King why any should have pretended that it was in danger of being Supplanted and much less in any Jeopardy of being overthrown And every wise Man was then and is now much more sensible That all those noisy and clamorous Suggestions which were so industriously spread abroad of Designs laid and carried on for the Extirpation of our Religion were fictions of Knaves to impose upon Fools And which were promoted and given out to blacken the King and to mislead a credulous and unthinking People The great End of it being to impose upon the Understandings infect and pervert the Consciences of the Subjects thereby to undermine the Throne and shake the Government by Slanders and Reproaches thrown upon his Majesty For he was so far from entertaining a Thought of this nature and tendency that he offered his Protestant Subjects all the legal Security they could desire besides what they actually had by the then established and existent Laws for the Preservation of their Religion and for the Maintenance of the Church of England in its lawful Jurisdiction and Authority Nay at such a distance was he in his Intentions from any ill Design against our Religion that he was willing even to the Diminution of his own Royalty and Grandeur both to have granted a Stipulatory Law which should have had the Force and Vertue of a Magna Charta or Constitutional Contract and to have made it a Fundamental in the Government in all other Reigns And to give farther Evidence of his alienation from and abhorrency of that with which he hath been so impudently and malitiously charged he was ready to have gratified the peevish Humours as well as to have extinguished and removed the vain Fears and needless Jealousies of his Subjects by consenting to a Thing not very reconcilable to true Politicks but directly inconsistent with any Design he was capable of harbouring to the prejudice of our Religion namely That the Prince and Princess of Orange should have been named and admitted Guarantees of what should have been agreed and enacted for the Preservation of our Religion on the Bottom and with the Provision only of Liberty of Conscience for Dissenters And as there was not the least just Ground of suspecting his Majesty guilty of any secret Intentions of subverting our Religion his open avowed and candid Behaviour as well as his Publick and Royal Declarations lying in direct Opposition to such a concealed Machination so had it been possible for him to have so far departed from Kingly Wisdom and Justice and from true English Politicks and to have renounced the Veracity Compassion and Generosity which are so natural unto and inseparable from him as to have inwardly entertained and latently persued a Purpose and Project of that kind yet it was so impracticable and physically as well as morally impossible to be executed that instead of serving to awaken Fears in any discreet and sensible Men it could at most but have administered matter for Entertainment and Diversion and provoked us to laugh at the Weakness and ridiculous Bigottry of those that had Suggested such Councels unto him For surely we will not so scandalously reproach the Protestant Religion nor so ignominiously detract from the Integrity Zeal Industry and Learning of our Universities National Clergy and of many of our Layick Protestants as to imagine and much less to grant that those of the Roman Communion were able to have disputed our Religion out of the Kingdom or to have baffled us out of our Belief and have withdrawn us from the Faith and Worship which we profess and practise by Arguments from Scripture Reason or Tradition And indeed had they been Qualified for and in a Condition to have done it that way I do know no Cause unless we will disclaim both the being Men and the being Christians why we should have taken it ill to be conquered at those Weapons or been angry with them that should gain a Victory over us by such honourable and divine Means But this they were so ill prepared and uncapable to effect That all their Essays and Efforts of that kind against our Religion served only to render it the more triumphant and to confirm us the better in it And it had been the best Policy which the Religious of the Roman Fellowship could have used and I dare say will be thought so if ever they should be furnished with such another Opportunity to have confined themselves to the Service of their Altars and to the discharge of the Devotional Functions of their respective Orders and the performing the Ministrations incumbent upon them towards those within the Pale of their Church or at most to have employed themselves about the Subjects of common Christianity and of good Morals and not to have disturbed us in the possession of our Religion by Polemical Writings Controversal Tracts and by Oral Disputes For those Methods were so eminently subservient to the Truth and Glory of our Religion and to the Reputation and Credit of our Divines and of other learned Persons of our Communion that if they be wise they will never venture to tread any more in those Paths unless they have a mind to embark in a Plot against