and advance towards the inthralling them under the Yoak of Popery and Arbitrary Power nevertheless for the Kings Promise and Declaration of Liberty and all this not only from the Press but many of the Pulpits too To obviate which Malice of these crafty wicked Men His Majesty with His Council have thought expedient to iterate his Declaration and to extend the Publication of it to all Churches and Chapels which was omitted before because His Majesty never imagined to have met with so much of it among the Men of Churches and Chapels as since He hath found This has made it at length necessary by the Reading of it in Churches and Chapels to undeceive the easie People there also Now Sir why may not this Account satisfie you which appears so rational and probable without raising up the Old Cry of Forty One against the King and His Evil Council and exposing His Ministers of State on every slight Occasion And why should you affright your self and your Readers with so many false Alarms of Enemies of Ruine of falling of unavoidable undoing what course soever we take and require us to give more Credit to your melancholy Dreams than to the Honour and Integrity of His Majesty and the open Declaration of His innocent Meaning After which I do agree with you that should we chuse to take our fall here and die of mere conceit we do leave a shrewd Temptation upon some to conclude as you say That we have undone our selves and die like Fools It seems though in the next Paragraph you have found a more honourable and comfortable way of falling as suppose for refusing to read Mass or to swear to the Trent Creed I agree with you in this but wonder then that you who can see so well and approve the better and are so confident it is not far off should undertake to perswade the Church of England to fall before-hand with you and to die with a Deteriora sequor over her Tomb for her Epitaph But this of falling for refusing to read Mass you say is not our present case No nor ever shall be in future if His Majesty may be believed and His Measures taken and complied with by our selves You shall never have the Honour Sir to fall so in His Reign nor in any to follow if His Declaration be suffered to take the effect But one thing there is by the way which I cannot pass over without Remark which is That though this Declaration have two Strings and tuned harmoniously one to the other yet quite through this your Letter you can never be made to strike both together One is His Majesties Desire of our Compliance with Him for taking off the Test and Penal Laws The other is His Declaration in the first place That he will Protect and Maintain our Archbishops Bishops and Clergy and all other His Subjects of the Church of England in the free exercise of their Religion as by Law established and in the quiet and full enjoyment of all their Possessions without any Molestation or Disturbance whatsoever Now upon one of these Strings you are perpetually harping viz. The taking off the Penal Laws and Test and that makes no Musick alone without the other to a Church of England Ear be it of the Nobility Gentry or Clergy It is certain it would undo the Church of England to have her Test and Penal Laws taken away by a Parliamentary Law without any Provision made by a like Parliamentary Law to secure the keeping what she has beside and what the King has promis'd shall remain inviolate This His Majesty offers and should be always supposed along with the other But that is the String you cannot be made to touch and you are not without a Reason for it for then you had answered your Letter your self and that had stopped the Mouth of all your popular but falsly and temerariously inferred Consequences That to take away the Test and Penal Laws at this time is but one step from introducing of Pepery and therefore to read such a Declaration in our Churches though it do not immediately bring Popery in yet it sets open our Church-Doors for it and THEN it will take time to enter and THEN the People will hate us and despise us and THEN we may be easily crushed and THEN we fall without pity All these THENS hang upon the same String and are but begg'd Consesequences However I perceive you are so confident of your Skill in linking a Chain of Consequences and hanging them on the Thread of a Spiders Web that you are resolved not to stay for the fulfilling of your Prophesie of Destruction to the Church of England by the introducing of Mass Trent and Popery but seeing it comes all to one even as good fall now it is but a little the sooner by not reading the Declaration For this persecuting Declaration does threaten us that if we hold but our Hands from knocking His Majesties Friends on the Head with our Penal Laws then in the first place He will Protect and Maintain our Archbishops Bishops and Clergy and all other His Majesties Subjects of the Church of England in the free exercise of our Religion as by Law established and in the quiet and full enjoyment of all our Possessions without any Molestation or Disturbance whatsoever So that the Matter is plain What should we live for any longer But even die Marryrs with all the speed we can lest if this Declaration should take effect we never have opportunity to do it more Let us suffer all that can be suffered say you in this World rather than contribute to the final Ruine of the best Church in the World by reading such a Declaration as this But I think it is good first as you say in the next Paragraph to stay a little and examine the Matter impartially as those which have no mind either to ruine themselves or to ruine the Church And that you may lay your Foundation sure you begin