Frankness of your Style it being in the pursuite of truth It s very well known your Zeal for that makes you no more spare any one guilty than you did the Author when you called him Rogue which he agrees you did well in as your apprehended him Then he tells you This Epistle had been monstrous in any other age but why not in this when its twice the length of the rest of his Pamphlet is not Discernable by any body but himself then he tells you Knavery and Hipocrisie were in Fashion Thirty or Forty years ago but spares the telling with whom therefore I cannot give it any particular answer but must leave it with him and his Acquaintance in those times he says now the present Humour of France runs upon Poysoning the Enemies of our Government altogether upon the Vein of Plotting Indeed that 's too true and the Plotters as the Case is are of several sorts some have the Hellish and audacious Impudence to contrive his Majesties death by violence his Magistrates his Witnesses the overthrow of our Government the extirpating of the Protestant and Introducing the Romish Religion so called and there are another sort which I apprehend little inferior to the other in the Consequence of it who by their Poysonous Principles and frothy Strains of wit with their Paper-Squibs audaciously traduce and fly in the Faces of the Governors and Government and make nothing of turning the Justice of the Nation into Ridicule both at home and abroad and instead of healings broach divisions amongst the dissenters from the Church of Rome thereby to give all advantage imaginable according to your Evidence to weaken the Parties to our professed Enemies without the least just occasion or any other Rationally than to do that for our Adversaries they themselves could not effect but by making us Fools or Knaves to one another Then this Author takes it Positively upon him to tell you Doctor that he hath acquitted himself That he is no Papist and now he resolvedly undertakes so to acquit himself of the charge upon him by you and your Father of his Reporting you for a Fanatick In my Opinion if he doth the one no more than he hath done the other he might have spared his Labour I fear if the matter had been true he will not give you any cause to thank him for I do not remember one authentick Proof nor any other rational Argument yet produced by him that he is not a Papist unless such an Argument which he used that took upon him to confute Bellermine by telling him it was not so Is it out of pure kindness or at your request he takes this pains for you Truly I think both alike for I verily believe if the thing be true that he said you do not esteem it such a Scandal as you need to be vindicated from it either by him or any one else but he says your exhortation to Indulgence opened the mouths of some ignorant people to that effect I doubt not in this but you may take Mr. L'Estrange at his Word and keeping to Solomon's Rule not to answer him in his own way let it pass as it is and although you went no further than as an exhortation Mr. Roger hath the Confidence to take upon him to instruct and to give Judgment too Then he exclaims against a persecuting Spirit how this Coheres with the precedent matter it 's a Riddle to me and seriously I cannot fancy who or what he means by it certainly he dares not be guilty of so much Confidence as rather than he would not bespatter and traduce you he will arraign the whole Justice of the Nation for if that should be his meaning which to me seems very obvious I believe not ignorant but wise people would think he did not lie under any aspersion but rather take that Character already given him to be far short of his true demerit but I am sure the whole drift of his Pamphlet is for causeless persecution but blessed be God our Governours are of a more healing spirit Now he tells you that by this time you see what a Church of England man is to trust to when he the true Son of the Church is boxed on both sides and then he concludes that Paragraph with this Question With what face shall any man dare to charge him for a Papist that hath done so much for the Protestant Religion or a Fanatick that hath done so much for the Church of England I think it may be thus resolved that if it be without cause it must be with a brazen face but if the Party he means be one that can tell what the Church-yard Wall is made of and not the Church he may then lie open to all sorts of Censures especially when he hath acted on all sides as he puts the Case The Plot indeed is represented to be triplicite viz. against the King Government and Religion but what question or distinction this Author will make we shall see anon for there is his Diana but that you Doctor or any other of the King's Witnesses in this case have in the least occasioned such a question is not in my apprehension to be deduced from any of your Evidences and I believe that no man that hath ever heard read of or seen the Arts of those Persons charged with that horrid Plot in any of their Massacres either at home or abroad that ever they made any distinction of Persons that were Dissenters from themselves in Doctrine or Practice From what can it be imagined they would have done it by or in this Plot or that they did so intend by it only to cut off the Members