellent Magistrate who had been active in the Discovery of this Plot I say after all this and notwithstanding the continued and insupportable insolence of their carriage and behaviour even upon this occasion no violence nay not so much as any incivility that I have heard of has been offer'd to any of them Thus for the words of this good and learned man. He that loves not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen And the Religion that prompts them to destroy our bodies that they see makes them fearless in the damming of our Souls that they have not seen and even without giving us a minutes warning to make up our accounts with God and that too perhaps for extravagant lenity shew'd to some incorrigibles among them which was poor Godfreys case But the calm temper of the Protestants to them upon the Discovery of the Plot not breathing out any Cruelty or new Severity against their Bodies or Souls shall alwayes endear to me the Protestant Religion And though those two great Votes of the House of Commons may seem severe to the Papists yet are they warning pieces only if they please and not murdring ones and like the Arrows of Ionathan to warn David and not to hurt him And indeed only to warn them not to kill David and not to hurt themselves and in effect a reasonable request or petition of â—wo Parliaments to them only to make much of themselves and like the lenity that accompanied the Divine threatning of moriendo morieris restrain'd to their eating of one tree so that no Flaming Swords need fence up their way from the Tree of Life unless they please But though the Spirit of the people hath not on the occasion of the late Plot shew'd its angry resentments against the persons of the Papists by any outrage or rudeness and though our Parliaments have not on that occasion as those in the times of Queen Elizabeth and King Iames made the Anger of the Statute Book to swell with many Acts of Parliament against them they are not to infer that therefore
the anger of the people diffusive or representative is over but rather the contrary from it s not having appeared violent And indeed as that heat of the body that is acquired not by an approach to a blazing fire but gradually by gentle exercise of the parts is most lasting and most agreeable to its constitution so is it with that heat of popular anger that is the Result of the exercise of mens mindes and of several laboured intense thoughts most durable and salutiferous to the body of the Kingdom It hath been observed by a Man of no Vulgar intellectual Tallents Mr. Philip Nye a Man indeed of great Sagacity in his Generation as I find it in his Book called Beams of former Light viz. We know that in near a hundred years the Reformation gained little upon Popery and Superstition more then was gotten by the first assault nay it decay'd and Popery grew under it so fast as at last we were almost returned into the same condition that we were reformed from and this he sayes may be the cause why the first Reformation prospered no better there were the like severe impositions and Laws made upon occasion of difference among the Protest ants and then advantages were taken thereby and many put out of the Master-Role for Nonconformity who were of greatest courage and most faithful Resolution against Popery and Superstition the then common Enemy The silenâ—cing and ejection of Ministers in Queen Elizabeths dayes reformation being newly begun and the Enemies to it many the friends and those that faithfully engaged few was looked on by the godly prudent of that age as very unseasonable yea the their crimes had deserved it because of the searcity of Preachers at that time There is nothing more frequent in our Suffering Brethrens writings that were then published against the Hierarchy then a bemoaning the great loss to the cause and people of God thereby I will mention but one considering the season saith Mr. Parker though we were worthy yet should we least be deprived now when Popery riseth like the swellings of Iordan yea maketh invasion like an Armed man when there are wanting many on the other side in many Parishes to stand up in the gap against it Doth not the Canon Law it self spare depriving for greater faults when there is penuria sacerdotum quando utilitas ecclesiae exigit Thus far Mr. Nye who whether he has assigned non causam pro causâ or no as to the Vigorous encreasing of Popery after the Reformation I shall not say and shall forbear even with the tenderest and gentlest hand to touch the sore place of the difference among Protestants till we are secured against the Rough hands of any Esaws touching Gods Annointed Nor shall I now debate of which perswasion among Protestants should strike Sail to the others till we have put off the Fire-ship that hath grappled us but shall here say that I think one cause why the Protestant Religion hath not since its first assaults against Popery gained ground of it proportionably was what is necessarily incident to humane Nature and even in the most generous and particularly English Spirits after a great overflowing of passion to find in themselves the lowest ebb to succeed the highest tide and our boyling blood to be the more dispirited afterward by reason of its former heat and for us instantly to fall asleep when our spirits are taken off from the wrack that passion extended them on and to try to recruit our spirits again by the passion of Pitty or Shame which we had wasted by that of Anger like men that after one excess refresh themselves by another And as the great expenses of War which is the passion of Anger raging in the body of a whole Nation Necessarily at last end in a peace that continues till mens plenty blow them up into War again so doth the spending and wasting the Treasure of our Spirits by Anger necessitate us into a quiet that lasts till being thereby recruited we are again capable to take Fire from a fresh provocation and to trouble our selves and others But as men grow older and wiser they grow abler to moderate their passion of Anger and make it like Fire not a bad Master but good Servant to themselves and the Public not a Fire that acts as natural agents ad extremum virium and so as anger acts and rests in the bosom of fools who are so far natural agents only as not guided by reason but as in the Breasts of the Wise where reason rests and makes all passions as its Messengers and Ministers not unresembling what is said of the most High that he makes his Ministers a flame of Fire and so by God-like men who love others like themselves their passion of Anger is made like a Guardian Angel to themselves and others and by thus according to that precept being angry and sinning not the fire of Anger in the Protestants here against Popery having long been light and restless is at last got to its proper Element where it doth not Levitate and where it hath no burning but only a purifying quality and thus the hatred of the English Protestants against Popery may be said to be as the Scripture expression is a perfect hatred being now come to its height and proper Element which perfect Hatred to Popery may always consist with a perfect love to Papists and cinge not a hair of their heads more then a Lambent Fire My Lord I account that we do but Justice to the Persons of many of our Roman-Catholick Acquaintance in pronouncing of them that they have no PLOT but to get to Heaven and to follow the last Dictates of their Practical understandings as to the Mind of God reveal'd in the Scripture I shall tell your Lordship that I entertaining my thoughts sometimes with the great pacificatory ones of our Divines have observâ—d things there said with sharpness enough against the Errors of Papists and yet with great sweetness as to the persons erring and not only exempting these from odium in their holding Problematick Tenets contrary to ours but asserting their just liberty so to do And because one of our Church of England-Divines who hath writ at that rate hath done it with a graceful mixture of wit and frankness I shall here entertain your Lordship with some of his passages about it I intend here to refer you to an excellent Sermon of Dr. Ingelo's Preached at S. Paul's and Printed A. 1659. and where in p. 129. he saith I am afraid that Christian Religion will not recover for a good while that honour which is lost by the uncharitableness of the present Age. God grant that we may return speedily to the sincerity of the Protestant Principles We know not what the Christian Religion is but by the Scriptures and by them we may know for there it is plainly and fully set down In things doubtful if every Christian may not interpret for himself how shall
least one World of hereticks the author of the Compendium needed not by his Rhetorick to reflect on my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Candour gentleness in saying yet if it be a breach of Christianity to crush the bruised reed and of generosity also to trample upon the oppressed I wish his Lordship may be found guilty of neither c. for behold any single Jesuite according to Campian tho but like a reed shaken with the wind is able to bruise all Protestant Scepters and any little toe of that Order can trample all Heretical crowned heads to dirt and the Number of the Papists in England if reduced to the least of Numbers is not according to Campian to be slighted if one of them be a Iesuite for that that one Jesuite will carry the advantage of odds against all Protestant Kings and Princes that one may say my Name is legion for we are many but as that legion-spirit could not without the Divine permission ruin a herd of Swine off from a Steep place so neither can all the legions of Iesuited evil Spirits in the World drive a King Kingdom from Precipices at their pleasure And Queen Elizabeth in spight of all the arts and power of Rome outlived eight Popes and lived to change all her Counsellors but one all her great officers twice or thrice some Bishops four times and died full of years and did see and leave peace upon Israel And now I shall Entertain your Lordship with a further Reason of my charging the present Popes declaration aforesaid about some opinions of the Casuists as carry with it a face of some thing like shamme and my reason is grounded on what was said in a publick Sermon before an honourable Audience namely that the propositions of the Casuists therein were not Condemned by the Pope in the Consistory which would have made the Censure more authoritative but by the Pope and Cardinals of the Court of the Inquisition upon which a remarkable thing follow'd the Iefuites in France who were much provoked at this Censure moved the Procureur de Roy or Attorney general at Paris to put in a Complaint against the publishing that Decree since it came from the Court of the Inquisition which not being acknowledg'd in France nothing Flowing from that authority could be received in that Kingdom upon which the decree was prohibited and suppress'd And may not the English Popish Priests say the same thing the Inquisition was never received in England and therefore that declaration of the Popes obligeth us not here and we will prohibit and suppress it as much as we can No doubt but the present Pope fearing that the Noysome and Infectious smell of those Opinions of the Casuists being more offensive to the minds of Men then any snuff of a Candle can be to their Nostrils they were ready to cry for the removing of the Candlestick of his Church out of its place went about to extinguish them in the most Summary Manner that he could and therefore attempted to do it by the Court of the Inquisition well knowing that in the Consistory of Cardinals all proceedings are so dilatory and the old magi there so used to do every thing pian piano that they would consume many pounds of new Candles in debating whether or no and how the old snuff should be removed and perhaps would have thought to have contented the World in the mean time with giving it some perfumes but the Pope being afraid of the Iesuites perhaps as sometimes the Grand Signior is of his Ianisaries doth not for fear himself should be extinguished by them so far as I may say follow the light within him as to throw away or tread out that snuff of those opinions as containing a malum in se or declare any of them to be ill as contrary to the principles of the law of nature in which case neither he nor God himself indeed could have dispens'd with them tho yet any honest and ingenious Heathen would on the least occasion given have declared them so As Cicero and Seneca and many others have done and which had the Pope done and the Iesuites or any Papists persevered in the making those principles the Rules of practice his Kingdom had thereby been ipso facto divided against it self and a diffinitive sentence had been thereby given by the Pope that all who had dy'd owning those principles and practices had been sunk for ever into the burning lake Therefore as I said before I hope this declaration of the Popes such as it is will give an alarm to our English Papists to deal seriously with their Souls and to consider as if it were for their eternities these and other Principles of their Religion and that if they will not be thereby perswaded to be almost Protestant Christians yet to be altogether Masters of as good Moral Principles as the Heathens I named and If any of them can but give us a Moral certainty of their Principles being but such I shall never repine at any favour that any new Law may afford to such of them If therefore any of our Lay Country men Papists not guilty of the late Plot shall desire to be heard and to say any thing toward this effect some of us have heard of these principles before mention'd as own'd by our Casuists and Priests and Confessors that are now thus condemned by the Pope and we did not believe that those our spiritual guides did own such Principles but now our Eye seeth by the condemnation thereof that they were before own'd and made rules of Practice Wherefore we hope that who ever do own them will abhor themselves and repent in dust and ashes and others of us did formerly think them Consistent with the Christian faith and the peace of Kingdoms and with humane Society but we now abhor those principles and repent in dust and ashes We are ready to let the King and Kingdom and the World have a moral certainty that we desire no power to change the Religion in England by Law establish'd and we are willing to receive Instruction from any that shall be appointed by publick Authority to give it to us concerning what other principles beside these Condemned by the Pope are inconsistent with Religion or the publick Peace and in case any shall offer to give us dispensations either for principles or practices contrary to those we renounce as inconsistent with the publick peace we shall be so far from accepting of such dispensation that we shall detect the offerer thereof before a Magistrate as much as we would an enemy to His Majesty We are ready to give active or passive obedience as to all the Laws in being We believe not the Bishop of Rome to have more power in His Majesties Realms by Gods word then any other forraign Bishop as was by Acts of Parliament and publick Recognitions declared in the Reign of Henry the 8 th We are willing to render the Kingdom as secure from