with a conjectural and precarious Supposition I suppose say you no Minister of the Church of England can give his Consent to the Declaration And with this Pestulatum away you run to prove Then he cannot read it That this is a Non Supponendum you see in the experience and event of the thing some both Bishops and Ministers of the Church of England do Consent and Read it and I doubt not but many more will if His Majesty think fit Well and what Fault have they committed None at all your self being Judge For you say Pag. 4. Reading the Declaration would be no Fault at all but our Duty when the King Commands it did we approve of the matter of it So then with those who can approve of the matter of it and Read we have nothing to do here they are acquitted by your self and they prove more it seems than you supposed and if there be any Fault it must remain to be on the part of those who do not
for that their Consciences cannot comply with the execution of some Laws made by their Predecessors in matters of Religion Constantine the Great Lucius Ethelbert by the established Laws should have persecuted Christianity but then they must have done it against their Consciences Julian found Christian Laws in the Empire but he could not be bound by them against his Will and retain the Authority of Emperor What would you have His Majesty do bring in an Exclusion Bill against Himself lay down His Crown and Scepter at your Feet and turn Subject to serve you Or would you have Him do worse prostitute His Conscience to your pleasure and act against the interest of His Soul to serve yours of the World Indeed what would you have Him do wiser and safer for His own Conscience and gentler and kinder for ours than what is imported in that Declaration which we suppress notwithstanding His Majesties Command to publish it and against which your Letter endeavours to stir up the madness of the People and to alienate their Hearts and Affections from so Gracious and so Wise and so Religious a Prince You would have Him perhaps represent the Business to His Parliament and leave it with them to excogitate some expedient for this emergent difficulty Well and what must He do in the mean time Sin against His Conscience No suspend For Gods sake then what is this stir for You know Sir His Majesty has already attempted something of this Nature with His first Parliament but with no success If you answer It was not probably to be expected then The Nation had not time enough to bethink themselves to take a Right Understanding of the thing and to apprehend the reasonableness of His Majesties Proposals To all this I agree with you Magna molimina tardè moventur Matters of so great moment and springing from such a surprising Vicissitude of State could hardly be so soon digested Yet His Majesty Dissolved not that Parliament till after He had condescended to Treat further of that Affair in His Closet with most of the principal Members and till He assured Himself of an utter averseness in them to any reasonable Complyance If you say then He must leave it to the issue of the next Parliament after so long a time as they have had to think over again You say right and so His Majesty intends and so He would have us signifie for the Peoples Satisfaction by Reading this Declaration Well but in this longer protraction of the time to another Parliament what would you have Him do Put these Laws in execution not only against the Safety of His Person but of His Conscience too Persecute what He accounts the Truth Apply Force where in His Conscience He judges nothing but Persuasion to be used I know no remedy for His Majesties Conscience in the interim but a further suspending and dispensing still with such Laws Nor do I believe that you or any Man else can assign a better Why He may not then make known the Continuance of His former Purposes in his first Declaration and why may it not be published by us the Ministers of Conscience and whose Duty it is of all Men to be most tender and of all others towards His Majesties Conscience And why not in our Churches and Chapels where we have insinuated generally to our People our own Mistakes in common with others even almost the whole Nations first hastily taken up false Conception of His Majesties Purposes Rightly to inform His Majesties Conscience so far as is becoming will not be taken amiss from us But if we find Him at a Point and that He is not to be moved from His Sentiment in these Matters I am confident none of us dare I am sure ought not to advise His Majesty to sin against His Conscience no more than we would do it our selves against ours Upon which Concession we cannot fairly censure and oppose in the manner we do His withdrawing His Authority from those Laws in the practice and prosecution of which His Conscience must needs be violated These are the Straits into which our Gracious King is driven at this Juncture He chuses according to His Judgment to offend Man rather than God Can we blame Him Nay ought we not rather to applaud Him for it We of the Clergy ought of all Men to lay our Hands upon our Mouths and make no Clamors nor give Him any Molestation on this account It is our own Doctrine in His Majesties Application while there are such Diversities of Religion among us and none more infallible than other on our Principles and while Temporal Laws will be medling with them and determining their Controversies unless they could make it a Shoo to fit to every Foot and to stretch to every Conscience such Mutations and Troubles of State as we meet with now are like frequently to return and the Government will ever and anon be off the Hinges new Exclusion-Bills to be