AN ANSWER FROM THE COUNTRY TO A LATE LETTER TO A DISSENTER Upon Occasion of His MAJESTIES Late GRACIOUS Declaration of Indulgence By a Member of the Church of England LONDON Printed for M. R. in the Year 1687 AN ANSWER FROM THE COUNTRY TO A Late Letter Writ to a Dissenter c. SIR IT is the unhappy state of mankind that the over-weening Opinions and Sentiments which by Education or Custom we have entertain'd incline and warp our minds so to the maintaining of them that we are as difficultly alter'd as the Tree is which bended when a young sappling is rarely by any Art made straight Besides this the tempers of most Mens Souls are such that they easily divide into Parties and being listed as in a state of War they study nothing more than to convince or subdue all those who differ from them Yea we too frequently find that they make those the Object of their aversion or abhorrence who study to compose their eager tempers or direct them to any degree of humanity Hence it is that when National limits are not sufficient causes of quarrels the ranks and degrees of Men the City and Country Fraternities Neighborhood yea Domestical Interests crumble us and cast us into various figures These Jars and Hostilities are fomented by Interest Ambition and all the cross-grain'd passions of our Souls and when Religion mixes with our humane concerns it sublimes all their corrosive spirits and is the universal dissolvent Every one is apt to think the fire of his own Altar the purest and is not content to have liberty to trim his own Houshold hearth and warm himself at his own Faggot but endeavours according to his power to make all gain-sayers Victims and Sacrifices to his Deity and when no Secular Interest moves them the pretended eager Charity to save their Souls and the preventing as they call it the spreading of that Infection makes them mortify them in their Estates or send them to the Pest-house or cut them off as gangren'd Members Hence it is that the Roman Catholick Church the Church of England and Dissenters according as they have had the favour of the Government or could exercise any Authority have each of them punished or supprest the other and have been more or less severe according as the Government judging it to conduce to secure the publick peace was inclin'd to embrace that Religion or the desires of Church-men were more or less pressing to bring all to Uniformity in Faith and Discipline Former Ages have experimented this way of proceeding and it hath been accompanied with the lowd cries of the suffering Parties the decay of Trade the unpeopling of Countries and Intestine Seditions and Rebellions Our unhappy Island hath not wanted Instances of the ill effects of arming by Penal Laws Church Communities one against the other so that the Governing Parties under Religious Denomination have produced almost as much mischief as in Ancient times the Wars betwixt the Houses of York and Lancaster occasioned and however oppressive the State-Church of England is reputed yet I think it will not be disown'd that when those called Dissenters got the Power in their hands they made greater Ravage and Depredations in Twenty years upon the Roman Catholicks and the Members of the Church of England than had been inflicted on themselves in an Age witness the sequestring decimating and seizing their Estates Fining Imprisoning Banishing and putting to Death of so many and selling the Lands of the Bishops Deans and Chapters Our Gracious King revolving therefore in His Princely Mind the Fatalities that have attended this Conduct and the unfortunate and mischievous Results of such proceedings the effects whereof he had felt Himself hath in His profound Wisdom resolved to try the most probable expedient to still and quiet these so long continued Animosities Contrarieties and Ferments of His Subjects Some publick notices of this He gave in the very beginning of His Reign by Prohibiting in His Courts and discountenancing proceedings upon the Penal Laws But that I may discover the true steps the King made towards it and the foot upon which the late Indulgence stands and prevent some Repetitions I should otherwise be necessiated to use in my Reply to your Letter I shall succinctly touch the Kings Progress and the deportment of some Members of the Church of England and Dissenters before and since the Indulgence At the First Council the King held after his coming to the Crown he expressed the sense he had of the Church of Englands Loyalty and gave us Assurances of His Defence and Support of it This pleased the Dissenters only so far as it gave them hopes that the Protestant Religion might be preserved but they were afraid lest the King might remember their former promoting the Bill of Exclusion and that thereby they should not only continue under the lashes of the Church of Englands Discipline but of the Kings disfavour and having yet the Idea's which had been infused into them of a Popish Successor and the D. of Monmouth giving them an opportunity to make head under the specious pretence of preserving the Protestant Religion as many of them as were near the Scene of Action and were fool-hardy joyn'd with him in that Rebellion and the wishes for his success were not wanting in most of that Party But that Rebellion being so speedily and almost miraculously suppressed they fled to the Church of England for Protection flocked to the Churches personated a Conformity and so closely mixed that they now seemed one Body and one Church Some leading Men of the Church of England finding this great accession of strength and being desirous entirely to win the Dissenters over thought it expedient to let them see how much they had been mistaken in thinking them in the matter of Exclusion to be going over to Rome and being willing to wipe off the Calumny the Dissenters had cast upon them as being Papists in Masquerade they began instantly to shew their utmost Zeal against the