of lust try to puzzle the Cause of Religion and by distinctions to make Golden Bridges for Men to retreat from Morality And this Course the Iesuits have took By their Casuistical distinctions they have broke both the Tables of the Moral Law into innumerable pieces they have broke not only the least but greatest of the Commandments and have taught men so to do and how to do it with a Salvo to them and how Salvo metu fide peccare and by being Casuistical Splitters of Sin have been as troublesome to the World as Splitters of Causes are to a Country The Christian Religion that great Tye intended by Heaven to be like a substantial and great Cable as I may say to supply the great Anchor of our hope they have made it their great business to untwist by their nice distinctions and to make it so fine that it will not hold and by encouraging Lies and Calumnies for the honour of Holy Church they have help'd the Politic-Atheists-would be to a new occasion of trying to insinuate that old impotent-Slander that Religion it self is a Cheat and moreover since it is on all hands Confessedly true that Religion is necessary for the Government of the World and that every Ligament of Humane Society without Religion is but like a rope of Sand 't is probable that the Iesuits Morality being destructive of Religion that the Nations of the World will look on it and their Society as an Association against Humane Society and that one Nation after another will declare themselves Abhorrers of it And it must by necessity of Nature appear that they cannot be Confessors of truth nor Martyrs for any but the Devil that make lying venial nor can their fate who pretend to be Witnesses in the Cause of Religion be any other than is that of some according to the Law and Practice of Nations who are Witnesses in any Cause to have their whole Deposition rejected upon the Discovery of one falsity therein And since 't is confessed to be the Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and particularly of the Trent-Council that the intention of the Priest is necessary to the validity of a Sacrament who can promise to himself safe anchoring in the Depths of a Jesuits intentions to make the Sacrament while he makes Cheating lawful If any one shall say that so vile a thing is not to be supposed in a Priest as upon any occasion not to intend the making of the Sacrament let him consult the Additionals to the Mystery of Iesuitism and there he shall see p. 95. Proposition 23. no meaner a Iesuit than the Great Casuist Escobar cited for this Assertion That it is lawful upon Occasion of some great fear to make use of Dissimulation in the Administration of the Sacraments as for a man to make as if he Consecrated by pronouncing the words without attention Escobar Theol. Moral Tom. 1. l. 6. Sect. 2. C. 7. Prob. 26. p. 27. And in this point the Pope's said Decree is infallible namely to shew the fact of this Doctrine of Devils having been own'd by Jesuits and Casuists as appears by the Proposition 29th in the Decree viz. Vrgens metus gravis est Causa justa Sacramentorum administrationem simulandi O Blessed Jesus can any Jesuit think it is lawful for him so far to fear those that can kill the Body as by his Dissembling his making of thy Body to destroy anothers Soul by Idolatry 'T is among both Papists and Protestants confessedly true that if the Host I worship should not be the Body of Christ I were a great Idolater and therefore if a Priest by that incident Passion of fear may lawfully forbear to intend to make the Body of Christ I may well have such a constant fear as do's cadere in Constantem virum of the danger of my worshipping only a Wafer and consequently of my being an Idolater and since a Miracle is Heaven's Broad Seal to the truth of any Doctrine and since Transubstantiation is the greatest Miracle that can be thought of I may well conclude that God will not commit the Power of making Millions of Miracles every day to men that make Cheating lawful more than a Prince will commit the Custody of his Broad Seal to a professed Impostor And therefore I shall 〈◊〉 the way affirm that the Protestant Religion not making the intention of the Prâ—est essential to the Sacrament of the Eucharist is more strongly assertive of the Real presence there then is the very Popish Hypothesis The truth is 't is a very inglorious and a very imprudent thing to use fraud even in the Conduct of Political Government My Lord Herbert in his Life of Harry the Eighth speaking of a foreign Monarch saith with great Judgment but while he escaped not the Opinion and the Name of false which yet his Country Writers pallâ—aâ—e no otherwise than with calling it Saberraynar he neither comply'd 〈◊〉 his Dignity nor indeed the Rules of Wisdom true reason of State consisting of such solid Maxims that it hath as little need of Deceit as a sure Game at Chess of a false Draught there is no use of it therefore among the wiser sort it being only a supply of Ignorance among the Ruder and worse kind of Statesmen Beside it appears so much worse in Public Affairs as it is never almost hid or unrevenged Reputation again is still lost thereby which yet how much it concerns Princes none can better tell than such as Imagine them without it But to use Fraud in or for that great concern of Mankind call'd Religion is more absur'd and 't is the vilest Nonsence imaginable for Men to talk deceitfully for God and that style of a foreign Monarch of Dissembling his Indignation need not be used by him who made the World with a fiat and can unmake it with a thought and whatever Religion in the World is true I am sure that is and must be false that attempts to support it self by falshood or fraud and by the Violation of Faith given For I am sure that to stand to Promises to abhor Deceit is a thing in its own nature simply good and that it is impossible that God should lye and if it be simply good in God it is necessarily so in Man whom he hath made after his own Image the Image being to answer the Archetype and that Religion therefore that doth approve of falsarii and which cannot have the true God for its Founder and in which every honest man may justly say to the Deity of its worshippers Stand by thy self come not near me for I am holier then thou as the Scripture expression is must expect to be exterminated out of the Knowing World. Such worshippers can be no more judged parts of the Ecclesia Catholica than Pick-pockets in Churches are of the Coetus fidelium there and as when these petty Larceners are there discovered they are glad silently thence to steal themselves away such perhaps will the
giving decent burial to any of their undecent Plotts and for the exasperating any Protestants by despising them and endeavouring to impose on their Understandings as some did on a raw young Country Gentleman whom one day treating at a Puppet-shew they persuaded that the Puppets were living Creatures and after he had found out his gross ridiculous misconceit therein they on the following day attending him to the Theatre engaged him to believe that the Actors were Puppets I mean their endeavoring to make us believe that Sham-Plots were real ones and that a real one was Shamme I shall never wonder at the encrease of the passion of anger incident to humane Nature even in great and generous Souls on the occasion of gross Calumnies invented against them about a matter of weight when I consider the Example of the Great Royal Prophet a Person of a great Understanding and of so great Courage that he was not afraid of Ten thousands of men who set themselves against him round about and tho an Host should encamp ogainst him his heart would not fear and a Man that had in his Nature and temper the Gentleness of a Lamb mixt with the stoutness of a Lyon and one to whom the Divine Promise had ensured a Kingdom and yet was he by the Sycophancies and little Shammes rais'd against him by Saul's great Courtiers wrought to so high a pitch of anger that he did with exquisite forms of imprecation and such as perhaps are not to be found in any other Story frequently devote those Calumniators to the most dire Miseries his fancy could lead him to express But the Cause of his being so highly provoked by those that would turn his glory into shame and did seek after leasing and whose deceitful tongues used all-devouring words as he saith to Doeg the Edomite in one of his Psalms and whose tongue he there sayes did devise mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully may be ascribed to the Shammes of his Enemies wounding him in the most sensible Part namely the Reputation of his Loyalty to his Prince whose Life he spared when 't was in his power to destroy him and who was so far from the use of Shammes against him that he doom'd the Amalekite to dy that shamm'd himself the author of Saul's death And therefore No marvel if the Calumnies of Jesuited Papists attaquing Protestants in that Case too of their Fidelity to their King render the passion of anger in them against those Shams so intense and vehement And tho the English Courage or a very little Philosophy would help them to bestow only a generous neglect on other Calumnies they can never forget those that strike at the heart of their allegiance and consequently of their Religion that so strictly enjoyns it Nor if according to the Example of that great man after Gods heart who said Away from me all ye that work vanity and who would have No lyer tarry in his sight is it to be admired if every true English Protestant shall say too odi Ecclesiam malignantium and shall feclude all dictators of Calumny from his company and banish them home to their own And tho the abuse of Excommunication by the Papal Church and Presbyterian hath been so horrid that the primitive use of it is in a manner lost and grown obsolete yet will that which includes somewhat of the Nature of it be still kept alive in the World by private persons who practice the Christian Religion they profess and to whom tho the Precepts of the New Testament have not given that hateful thing to humane Nature in charge namely to be Informers or Promoters or judicial accusers of any of Mankind accordingly as under the Mosaic oeconomy 't was said Tu non eris criminator yet have they obliged them to withdraw themselves from men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth and not to eat with any one who is call'd a Brother and is a railer and to turn away from men that are truce-breakers and to mark those who cause divisions and to avoid them and to reject a Heretic who is subverted and self-condemned and by men of Cultivated educations and tempers who value themselves on the Company they keep and on it are valued by the World and will therefore abandon or excommunicate from their Conversation such Monsters of men who have renounced the obligations of humane society and who are guilty of Notorious Contumacy in matters that concern the very Salvation of Souls and the Safety of Kingdoms The being staked down therefore to a Narrower Tedder in Conversation or being Civilly Excommunicated from Protestants Company must by necessity of Nature in my opinion be the fate of our Jesuited make-bates and criminators of Protestants that have been so unweary'd in raising Jealousies between the King and his People and between Protestant and Protestant and all such that go to part whom God and Nature and Interest have joyn'd will probably come at last to be the derelicts of humane Society when they shall Come to be understood and especially when there shall be that good understanding between Protestants here of several persuasions that may be expected to arise from their having found out the authors of their divisions and seen how ridiculous Protestants have been in the view of the World while they have appear'd like the Cat to draw one another through the Pool and the Jesuits and their Pensioners stood behind undiscern'd and pull'd the Rope My Lord I know we may justly fear that Popery may during some turbid intervals gain ground in England and as the Renowned Historian of our Reformation hath in a public Sermon Judiciously observed that Sure none believed themselves when they say we are not in danger of Popery and none can think it but they who desire it But without presuming to make my self one of Heavens Privy Councellors and without pretending to a spirit of Prophecy I shall on the basis of the Course of Nature ground this affirmation That whatever alterations Time can Cause yet while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Forraign Conquest the Protestant Religion Can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom nor the public profession of it suffer any long interruption therein I will grant it possible that hereafter under a Prince of the Popish Religion Popery may like the vibration of a pendulum among Certain persons have the greater extent in the return of it as Becket's Image was by Gardiner set up in London 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much pomp in Queen Mary's time after its being pull'd down in Harry the Eighth's and himself unsainted and some people may undertake devout Pilgrimages hereafter to some such Images and Reliques as my Lord Herbert saith were in Harry the Eighth's time exploded and we may again hear of our Lady's Girdle shewn in eleven several places and her Milk in eight the Bell of St. Guthlac and the Felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster both Remedies for
the head-ake the Pen-knife and Books of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a piece of his Shirt much reverenc'd by great belly'd women the coals that roasted St. Laurence two or three heads of St. Ursula Malchus his Ear and the paring of St. Edmund ' s Nails and likewise the trumperies of the Rood of Grace at Boxly in Kent and in Hales in Glocestershire things name◠as trumperies in p. 495 and 496 by Herbert in that History and as adjudged to be such by H. the 8 th And no doubt but the Number of such would be very great who having great Summs of Money given them would be content to offer small ones in Devotion to such Images and many Candidates for preferment among some that now look big for and among Dissenters that look big against the Church of England would produce Certificates of their Constant good affection and Zeal for the Roman Catholic Church and any Legate that came to reconcile us to the Church of Rome would be thought by many to have brought the Holy-Ghost in his Sumpters thô we know what the Inside of Campegius his was made of It is moreover possible that Protestant writers may come not to have that freedom of the Press that Popish now have and all the luxury and wantonness and humor of the Press in sending forth innumerable Pamphlets against Popery in this Conjuncture may perhaps prove but like the jollity of a Carnival to usher in a long melancholly Lent. I will grant that 't is possible the Writ de haeretico Comburendo being now Abolished that destroyed so many Protestants by retail certain bloody men may find some Invention to destroy them by wholesale and to something of that nature Bishop Vshers Prophecy referred of the Raging Persecution of Protestants yet to come and not lasting and when their enemies will ipsam saevitiam fatigare and in the violence of such predicted cruelty not being long lasting that great Prelate erred not from the Nature of things more then he did when he Prophecy'd of an Irish Rebellion Forty years before it hapned for that usually happens once in so many years through the force and numbers of the Irish within that time outgrowing the English and their allowing themselves the repossession of their Estates by that time as a Iubile I will further grant that the discipline of our Church of which I think the Constitution is the best that the world can shew may be Crusht as I said before and our Dissenters then in vain wish that they had the tolerabiles ineptiae as your Lordship knows who imperiously call'd them in the Room of the intollerable abominations of the Mass and 't is possible that divine Iustice and Power may permit the doctrine as well as discipline of our Church to be supprest totally and finally in this Realm and that the prediction of that Great Man of God whô since his death has been as generally styl'd the Iudicious as Lewis the Iust was elsewhere so vogued I mean Mr. Hooker may impress a deep horror and a too late repentance on us who in his 5th Book of Ecclesiastical Polity in the end of the 79th Paragraph p. 432. of the old Edition speaking of the ill affected to our Church saith By these or the like suggestions receiv'd with all Ioy and with all sedulity practiced in Certain parts of the Christian World they have brought to pass that as David doth say of Man so it is in hazard to be verify'd concerning the whole Religion and Service of God the time thereof peradventure may fall out to be Threescore and Ten years or if strength do serve unto Fourscore what follows is likely to be small joy to them whatsoever they shall be that behold it Mr. Hooker did first print his 5th Book in the year 1597. the first four of his Polity being before printed in the year 1594 and so the period of Fourscore Years in his prediction was in the Year 1677. Thô that good man pretended not to be a Prophet yet according to the old saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. he is the best Prophet who can guess well both our Church of England and the Dissenters and Papists too have found that Mr. Hookers prudence had so much divination and his divination so much prudence that the small joy with which they have beheld the external face of Religion here since 1677. hath shew'd us that he guess'd shrewdly I have only affirm'd that humanly speaking and according to the common course of nature Popery cannot be the overgrown National Religion of England but am not ignorant that the sacred Code hath given us instances of Omnipotent power punishing even Heavens peculiar people by the Course of Political and Ecclesiastical Power running out of the common Channel of the Nature of things and particularly by a succession of Ten evil Kings one after another For thô humane Nature is so inconstant and men generally so apt to reel from one extream to another that the World growes as weary of the prevalence of Vice as of Virtue and after a long age of Dissoluteness and Luxury a Contrary humour reigns as long in the World again a humour that then excludes all Voluptuaries from Public Trusts for an Age together and a humour of which I think we now see the Tide Coming in and thus ordinarily scarce any Kingdom hath more than two or three good or bad Princes successively for any considerable space of time Yet after the Ten Tribes had made their defection from the Line of the House of David they were punish't by a Succession of Ten Kings and not one good one in the whole number thô some of them were less ill than others so that no Marvel if the weight of the impiety of so many successive ill Princes sunk them into the power of the Assyrians and to this their doom that passage in the Prophecy of Hosea refers which the vulgus of the Scriblers against Monarchy so Miserably detort and wracke as I may say to their own destruction namely I gave thee a King in mine anger and took him away in my wrath for the Prophet there had not his Eye on Saul or on a particular Person but on the whole succession of Kings after their Rent from Iuda from Ieroboam to the Last under whom the Catastrophe of their Captivity was Such Kings were given them by Heaven as were proper Instruments of Divine wrath and when they were took away from the Stage 't was that other worse might enter and make their Condition more Tragical But secret things belonging to God I pry not into the Book of Fate but Confine my sentiments alone to the Book of Nature In an Excellent Sermon of the Dean of St. Pauls 't is with great Piety and Prudence said We have liv'd in an Age that has beheld strange Revolutions astonishing Iudgments and wonderful Deliverances What all the Fermentations that are still among us may end in God alone knowes I