brought into Parliaments new Plots and new Subjects for almost every new Prince To prevent such Convulsions of State and probably at one time or other Dissolutions of the Government as new Religions and new Consciences now a days multiply His Majesty wisely propounds that there be henceforth no disability on account of Conscience as of Kings to Reign so of Subjects to serve their Princes In the mean time nevertheless for the satisfaction of our Consciences as well as His own His Majesty further declares That he is resolved to use His uttermost indeavours to establish Liberty of Conscience on such just and equal Foundations as will render it unalterable and secure to all People the Free Exercise of their Religion for ever And to those of the Church of England principally and especially the Protestant Religion as by them profest and as by Law Established he will protect and maintain supereminently above all others as the National Religion That as we shall give the Check to no other so neither shall we be Checked by any in the free Exercise of our Consciences nor in the quiet and full enjoyment of our Possessions You would have His Majesty continue to us and protect and maintain us in our Dominion over all the Consciences of the Nation in the putting to Death Banishing Imprisoning Confiscating and by all other means not to call it persecuting suppressing and keeping under all others of a different Persuasion His Majesty would lend us His Power and Authority to do all this for us too if in Conscience he could but I think we ought to excuse him in that and I hope all Persons of Honour and Conscience will tenderly consider His Majesties Case as their own and be satisfied that the King does no more in this Affair than what any truly Conscientious Man even on our own Principles must have done And as Himself has been on this account hitherto necessitated to suspend the execution of the Penal Laws and Test so they also when convened together in
Moral Certainty be grounded upon that It seems you were before aware of this Retort and you think fit to grant it in these words which follow which are by way of Question Whether the King cannot keep his Promise to the Church of England if the Test and Penal Laws be repealed To which your self make answer You cannot say but this may be so that you grant as Moral a Certainty on this side as on the other But the Kings Moral Certainty is not to be believ'd though yours must But for Reasons wherefore you are wont to be sparing where the Matter pinches but if we will take your Word there are some very substantial ones behind the Curtain Wherefore as you say the Nation does not think fit to try it and we commend the great Men who deny it If we will take such Reasons as you think fit to make show of at present why here they are The King is an Immoral Man and therefore no Moral certainty of what otherwise might be possible enough in it self The King professes an Immoral Religion and he converses with a sort of Immoral Men called Jesuits who can presently furnish him with a Salvo for his inclination to forget his promise to the Church of England Is not this to make the matter almost as evident a Demonstration as you promis'd us Why Sir I confess this is a young Phoenix Argument sprung out of the Ashes of that old one said to be of the Earl of Shaftburies which was burnt by the hand of the Common Hangman We must have a King we can trust And the Nobility and Gentry are called to take notice of it and to be supposed they go on the same ground Nay the whole Nation do not think fit to try it you say And all must be thanked the Nobility and Gentry especially most tenderly treated and their Ears by no means grated with this Declaration which may discourage provoke or misguide them from their opposition to the King on this account and then we are finally ruin'd indeed Now if the Church of England can be beholding to you for furnishing her Ministers with an Argument against the Kings Declaration which smells so rank of the Hangman I am mistaken in her which I am sure I am not among those who are Israelites indeed Wherefore I think it needless to spend any more words about it But having made sure of the Nobility and Gentry as you would have us think Now but a word to the Wife and you have done and that is to the Dissenters Who say you are so wise and considering as out of our opposition to the King on this Proposal to smell in us something of a persecuting spirit Well how shall the Matter be handled then that they be not provoked for there is no Policy in that at this time of the day however we have provoked them heretofore The Dissenters you say whom we ought not to provoke will expound our not reading to be the effect of a persecuting spirit Then it seems not reading is teaching too as well as reading what you will for that But how shall we split the hair between the Nobility and Gentry on the one side and the Dissenters on the other If we can draw both to to our side nothing can resist us To disoblige the Nobility and Gentry were more fatal indeed as you say than to anger the Dissenters But they are numerous and rich there is no parting with them at this time neither some cunning and fineness must be used then to bring over the Dissenters to the Confederate Army for God's sake what is the meaning of all this Plotting and Projecting and making Leagues and Alliances and mustering our Forces Where 's the Enemy May a Man venture to peep his Head over the Wall to see this same Hanibal ad portas which comes threatning thus with Fire and Fagot to discharge our new Alliance the Dissenters From all Pains Penalties Forfeitures Imprisonments by