of the Church of England and leave the Dissenters from them or only cut off the Dissenters and leave the Members of the Church of England there is no shadow of colour for it and it 's fully proved by you to be intended general to all Dissentets from the Church of Rome Now like a knowing Son of the Church of England Mr. L'Estrange acquaints you how far he understands and what is Religion he fixes it in the Word Government in which says he is comprehended Regiment Ecclesiastical and Civil and inclusively the Order of Bishops and Doctrine and Discipline of the Church and then concludes positively that that and no other is the Protestant Religion designed in the Plot and he thinks in his second Position he makes it good for he says they meaning the Dissenters from the Church of England are Religious and their name is Legion and his third is as good as that for therein this Author affirms they the said Dissenters are Christian Arbbs but the fourth goes beyond all That it stands not with Common Sense for Papists to plot the ruine of their own Auxiliaries and this he lays at your door that it 's against the Reason of your Depositions that they should contrive their Destruction when at that time they are making use of them to destroy us
in a popular Out-cry in the matter of Religion to have a State-Faction in the belly of it and then again compares it with the late times and so Concludes that Paragraph What an Hotch-Potch Chimera is this and as Forreign to the Case in hand as the East is from the West What is the Scribling of Pamphleteers now there is no Licenser when it was altogether as bad when there was one or what is the babling at Coffe-houses to be regarded or be thought to have any share in the Prosecution of this Discovery It 's bare matter of Fact and not at all Mysterious to men of understanding and although as the truth of the Evidence is It doth solely and Principally Centre in the Roman Catholique Party yet I cannot with all the skill I have with this learned Authors Assistance to boot understand wherein Religion is concerned in the least especially the differences between the Church of England and the Dissenters from it as he aims to inforce it Nor is the question the same as to the Plot you have Discovered nor the Transactions thereupon nor in any Possibility can be Paralelled with those of the late times Nay I know some of the Roman Catholick Religion take it quite otherwise for a person of Honour of that perswasion lately told me That he believed neither the King nor the Nation would be happy or safe until they were well rid of the Jesuites and their King-killing Doctrine and I think with Mr. Strange his favour it was not mannerly done of him to arraign the Judgments of the Representatives of the Nation in Parliament to say nothing was more narrowly Sifted nor more Vigorously discouraged I conceive that was intended incouraged but mistaken by the Printer than this Conspiracy for certainly had it been so they would never have made the neglect of it a Considerable part of their Impeachment against the Earl of Danby and doubtless they did not make that without due Consideration of such authentick proofs as they had before them to make it good And the Author of that Pamphlet having thus by stating a Case that is not in the least the Case you Doctor have in hand he draws a Conclusion Suitable to it That it might be useful and find Credit upon its own Account and then giving an Encomium of himself he casts off the Reader and enters into the Lists with you again In the beginning of his Book the Author gave you the allowance of a Figure in the Government But now he 'l make you as little as a Cipher he thinks you of so little understanding that you by his Incoherent Arguments are now perswaded out of your Senses and of the reallity and truth of that Case you have with so much danger avowed and justifed by and with a fictitious Case of his own making and proved it by Fallacious Arguments and it is so far unlike yours Doctor as instead of four feet it doth not go upon one of them and upon the Credence the Author hath of this supposed Conquest over you in a great part he proceeds to make it compleat and is resolved in another Point right or wrong to stand fair in your Opinion and that is That he is free from the Itch of Scribling unless where his Genius tells him his Pen may be of Publique use and where he is Prompted on by such an Incontinence of a publick Spirit as you find in your self and he Injured Gentleman never was but upon the Defensive part and received no reply but reproaches as he terms them of Popishly affected or a Villifier of the Kings Evidence Indeed this Comparison of his is of the same Stamp with the other but Doctor you may well pardon him because he Pardoned you for calling him Rogue and this is only out of a great desire he hath to be esteemed like you in publick Spiritedness but I am afraid his temper is more like Baals that was only Sollicitous to die the death of the Righteous but I do not remember one Word of his living their life I think as to the matter in hand I have had as much Experience of your Actions and as Seriously and Impartially and Duely weighed them as another but it s very Probable the Eyes of Mr. L' Estrange and my Understanding differ which