then in the world had put a period to the night of ignorance in which the Beasts of Prey had domineer'd and to their Monastic denns themselves The enlighten'd part of mankind was weary of growing pale among papers and sometimes red hot with arguing about terms of art and all those barbarous too that had formerly hid the God of nature and would no longer account implicit faith the only justifying one and could not more esteem the imposing of such a blind faith commendable that was made previous to mens quest after pabulum for their Souls then that practice of the boy of Athens who did put out the eyes of birds and then expose them to fly abroad for food The Learning then introduced into the world shew'd that the hierarchical grandeur of the Roman Church was not extant formerly in the learned times when the old Roman Empire flourish'd but was contrived in the times of ignorance between the Bishops of Rome and the Leaders or Princes of the Barbarians and that it had its beginning from the Inundations of the Northern people so that with Mr. Colemans leave by the way Popery may be call'd too a pestilent Northern heresy and that to the end that those Barbarians might not find out the original of the papal power and see how narrow the stream of it was at its fountain when every Bishop was call'd Papa as every woman is now with us call'd Madam and Lady that the Pope by affronting the Emperors power effected a strangeness between the Greeks and Latines by means whereof the Barbarians being brought up in prejudice against the Graecians neglected their Language to the decay whereof in the world not only the decay of the purity of the Latine Tongue may be imputed but also of History Geography Geometry skill in antiquity and even the worlds not knowingly then conversing with the Latine Fathers It was in an age of non-sense when a Canonist venturing to be a Critic told the world concerning the Greek word Allegoria istud vocabulum fit ex duobus vocabulis ab allo quod est alienum goro sensus and when an old Schoolman Thomas de Argentina thus gave the derivation of latria istud vocabulum fit ex duobus vocabulis à La quod est laus tria quod est trinitas quia latria est laus trinitatis But the very understanding of two ordinary Greek words namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal priviledges in ecclesiastical matters to the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople allow'd by a General Councel that were obvious to every enquirer into history did quite blow up all pretences of the Popes supremacy and one versicle in that long unknown Greek Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. Luke 24. 47. which shews that the teaching of Repentance and remission of sins in the name of Christ by his own order began at Ierusalem did surprize thinking men with amazement when they heard a Pope and General Councel calling Rome the Mother and Mistress of all the Churches and anathematising all who think otherwise and saying further extra hanc fidem nemo potest esse salvus for this the Trent Councel did Thus then the abolition of the papal power here brought the world at the first step out of a blind Chaos into a Paradise of Knowledge and help'd Christians to demonstrate to themselves and to Jews and Pagans the truth of the Christian Religion for the certainty of the doctrine of which during that time of papal darkness the world had only the assertion of the present age that call'd it self the tradition of the Church but by the introduction of the Greek Tongue and other learning Christians had the sense of the Greek and Latine Fathers and those historical Records that brought down to them the certainty of the Miracles that were wrought in the founding of Christianity from the Primitive Christians who saw them 'T was the restoration of learning in general help'd them to say with Tertullian fidem colimus rationalem and with St. Paul I know whom I have believed and without the introducing of humane learning the Protestant Religion could no more have been advanced to its height in the world then men can be perfected in Astronomy without the knowledge of Arithmetic Luther came into the field arm'd with the Knowledg both of the Greek and Hebrew Tongues when he was to contest with the Errors of the Papacy and he having for his Antagonist Cardinal Cajetan who was the Legate in Germany and an eminent School Divine and who made a home thrust at Luther out of the Scripture according to the Vulgar Latine translation Luther told him in plain terms That that translation was false and dissonant to the original and hereupon the Cardinal thô he and the Papacy too had one foot in the grave Cato â—like fell eagerly on the studying of Greek that he might be able so confute Luther and his followers out of the Scriptures and was put to it to make his weapon when he was in the field And can any one think now that in this present state of England when we see so many that are Critical Masters of Experimental Philosophy and who by means of the great useful pains formerly taken by Erasmus Sir Thomas Moore and others in restoring Philological Learning have now entire leisure to devote their Studies to the substantial Knowledge of things and whose Motto is Nullius in verba and who know that if they would have every one trust them they must take nothing on trust from any one and who know that since truth doth always sail in sight of error they must all the way go sounding by experiment I say can any one think that it was less easie for the Sun to go back Ten degrees on Ahaz his Dial then 't is to make this Age run back to implicit faith and ignorance and barbarisme And is it to be thought that men who weigh Silver in Scales will not weigh Gold I mean not examine notions of Religion with care when they are so cautious in others Can we think that men who will not part with those Notions that salve the phaenomena will quit those that save their Souls and especially considering the proverbial addiction of the English genius to Religion and considering too that men by long use and Custom have been habituated to the profession of a rational Religion and that it can plead here a hundred years prescription It is certainly more easie to unteach men the use of the Sea-Compass in Navigation then the use of Reason in Religion and the inclination of the Needle to the North is not likely to be more durable then the tendency of mens affection in England to the Northern heresy so call'd and it is more easie to teach all Mankind the use of Letters then to unteach it to any one man and when the temper of an inquisitive Age is like a Trade-wind carrying men toward Knowledge and toward a rational Divinity they may
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
their Guardian and account it a very preposterous thing that since our Saviour refused to divide an Inheritance his pretended Vicar should do nothing else Moreover Holy Churches resuming all its Lands out of Lay hands would appear the more strange in England when we see as my Lord Primate Bramhal saith in his vindication of the Church of England p. 212 that the very Kings of Spain impose Pensions usually on Ecclesiastical preferments to the 4th part of the value and particularly one Pension on the Arch-Bishoprick of Sivile in favour of an Infant of Castile of greater value then all the Pensions there imposed by the Pope and when we know that the French King doth for the behoof of so great a number of Lay-men impose so many and great Pensions on the Abbeys without saying to the Abbots more then Car tel est nostre plaisir Sir Edwyn Sands in his Europae Speculum writ in the Year 1599 and in the time of Harry the 4 th of France speaking of that Kingdom saith That there the Church Prelacies and other Governments of Souls are made the Fees and Charges of meer Courtiers and Soldiers and our excellent Animadverter on Monsieur Sorbier reflecting on that Country Intimates in effect how there the chiefest spiritual dignities are entailed upon Families and possest by Children They who unjustly cry out of the Constitution of the Church of England for interrupting the Trade of the Kingdom would be loud enough in their Complaints of Omnia comesta à Belo under Popery He who knows not that the Revenue of the King now depends in a manner solely upon Trade and that Trade depends on populousness and that the encouragement of people to live under any Government is that great thing call'd Property in their Estates Religion and Laws and that therefore any thing that calls it self Religion that goes to exterminate above a hundred and fifty persons for every one it leaves for so the Proportion between Non-Papists and Papists by the Bishops survey made about the Year 1676 was return'd to be and to call them Hereticks and which makes their Goods and life ipso facto a forfeit of the Law will not ipso facto exterminate Trade is fitter for the Galleys or a Trading Voyage to the Anticyrae then for any discourse of Trade and Commerce Your Lordship hath in your Travels sufficiently seen it long since exemplified that the Protestant Countries for the quantity of Ground exceed the Popish in Trade and numbers of People and that thus the Protestant Hanse Towns have eclipsed their Roman Catholick Neighbours and Amsterdam Antwerp and the Vnited Provinces Flanders and that in Flanders where the Ecclesiasticks are Proprietors of seven parts of ten of the whole Country Levies of Men and Money for the defence thereof have been made with so much slowness and difficulty and been so inconsiderable as not to have secured themselves against Invaders Nor did the Ecclesiasticks there think it worth their while to strain themselves in Contributions to resist an Invader who is of their own Religion the which made the French Kings Victories there flie like Lightning more then our over-rich English Regulars did to oppose William the Conqueror when he came here under the Popes Banner And thus were they here and in Flanders are like Wenns in the Body which draw to themselves much nourishment and are of great trouble and no use and thus ridiculous is it that so over great a part of the property of the Land should be linked to persons who are no way linked to the interest of the Country more then professed Gamesters and Empyrics and Soldiers of Fortune and are no more damnified by Popish Invaders then Fishes of the Sea are by Earth-Quakes But on the other hand in the United-Provinces how easily and soon are vast Taxes raised when their All is at Stake to what a prodigious encrease of the numbers of their People have they attain'd since the Reformation insomuch that the Author of a Political discourse of the Interest of Holland Printed in Dutch in the Year 1669 and Licensed by Iohn de Witt and by Van Beaumont makes the People in the Province of Holland to be 2 Millions and 400 thousand and so likewise doth Pellerus in his Learned Notes on Klockius de Aerario p. 300. and there cites that Book of the interest of Holland when as Gerard Malynes in his Lex mercatoria makes the People in Flanders in the Year 1622 to have consisted of a hundred and forty thousand Families and he reckoning each of them one with an other at 5 persons makes the Total of the people in Flanders to have then amounted but to seven hundred thousand Souls And yet as that Author of the interest of Holland saith the Province of Holland can hardly make 400 thousand profitable Acres or Morgens of Land Down and Heath not put in and that the 8 th part of the Inhabitants of Holland cannot be nourished with what is growing there but tells us what prodigious Granaries they there have and that Amsterdam that in the Year 1571 was about 200 Morgens or Acres of Land was in the year 1650 enlarged to 600 Morgens or Acres of Land in Circumference and to have in it three hundred thousand Souls And the defence of the Zelanders Choice Printed in the Year 1673 mentions Aitsmas Liere to have reckon'd the publick Incomes of Holland alone in the Year 1643 to have amounted to 1100 thousand pound Sterling and the Author of the Interest of Holland saith that in one Year in a time of Peace viz. In the Year 1664 the Inhabitants of Holland did over and above the Customes and other Domains of the Earls or States of Holland pay towards the publick Charge as follows viz. To the States of Holland 11 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Maze 472 898 Gilders To the Admiralty of Amsterdam 2 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter 200 thousand Guilders Which comes to in all about 14 hundred 87 thousand Pounds Sterling How meanly do the Atchievements of Venice and their Efforts to aggrandize their Republick compared with Hollands shew in story for the quantity of years many times doubled since the Dutch threw off the Yoke of the Papacy History hath recorded the longevity of the Venetian Government as it has of Methusalem of whom we read not 〈◊〉 great thing he said or did or attempted but a few days of the short life of Alexander in the Ballance of same weighs down the 999 years of the other The very Religion of Popery makes the Venetians more narrow in their principles and even in their Rules of Traffick then are the Inhabitants of Protestant Countries The Popish Religion doth hamper its devout Professors as to Trading with Hereticks and holding Communication with such as are ipso jure ipso facto excommunicated and giving any Quarentine to men said to be infected with Heresie insomuch that we are told in D'