them or any of them incurred or forfeited or which they shall or may at any time hereafter be liable to by reason of their Nonconformity or the exercise of their Religion and from all Suits Troubles or Disturbances for the same And as for our selves there is no more mercy to be looked for at his hands than for our Brethren the poor Dissenters For all our Archbishops Bishops Clergy and all other of the Church of England in the first place Alas they must be every Scul of them protected and maintained in the free exercise of their Religion as by Law establish'd and in the full and quiet enjoyment of all their Possessions without any molestation or disturbance whatsoever It is time one would think to project a way of joyning the Church of England and the Dissenters to keep one another For these Dissenters are wise and considering Men and they are sensible of themselves that all this is but Anguis in Herbâ a mere Trap a Gin a pitfall And although they desire Ease and Liberty they are not willing to have it with such apparent hazard of Church and State. Let them but stay their longing a while for when there is but the first opportunity of shewing our inclinations without danger they will find that we are not such Persecutors as we have been represented Where then and what has been the danger that no such Inclinations have appeared toward the Dissenters these twenty eight years back Have not our Protestant Princes as well as this been always oppos'd in their Inclinations to any such Indulgence King Charles the Second made them a Promise of it at Breda he made several Intimations of that Promise in future Parliaments and how his Honor lay at stake but met with no Inclination in us unless it were to lay on more lode And after when that gracious Prince was fain to breake from us by main force and upon his own Prerogative issue out his promised Indulgence he could have no peace with us again nor any compliance with him in his other Affairs of State till we almost compelled him to a Revocation And yet what manner of Men should the Dissenters see we are towards them if we had but opportunity But now you say there is danger yes now we have carried our selves so as to apprehend danger to our selves there comes an opportunity for cokesing the Dissenters to help us to turn the danger upon the King and they must be made to believe they are in the saddest danger now that ever they were who in truth were never so much out of it for above twenty years past nor in such probability of shaking off the fear of any such danger for the future if they are not seduced and infatuated to be unthankful to their gracious King and wanting to themselves Now the reason wherefore I call the Dissenters to look back upon our Inclinations towards them is not to censure the Wisdom and Honor of those Parliaments which made such Laws against Dissenters
their Consciences As for the other succeeding Ages of the Church after the Sixth Century the Church of England throws them aside as no Precedents for us to follow And yet it is the Christian Church in all Ages you would call in to avouch for you the Illegality of this Toleration 3. Your next Reason on which you ground your suppose that we cannot Consent you thus express It is to Teach my People that they need never come to Church more but have my free leave as they have the Kings leave to go to a Conventicle or to Mass Why Sir that they would do without the Kings leave or yours either before this Declaration came out However you are loth to have your Scepter wrested out of your Hands though it be with as vain and empty a Title as King of Jerusalem What a Grand Seignior you may be still in your Parish I cannot tell but I assure you in our Country Parish Dominions such a despotick Church-Power is extinguished long since Well Sir I perceive you are not inclin'd to be so merciful a Prince over your Subjects as His Majesty over His they shall never have leave for you But your Brother King would intreat however this favour at your Hands that when you have occasion to shake your Rod over your Subjects you would not send for him to be your Beadle And the rather because as he has no mind to it and that it is against his Conscience so you have no want of him neither the Spiritual Power having a Rod of their own more proper and agreeable to their purpose that is the Rod of Excommunication and other Church Censures which no body goes about to take out of your Hand Wherefore when you Read the Declaration you may let your People understand if you please that it is with a Non Obstante to that and so you have well enough escaped the Danger you fear should ensue to your Regalia viz. That it would be to Teach your People that they need never more come to Church but have your free leave as they have the Kings leave to go to a Conventicle or to Mass And so I pass on to your Fourth Reason 4. It is you say to Teach the dispensing Power which alters what has been formerly thought the whole Constitution of this Church and Kingdom which we dare not do till we have the Authority of Parliament for it At the Kings Command you dare not do it till you have the Authority of Parliament for it It seems then however you are bound in Conscience not to approve of such a Declaration Though it be against the Constitution of the Church of England nay though condemned by the Christian Church in all Ages though against the Laws of God and the Laws of the Land yet Authority of Parliament can discharge you of all Never was any Pope in England so high as Authority of Parliament is now set up that can dispense with the Laws both of God and Man for all this of the Kings doing is against