Kings Religion When therefore the King pursuant to His Royal design before-mentioned required the taking off the Test and Penal Laws many leading Men of the Church of England set themselves to oppose the King in it and from that day the more they found the King press it the more they shewed their reluctance Suddenly several Ministers able or unable to manage the dispute with the Church of Rome began to confirm their Auditors in the Doctrine of the Protestant Religion and to insinuate the danger we were in to lose it as soon as the Test and Penal Laws should be repeal'd they murmur'd and repin'd at every favour shewn to Roman Catholicks and none were so much applauded as those who lost their places upon their denial to concur with the King in his demands They animated and encouraged one another to stand the shock not thinking perhaps they had to deal with a more resolved Prince than some of His Predecessors nor apprehending or not willing
Memento Mori which shows by your favour an ill nature in you that will not allow a Dissenter the joy of his hony moon In this you are like one that after vows persuades to Enquires But I hope e're I have gone through with this discourse you will acknowledge though your Style is soft and beautiful yet there is a weakness in your Reasonings will not easily prevail with a true dissenter who is not so far gone in his new passion but that he will hear and answer too d Since you quit your exhortatory Preface which was penn'd to obtain Audience and now will let us see your dexterity at Argument I shall endeavour to follow your method owning you have chosen the fittest mediums and if you could make them as convincing as plaufible which is now to be examined you might expect many Proselites e The Kings Justice and Honour was as conspicuous as early in his praises of and promises to the Church of England and I believe in the upshot those Politicians will be found the worst enemies to both who made such ill constructions of the Kings desire of the Repeal So that whatever the Church of England hath or can suffer may be ascribed to their taking the matter by the wrong handle But it is most evident Dissenters were then designed to have a mutual share of Liberty since the King granted noli prosequi's inhibitions and other relexations to them as soon as he did to Roman Catholicks How dutiful it was to reject the Kings Courtship I leave to all un-interessed persons to judge and the more the Instances can be multiplied the greater is the demonstration of the Kings desire to preserve them in their Duty and the more faulty those Men who filled peoples minds with the affrightments of the Kings design to settle Popery and destroy the Church of England which they knew morally impossible and yet continue to make it the only Helmet Argument Those who fly to any for Refuge had need use better Arguments than flattery whilst Dissenters were Rebells they could expect no other Quarter than the Law prescribed if the King had not been most merciful and it is most apparent a greater cause of the granting Indulgence is to take away all occasions and pretences of Rebellion rather than singly to usher in Liberty to Roman Catholicks by that Grace Neither is it any new inclination in the King to relieve Dissenters in Communion with the Roman Catholicks unless you will give him the lie who so publickly avows that it hath been ever his judgment that none ought to be Oppressed and Persecuted for matters of Religion and I think He ought to be believed as soon as any in His Kingdom Therefore if any Roman Catholicks at this time let fall hard words against Dissenters it can be against none but such who they have reason to suspect do act by no publick spirit of preservation for any but their own party and by this show that they have not changed their Nature by the favour that is afforded them f After all the search I can make I neither find it to be an Article of Faith in the Church of Rome to deny Liberty to nor that Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks and if any Constitution or Decree of a Council be found to the contrary that obligeth not Catholicks in point of Obedience The fallacy of your reasoning is easily detected by pulling out one pin the whole Machine flies in pieces One cannot be a Member in Communion with the Church of Rome or any other constituted Church whether Fallible or Infallible who is by that Church declared a Heretick so that liberty of Communion is only what is inconsistent with the Church of Rome but it no ways follows that Schismaticks or Hereticks in their sense ought not to be tollerated to Live yea enjoy their Worship by the power of the Prince who grants that Indulgence as Father of his Country For it is no Church Membership that is required by Tolleration Suppose any Prince let the Scene be where it will that hath in his Kingdom great numbers of Subjects of several persuasions in Religion must he unpeople his Kingdom of Two Hundred of his Subjects for every single Man of his own Religion according to your Calculation Do you judge in good earnest His Ghostly Father or his Holy Father the Pope will judge him to be in an habit of sin for it or enjoyn him for a Pennance to make such a Carnage no surely they will rather let the Tares grow among the Wheat or if He do not this must he pull ruine upon Himself and all those of His persuasion How Infallible soever the Church of Rome may judge it self yet you must allow she is not quite void of Sense Prudence and humane Policy or will not in several things yield to publick good and necessity You must suppose that Church to oblige that King to a Barbarism even impossible in it self to be effected e're you can make good any such conclusion from the Premises Excommunication is the highest and most destructive Sentence any Church can pronounce and it is to avoid Mutulations Dismembring Incisions and Corrosives for Religion our merciful King proposeth