themselves and to lose that Esteem which we are willing to preserve for them notwithstanding all our Differences in Religious Matters For under all their Mistakes whereof some are of the highest Importance yet we ought to own and respect them as Christians and to pay them the deference that is due unto them not only upon the score of the Condition and Quality of many of them but upon the account both of their moral Accomplishments and of their natural and acquired Parts in which great Numbers among them are remarkably Eminent And as there was not the least shadow of Probability that the Roman Catholicks could have disputed us out of our Religion so it is to 〈◊〉 an Affront to the common reason of Manking to believe that they could have overthrown it by Force and Violence For notwithstanding that many have had the Malice to say this and some the Weakness to entertain it yet besides the Impracticableness of the Thing the King had both the Wisdom and Goodness not only to disclaim it by Words but to disprove it by signal Matters of Fact And unless worldly Interest Ambition Passion and Wrath had so darkened and distorted our Understandings as either to extinguish or pervert the use of our discursive Faculties we could never have allowed our selves to think that the King would attempt to do that in a way of Force which there were a hundred to withstand and oppose for every single Individual that can be supposed inclinable to have joyned in the Execution of it Surely a very little Knowledge of the World and a mean Acquaintance with History would help to instruct some unthinking and half witted People how difficult if not impracticable this has been found in other Nations where it hath been attempted Nor have any
then as they superadd the Divine Sanction to human Legislative Authority thereby to oblige and enforce us in Conscience to yield all that Reverence Loyalty and Obedience to our Sovereigns which the lawful and just Laws of the Kindom do impose upon and exact from us And therefore and thence it is That the same Texts of Scripture do bind and oblige some Nations to yield a more universal unlimitted and unreserved Obedience to their Rulers 〈◊〉 they can be construed and applied to require those of other Countries to perform For those Places of the Holy Bible are designed to influence and operate upon Conscience in proportion to the different degrees of Prerogative and Sovereignty vested in Princes and according to the respective measures of Liberty preserved unto Subjects by the Rules and Laws of their several and various Constitutions The Scripture was not given and designed to teach us Politicks or to prescribe the Forms of Government and the several Limitations of them farther than that all Governments were to be for God and the good of Mankind and of Societies But all Relative to Civil Government in Scripture is to require and oblige Subjects under the Penalty of eternal Wrath to yield Obedience in proportion to the respective Terms upon which the Government is founded under which they live and according to the several Laws by which it is to be upheld and exerted And the same Divine and Revealed Commands which oblige us in England to submit to Monarchy and be obedient to the King according to the Municipal and Statute Laws of the Kingdom bind them at Venice to acquiesce in Aristocracy and be in subjection to that Authority and Power and to pay obedience to all the Laws of the Republick if they be not inconsistent with and contradictory to the Laws of God No Man will say That the same Things were Lawful for the Persians or Babylonians to do against their Kings which the Lacedemonians under the Protection and Authority of the Ephori might have done against theirs or which those of Arragon were heretofore empowered to do at the Command and under the Jurisdiction of a certain Person chosen and appointed to be the Custos and Guardian of their Rights and Privileges and who had Power by the Law and Constitution to controul and resist their Kings in case of their invading and going about to overthrow them Whereupon it is no Sin in the King of France to take upon him and assume the whole Legislation without the assent and concurrence of the Three Estates whereas it would be otherwise in a King of England whilst he stands limitted as he doth by the Laws of the Constitution and Government and restrained by his Coronation Oath The French Monarch is guilty of no Offence in exacting Taxes of his Subjects without a previous Gift and Grant of them by their Representatives But I cannot say that according to the present Form of our Government the King of Great Britain would be Innocent in the Sight and Esteem of the Supreme Sovereign should he Levy Mony of his People without their own antecedent Consent in Parliament So that I will affirm with the utmost Confidence as knowing I do it upon the greatest Certainty That every Declaration and Intimation in the Bible relative to the Subjection and Fealty we should pay to Sovereign Rulers are intended to bind and oblige us in Conscience and out of Fear of Divine Wrath to be obedient to them actively