hands for discharging with Courage the Duty to his Prince that the Law of Nature and of the Land required from him have given the Name of Martyrdom to his Fate and I should ascribe the same Name to any one that should suffer the same Fate by the hands of any Ruffians that called themselves Protestants for his asserting the Religion by Law Established and discountenancing the Doctrine of Resistance and the Principles that subvert the Right of the Inheritable English Monarchy and doing what he was by the Law of Nature and the Land obliged to for the asserting the one and discountenancing the other Thus therefore do I judge that Name due to the Dire Fate that the late Arch-bishop of St. Andrews sustained from the hands of those execrable Presbyterian Bravos who defiled their Land and the light of the Sun there with the open Murder of that Prelate And supposing that the great Harry the 4 th of France who was so abandoned by Heaven to little Fears on Earth as when the Duke of Sully was perswading him not to recall the Iesuites to answer him thus Give me then security for my Life did yet receive the doom of the Fearful in this World for his continuing his Protection to his Protestant Subjects according to the Laws of Nature and of his Realm I shall not deny the right that the Nature of his Fate hath to be Crown'd with the Name of Martyrdom 'T is very possible that some wretched Protestants so call'd may to the scandal of the Name of Religion design Out-rages and Sedition and the late Publications of many Seditious Pamphlets by them and the Re-printing of some of the most Rebellious ones that faced the Light in the times of the Usurpation and for example of the Political Catechism and of the Rights of the Kingdom in which latter the Murder of the King is justified and the Right of the English Monarchy struck through the 5th Ribb by the Authors making it Elective hath given the Government a just Alarm of the designs of the Publishers of such Pamphlets and of their Abettors and they serve among Men of Caurion as a suspicious sign of some mischief intended by them as the extraordinary Commotion of the Waters is to Whale-fishers an indication of a Whale approaching and from such as well as from some of the Emissary Slaves of the Iesuites here what can any who act with the highest zeal in their several Capacities to assert the Rights of the Crown and Church expect but according to the Stile of Cicero against Cataline Nisi ut notent designent oculis ad caedem unumquemque nostrum But as to any who for the just discharge of their Natural Obligation and Duty as Magistrates or private persons shall suffer the worst of Fates I shall not deny the name of Martyrs so neither shall I think him worthy the name of an English man or a Regarder of the Divine Natural Law who doth not if a Magistrate by the due Execution of the Laws or if a private person and of Signal parts and Learning by his discourse and writing notifie the absurdities and inconveniences of any Seditious Principles chargeable on any perswasion of Religion whatsoever every Subject being under Moral Obligations duly to represent to the Pater Patriae and to his Brethren Subjects the dangers imminent over them by any destructive Principles or Practices whatever disguise of Religion the same may assume and it is most worthy of the most generous dispositions that can be in men who own the love of their Country with Monuments of Praise to honour the Memories of those Heroic Persons who were so unnaturally dealt with for asserting the Rights of the God of Nature and thus fell its Noble Victimes and who in the Race of their Lives were Agonists for it and to resemble the Justice of the Lacedemonians among whom those that died for their Country were proverbially said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and were Crown'd with Olive and other Branches and with Praises Extoll'd to the Skies and to this Custom probably the words of the Doctor of the Gentiles have a reference where he saith to Timothy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fight the good Fight of Faith and St. Paul sutably was but just to himself when writing to Timothy I am ready to be offered up c. he added I have fought a good fight c. And thus too may our Royal Martyr be said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and considering how great an Agonist and Confessor Queen Elizabeth was and how often she was designed for Martyrdom by some of her Romish Antagonists the Londoners were but just to her when adorning their Churches with the figure of her Monument they placed over her Effigies the Inscription of I have fought a good fight c. And as the old Agonistical Games were among the Graecians and Romans instituted in honour of their Gods and as critical seasons for their shewing their love to their Country by their then making Leagues and agreeing on the great Concerns of Peace and War and Men then in various Contentions of the Body and Mind shewed their utmost Abilities so doth the Divine Natural and Positive Law oblige all Christians in any Conjuncture or Season of Colluctation between true and false Religionary Principles to shew their Athletic Habits of mind in the most consummate manner and earnestly to contend for the Faith and indeed the Christian Religion in the Rule of its Practice having throughout the New Testament made Agonisme Essential to its Morals which one word of Agonisme is Comprehensive of more vigour than all the Heathen Precepts of Morality include or perhaps all the written Practices of Piety and Devotional Books let him by my consent be devested of the Name of Christian who on any just occasion shews not himself as an Athleta for his Religion and Country in all lawful ways by entring the Lists with all Principles of Hostility to either whatever the Event may be but still with a fair respect to the persons of all Contenders for even that the Agonostic Games required and particularly Ne quis in Colluctatione vel pugilatu antagonistam studio deditâque operâ conficeret alioqui ne victor Coronaretur nay so averse were the Athletick Laws to cruelty that they obliged all Contenders to endeavour Quo mollior leviorque ictus minus laederet and especially to abhor the Brutish Art of biting one another the abhorrence of which I do expect will grow more and more in fashion between Religionary Antagonists notwithstanding the many exorbitant incivilities I find practiced by some such Contenders towards the persons of each other in the present Conjuncture wherein I have observed that too many of the Protestant as well as Popish Antagonists have by cruel mockings and biting words and Shams made it their chief business but in one thing to resemble one of the old Agonistic Games namely that of the Wrestlers who after their having been first annointed
Plot that caused the Vote of its reallity to pass with a Nemine Contradicente there What Fautors of false Testimony the Jesuites principles are I have shewn and at the same time afforded my Testimony to the Heroic Vertue of many others of the Church of Rome and think it great and pedantical kind of Injustice to charge all Lay-Papists with a readiness to obey their Priests Commands by being ministerial in Cruelty to Protestants I remember I have read it in a printed Speech of Sir Audly Mervin the Speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland a Speech glowing with anger enough against the Papists where yet 't is said p. 24. In the Barony of Enishoan there are above two thousand Irish Papists can bring hundreds of Protestants to witness their Civil demeanor through the whole course of the distemper in this Kingdom And as the bloody Sect of the Zealots grew at last so odious among the Iews and another Order of such sicarii among the Turks so I suppose that of the Jesuites will naturally do among Christians and the Jesuites writ de haeretico Assassinando grow obsolete and especially in places where the Scene of Mr. Coleman's Northern Heresie lies it being an old observation that Northern Countries are more hospitable and less cruel than Southern In the very time of the dawn of Learning ushering in that of the Reformation it presently grew odious to the first-rate Ingeniosi to draw Heretics blood Our Famous Countryman Tunstal Bishop of Durham who had imbibed so much of the Mathematical Sciences that Vossus de Scientiis Mathematicis saith p. 40. Ante annos Centum quod excurrit magnâ cum laude praecipue ob sermonem purum perspicuum de arte supputandi egit Cutbertus Tunstallus and whose Book of Arithmetick writ with such pure Latinity is commonly extant was of such a temper that as Fuller tells us in his Church History the Bishopric of Durham had halcyon days of Peace and Quiet under God and good Cutbert Tunstal the Bishop thereof Sir Thomas Moor of whom 't is said that 't was writ on his Tomb that he was furibus haereticisque molestus yet in his Vtopia rouls neither of them in Blood and in his Chapter there concerning the Religions in Vtopia he makes divers kinds of Religion not only in sundry parts of the Island but also in divers places of every City some worshipping the Sun and some the Moon and some other of the Planets and the wisest of them worshipping God Almighty and some embracing the Faith of Christ at first without the help of a Priesthood and minding to choose a Bishop among themselves without sending out of their own Country for the Order of Priesthood and makes them affrighting none to or from the Christian Religion And that that Book of his may rather be thought an Original of his Mind than a mere Copy of his Countenance we have the Suffrage of Dr. Danne in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where having said That Sir Thomas Moor was a man of the most tender and delicate Conscience that the World hath seen since St. Austin and citing of his Vtopia l 2. c. de servis he saith He was not likely to write there any thing in jest mischievously interpretable And if a man would quote things of Erasmus his great Humanity to all humane kind he must quote almost his whole Works But how far his Genius led him from any brutal ferity toward Heretics your Lordship will see by this passage in his Supput error Bedae Dic ecclesiae quod si non audierit sit tibi velut ethnicus publicanus quasi hic ulla sit incendii mentio Rursus Apostolum Post unam alteram correptionem devita An devitare est in ignem conjicere Iterum Auferte malum ex vobis ipsis Num auferte valet idem quod occidere He had said before Quas autem mihi narrat ecclesiae leges An leges ecclesiae sunt quenquam ultricibus tradere flammis And afterward at episcoporum est quod quidem in ipsis est docere corrigere mederi Qualis autem est episcopus qui nihil aliud possit quam vincire torquere flammis tradere Quod si qui tractant hoc negotium tales essent qualem se declarat in hoc libello Beda hoc est si tantum spirarent odii si tantum haberent impudentiae tam impotens calumniandi studium tam corruptum judicium ut videatur citius decem propulsurus in haeresim quam unum revocaturus nonne belle ageretur cum delatis Nisi fallor primum designare cui male vellet eum curaret clam rapiendum in carcerem ibi quaererentur articuli tales quales plurimos objicit mihi partim falsos partim depravatos Disputatio si qua fieret perageretur in carcere si quidhisceret contrà mox accersitis tribus dilectis monachis pronunciaretur sententia diffinitiva Quod reliquum est perageret carnifex Vbi theologus defert rapit in carcerem urget accusationem damnatum tradit judici profano Iudex non ex suâ cognitione sed ex theologi praejudicio tradit flammis Our Martyrologist Mr. Fox could not have expressed more anger against a Bishop Bonner than Erasmus a Papist hath here against Popish Persecuting Prelates Had Erasmus then known of one practice enjoyn'd constantly by the Canons to Popish Bishops at their Condemning of Heretics to salve the Phoenomena of their irregularity by intermedling in Causâ sanguinis and about which your Lordship shewed me once some remarkable quotations in a Letter writ to you by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln and of which quotations I beg a Copy from you by the first opportunity namely efficaciter excorde to intercede with the secular Judge to whom they deliver the Heretic over to bring no pain of death or mutilation of member to him I believe the great Wit of Erasmus would after his ingenious account aforesaid of the Tragedy of the Condemned Heretic pleasantly entertained himself and Posterity with the wanton cruelty of that Farce that ensued it and let us see how the Popish Bishop then using the Speech familiar to some Tooth drawers just before their operation I will do you no harm and put you to little or no pain did at the same time make use of the power of the secular Magistrate but as the Linnen Clout or Silk to wrap and hide the tormenting Pincers of Holy-Church in But to return to my observation of all Popish Canonists themselves not allowing that wanton mode of the cruel usage and interceding with the Magistrate Efficaciter ex corde to do the Condemned Heretic no harm I think the same quotations mention how the famous Panormitan did brand the Hypocrisie of that Practice and the truth is 't is very abominable that Heretics neither living nor dying can be free from suffering Shammes by some Papists But again on the other hand 't is with Justice to be said that
ever errors they fell into as I should be if I heard any Principal speak unkindly of his Second who contending for him in loco lubrico or fencing on the Ice did slip and shall be as apt as any to wish and hope that now such have consulted with their Country as the Agonothetae and know their opinions better then formerly that they will take other measures and especially when they see the present State of Christendom importuning us to be quiet more then formerly and thus in the old Agnonistic Games many of the lapsi athletae came to be Crown'd The Rule in those Games was that the Agonists were to make three Attaques on each other and he that did slip or go back in the first and second if yet he overcame in the third On-set was lawfully Crown'd and good luck say I have they with their honour who having an opportunity of a third Assault against Popery shall out-do not only others but themselves and I have the Charity to believe that what the great Athletae did in the Exclusion Bill was thought lawful by them and that they thought therein they did not transilire metas And 't is but with Justice that the generality of the People of England seem as Agonothetae to have judged of the temper of our Prince in this Religionary Certamen and I believe whatever time can cause that yet among all composed and sedate Minds his Majesties deportment in the late Conjuncture will never happen to be forgot and particularly his wrestling with his Parliaments as I may say by several Gracious Offers and Messages relating to the security of the Protestant Religion and to the making of English Men everlasting Comprehensors of the same He notified it to them by the Lord Chancellor on March the 11th 78. That this is the time to secure Religion at home and strengthen it from abroad by strengthening the Interests of all the Protestants in Europe c. The results of this Council seem to be decisive of the fate of this Kingdom c. And I must confess I wish that tempus acceptabile as I call'd it before had been accepted of that great Critical Moment of time when the curious needed no intelligence from that Oracular States-man of the measures taken abroad to extirpate Protestancy and when its Enemies in some Countries thought they had the life of that Religion as sure within their gripe as he had that of the Bird when out-braving the Oracle he ask'd if the Bird in the hand were dead or alive and when all his Majesties real acceptable offers were thus reiterated to all the noble Contenders and offered like the water of life to prevent their fainting in their Race and that without Money and without Price And because his Majesties Title hath appear'd as due to his Agonists Crown as to his Inheritable Royal one for having in the several periods of his life at home and abroad contended so earnestly for the Protestant Faith and purchased an immunity from Envy it self and that according to the right of that Law in the Code that restrains the obtaining of Immunities only to such a one who hath striven per omnem aetatem cum coaevis and hath to the Athlotletae given proof of his valour from his youth and who hath at least in tribus agonibus been Conqueror I think the rather that a Crown of Iustice is laid up for him both in time and in eternity for his preserving the property of his Line in some of those his earnest Messages aforesaid and for that he did not by the infringing the Legal Rights of that as I may say transilire lineas or by doing any thing of the Justice whereof he doubted and much more of the Injustice whereof he was fully convinced As the figure of a Crown must be entire so must every good Action consist of entire Causes that is to be rewarded with it and any Prince who doth deliberate of the doing a thing in it self unjust has need of the Caution given to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia hold fast that which thou hast that no Man take away thy Crown and indeed for a Monarch to do an Act of Injustice is a greater misfortune to him than to be deposed the latter being but the evil of punishment and the former of sin I reading lately in Klockius de aerario was ashamed to see the 41. Summarium of Chap. 109th Book 2d to be this viz. A Iustitiâ licite in parvis subinde variariut in majoribus inviolata sit and ashamed to find in that Chapter Tacitus quoted by him for it and saying Habet aliquid ex iniquo omne magnum exemplum and Plutarch cited for saying A justitia in parvis rebus nonnunquam abeas si salvam eam voles in magnis But honest Cicero tells us better things and that Nihil honestum esse potest quod justitiâ vacat and the Christian Morallity I am sure prohibits the doing of one unlawful Act tho the effect of it would be the restoring the whole Creation in integrum to its first State in Paradice and it enjoyns the fortitude of not fearing those that kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul as our Saviours words are in St. Math. 10. 28. and where he doth not say fear not those that can kill the Body but who do actually and frequently kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul implying that unjust men often labour to do that and would do it if they could and their cursed sollicitude therein is not capable of being practised more then by endeavouring to prevail on Men by fear of imminent bodily danger to warp from principles of Justice and the Scripture doth annex the Crown of Life to the condition of being faithful unto death and to not fearing the things to be suffered as 't is said in Rev. 2. 10. the ominous Text Preached on at the Coronation of the Royal Martyr And as it is a saying that Must is for the King so he that Rules over Men must be just ruling in the fear of God as part of the last words of King David assures us and must not by fear of Man do any unjust thing that would imply his intermitting the filial fear of Heaven which is justly punished by being abandon'd to the Servile Fear of Man and to that fear bringing a Snare as that Kings Son hath in his Proverbs told us and when otherwise he might have made his own wrath as the roaring of a Lion as Solomons words are And 't is when exact Justice is as it should be fixed in the Firmament of a Princes Mind that its brightness is above being Ecclipsed by any popular temptations or fears that it resembles the fixt Stars whose great height dazles the eyes of gazers and which Stars cannot be eclipsed by the shaddow of the whole earth The Populace and their Multitudes and Commotions are in the Scripture frequently compared to