this Repeal since it hath been by too sad experience found how Magistrates Members of other Churches besides that of Rome have been guilty of the same whether with better Dexterity Success or Authority I now dispute not but surely all this harangue tends rather to engage Dissenters at any rate to purchase that Sovereign Panacaea which will prevent Persecution from any hand than to continue in a state of danger g Kings as well as others may Time matters and the Indulgence of a Prince makes no quicker a change in a Dissenter than a Pardon doth after the Malefactor hath his Irons on or the Halter about his neck or the poor Man made instantly rich by finding a Treasure These motions are from extreames as quick and as surprizing Dissenters while under the sense of continual sufferings might be instigated to Rebellion and so be Sons of Belial yet this sacred Ray if such mists as you are casting before them hinder not may well transform them to thankful and dutiful Subjects which is all that is expected It is true if the Dissenters Features be not changed from having a sower sullen murmuring and repining Aspect to that of chearfullness and gratitute Roman Catholicks have no reason to harbour a good Opinion of them Or if they be such Bigots to charge all persons that are not of their persuasion with Idolatry as you know they have done to the Church of England even by that Churches own Argument they are to be instructed better but this hinders not the King to do them good even against their deserts and I think it one of the greater Arguments that you are a most Rigid Calvinist or Brownist rather than a Church of England-Man that make use of this Article and that you are a most
and room enough to enlarge the Foundations and build stronger Defences against the common Enemy of Persecution if this conspiring against a work which You own Dissenters need and deserve do not destroy it q In this Paragraph you are numbering the people and examining Your strength by the Muster-roll and the head of those Powers you design to Oppose is manifestly the King which is not very agreeable to the Church of Englands Doctrine of Non-Resistance r Good words butter no Parsnips if the Expressions of Duty were not tainted and hollow and in your Opinion His Majesties Religion did not only shade but totally Eclipse His Vertues Your Allegiance would not look as it doth more like a Submission than a Duty nor would You adventure upon that Bravado that some own their best security to Passive Obedience and the Doctrine of Non-Resistance which look very like bidding Roman Catholicks beware least they rouse a sleeping Lyon For I know not who they are that Laugh at the commendable Doctrine of Non-Resistance but when I see Men fomenting jealousies against their Sovereign ridiculing His Conduct endeavouring to Represent Him as acting against the Laws assuming an Arbitrary Power denying Him the service of all His Subjects and by all possible Arts endeavour to withdraw the Affections of the people from Him solely because of His Religion I cannot judge such to be true practicers of that Doctrine s Here you give a touch of your Astrology and it being customary for the pretenders to that Art to attempt by Horary Questions to know Diseases and after a while to set up for Empericks So you give us a pretty Receipt to clear a lowring Sky the Sense of which is for all Protestants to lye in of the sullen keep their beds and there use some kind of reasonable Devotion and entertain their Visitants with discourses of their Loyalty and their adhering to the Laws and it will be twenty to one but they will be freed from the Hail-storm and escape the danger of the Infectious Air. But lest any should object that Bed-zid Protestants are not like to keep out Popery you have a most Infallible Elixir in your Repository which is that neither the Church of England or Protestant Dissenters ought to be affrighted with any fear that the Roman Catholick Religion can be Established by a Toleration since the ods is two hundred to one without a greater Miracle than any we read of in any Legend especially in the old Age of a Church which hath been so long barren of them For shame therefore give over your false Alarums amuse the Dissenters no more to such circumspect standing upon their guard to keep out Popery since in our days there is no feeding Five hundred with Five Loves and two Fishes t The conclusion is agreeable to your premises an Exhortation to an Association a gainst the King and all of His judgement in the matters of the Test and the motives to it are pretty odd that since both Parties have been too blame in Persecuting one another therefore they should be reconciled and combine in opposing the Indulgence which is most likely to put an end to all rancor and malice One would have thought that the Inference more naturally should have been that since they both had experienced the mischiefs of Persecution and neither of them bettered their condition by it therefore they should both have joyned in the promoting the general Indulgence that there might be no more strife among them since they were Brethren I am sure this had more truly resolved the Question But instead of this you tell the Dissenters without giving any Reason for it that dis-union is not only a Reproach but a danger to both This I own to be true if the Union you desire were for the publick good of both but if the Union be to combine you and them in equal undutifulness and ingratefulness to the King if this Union be desired to hinder the Kings Progress in His laudable purposes if this Union be but to while the business with a Shall I Shall I to tire the Kings Patience and disappoint His expectation it will redound to both the Dissenters and your Danger if not Reproach To persuade to such an Union as this is the whole drift of your discourse and something you must mean more than Passive Obedience when you rivet the Nail you have