both you say but not of the Parliaments By the way though you give a fair Hint unto the Parliament of the only Expedient as things now stand for the Common Peace Agreement and Satisfaction of all which is by their concurring with His Majesty in the setling what He has proposed by His Declaration For one part of the Nation approve of it for it self and all the rest want nothing it seems for their intire Satisfaction but only their Authority along with His Majesties At the present the main thing you stick at is The Kings Dispensing Power without Authority of Parliament Which indeed is the only thing you have said which bears any semblance of excuse for not consenting and consequently not reading the Declaration And you would have done better to have maintained your Post here than to have stuffed your Letter with Enemies Evil Counsellors Popery Mass Ruine utter and avoidable Destruction to both Church and Kingdom I have been fain to follow you hitherto in this wild Ramble which is nothing to the purpose but to inflame and exasperate Nobility Gentry Clergy People and all against the King and make the Breach wider than it would be Was not his late Majesty who was a Protestant and by the Advice of Protestant Councellors the adored Earl of Shaftsbury the Duke of Lauderdale and others forced to do the same thing when necessity of Publick Affairs required it Yet no Ruine of the Church of England followed nor of the Protestant Religion no Ruine no Destruction no Introduction of Popery nor intended to follow Some stir was then about the business of the Dispensing Power but nothing to what it is now Let us but quietly attend the expectation of a Parliament and that is a thing which it is likely may close of it self It did so before For indeed the Concurrence of His Two Houses of Parliament of which His Majesty made no doubt as He says when He first issued out His Declaration before we had royld the Nation The Concurrence I say of His Parliament will bury up all in Silence and Peace which is better than blow up so great a Flame as would arise by stirring the Coals of this Contest Prerogative of the Crown and Priviledges of Parliament are Matters too August for private Men as we are to meddle in much more to pass Sentence as your Letter does and plainly say The Dispensing Power is against the Laws and Constitution of this Church and Kingdom That it is Illegal which is so high a Presumption as can have no countenance for what was done in Parliament 72 for they have the Priviledge of free speaking there But out of Parliament perhaps it is a Crime of an higher Nature than we are aware Even the Bishops themselves though Persons moving in so high a Sphere and protected by so great a Power as the Pope was then in England yet they are given to understand as I find some Lawyers note 18 Hen. 3. That for as much as they hold their Baronies of the King that if they intermeddle with the Rights and Prerogatives of the Crown they must look to forfeit their Baronies for their Presumption If I say the Bishops out of Parliament incur so high a Censure should they do any such thing what Animadversion is due to Men of a lower Order Evil Men such as have some Fish to take which will not be catch'd but in troubled Waters are wont to throw in one of these as certain Occasions of it and as Bones of Contention whenever they have a mind to have one It would have becomed us who are Men of Peace of all Men in the Kingdom to have contained our selves and whatever we think to have said nothing in this Matter Now is Out-cry against Prerogative Time was when we made as loud a Cry against pretended Priviledges of Parliament Liberty of the Subject and for Prerogative Among other Complaints and Grievances which the Black
thing and to make choice of such Members of Parliament by whose Concurrence the Provision for His Majesties Safety might be made It is true the Church of England is hereby disobliged but who can help it or is to be blamed for it it was offered to them first and rejected by them Will they be neither persuaded to afford His Majesty together with theirs the Service and Assistance of His Roman Catholique Subjects of whose Loyalty there can at this time be no doubt for His sufficient defence against His numerous and inveterate Enemies nor yet allow him by His Indulgence of Liberty to their Consciences to win them to a Dutiful and Peaceable Subjection Just such an unsociable rigor as this now in the Church of England towards the Roman Catholioks was that of the Presbyterians towards us whom they then called Malignants and which was the occasion of bringing His Majesty CHARLES I. of Sacred Memory to the Scaffold and all upon piques and dislikes one against another on point of Religion The Presbyterians had a mind to Save the King and deliver him out of the hands of the Army which they then called Sectaries but this was morally impossible to be done by them upon the strength of their own single Interest without uniting to their assistance the Malignant also as they termed all those who stood well-affected to the King and Church but by no means would they be persuaded to any conjunction with the Royalists when His Majesties Life at that time depended upon it and might have been secur'd by it and even to the last point when the Army came up in their march towards the City with the poor Captive KING in their power they obstinately refused to take in any of the King's Party to joyn with them notwithstanding all their frequent offers and importunities and notwithstanding their own ruine along with theirs choosing rather to deliver up the Common Cause than to joyn with the King's Friends