may occasion from us Various Inferences and Conclusions It s true I have observed you often to be earnestly Zealous for truth in the Fact that you have Discovered and against all Opposers of it under what Circumstances soever but that you have in the least Promoted it either for this or the other Party or against this or that Party but only against particular Persons guilty Sparing none of what perswasion soever that are within your knowledge not in the least by any overt Act yet occurrs to my knowledge that you have any wayes made it your business either to set up or pull down or to make division amongst Parties of differing Perswasions I am sure it hath not yet appeared to be your business but rather of an healing Temper but how much it is that learned Authors is Manifestly apparent and he that runs may read it besides do but observe the different Foundations between you and him For Doctor you go upon occular and auricular Experiences and he upon Coffee-houses discourses only seconded by a Report of the strenuous affirmation of a Lady and that by hearsay too and then how naturally it follows that these malicious Rumors as he calls them put upon himself must needs promote and stir up him to Vindicate you that was not in the least concerned or named in it nor either wanted or craved his aid to defend you however with Cause or without Cause he hath no mind to part with you yet not out of love to prove you no Fanatick but to other more Sinister Ends and Purposes That is to get a small reward for his Pamphlet and Vindicate the Papists and crush the Phanaticks as he calls them as I hope I shall plainly and Evidently demonstrate But now warmly clad with these wonderfully Erroneous Considerations that incumbred his disturbed Brains with the help of taking your Works to pieces he had now fallen under such a Conception from which the World might expectsuch a product as was expected from the Mountain But you know that proved a Mouse Now the Author Glories in his Acquisition of Materials to defend you and now Magnifies his thoughts of his being armed to Suppress Popery and is as sure of his way as any blind man in Town for he will as certainly hit it as he that takes the way to Oxford to be the right and strait way to go to Canterbury When this Author hath pleased himself with these Incomprehensible thoughts by your Clue as he says he enters into the almost Inextricable Labyrinth of the Plot till he found out some Priests you pointed at lurking in Holes like Foxs and then he could not forbear Publishing it to the Nation
and then most abhominably Christian-like he briskly lets fly at the Dissenters from the Church of England with a most Dismal Judgment that Heaven and Hell is as easie to be brought together as to reconcile those People to any terms of Piety or Civil Order that corruptly style themselves Protestants I must confess here perchance the Author may apprehend he hath the whip hand of any one that will undertake to answer in respect of the Law but I think without offence I may put you in mind of the Words of the Bishop of Donn in his Preface to his Grand Exemplar which are That when it appears a Kingdom is converted to Christianity the Common-wealth is made a Church Gentile Priests are Christian Bishops the Subjects Servants of Christ the Religion turned Christian and the Laws of the Nation made part of the Religion there is no change of Government but Christ is King and the Temporal Power his Substitute and is to promote obedience to him Now I must confess I am and I doubt not but every really true Son of the Church of England will be much more inclinable to take Doctor Tayler for an Authentick Author in this Point of Religion than Mr. L'Estrange though he does not use the word Protestant and without all peradventure his Judgment is upon Truth I mean the word of God which Mr. Roger altogether omits to the great proof of his Sonship and only grounds himself in that case in my apprehension upon several and Vulgar Errors as first I take it to be an undeniable Truth from our Saviour and his Apostles that there is but one Religion and not Legions and that under two Heads 1. Loving God with all your heart 2. Love our Neighbours as our selves unless it may be said that every Chimera of mens brains or every Notion as the Author calls Religion or every Form is a Religion I am of opinion it's Nonsence and I cannot but concur with Dr. Tayler that the Antiochian or Christian Religion is the Religion Catexochene and what ever Forms in true and due order to that are framed doubtless they are praise-worthy and ought to be observed by all that Love the Kingdom of Christ but yet I take it the Form is improperly called a Religion but for this Author that hath the Confidence to style himself the true Son and would fain be esteemed the Champion of the Church of England to leave out the only Essential part of a true Church whose Foundation ought to be upon the Rock of Ages and to place it only in humane Laws which as Dr. Tayler says are but part and only in Substitution to that which is really true is as I said before to take the Church-Yard and all for the Church or instead of commending the Vine to praise the Hedge or Fence about it for as Dr Tayler's opinion is the Temporal Power is to be used