as far as is enacted and required by the Laws of our Country if those Laws do command nothing inconsistent with and repugnant to the Laws of God and to be passive in all Cases save in those in which the Rules of the Constitution and the Statutes of the Realms where we live give us Liberty Right and Authority to withstand and oppose them And I will presume to add with the fullest Assurance that Law and Reason can give me That in no Circumstances of Danger into which our Religion and Civil Liberties could be brought nor under any Hazards we could fall into of losing and having them supprest were we either permitted or empowered by the Fundamentals of our Government the Rules of our Constitution or by the Common or Statute Law of the Kingdom to rebel against the King or to dethrone or drive him away Nor did the having the Protestant Religion established and secured unto us by Law nor its being incorporated among our Franchises and made a part of our Birth-right to possess it peaceably and practise it openly authorize us to take Arms against the King divest him of his Sovereignty and banish him from his Dominions though we had been furnished with the most clear and indisputable Evidence that he was fully resolved to extirpate it For though the Laws give us a Title to it as our Heritage and a Right to claim the Exercise of it as our chiefest Blessing and most valuable Privilege yet no Law or Contract existent in the King's time had provided that we might fly to Arms to prevent its being supprest or for the securing the Continuance of it to us and our Posterity Yea instead of that there were divers express Statutes then in being by which it was made and declared to be Treason to take up Arms against him upon any Pretence whatsoever So that had the preserving the Protestant Religion been the real Motive and End of our raising War and of dethroning the King yet it was not a Lawful nor a Justifiable Inducement and Design for doing it Nor can it be thought so by any who seriously consider and look upon the Laws of the Land as the Standard and Measure of the Peoples Subjection and Obedience and that whatsoever the Municipal and Statute Laws of our Country restrain us from or confine us unto provided it interfere not with that which either the Laws of Nature or those of Revelation do indispensably require and exact that thereunto we stand bound limitted and obliged by the Laws of God and the Doctrines both of the Old and New Testaments and this upon no less penalty than Damnation Which let no Man upon the Testimony of a Flattering or Mercenary Priest or the Authority and Verdict of a Prophane and Atheistical Statesman think he will or can escape without unfeigned Repentance evidenced in sincere and hearty Endeavours to restore the King Nor are you to be surprised to hear this kind of Theology and Politicks from me seing that according to Dr. Sherlock's Phrase as no Man is forbid to grow wiser than he was so I blush not but glory to confess and have deeply bewailed it That I have been heretofore misled by false Notions and have entertained Hypotheses about Government neither reconcilable to our Laws nor to the Peace of Communities but errando discimus non errare And as the preserving the Protestant Religion could be no Lawful and Justifiable Motive to the late Revolution so there were no just and sufficient Grounds administered by the
that have set about it found it easy to be effected even where they have had all the Advantage imaginable to execute it And we may be speedily convinced how unfeasable such a Design would have been in England and consequently how far from being either undertaken or thought of by a wise Prince If we consider the Difficulties which have attended it in Roman Catholick Kingdoms where all the Craft and Power of wise and mighty Princes and all the Strength and Rage of the Body of the People inflamed by Bigottry have been united to compass it Is it possible for the King 's most malignant Enemies who use to speak of him with the most unparalelled Undecency and brutal Rudeness to conceive or believe that he could be so prodigiously Indiscreet and Weak as to think of banishing or overthrowing the Protestant Religion or of bringing in or setting up the Roman Catholick by a Protestant and Antipapal Army And other he had not nor ever can be in a Condition to have in this Kingdom if we speak of the Bulk of one or of one that can be Numerous and Strong And for a few Roman Catholicks mingled here and there in Protestant Troops or for two or three Regiments whereof the Generality were of the Romish Communion in an Army of those of the Reformed Profession instead of their giving us just terrour of a Design for subverting our Religion they only served to animate and provoke those vastly larger Number of Protestant Officers and Soldiers to assert their Religion with the more Courage and Avowedness and to exemplify and adorn it better by their Lives And it is but for those who were in England in 1687. and 1688. to recollect themselves and consult their Memories and they must needs confess and declare if they have not