hold that he still retaineth and ought to retain entirely and solidly all that aforesaid Supreme Power and Authority over the Churches of this Dominion in as ample a manner as if he were the most Christian Prince in the World. If therefore any shall think it reasonable to pronounce that the substantial Interest of Protestancy and of the Kingdom doth Stare moribus antiquis virisque I have pointed them to Arch-Bishop Abbot to Bishop Andrews the Antagonist to Bellarmine under the weight of whose Arguments Bellarmine fell in the Certamen and to others of our old Counsellors of State and particularly Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland your Lordships Noble God-Father in comparison of many of whom when we look on some of our great Politic and Protestant-would-be's of this Age and who would let none be Protestants but themselves we may well cry out In qualem paulatim fluximus urbem and have shewn how those great Confessors by their Overt Acts provided against the belief of the Doctrine of Popery without the barring any of the Royal Line from the inheriting the Crown And when I see some of our till of late unheard of Statists so eager to dispossess the Land of the Evil Spirit of Popery by illegal means and the use of the great Name of Protestancy as a Spell I fancy to my self that they may be call'd on by it as the Iewish Exorcits were in the Acts of the Apostles who taking on them to call over them which had evil Spirits the Name of the Lord Iesus saying we adjure you by Iesus whom Paul preacheth the evil Spirit answered and said Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are ye Thus to any who shall say that there is no way possible to secure English Mens continuing Protestants but by breaking in on the Succession in the Right Line may it be returned by Popery the old Protestants of the Church of England I know and the old Nonconformist Protestants and the old Covenanting Presbyterian Protestants I know who knew otherwise to secure Protestancy and likewise the French Protestants I know who never practised any Out-rage against the Great Harry the 4th of France's Government after he had left Protestancy but who are ye The truth is the Protestants in France so vastly numerous in his time which any one may imagine who considers that the most careful thinking men in that Realm make them now to be two Millions and that a judicious French Author hath writ that the Iesuites have lately computed them to be above a Million and a half have shewn the World a great example of their Protestant Loyalty in that they were ready as chearfully to obey their Prince when he was a Papist as when they served him in set Battles against the Power of the holy League and the majority of his Nobles and of his Metropolis and of the chief Cittadels in his Realm After they saw him go to Mass they never call'd him Iulian or Lampoon'd him in Hymns or demurred to his Beard or had any fears or jealousies of his touching a hair of their heads nor threatned him that the Galilean would foil him and no Language could have more truly expressed their Sentiments then that of the Famous Pierre du Moulin in his defence of the Faith Nous sommes prests d' exposer nos vies pour la defence de nos Rois contre qui que ce soit fust-il de nostre Religion Quiconque feroit autrement ne defendroit point la Religion mais serviroit son ambition attireroit un grand blame sur la verite de l' evangile i. e. We are ready to expose our lives for the defence of our Kings against whomsoever it be although of our own Religion And whosoever should do otherwise should not defend Religion but serve his own ambition and would draw a great reproach on the truth of the Gospel Considering the indeleble Character of Hary the 4 ths Protestant Good Nature his Subjects of that Religion did prepare their thoughts to be Lachrymists for him rather then themselves and knew that by his Coversion to Popery if in this life only he had hopes he was of all men most miserable and that his absolution left him only in the State of a Crown'd Victime I have before mentioned the Apology for that Scholar of the Jesuites Iohn Chastel which endeavours to prove that Harry the 4 th was by that Assassin not only wounded very fairly according to the Language of the Brothers of the Blade but in the Style of their Honour according to the Iesuites Morals very heroically and as the Contents of Cap. 1. Part. 3 d of the Apology expresses it Actus Castelli heroicus est in substantiâ suâ He moreover tells us in plain terms Part. 2. Cap. 7. that Excommunicatio quae â—b haeresim irrogatur remedium potius est ecclesiae quam excommunicato c. and that Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right And in Cap. 8. before mentioned viz. Neque etiam à Papa absolutus Rex esse potest he asketh Quod si quaeratur quid ergo absolutio praestet si jus amissum non redeat And it followeth Quòd si absolutus impaenitens existat effectus alius non foret quam is de quo supra ita si quod Deus velit paenitentia foret vera certe effectus propterea non exigâ—us esset futurus utpote in spiritualibus remittendo illum in ecclesiae gremium regni Caelorum Capacem reddendo temporalium vero respectu quicquid illa operari posset foret ad reddendum eum compotem novi juris per electionem auferendo impedimentum in foro fori quo durante is ille esse non posset And then he saith The Pope cannot confer such new Right to the same Kingdom on him for that it depends not simply on the power of the Keys so to do and in fine makes the Right to the Crown irrevocably devolv'd on the next person capable who has a right to it quum saith he ratum sit inter jurisconsultos incapacem haberi ut mortuum non impedire sequentes In the 3d Chapter of the 2d Part namely That Henry of Bourbon cannot be called King by reason of his pretended Conversion the vile Apologist derides the Conversion of this Great King and labours to prove by fifteen Instances That after his Conversion he did favour the Cause of Heresy more then ever and particularly by his observance of his Leagues and Agreements with the Queen of England and other Hereticks ut experientia saith he per novas ejus actiones locupletissime testatur Etenim primò faederum pacta cum haereticis sarta tectaque servat quibus ut hactenus nondum renunciavit ita neque dum renunciare cogitat Secundò ipsi haeritici in Germaniâ Genevae alibi ejus actiones comprobant Tertio contemnit Catholicos promovet haereticos illos repudiat atque rejicit hos
into the Field of Time have yet grown up and how many even of the higher Class of understandings have been tempted to believe the predictions of the illiterate and that such could read the Book of Fate who yet could read no other as appeared by Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop Fisher being tainted with some belief of the holy Maid of Kent's Sayings or at least seeming so to be and that the prediction of things as I partly before hinted may help as a Natural Cause to give them Birth I wishing so well to my Country and its Religion by Law Established have however adventured from Natural Causes to give my judgment for the future State thereof as I have done not despairing of its influences on some present Despairers And moreover the Class of Magna nomina who have faulter'd in their measures of Prophecy is so great that an obscure mistaken person may well hope to hide himself among them Father Parsons aliâ—s Doleman in his Book of the Succession doth p. 258. give his final Conjecture of the great future Event of the Succession after the death of Queen Elizabeth saying My opinion is that this Affair cannot possibly be ended by any possibility moral without some War at leastwise for sometime at the beginning and gives his reasons for that his opinion And how all our hot Apocalyptick Men and Teazers of Anti-Christ have erred in the times of the great Changes they have predicted in the World is obvious and therefore the most sagacious of that sort of Expositers have made the things they have foretold to be far distant in time and before which they knew they should long be in the number of Non entes doctores as one calls the Schoolmen and thus likewise the ingenious Author of the Treatise of Taxes and Contributions printed in London 1667 doth p. 23. say that Before five hundred years we may be all transplanted from hence into America these Countries being over-run with Turks and made wast as the Seats of the famous Eastern Empires at this day Mr. Herbert our pious Vates made Religion standing a tiptoe to take its flight thither many years ago And the ingenious Author of the Zelanders Choice hath therein told us that the French would never part with Vtrecht and that our King's Declaration of Indulgence would never be recalled but the contrary happened in both Cases and the Vote of the House of Commons in order to his Majesties recalling the latter was carried by the Party there favouring the Nonconformists and could not have been without them which that Author did not foresee and that those Nonconformists would be well neither full nor fasting and therefore their reflections on the King's Ministers for denying Indulgence to them since ought to be very gentle Mr. Fox in his Martyrology in one Volume p. 694. gives us this conjectural prediction that the Turk will seize Rome and founds one of his reasons for it on the 18 Ch. of the Rev. and that he shall consume it with fire and Ribera the Iesuite in Chap. 14th of the Rev. saith Romam igitur non tantum propter priora peccata conflagratarum esse magno incendio sed etiam propter illa quae extremis illis temporibus commissura est ex hujus Apocalypsis verbis adeo perspicue cognoscimus ut ne stulâ—issimus quidem negare possit Neither Mr. Fox nor the Iesuite name any particular time when Rome shall be consumed with Fire but many whose Enthusiastic fancies have played with the fire of Rome adventured to lay the Scene of its ruine in the Year 1666 and to assert this a Latin Book was professedly writ and called Romae ruina finalis Anno Dom. 1666. and printed in London in the Year 1663. in the Title whereof 't is said that Rome shall be incendio delenda in the Year 1666. And no doubt our many Prophetic Writers that read that Sentence as from Gods Tribunal that Rome shall be destroyed that year angered the Conclave there and they might well think that to such hot heads there belonged incendiary hands and accordingly as it was before cited out of the Pampâ—let called The Arts and pernicious designs of Rome wherein is shewn what are the Aims of the Iesuites c. the Author makes the Conflagration of London in case it were a practice of Humane Contrivance to have been caused by Rome and the Consistory there and the Iesuites as being willing to signalize that year of 666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some that predicted Romes utter destruction then 't is possible that they might grant against our City the reprisal of performances for our Prophecies against theirs which if they did was a Revenge very disproportionate for according to that rule of the Pharisees revenge namely an Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth they should only have equipped Airy Prophecies against us and not Fire-ships and by a little obvious Art have hounded the number of the Beast 666 upon us And though I am sufficiently convinced by the Quotations out of the Canon Law and the Canonists referred to in Gundissalvus that the Tenet of burning whole Cities if the Majority thereof are Hereticks is chargeable on the Church of Rome as approved by it and tho the Lord Chancellor and two Houses of Commons and the Magistrates of London have given their judgment of the Causers of that Fire as aforesaid and tho one of our great Divines and whose Name all Protestants in our Land must mention with great honour Dr. William Lloyd Dean of Bangir hath in his Funeral Sermon of Sir Edmund Godfrey p. 38. speaking of the incredible patience found in the Citizens of London at the time of its Conflagration as an effect of the Protestant Religion further said Tho so many believed and very few much doubted whence it came that it was from the same hands which we justly suspect for this wickedness meaning the Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey yet was there no Tumult rose upon it no violence done that extended to the life of any Person yet shall I never without the knowledge of convincing proofs of such a Fact projected or modelled by some in Authority in the Church of Rome and the Spiritual Guides of our Lay-Papists charge the Odium of the Fact on more of them than make the least of numbers nor yet the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists here at home or abroad in the World and would say that as infallible as the Pope was he knew not what spirit he was of when he thus in his Law called for fire on Heretical Cities I allude to our Saviour's words to the Disciples that importun'd him to call for Fire from Heaven to burn the Samaritans I know the Roman Catholick Author of the forementioned Pamphlet called the Arts of Rome c. in the Epistle of it saith of the Jesuites and Fryars that what they hold lawful to be done
thing that can happen and that whoever shall write the Story of your Lordships life after you have finished your Mortality will have cause to say of you as Mr. Fox p. 411. mentions that one who writes of Wicliff recorded of him that he persevered in his Religion ita ut cano placeret quod Iuveni complacebat that the same thing pleased him in his old Age which did in his youth Nor do I indeed doubt but that when your Lordship shall be upon your passage to the other World you will take your long leave of your friends in the Style with which Dr. Holland the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford was observed commonly to bid his friends farewel viz. Commendo vos amori Dei odio Papatus and that your Lordship who hath been so successful an Agonist against Popery will share in the Glories of that Promise from Heaven To him that overcomes will I give the Morning Star and that as the Morning Star is the same with the Evening one and in the Morning is call'd Phosphorus and in the Evening Hesperugo so the Protestant Religion will appear in the Evening of your Life with the same brightness that it did in the Morning thereof and so continue till you shall arrive at that Region where all the Morning Stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy How unreasonably rigid are they who when the Ministers of Princes are studying and procuring the ease of Mankind as your Lordship hath done will in spight of fate disquiet themselves in rendring the lives of such Ministers uneasie a temper that I think shewed it self over much in a late Speech in the House of Commons of Sir W. I. who if my Information be true did not reverently use the power of his Popularity when with much Acrimony reflecting on some in the Kings Council he was supposed to have aimed at your Lordship in words to this effect There is another in the Council a Noble Man too among the Kings Ministers and a Lawyer but if we cannot reach him do not impeach him intimating that he would have been glad of any being able with Articles and Proofs concludent to have reached your Lordship in order to Impeachment There is another Honourable Person who is your Collegue in the King's Council a Great Man and a Lawyer too whom I was sorry to find by the printed Votes of the House of Commons that were sent into the Country so many persons were endeavouring to reach with matter of Impeachment I mean my Lord Chief Iustice North. It seem'd to me a thing worthy the name of News that the advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions should be thought a sufficient ground to proceed upon to an