primarily and principally to promote obedience to Christ not to its self or any thing contrary to Christ's Doctrine Practices or Precepts therefore to me it seems apparent that the Author hath not done right to his Mother the Church of England which makes me fear in regard the Fathers of the Church seem to be of opinion against him in discription of a Church I conceive it may without straining be rationally conjectured he was not suckled by his Mothers milk but by a Foster Nurse otherwise certainly he would not have omitted so Essentiala Worth of the Church of England and the rather for that he might with ease have proved That when the Body of this Kingdom began to shake off that Spiritual Slavery imposed on our Ancestors by the Romish Yoke they then lay under the alteration that then was made by the Governours and Government of this Nation was the nearest and most agreeable by the Articles Cannons and Injunctions then agreed and established to the Apostolical Rule and pursuant to Dr. Tayler's Judgment therein as they could For that our Religion should solely depend upon humane Law it must be and may be as changeable as that of which I am sure we and our Ancestors have had woful Experience as by Repeals of Statutes for that purpose in the Reign of Queen Mary witness Another Vulgar Errour I conceive him with some clearness gullty of is in calling the Church of England the only Protestant Religion aimed at in this Case by the Papists Indeed I have heard once the Question was debated amongst Persons of an higher Sphere than Mr. L'Estrange what the Protestant Religion was and it was thought fit to be left undetermined and doubtless not imprudently for if we should make that the Basis of the Religion of the Church of England it would give our Adversaries the Papists a vast and inevitable Advantage for if History be in that Case to be depended upon the Lutherans the Calvinists c. were before the Church of England under the denomination of Protestants and I do doubt it will appear if it should be brought into dispute they differ in many and main Points but then the Consequence would inevitably follow that we must be put to prove which is the true one another advantage the Papists would have and which I have heard often made use of That they I mean the Church of Rome are the Mother Church and of many hundreds of years before the Church of England and doubtless they may be too hard for us in that Point if our Foundation begun only in Protestantism but in truth the Foundation of our Apostolical British Church which is fully clearly and elegantly proved and made out by the Learned and Judicious Author of the Book intituled of the Heart and its right Sovereign to be ancienter than Rome's especially here in this Nation by many Centuries of Years and for his saying by your Evidence it appears the Fanaticks as he calls them are to be Papists Auxiliaries and therefore it s not rational they the Papists would work their Ruine It 's true according to the Common and Vulgar term you in your Depositions call it the Protestant Religion indefinitely but why this must not concern all manner of Dissenters from the Romish Church I am sure does not in the least appear nor can any other thing rationally be expected but the extirpation of all Dissenters from them of Rome without distinction nor is it proved by you Doctor the Jesuitical Party endeavoured to make any other use of them but as all Conquerors do to divide their Dissenters to facilitate their intended Enterprize if so then his unchristian like Censure must of necessity be unwarrantable and groundless Dear Doctor I must beg your pardon for my prolixity upon this Paragraph but finding this the Author's Corner-Stone I could not pass it over slightly being so really zealous for the ancient British Apostolical Religion that as God was heretofore pleased to honour this Island to have the first Christian King and a British Woman to be Mother of the first Christian
from thence can be inferred without a violent or at least strange Construction and for my part I do not at all know or suspect that any one true Member of the Church of England is or will in the least joyn with the Jesuitical Party in it but do hope both they and the Dissenters from them will unite to defend his Sacred Majesty and the Government from it Then he tells you The Law is general in that case there is no relaxation the Law takes not notice of Honesty but Obedience and this Rule he says holds in common as well to the Papists as to the Protestant Recusants With something more to the same purpose but truly I think to very little purpose for as I take it those Statutes he cites are by their Title Preamble and Body only and litterally against the Popish Recusants For the Dissenters he talks of or the greater part of them were not then publickly in being nor in the least mentioned in any of them and if so I think they cannot be concerned But that being under the construction of a power above me I shall not be positive in it or determine it Then he rivets this he thinks by saying But what if it be said that it is not the thing sworn but the Oath it self that is scrupled at This he tells you Doctor is nice and unhappy to those that are so strait-laced and from thence he infers its dangerous to