renounced all Friendship with Truth when they disclaimed Loyalty to his Majesty That they never observed that Zeal in a Brittish Army for the Protestant Religion nor that open Boldness in pleading for it as when that Roman Catholick Prince was upon the Throne and some of that Communion enrolled among them and employed with them under the same Royal Standard But what clearer and fuller Evidence could the King give in Matter of Fact that he had no Intentions to undermine and much less to subvert our Religion than the Dispensation from Penal Laws which he granted unto Protestant Dissenters and the Liberty which he stated them in the Exercise of And through his giving it upon the only true Principle on which it could be done Justifiably namely That it is the natural Right of every Man to chuse in what Religion and in which way of Faith and Worship he will venture his eternal State he could not in Justice abstracting from his Friendship avoid granting Liberty likewise to the Roman Catholicks I do know there are some People whose Malice to the King makes them not only take every Thing by the wrong handle but which hath so perverted their Reasons as to cause them to draw Conclusions directly contradictory to the Premisses from which they infer them who endeavour to obtrude upon the Belief of such as are Weak and Credulous That the King 's giving Liberty was an Effect of his Enmity to our Religion and done in pursuance of a Design to destroy it But the two Poles are not at greater distance from one another than they are from Truth and good Sense who think the King would have given Liberty of Conscience and have set his heart upon the upholding and maintaining of it if at the same time he had given place unto and entertained the least thought of overthrowing and extirpating the Protestant Religion For that Wise Generous and Royal Concession of his was so far from lying in the remotest Subserviency to such a Design that nothing under Heaven can be imagined more effectually contributory to the preventing resisting and defeating an Attempt of that kind There are few but know what Connivance had been exercised to Roman Catholicks and how Gently they had been treated notwithstanding the many Laws they were obnoxious to during the last Years of King Charles's Reign while in the mean time vast Numbers of Protestants were harrassed spoiled and imprisoned and this not only by hounding out but by enforcing those of the Church of England to fall upon the Dissenters and to execute the Laws against them with great Severity Now by the King 's Noble Christian and Heroick Act of granting Liberty the Peevishness and Enmity of Protestants against one another was allayed and extinguished and they were at ease as well as leasure to employ their common Care and unite their mutual Strength against those of the Roman Communion whom they esteemed Enemies to them both And by being taken off from scratching biting and devouring one another they began to mingle Councels and to joyn their several Interests for obviating and obstructing the Growth of a third Party that stands in terms of distance both in Opinion and Ecclesiastical Charity to the one as well as the other For though the Liberty granted by the King to Protestant Dissenters did not incorporate them into the Communion of the Church of England but supposed the contrary and provided against the afflictive Inconveniencies of it and though it did not entitle them unto and make them capable of the Dignities and Emoluments of the Church which his Majesty neither pretended nor challenged a Power to do yet through his suspending the Execution of the penal Laws which he was told he might do in virtue of that executive Power of Laws and of Administration of Government which was lodged in him by the Constitution and inseparable from his Title Right and Sovereignty there was not only a Cessation of Arms between those of the National Church and them but a Coalescence in Friendship and Zeal for their common Religion though they couâ—d not embody together for Communion in all the parts of Christian Worship and for the exercise of Church Discipline And besides the taking off the Reproach and the wiping away the Infamy which lay upon our Religion through our persecuting one another and which made us the Subjects of our Enemies Râ—â—â—ery and the Objects of their Scorn there were so many real Advantages accâ—â—ing to it by the Liberty which the King granted That theâ—e cannot be a blacker Malice out of Hell than to perveâ—t this Royal and Christian Act of his Majesty from being an Argument of his innocent and honourable Intentions towards our Religion into a Topick whereby to insinuate into the Belief of those of a narrow Compass of thought that it was only in order first to supplant our Religion and then to destroy it And it argueth an Ingratitude which our Language is indigent of Words to express the hainousness of that any Protestant Dissenters should not only concur in such a Sentiment but value themselves upon the Vivacity Strength and Penetration of their Judgment that they could foresee and discover this