Impeachment against him for high Crimes and Misdemeanors The security and quiet of Kings and their People are to be so tenderly regarded that the drawing one Proclamation after another to prevent the blowing or breathing in the Kings Face I allude to the words in one of the Articles against Woolsy by Tumultuous Petitioners a thing punishable at Common-Law and likewise by the severity of the Council-Board seems strangely imputed as a Crime to a Judge and Privy Councellor The people petitioning in Multitudes are so far from being like the Horse not knowing his own strength that their coming in such numbers shews they have Calculated it and perhaps with more nicety than the Author of the Discourse before the Royal Society concerning the use of Duplicate Proportion had Calculated the strength of Animals the which strength he saith is as the square roots of their weights and substance and if 1728 Mice were equiponderate to one Horse the said Horse is but 1 144 part as strong as all the said Mice and so might easily strip the Horses Neck of the Thunder that God and Nature according to Iobs expression have cloathed it with and their petitioning in numbers being a real Proclamation of their power it was the part of so good a Councellor of State and Mathematician to advise his Prince and his Country not to be taken in a Trap by the Petitioning Mice and it was worthy of so knowing a Iudge to forewarn them of being entrapped by the Law and as the Millenary Petitioners were forewarn'd in King Iames his time What occasioned the Proclamation referred to by the House of Commons I know not but by what I have observed of his accurateness in the administration of Justice in his great Sphere and of his Mathematical Genius even not receeding from it self while on the Tribunal he in every Cause demonstrates the rationality of the Laws of England and makes Justice there in its Arithmetical and Geometrical proportion so visible to all and by what I have seen of the serenity of his temper in having had once or twice the honour of his Conversation I believe that as a Privy Councellor he would too as much occasionally assert any Legal Right the Subject hath to Petition his Prince as he would the Right of the latter not to be illegally and with the apparent Menace of Members addrest to a way of Petitioning that hath so often and so lately been the Prologue to the ensuing Tragedy of War. I was very much pleased to hear how this Learned Iudge being once moved to grand a Prohibition to the Court Christian in a certain Cause and that the Council fencing with Presidents pro and con that came not home to the point his Lordship declared in words to this purpose that in any proceeding that was against Universal Reason he would grant the Writ and I think it was as proper for him as a States-man to advise a Prohibition in the way of a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions than which nothing can be more against Vniversal Reason But if a person who is so great a Master of that Reason and indeed of Universal Learning and of that part of it that deserves the name of Real and whose single Learning would serve to vindicate a whole profession from Erasmus his Aspersion of doctissimum gâ—nus indoctorum hominum and of knowing nothing of the Sense and Reason of the World beyond Dover and the brightness of whose parts hath given a Lustre to the Science of the Law and by whom if by any of this Age that may be thought possible to be done that our Great Lord Bacon advised King Iames to Crown his Reign with namely the bringing the Body of the Common Law or our jus non scriptum into a Digest I say if a person thus accomplished cannot have the skill to walk through the World free from Impeachment it will be sufficient to make all men of Illustrious Abilities and Godlike Inclinations to do good retire from dangerous Mankind and not adventure to Aid Princes who are Gods Vice-Roys in the Government of the World and to be happy in themselves without preserving it as the first being was before he made
of the Moral Law Principles whereof are in all mens natures and attended in their actings by a natural Conscience 3. Gospel Duties directed and ordered by a supernatural Light no Principles or Footsteps whereof are found in us For the former Religion in the first sense as the knowledge of God Conscience of an Oath Iustice Righteousness in our dealings c. are such things wherein the well-being of Kingdoms and Commonwealths is much concern'd But Religion as it stands in exerting supernatural Principles and in Duties termed the Commands of Christ as the other the Commandments of God Jo. 15. Such as Faith Repentance Sacraments Discipline and the like Gospel Ordinances in the Duties under this Head considered and as distinct from Moral Duties there is little or nothing directly and immediately contributed by them to Mens civil interests further than where these supernatural Vertues are planted in Mens minds the Moral Duties of Piety and Honesty do more plentifully abound and are in exercise As these Moral Duties do more immediately concern the Common-wealth so the Laws thereof are principally drawn forth out of them especially the second Table Duties forming and building them into Municipal Laws under Penalties and Encouragements greater or less as in the Wisdom of a State is judged most conducing to the Well-fare thereof For these Gospel-mysteries it is otherwise For as they contribute to us in our Civil Government no otherwise than as before mentioned so is there little contributed by the Wisdom or Authority of any State advantageous to the Gospel but Protection or being a defence upon the glory of it If Adam had stood all Common-wealths had been prosperous and flourishing and yet no Faith no Christ no Repentance nor any Gospel-Worship known or professed And since the fall you have had well govern'd Kingdoms among Heathens and Turks that never received Christ or Gospel-Worship It is with States as with particular Persons in Commerce another mans Estate or Trade or Credit or any other Civil Concern with whom I have to do is not prejudiced or better'd by Omission or Practice of what is a mere Gospel Duty If a man I deal with be unjust lye steal c. my worldly Interest is prejudiced hereby but whether he repent or exercise faith in Christ for forgiveness of Sins and humble himself I am neither gainer nor loser in my Civil Concerns Now it is Gospel-Worship Gospel-Religion we profess in this Nation c. The Christian Religion having suffered so much by so many Pedantly and Bigottish Writers having mis-represented it as an Invader both of the quiet and business of Princes and Governors and as if the necessary different Sentiments in Religion according to mens several Capacities were still to give the Political Conduct of the World unnecessary trouble and as if God who was in Christ reconciling the World to himself design'd by any various Religionary Notions to render Christian Princes and their People irreconcileable to one another and 〈◊〉 I may say to make the World irreconcileable to it self I am glad when I find the Subject of Religion by falling into the hands of any man of large and noble thoughts to have right herein done it as particularly hath thus been done it by Mr. Ny who had made Religion and Politicks very much his Study and I can refer the Curious to a Great Man of the Communion of the Church of Rome with some of whose Notions in this Point Mr. Ny's were partly Co-incident as any may find who will consult the 2d Volume of the Memoires of Villeroy whose great Character is Recorded by the Bishop of Rhodes in his History of Harry the 4th of France and to whom he was Secretary and was so before to Charles the 9th and Harry the 3d and afterward to Lewis the 13th and the greatest part of D'Ossat's memorable printed Letters from Rome was to him with high respect Addressed In the beginning of that Volume we have his Discours de la vraye legitime constitution de l' estat que l' ordre y est encore que la Religion n' y fust and in p. 6 he discourseth of this Subject viz. L' estat la Religion n' ont rien de Commun and in p. 11. there his Subject is That l' estat n' est estably ny mainteny par la Religion ains la Religion conservée par l' estat and in p. 16. his Theme is That la difference de Religion n' empesche point la paix de l' estat and in p. 19. he discourseth of this Assertion That Le Prince ne doit etre consideré pour sa Religion mais pour ce qu'il est chef du peuple It may moreover be supposed that God in his Government of the World and in his care for the Church in particular Countries when he thinks not fit to incline a Princes mind to receive the same Religionary Sentiments that the generality of the People owns doth yet often endow him with those Moral Vertues and habitual inclinations whereby he is much better qualified for the Protection of the People than any can imagine him to be by Orthodoxy in the Speculative points of revealed Truth The Church we know is in Scripture represented as a helpless Minor and Kings are there mentioned to be its Nursing Fathers and thus the Canon Law tells us that Ecclesia fungitur vice minoris and the Canonists that à minoribus ad Ecclesiam valet argumentum It is here therefore obvious to consideration that Power and moral Honesty and Diligence and Courage and Discretion are the chief endowments requisite for the protection of an Orphans Person and Estate We find these sayings commonly used by the Roman Catholick Authors who treat of the Rights of Protection granted by Sovereign Powers viz. Religio cum protectionis jure nihil commune habet and Religionis communio propriè nulla homini cum homine sed homini cum Deo and Religioni cum juribus Gentium nulla est necessaria conjunctio and on these grounds Magerâ—s in his 8th Chapter of his Advocatia armata raising the Question whether Roman Catholick and Luther an and Calvinist Princes may lawfully protect and defend one another determines that they may and that they ought so to do pursuant to the agreements of the Interim and other pacta Conventa and in his 1â—th Chapter he refers to the settlement of the Confraternities in Germany between Princes of several Religions and particularly of that settled between the Dukes of Bavaria and the Count Palatines of the Rhine Tam quoad bonorum principatuum quà m dignitatis Electoralis successionem and which was not to be dissolved by either of those Electors changing their Relâ—gion And the same reasons are assign'd by him and other Writers of the jus Protectitium for the lawfulness of Christian Princes protecting Iews Turks and Infidels and it passeth among them as the common opinion of the Canonists and Civilians Infidelitatem non privare
quemjure naturali dominiove rerum aut provinciarum And as I have already referred to the Instance of Abraham in obliging himself at once to Abimelech and his Son and his Sons Son I shall here cast my Eye on Abimelech as an Idolater and take notice that the aforesaâ—â— Father of the Faithful and by whose Bosom Heaven is represented and who had the honour done him by Holy Writ to be called the friend of God and by the Chronological Writers of Memorable Things to be called Inventor foederum and most worthy of him as being the friend of God it was to be the Inventor of Alliances and federal friendship with men did make that first Alliance with an idolatrous Prince and with his whole Race of Idolaters in Prospect If then it is an allowed judged point by the consent of Parties That Religion is out of the Case when one Prince doth freely protect another and his Subjects of different Religions it may be thence very well inferr'd That it is most reasonable and just and ought not to any to seem strange that Subjects who owe a natural Allegiance to their Princes are indispensably bound to pay the same to them and to defend all their Regal Rights without any regard to the Religion their Princes may profess and on the other hand that Princes may oft protect their Subjects who differ in Religion from them in the enjoyment of their Rights I grant that some Popish Princes abroad having rivetted the Inquisition into their Politicks and being perhaps of harsh or bigotted dispositions have out of a regret against Hereticks expelled Infidels from their Territories and by which expulsion such Princes have been sufficient losers in this World and a Case of which nature is particularly referred to by the Bishop of Rhodes in his History of Harry the 4th of France who accounting the Moors in Spain to be about a Million mentions the hard usage they there found and that before they were thence expulsed they applied to Harry the 4th for Protection once when but King of Navarre and afterward when King of France and a Roman Catholick and who then did no more doubt of the lawfulness of protecting them than while he was a Protestant however he forbore on Political grounds only to protect and defend them Nor when he forsook the Communion of the Protestant Church were any of his Heretical Subjects used by him with any hardship on the account of the hard word of Heresy and I believe his Notion of the practicableness of an orderly Political Government without reference to Religionary differences was the same with his great Minister Villeroy's I have mentioned how Cardinal D' Ossat told the Pope that if his Holyness were King of France at that time that Harry the 4th was he would shew the Huguenots the same favour that Harry the 4th did and shall observe it that in the famous printed Oration of Cardinal Perron made to the 3d Estate or Commonalty of France tho he speaks of the LATERAN Council and owns and asserts it to be a general one as strenuously as the Learned Bishop of Lincoln hath since done and faith When that Council intended to provide for the extirpation and rooting out of the Reliques of the Albigenses it ordained that the Princes who should become Contemners of the Council that Condemned the Albigenses should be deprived of the Obligation of their Subjects fidelity to them yet he then adds And this I remember not for an Example to disturb or trouble the publick Peace or Tranquillity seeing the Hereticks are here in so great a number as that they make a notable part of the Body of the Estate c. Here then I have named two Cardinals of as great real Eminence as any the Church of Rome could ever shew who held it lawful for a Catholick Prince to protect his Protestant Subjects notwithstanding the Lateran Council But what Tacitus speaks of the Duty of common Men namely that they should not penetrate Abditos Principis sensus nay be particularly applied to their Religion And the Apostles Caution of Who art thou that judgest another mans servant may here be improved by saying Who art thou that judgest thy Natural Liege Lord and particularly as to matters of Religion wherein the most Antimonarchical Writers will allow them accountable only to God. And to any Protestant who having followed his judgment of Discretion hath separated from the Communion of another Church and yet shall Censure his Prince for so doing those other words of the Apostle are justly applicable Therefore thou art inexcusable O man whosoever thou art that judgest for wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy self for thou that judgest doest the same things The Christian Religion that hath enjoyned us not only to defraud and injure and offend none and to love our Neighbour as our self and extended that Neighbourhood to all Humane kind hath likewise commanded us to HONOVR all men and especially to render honour to whom honour is particularly due and not rashly to judge another and if men would imprint on their minds a serious Sense of the Moral Offices to which they are obliged by Virtue of those Expressions they would soon be better guided in the Measures of their Obligations relating to the King and his Heirs and Successors without being tempted as formerly to exclude any of them from their Civil Rights on the account of Religion Ames in his Cases of Conscience doth well descant on those Moral Offices and in his Chapter of Charity to our Neighbour he assigns some particular Cases in which as to the actual exercise and effect of Charity one is to love his Neighbour more than himself and instanceth in our being in Temporal Matters obliged to prefer publick Persons to our selves and saith That all are to be reckoned among publick Persons concerning whom it is manifest that they are useful to the Realm and in the Case of whom he determines it That on their occasionally being in danger of their lives we are to venture ours Are we not then when we may without the peril of our lives defend the Civil Rights of an Heir of the Crown who by the venturing his life hath supported the honour of the Realm obliged to forbear excluding him from the benefit of his Birth-right The Privilege of his owning the belief of Religionary Propositions tho differing from any other mens was purchased for him by the Blood of Christ and in using it he doth but use his own Right and consequently injures no man and if we slight the offering his own blood to us shall we too vilify or as I may say endeavour to nullify in his Case the effect of the Blood of his Saviour Ames in his Chapter De honore proximi tells us That Honour according to the common Notion of it doth denote the Testification of the excellence and worth of any one and that such Testification thereof cannot appear before men but by Words and Actions and