in one common Defence Nay to bring the parallel still nearer when it pleased the Divine Providence to make some aspect towards the Restauration of His late Majesty CHARLES II. to the Succession of His Royal Fathers Crown so imperious and ill natur'd were they still towards the poor Cavaliers and so resolved against admitting them to any share in the Honour and Interest of the Enterprize however their former Fidelity to His Majesty might commend them and His Affair need them that after the Secluded Members were re-admitted a Resolution taken of Convening a Free Parliament in order to the King's Restauration before their Rising they passed these two Votes One That all and every Person who have Advised Abetted or Assisted in any War against the Parliament since January the First 1641. his or their Sons should be uncapable to be elected to Serve as Members of the next Parliament And another That no Man should act as a Commission-Officer without First Acknowledging and Declaring That the War undertaken by both Houses of Parliament in their Defence against the Forces raised in the name of the late KING was Just and Lawful What can more nearly resemble those Oaths and Tests which have been of late years laid upon so many of His present Majesties Friends and no doubt with the same Design and in a then probable prospect of His Succession to the Crown That if they should fail of Excluding himself yet at least they might exclude a considerable number of His Friends from joyning their Force and Assistance to the rest when He should most need them and so one time or other he might fall into their Power thus unarmed and deprived of His just and sufficient Defence The subtle Projectors and Contrivers of this Intrigue it is likely are now off the Stage but since many of those who I believe have not the least Malice against His Majesties Person are yet nevertheless so intoxicate with the fears and jealousies they then imbib'd that they are yet hardly sober and must have time to recover their debauched Reasons It is necessary in the mean time that His Majesty look to the preservation of himself and of them also whose Loyalty is yet half asleep and who perhaps when they are better awake will find reason to thank him for interposing His Prerogative against their obstinate Defence of a Law so unreasonable and unsafe and thank God too for that Courage and Wisdom with which he has inspired him to preserve both them and Himself and the whole Nation from their precipitate Folly. These things considered may I think satisfie any reasonable unprejudic'd Man of the justice and necessity of His Majesties exerting His Royal Prerogative at this time and in the manner he has expressed in His Declaration for the preservation of Himself the Head of this great National Body which cannot be touched with danger in that principal part without a fatal evil to the whole But with His Majesties Person I intimated also a Salvo for His Conscience and that by His Prerogative if he cannot have it otherwise Conscience is the common answer on the account of which the Nobility and Gentry do not consent to His Majesties Proposals for taking off the Test and Penal Laws Is there not some regard to be had to the King's Conscience as well as other Mens The King no doubt so sincere and devout as he is in the profession of His Religion accounts it a very high offence against God and danger of Eternal Damnation to His Soul to persecute what He accounts the Truth and to drive away or terrifie any by Penal Laws from embracing it Who does not I believe also the inflicting of such Penalties on any other for mere matter of Conscience is not without a great regret to His own That Conscience ought not to be constrained nor People forced in matters of mere Religion are the express words of His Declaration Now all prosecution of Law against Recusants or what other Dissenters from the establish'd Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England must be made in the King's Name and all Warrants for the execution of Sanguinary Pecuniary or what other kind of Mulcts issue from His immediate Authority So that no Man's Conscience of the whole Nation is so nearly concern'd nor so accountable to God for what relates to these Laws as the King's Conscience I think no Man will say that the King ought in the execution of such Laws to sin against His Conscience or that we have ever the less obligation upon us to Own Him and Obey Him as our King and to comply with Him tenderly for the finding such a temper if there be any better than what He already offers for the satisfaction of both His Conscience and ours Subjects may suffer for Conscience sake and lose some part of the priviledge of Subjects rather than break the publick measures which have been established But Kings may not be constrained by Law to suffer nor to diminish any part of their Royal Sovereignty