the Government for it lets in all the Priests and Jesuits in nature under that colour for they will all flow in thither that is amongst the Dissenters from the Church of England for shelter and carry on their Designs without trial or danger Is not this most incomparable Jugling he can blow hot and cold at his pleasure an excellent Artist for observe when he had some trouble of Spirit upon him for the Papists Sufferings upon this Hellish Plot and to take off the edge of the Magistrate and the opinion of the People as to the further and severe prosecuting of it that there might not be any more havock made with them then there was not a Papist to be seen they were invisible but now when the Tables must be turned upon the Dissenters to the Church of England then because of some of the Dissenters scruplesomeness in Swearing his Opinion is changed for now there is a great deal of danger he says but if you will believe the Author before it must be of no body or at least so few that they are not worth the looking after but one to three thousand if so much so here is Mr. Roger against Mr. L' Estrange and indeed I take the Author's Inference from hence to be altogether foreign and remote from your words or meaning in your Deposition or the truth of the case for though your Deposition in fact is true and common experience joyns with you in it that the Jesuits and their Party are so active that they will if possible thrust themselves into any Society of Men to try their skill in disturbance of Governments and carry on their Design yea even as well where there are Dissenters from the Church of England as where there are none and according to what he said equally safe to themselves Now to conclude all he tells you Doctor It must be granted that either the Papists have a design upon the King Religion and Government and advance it by acting the parts of Quakers Anabaptists Presbyterians and other Sectaries or not and admitting your Deposition to be true there can be no security to this Government without either dissolving all seperate meetings or bringing in all Dissenters to this Legal Test otherwise the Papists have all sorts of liberty and security in herding themselves amongst Conventiclers where upon the beating of a Bush it will be an even wager whether you start a Jesuit or a Fanatick and in this case there is not much difference between them where the Jesuit plays the Fanatick or the Fanatick the Jesuit and then says if this main Assertion be true there is no way of finding out the Papists but by this Test and Dissenters cannot chuse but incourage the Proposition either they have Priests amongst them or not if they have why do they not the best they can to find them out if not why do they say they have Either they are influenced by the Jesuits or not if they be why do not they purge their Congregations If not why do they pretend they are and so set the Saddle on the wrong Horse Either its possible to clear their Conventicles of this dangerous mixture or not If so why do they still complain and do nothing in it If not then there is no way to extirpate Popery but by rooting out Fanaticism and then he calls to the world to judge with what injustice the Orders and Rituals of the Church of England are charged with a tincture of Superstition and Popery when the Calumniators are tainted with this Leaven and then concludes he is come to the bottom of the Popish Plot. I am sure a blind man would be glad to see it for I that have both my eyes can neither see top middle nor bottom of what he promised of a further Discovery of your discovered Plot and all he hath said I take to be but a meer groundless Phantasm for in the beginning of his Pamphlet he undertook a further Discovery of the Plot than you discovered and could you or any other rational man have from thence expected or looked for any thing else but some new matter and clearly made out and evinced either by authentick Testimony or undeniable Arguments but instead thereof he hath spoiled three or four Sheets of Paper by stuffing them full of strained and wrested Constructions of and inferences from some part of your Depositions and Observations many manifest contradictions and apparent mistaken Conclusions thereupon Nevertheless to do him what right I can perchance if you take not his litteral expression but his mystical meaning I am perswaded you will go nigh to judge he hath made or really intended to make a further Discovery of a Plot but not the Plot you have discovered for if you well and seriously observe the subject matter of his Discourse and Arguments and to what they tend and add to it the time when this Learned Piece came forth and compare it with the invented Plots of the Earl of Castlemain Countess of Powis John Gadbury Mrs. Celier c. I may easily suppose Doctor you may without any great stress readlly conjecture with whom he conversed for what Meridian this elaborate Piece of his was calculated and for whose use by its Image and Superscription but the All-mighty Providence having taken them in their own Snares both in those and other things hath thereby plainly proved to the world the manifest untruth of his Assertions for although is be undeniably true what you have deposed that the Jesuits and their Agents endeavoured to Work