Acquaintance as to judge them free from any Complication of the belief and practice of any irreligious Principles with the Principles of their Religion and particularly from the owning any Principle of Disloyalty or the Iesuites Doctrine of Calumny or the Obligatoriness of the Lateran Council will not rashly pronounce any other particular Papist guilty of the belief or practice of such Principles Nor is it any great honour that I have done to any men of extraordinary Vertue in thus judging that they cannot believe or practise such Principles for that it being true in the Course of Nature what Machiavel said that next to the being perfectly good 't is the most difficult thing to be perfectly bad the World hath had thereby some Garranty against the belief and practice of such Principles and by necessity of Nature must still have But since Mankind in general may expect to find in our esteem the benefit of the presumption of Law viz. That every man is presumed to be good and that the high Births and Educations of Princes and the great Examples of their Magnanimous Ancestors may well pass as strong presumptions of Nature against their doing any low ungenerous Acts of Cruelty and since in Gods great Ordinance of Magistracy an especial Divine presence may by Virtue of Holy Writ be presumed to accompany the very Magistrates appointed by Sovereign Prinâ—es according to that in 2 Chron. 19. 6. where after it was said to the Judges Take heed what you do for yee judge not for man but for the Lord the following words are Who is with you in the Iudgment and that therefore as Christ is said to be present with those Officers he appointed in the Church because there is a special Virtue and Efficacy of Christ manifest in their Ministry there may likewise be expected a special presence Divine in the Administration of Magistracy from the like manifestation of God in his Wisdom Power Goodness c. for the Well-fare of Societies as Mr. Ny observes and since Kings and Princes are an Oâ—dinance of God or Medium by which in a more special and peculiar way he communicates his Goodness to Christians according to the Style of the 13th of the Romans the great Sedes materâ—ae of Loyalty for he is the Minister of God to THEE for good it may well be thought profaneness and Sacrilege for men to bode and presume ill of the future Acting of any Heirs to Crowns and particularly as to their believing or practising any thing pernicious to their Realms What Roman Catholick Prince doth not deride Innocent the 3d under whom the Lateran Council was held for telling it in the Canon Law that the Papal Power is as much greater than the Imperial as the Sun is greater than the Moon and at the Marginal Note there for saying That the Papal Power exceeds the Imperial no less than 7744 There is a Prince whose Emblem is the Suâ— and whose Power exceeds the Papal in every ones account to more than that Proportion And is it not therefore but according to reason and common sense that we should believe that of all men in any Realm the Prince will be the latest brought to the belief of that Papal Power so categorically asserted by that Council That Kings may be Excommunicated by their own Bishops for not obeying the Pope and their Subjects in such Case be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance Do not all the French Kings notwithstanding that Council claim the liberty of so much freedom from the Papal Power that Popes can neither directly nor indirectly command or ordain any thing concerning Temporal Matters within their Dominions and that neither the French King nor his Realm nor his Officers can be Excommunicated or interdicted by the Pope nor his Subjects absolved from their Oath of Allegiance As I have therefore in my Writing to a Noble Lord one of his Majesty's Ministers who was barbarously accused by one of the Plot-Witnesses for being a Papist and designing to advance the Papal Power said that I would be the last man in England who would believe he could be a Papist meaning it as impossible that he could believe or practise any irreligionary Tenet of Popery I will account it more impossible that any Roman Catholick Prince now living in the World should favour the Usurpation of the Papal Power however any of the Popish Clergy or Layety in his Realms might perhaps be addicted to favour the same That great Affair of the Munster Pâ—ace wherein so many great Roman Catholick Crown'd Heads agreeing perhaps in the Lateran Council being a General one did yet certainly agree together in the Year 1648 for Lutheran and Calvinistick Princes and States and their Subjects quietly possessing forever their Properties both in their Religions and Estates hath afforded the World an important Instance of Heavens so far influencing the understandings of those Crown'd Heads that they thought not themselves obliged to put the Decree of that Council in practice by exterminating Hereticks but to the contrary And because the Affair of that Peace and the great Pacta Conventa therein for the effect aforesaid have been scarce more taken Notice of here than the Transactions in China and that the notification of the same may advance the measures of our Duty by Internal Communion and help to un-blunder some of our Nominal Protestants in their fancying it so necessary for the quiet of Christendom that Christian Princes and their Subjects should agree in the belief of the Speculative points of Religion I intend to take an opportunity to publish some Account of the same I account my having thus largely dilated on the Moral Offices as aforesaid hath tended to corroborate this my 8th Conclusion I am here conversants in the great Court of Conscience the Court whose Seat is in the Practical and not Speculative intellect and the great things of which it holds Plea are as Sanderson tells us Actus morales particulares proprii and therefore particular urging of Records against which lies no averment is not more pertinent in Courts of Law than of Moral Offices in this And moreover I observing in this Conjuncture when many mens zeal hath been so hot against the Speculative points of Popery which disturb not Civil Society that yet they have believed the more pernicious Tenet of it and would have practised the same viz. The founding Dominion in Grace and that tho they have been altogether neglectâ—ul of their Actus morales particulares proprii they have both presumed to judge dishonourably and rashly of the Actings of others and to trouble the World not only with their Anxiety about the Acts of Kings and Princes but the Actus Dei and his illuminating Princes understandings with the Heavenly Mysteries I have thought this discoursing of our Moral Offices as aforesaid the more a Propos and seasonable as tending to fortify the rationality of this 8th Conclusion by exposing the absurdity of a respective or conditional Loyalty a
to belong to the Pope's Authority and their own School Doctors are at irreconcileable odds and jarrs about them He had then his Eye on the Lateran Council as appears by the other words there in the Margent viz. Touching the PRETENDED Council of LATERAN See Plat. in vitâ Innocen 3. and by which Council the King knew that all except two or three of those Conclusions were concluded and defined If therefore many of the poor petty School-Doctors were so searless of the Papal Thunder as in Cases when they were perhaps unconcerned to impeach the Papal Usurpation there was no cause of apprehension in that our wise Monarch that any of his High-born Heirs and Successors would ever favour the Usurpations of that Authority When Queen Elizabeth was so firmly satisfied concerning the Loyalty of the Roman Catholick Lords Temporal and of their great Quota in the balance of the Kingdom securing their abhorrence of all Papal Usurpations as not to impose the Oath of Supremacy on them tho yet She took care to have it imposed on the Popish Bishops can we imagine that the great Interest of an Heir of the Crown in the Hereditary Monarchy did not give a Plerophoâ—y of satisfaction to that Great Monarch that such an Heir would never permit any Usurpation to prejudice his Crown Imperial Moreover if in the Case of the device of an Inheritance by Will on the Condition of the Legatees not holding this or that Philosophical or Religionary Tenet the absurdity of such Condition would not frustrate the device but would be taken as Pro non adjectâ and that thus in that known Case in the Digest viz. Of an Heir made on an absurd Condition namely On Condition he should throw the Testators ashes into the Sea the Heir was rather to be commended than any way questioned who forbore to do so how can we think in the Inheritance of the Crown which is from God and by inherent Birth-right any such supposed absurd Condition of a Prince's not believing this or that Speculative Religionary Tenet and for his professing of which he hath a dear bought Liberty by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the New Testament of Iesus Christ should be intended to operate to his prejudice But that I may in a word perimere litem about that Kings never intending the least prejudice to the Succession by any of his Successors being Roman Catholicks I shall observe that that Kâ—ng who was so great and skillful an Agonist for the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England did yet in the Articles of the proposed Match with Spain and afterwards with that of France agree that the Children of such Marriage should no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience or Religion and that their Title to the Crown should not be prejudiced in Case it should please God they should prove Roman Catholicks and that the Laws against Catholicks should not in the least touch them And that the sense of the Government then was likewise to that effect avowedly declared is manifest from the Passages of those times and the needless quarrel therefore that our late Excluders would have exposed us to with France was a thing worthy their considering But enough of this Conclusion if not too much for where the Tide of the Words of any Oath runs strong and clear we need not to regard the Wind of any Law-givers intention however yet I have made it appear for the redundant satisfaction of the scrupulous that while they have embarqued their Consciences in thâ—se Oaths they have had such Wind and Tide both together on their side and that therefore any Storms which the Takers of these Oaths relating to the Lineal Succession of the Crown may have raised either in their Consciences or the State must be supposed to be very unnatural Having thus in the foregoing Conclusions asserted and proved the Obligation relating to the Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I shall briefly answer such objections thereunto or rather Scruples for they deserve not the name of Objections as some noisy Nominal Protestants have troubled themselves and others with and so end this Casuistical Discussion The first Objection or Scruple then I shall take notice of that some have raised against the Obligation of these Oaths as above asserted is that they were made in relation to Papists only and were enjoyned to be taken for the discovery of those that were suspected to be so As to which it will be sufficient to say that it is most plain that all Persons who have taken these or any other lawful Oaths are bound by Deeds to fullfil what they have sworn in Words and it is an absurd thing to doubt whether the Law intended that those Persons should observe the Oaths whom it hath enjoyned to take them And to this purpose we are well taught by Bishop Sanderson in his 6th Lecture of Oaths That tho Papal Vsurpation was the cause of the Oath of Supremacy the arrogating to himself the exercise of Supreme Iurisdiction in spiritualibus throughout this Kingdom yet the Oath is Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude the reà son is that the intention of a Law is general to provide against all Future inconveniences of the like kind or nature c. I refer the Reader to him there at large By the Measures of that Bishop as to the Oath of Supremacy we likewise may direct our selves in the Oath of Allegiance being Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude tho that Oath was made by occasion of the Gun-powder Treason And as to the intent of the Oath of Supremacy King Iames tells us in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 108. That it was to prop up the Power of Christian Kings as Custodes utrâ—usque tabâ—ae by commanding Obedience to be given to the word of God and by reforming Religion according to his prescribed Will by assisting the spiritual Power with the Temporal Sword c. by procuring due Obedience to the Church by judging and cutting off all frivolous Questions and Schisms as Constantine did and finally by making Decorum to be observed in every thing and Estaâ—lishing Orders to be observed in all indifferent things c. whereby his Majesty doth clearly denote the intention of that Oath to have been to extend against any Non-Conformists continuing their Schism in the Church And as to the Oath of Allegiance being intended against Protestants as well as Papists making a Faction in the State the Book called God and the King compiled and printed by King Iames's Authority sufficiently shews throughout by the Notification of the particular Moral Offices required by the Oath of Allegiance and likewise by his Subjects natural Allegiance and which Moral Offices are there strengthened with passages out of the Scriptures and Fathers and the Doctrine of absolute Loyalty is there well Established and likewise the Doctrine of Resistance
the King's Heirs and lawful Successors by Virtue of these Oaths must remain uncancelled in the Court of Conscience and however any Act of Parliament supposed to be made against the Law of God may a while be de facto received in any Courts of Law yet is it in the Court of Conscience to be looked on as a poor Escrole and as not worthy the name of a Law. It is most manifest that by these Oaths there is jus alteri acquisitum I mean to the King's Heirs and Successors as well as to the King and that therefore any supposed relaxation of the Oaths without the consent of all Parties for whose behoof they were made is a thing Nugatory and not allowable in the Court of Conscience And as I have speaking cum vulgo called some Anti-Papists whose Principles tend to Faction in the State and Schism in the Church Nominal Protestants tho yet I should be still as much content with any Law that made it Penal to call them Protestants as with one that should be so to call Quacks Physicians so I should in the Court of Conscience call any Acts of Parliament that are contrary to the Eternal and Natural Rules of indispensable Iustice only Nominal Laws suitably to what is said in the admirable Preface of Aerodius his Rerum Iudicatarum Pandect viz. Quod si quid iniquè malo more sordibus adversus illâ—m sempiternam legem atque immutabilem hic aut illic judicatum tranaâ—ctum sit qualis fuit apud Graecos Socratis Phocionis apud Romanos Mâ—telli Numidici Rutilâ—i Rufi M. Ciceronis damnatio in ecclesiâ Flaviani Johannis Chrysostomi contrà absolutio P. Sexti Clodiorum atque adeo Gabinii quam proptereà legem impunitatis appellarunt non magis judicata aut decreta debent appellari quam Seiae Apuleâ—ae Liviae leges Leges non sunt inquit Cicero But Thirdly The just allowance of the Rebus sic stantibus that can be in this Case is this there being nothing of pretence of relaxation from all Parties supposeable these Oaths bind us to the King's Heirs and Successors as long as there is any ONE of them remaining in the World and without the insertion of the words in the Oath of Allegiance viz. I do believe and in Conscience am resolved that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve me of this Oath or any part thereof its indispensableness to those who know the Obligation of Oaths to be jure Divino naturali would have sufficiently appeared In fine there are Rationes boni mali aeternae indispensabiles and to stand to promises is one of the things that are simply and in their own nature good and it is impossible as the Scripture saith That God should lye and therefore man made after God's image must therein answer the Archetype and hereby our Princes have the Garranty of our Allegiance sworn to them