with this Power That it is no where wiser and safer lodg'd than in the King. That therefore we must acquiesce in His judgment when it is seasonable to use it That nevertheless for our satisfaction the Reasons which His Majesty has given in that Declaration of His which we refuse to Read are very clear and cogent for the putting in practice His Prerogative at this time But you say further We cannot Consent nor Read. For that is to recommend to out People the choice of such Persons as shall take away the Test and Penal Laws which most of the Nobility and Gentry have Declared their Judgment against This is an Argument not from the force of Reason but Example which may be right or wrong as it happens and we have no way to assure us when it is and when it is not but by putting it to the touchstone of Reason which being done already till I see those Reasons answer'd I have no more to say but Magis amica Veritas Passing this over therefore as nothing new but only a scrape to the Nobility and Gentry you say next rather than nothing almost the same over again viz. That it is to condemn all those great and worthy Patriots of their Country who forfeited the dearest thing in the world to them next a good Conscience that is The Favour of their Prince and a great many Honourable and Profitable imployments with it rather than consent to the Proposal of taking away the Test and Penal Laws which they apprehend destructive to the Church of England and the Protestant Religion and he who can in Conscience do all this I think need scruple nothing If the same Proposal had been made to us as to the Worthy Patriots that is Whether we would give our Votes in Parliament for taking off the Test and Penal Laws then you had rightly taken an Argument a simili for our suffering like them rather than consenting which is the thing you pretend to do but very inconsiderately for our Case is not like theirs Nor will the Great and Worthy Patriots Thank you for bringing them to parallel and patronize your Disobedience to His Majesties plain Command when the Consent they were asked to give was only to a Proposal and so can imply no Disobedience if they did not consent If His Majesty had asked no more of them than he does of us which is to publish His Declaration they would never have forfeited His Majesties Favour for that nor their Honourable and profitable Imployments For how I pray came His Majesties Declaration the first time published I suppose it must be communicated to others so as to pass all over the Nation through many Hands of Officers of the Gentry and of the Nobility too for any thing you know and of such as nevertheless did stop perhaps at the Proposal of taking off the Test and Penal Laws and so are you left free to do if you please for all your Reading and as free are all those that hear you You proceed next to the evil consequences which may follow your Reading It would make our Ministry contemptible you say which must by no means be admitted right or wrong for ought I see A Minister must look to please and humour the Mobile or all his Counsels Exhortations Preachings Writings are nothing worth For St. Paul has said Tit. 2.15 Let no man despise thee That is well enough argued against Authority in a matter where we see the People as hot and as forward as ourselves But now if we were to Teach the People as you call it by Reading the Act of Vniformity the Book of Homilies or the Book of Common Prayer or any thing else not so relishing or by which we are like to get the Ill-will and Contempt of the People Why it is but putting on our Nose of Wax again with a bent on the other side then by honour and dishonour by good report and evil report as deceivers and yet true 2 Cor. 6.8 Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the Truth If your business were only ad captandum populum this might serve but whereas you wish us so to behave ourselves that no Man despise us It will concern us who are Clergy-men and Scholars not to appear to all Men of Sense such silly and despicable Animals as you seem to take us for by thinking to impose upon us with such pitiful Sophistry as this For Sir Is the thing evil or is it not If it be as somtimes you are in the mind contrary to the Laws both of God and Man do but prove this as soundly to us as you have said it temerariously and we are as much at a point for not recommending it to our People as you though they should despise us for it never so much But if it be not evil in itself as forgetting your Theme in another place you had almost slipped out in these words It may be it were no fault to consent to the Declaration If I say there be perhaps no fault but only a popular misprision in it to make some Men despise us by the same reason we should not read the Book of Canons as we are bound every year nor an Homily nor the Book of Common-Prayer itself Your next Reason is that it will effectually tend to the ruine of the Church of England And why Because it will provoke or misguide all the friends it has What the Reading it and nothing else A Man had as good be a keeper of Bears as of such Friends who will be so easily provoked As for the King no body cares how much he be provoked though he be most able by His Power and obliged by His Sacred Promise to Protect us from ruine And if we once disoblige Him from that I fear we shall find it beyond the Power of the Nobility and Gentry to protect and maintain us so far as he has ingag'd Himself in this so provoking Declaration supposing His Majesty false and treacherous to His Royal Word and Promise you have said somthing on this Argument and truly he who should be over solicitous in answering it would but seem to be so too Wherefore you may run for me to the end of your Rope with the rest of your harangue on this reason It is all set on a false bottom which is Answer enough Your Objection comes next of some who should say These are Consequences but conjectural and not absolutely necessary It may be the Reading of it will not so effectually tend to the Churches ruine To which you Answer They are not indeed such effects in respect of certainty as arise from natural Causes but they are as morally certain as any thing can be Good Sir then do us the Favour but to hear them made out almost as evident Demonstrations as you have promised us let us see this Moral Certainty Moral Effects must have Moral Causes Is not the Kings a Moral Promise and may not a