their Heirs and Successors being indispensable by Popes or Acts of Parliament or by God himself for he cannot dispense with the Law of Nature Humanâ naturâ manente eadem Lastly It is most manifest from what I have already said that any such Tacit Condition in these Oaths as before mentioned was contrary to the sense of the Imposer as well as to the Words and was therefore not allowable in the Court of Conscience in this Case and I believe that the Consciences of such who have made this Objection must tell them that when they took these Oaths their sense of them was then contrary to any such condition being allowed And therefore any such After-birth of a strained Interpretation being so contrary to the Law of God and the Land and the sense of the Imposer as well as the words of the Oaths and to the sense in which they actually took them must be thrown away There hath been a third Objection if it may be called one or if yet it may be called a Scruple for I think it hardly deserves the name of that However it having got under some mens feet or into their heads it hath made them so uneasie as frowardly to trample on the Rights of Crown'd Heads and it hath troubled us by the name of Haeres viventis and as if that were a Chymaera when as indeed the Objection is altogether Chymerical When Sir L. I. had with so much clear reason shewed much to this purpose viz. That the Exclusion-Bill was against the Fundamental Iustice as likewise the wisdom of the Nation and that it would induce a CHANGE in the Government and that was likewise against the Religion of the Nation which teacheth us That Dominion is not founded in Grace and that we are to pay Obedience to Princes whether good or bad as accordingly the Primitive Christians did and that it was against the Oaths of the Nation namely of Allegiance and Supremacy and that his R. H. is the King 's lawful Heir if he hath no Child and in the Eye of the Law we are sworn to him and when he had further signalized the weight of his Political Remarks and Learning in that Speech as well of as his Loyalty so as on the account of both to merit a place for it in the English Story and had instanced in some Princes and their Subjects of different Religions living very happily together it may perhaps be a blot in that Story that Sir W. I. in an answer to that Speech granting That we are sworn to the King his Heirs and Successors said further That we are not obliged to any during the King's life but to himself for it were Treason if it were otherwise The King hath no Heirs nor Successors during his life for according to his Law meaning Sir L. I's and ours Nemo est haeres viventis In answer to which I shall say that that Proverbial Latin saying in the Law Books doth amount to no more in nature and hath no more influence on Humane Affairs nor particularly on Moral Offices than that kind of Proverbial Sayings in the New Testament viz. For where a Testament is there must also of necessity be the death of the Testator or a Testament is of no strength while the Testator liveth Every one knoweth that a Will is in its own nature revocable and Legatees and Executors may be altered by the Testator and for any one to quote it as a Maxim Nemo est Executor viventis and for a Legatee or in effect an Executor in a Will the word haeres iâ— often used in the Civil Law and by the Writers of it will be no more significant than the telling the Legatee or Executor is that they must not meddle in the Testators Goods till he be dead and it may usefully operate to divert People from the slothful Omissions of making their Wills in due time out of a fond imagination that their Legatees or Executors would have a Title to any thing before the Testators death But after what hath been said
him our Sovâ—reign Lord the King IS lawful and rightful King c. and so the word IS must necessarily hinder any Heirs or Successors forestalling the Market if they should presume before their time to come for our actual Allegiance however sworn to them to be paid in future time Our Law-Book of Oaths mentions a long Promissory Oath made voluntarily to Harry the 6th by 2 Arch-Bishops 16 Bishops 3 Dukes 5 Earls 2 Viscounts 14 Abbots 2 Priors and 7 Barons and but part of which I shall here set down viz. I A. B. knowledge you most High and Mighty and most Christian Prince King Henry 6. to be my most redoubted and rightwise by Succession born to Reign upon me and all your Liege People whereupon I voluntarily without Coercion promise and oblige me by the faith and truth that I owe to God and by the faith truth and ligeance that I owe to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord that I shall be without any variance true faithful humble and obeysant Subject and Liege man to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord c. and swear to endeavour to do all that may be to the weal and surety of your most Royal Person c. to the weal surety and preserving of the Person and benign Princess Margaret Queen my Sovereign Lady and of her High most Noble Estate She being your Wife and also the weal surety and honour of the Person of the right High and Mighty Prince Edward my right redoubted Lord the Prince your first begotten Son and of the Right High and Noble Estate and faithfully truly and obeysantly c. First my Allegiance to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord during your life c. and if God of his infinite Power take you from this Transitory Life me bearing life in this World that I shall then take and accept my said redoubted Lord the Prince Edward your said first born Son for my Sovereign Lord and bear my true Faith and Ligeance to him as by nature born for my Sovereign Lord and after him to his Succession of his Body lawfully begotten c. and in default of his Succession c. unto any other Succession of your Body lawfully coming But the wisdom of any Nation making Laws and especially about Oaths as short as may be I account that those of Supremacy and Allegiance have much better that Multi-loquious one as I may call it provided for the security of our Allegiance to the King Regnant and afterward to his Heirs and Successors by plain and liquid words as far as Humane Prudence could provide for the same And because what is made by Humane Art is in danger of being by Humane Art eluded and for that we see that Nature it self hath been made a Term of Art a word that St. Paul thought plain enough when he said doth not Nature teach us that c. yet of which word a late Lawyer and Kinsman of the Great Grotius hath in his Book De Principiis juris Naturalis told us of seven significations and for that it is as easie for a captious versatil Wit to turn the word Heir or most words into as many or more the Oath of Allegiance was further with deep precaution made to exterminate all cavilling senses and calumnious interpretations and such as that of the haeres viventis by that Final Clause which Crowns that Oath and that which alone as I partly hinted before amounts to an Oath viz. And I do make this Recognition and Acknowledgment heartily willingly and truly upon THE TRVE FAITH OF A CHRISTIAN and after which it follows So help me God. That the Faith of a Christian alone amounts to an Oath I shall cite the opinion of Tuldenus the Regius Professor of Law at Lovain when writing De interpretatione Iuramenti he saith Affirmatio perfidem tunc demum jusjurandum est cum additum fuit Christianam Alciat in l. 41. c. De transact I conclude therefore that what Christian soever hath taken this Oath hath by Virtue of the words of The faith of a Christian obliged himself thereby as much as if he had said That Great Privilege of Birth-right belonging to the King's Heirs a Privilege so great that the despising of it as in the Case of Esau is applied in Scripture to mens prophaneness in despising their Inheritance of Bliss by Christianity I do as sincerely promise to defend according to my Oath and without any Fraud or Mental Reservation or the least cavilling capricious or calumnious interpretation as I value the great Privilege that Christianity hath ennobled Humane Nature with in being Heirs of God and joynt Heirs with Christ as St. Pauls words are and of being Heirs according to the Promise and may all the Divine Promises be so Yea and Amen to me and interpreted with not only a plain but a full and fair interpretation and so likewise the very Oath of God mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews As I do plainly and fully and fairly and with the exuberant honesty and simplicity enjoyn'd by the Christian Religion and so much transcending the Bona fides of the Heathen Morality perform my Promissory Oath of Allegiance to the King and his Heirs and Successors I shall in the last place take notice of what I have not without horror observed namely that some disloyal Authors have presumed in Print to pretend the lawfulness of Exclusion of Heirs and Successors on the account of their Religion by colour of the punishment of Idolaters according to the Iudicial Law and as to which it will be sufficient here to say that that Law was given only to the Iewish Nation and that it did never bind any else or doth and that the Divine Law natural and positive bind us to the Observation of our Oaths and that Christianity doth not found Dominion in Grace and that the Patriarchs and Ioshua and the Princes of the People of Israel made Leagues with Idolaters and on both sides there was mutual Faith confirmed with solemn Oaths and that an Oath Promissory to pay Allegiance to the Heirs of the Crown at the time of its Descent is much more lawful And I might urge that the Iewish Kings tho often idolatrous yet as the Lord 's Annointed had De jure de facto Obedience payed them without respect to their Religion or Irreligion And by Virtue of the Moral Offices of honouring all men and of the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians I shall without offending the Church I hold External Communion with venture to go as far in my Measures of Charity as some of its great Ornaments Dr. Hammond and Bishop Taylor and likewise Bishop Gunning have done in freeing many Roman Catholicks from the guilt of Formal Idolatry Innumerable Acts of Idolatry may be charged on many Persons of that Communion and particularly on all such as do worship the Cross or Saints and Angels Culâ—â— latriae and on such as in the Eucharist determine the
heard you say that you have often wondered why none ever moved in the House of Lords that the Proceedings there against Arch-Bishop Laud might be took out of their Iournal as well as those against the Earl of Strafford were which was to me an Indication that you would have consented to such a Motion Mr. Fox in his Boâ—k of Martyrs in one Volume p. 1085. in the Story of the life and death of the Lord Cromwel who was Vice-Gerent to Harry the 8th for Ecclesiastical Affairs brings many instances of the cruel injustice by Acts of Attainder that many Great and Excellent Men suffered and hath these words in the Margent Examples of men falsly Accused and Iudged and â—aith in that p. Not that I here speak or mean against the High Courts of Parliament of this our Realm c. to whom I always attribute their due Reverence and Authority but as it happens sometimes in General Councils which tho they be never so general yet sometimes they may and do erre so they that say Princes and Parliaments may be misinformed sometimes by some Sinister Heads in matters Civil and Politick do not therein derogate or impair the High Estate of Parliaments but rather give wholesome Admonitions to Princes and Parliament Men to be more Circumspect and Vigilant what Council they shall admit and what Witnesses they do Credit This passage out of our pious Martyrologer makes me with a just Compassion to the Merits of several Illustrious Persons to call to mind the severity of the Votes of a Loyal Parliament against them It was with great precaution and solemnity that the Athenian Wisdom fastened the name of Enemy on any one and of which the frequent imposition and on slight occasions and on persons not known to have done any Act of Hostility to the Kingdom would make the word lose the Odium of its signification as many Words and Phrases have done and to import no more stated hatred or enmity in any man to his Country than do the expressions of Course put into Writs of Prohibition or Mandamuses to our Bishops and their Officials viz. Of intending our disherison or machinating against our Crown and Dignity mean any thing of Treason in them which yet the words so expresly import Tully tells us in his Offices that the Original use of the Word Hostis for one who was perduellis came from the lenity of the Romans hostis enim saith he apud majores nostros is dicebatur quem nunc peregrinum dicimus and according to this acception of the Word Enemy for Stranger I shall venture to say that I think they were Strangers to the Earl of Hallifax and persons misinform'd as Mr. Fox his Expression was who in the late Loyal House of Commons did think him to be hostis patriae and whom they who know him do know likewise to bear no Enmity to any part of the Creation of God and to be one that is so far from any inclination to injure his Country for his Prince that either or his Prince or his Country he would not injure the most abject Member of Mankind How shamefully void of sense have I observed some few querulous people here to be who have professed to doubt that a very honourable man hath of late remitted somewhat of his fervour in the defence of our Religion and Laws who hath so long on every occasion in every place been such an unwearied Agonist for both and one who would not fear to be an Athanasius contra mundum whenever he should in his Province be lawfully called to be its Antagonist and that with contempt too even of the Bribe of Popularity and of the continuance of whose confirm'd and obstinate habit of an Heroical Love to his Country they who have long known him have never doubted but have agreed in this point of his perseverance in what Tully calls the pietas in patriam to pronounce as the warier Arminians do concerning Grace viz. that there is a State of Grace attainable in this life from which it is difficult if not impossible to fall away With as little Art and faint Colours as I have here drawn the Picture of this Great Man any one will say it is very like the Earl of Radnor and the truth is considering that this same pietas in patriam and the inflexible observation of Justice have not been so much incarnate in the lives of later Christians as of ancient Heathens nor perhaps so legible in their Writings and therefore as if that Practice of Piety had been too among Pancirols Res deperditae Boccaline held it a proper Advertisement That all the Princes of the World should beseech Apollo that he would insert into their People the love of their Country when I would occasionally in discourse do Justice to this Great Exemplar of it I endeavour to whet my imagination with thoughts out of the Roman Authors and do think of Coâ—tumacy in Vertue according to Pliny's using that word in a good sense and of the inexplebilis virtutis veraeque laudis homo and of the forementioned sooner making Crimen honestum quam turpem Catonem and of the multa terribilia Piso Contemsit dum speciosum mentis suae flecti non vult rigorem and of what is in Valerius Maximus of Scipio Africanus quem Dii immortales nasci voluerunt ut esset in quo se virtus per omnes numeros hominibus efficaciter ostenderet and of Ciceros accounting the pietas in patriam to be the via ad Caelum Some here who Correspond with Sir W. I. asking me if I had not heard that you were prayed for at Mass in Ireland I told them I had and that the Earl of Essex mentioned the same in the House of Lords and that your Lordship replied that if any well meaning Papists in their Mass-house or Iews in their Synagogue or Mahumetans in their Mosc unask'd and unsought to pray'd for you you would be glad to be the better by their Devotion tho yet you believed that none of them did ever yet supplicate Heaven in your behalf I told my friends here that if that thing had been true and tho on the account of what hath been beforementioned I believed it not to be so in the least yet they would soon cease to infer thence that your Lordships love for the Protestant Religion was diminished if they would reflect on the Case of Rawlins White in the Acts and Monuments where it appears that the Bishop of Landaff in the Year 1555. just before he Condemned the said Rawlins to the Fire as an Heretick ordered a Priest to say a Mass for him and as that Bishop in vain Courting him a little before to abandon the Protestant Faith and then asking him how he dâ—d and how he found himself inclined the poor Captive replied Rawlins you lâ—ft me and Rawlins you find me and Rawlins I will continue that thus constant your Lordship will prove to your Religion and your self upon any