all this while been driving in telling your Reader that it is as unjustifiable to have no Religion as wilfully to throw away the means of preserving it This looks like a second sound to Horse and you have a pretty slight in your Mouth to persuade Roman Catholicks because you think them so credulous of Miracles to neglect all Cautions or means to preserve themselves but to relie upon a Supernatural Power But those of your Principles must use the Humane Means of preserving it and of how many Battalions these must consist though you have reason to conceal the Intimation from the World yet you give a sufficient Item what may be expected and thereby caution the Government to have more Circumspection over your Sayings and Actions Thus Sir I have now finished my Observations upon your Letter I shall subjoyn something the subject matter induceth me to offer to the consideration of all Christian Dutiful Subjects and then close the whole SIR I have hitherto follow'd the train you have lead me and endeavoured to give a reasonable Answer to the most material parts of your Letter What was bare supposal and groundless suspicion I have not much concerned my self with Those being but like the Feathering of unpiled Arrows which help their flight but enforce them little to do harm where-ever they fall Neither have I attempted to reach the Towring Flights of your Oratory which how Ornimental soever are but like mounting Bubbles which break and vanish when at the utmost stretch Your affrightments when well considered are but like the sparks in a Smiths-shop which upon a brisk heat and stroak fills all with seeming liquid fire yet it is as soon extinguished as the Iron cools or the labouring stroke ceaseth What was Seditious and tending to instigate the Subjects to jealousies and disloyal Opinions of their Sovereign I have endeavoured to Disprove and Repress What was Calumny I have gently wiped off unless when it was couched in such general Terms as placed it beyond all reach of the Spung. Rebells in open Hostility are not so dangerous to a Prince and His Governmet though the severest Punishments are inflicted on them when mastered as those are who by sly Arts Detraction evil Surmises and Constructions render their Prince suspected of Ruling Arbitrarily and altering Religion and Laws and thereby blast His Credit with His people For those are the Men that make the whole Reigns of Princes troublesom and unfortunate to Themselves and their Subjects These List the Men provide Magazines and Arms and prepare all things in readiness against the sound of the Trumpet
and do not only Muster the Rebels but they do as much as in them lyes to enfeeble or taint the Allegiance of the remainder You have contributed all you possibly can to effect these things and exposed your Letter as a Banner to invite to jealousies and fears which are the very Avant-couriers of Sedition and Rebellion and this in you that pretend to be a Son of the Church of England is so much the worse in that you know how strictly it enjoyns Obedience to the Lawful Sovereign and how much the Doctrine of Non-Resistance hath been taught and practised by its Members If the Kings Intentions to settle the Roman Catholick Religion by force which you surely cannot in good earnest believe practicable were much more apparent than it is If the inevitable ruine of the Protestant Religion here should be the consequence of the Repeal and if the exercise of His Prerogative and Dispensing Power were the certain ruine of all Mens Properties you and others who own no other Loyalty to their Sovereign than what is consistent with their supposed Interest could not invent more provoking Reflections upon the King or mis-interpret His Actions worse than you do But how unreasonably undutiful is it in Subjects and those who would be reputed the zealousest for our Church to charge the King with Intrigue and Hypocrisy or breach of promise who of all Princes living detests mear tricks and to prevaricate with any To whom Dissimulation is the odiousest of Vices and whose very In-bred Natural and Heroick courage places Him as much above all low Arts as His Dignity doth above His Subjects Besides all the un-answerable Arguments which have been produced why the taking off the Test and Penal Laws cannot work such a change in our Religion you may consider that at the same time the Church of England may be Insured by Laws of greatest caution Furthermore we have most solemn and publick promises That His Majesty will Protect and Maintain the Church of England in the free exercise of its Religion as by Law Established and in the quiet and full enjoyment of all Her Possessions without any molestation or disturbance which He will inviolably observe If by a stubborness that shall be unpardonable in the judgement of all Impartial Men we forfeit not a Clemency so rarely to be parallel'd To all which may be added the universal aversion of the Nobility Gentry and Commonality to the Roman Catholick Religion occasioned even by the deepest Impression that Education Custom and an Opinion of the Purity and Primativeness of it hath made If none of these Arguments will prevail with you to change your evil Opinion of the Kings designs by the Repeal consider deliberately I pray you how the King must overthrow the very Foundation upon which the great Enterprize of Universal Liberty and consequently of all the Benefits to His people by enriching them and keeping them in peace and securing the Roman Catholicks in future times in any tollerable state if He ever give way to invest any one Church-Community with a Coercive Power But I know it is Objected that if a Toleration only were intended how comes it to pass that so many Loyal Members of the Church of England even of those who so couragiously adhered to the Crown in its utmost danger are now displaced and the Roman Catholicks or Dissenters even such of the last as have most violently opposed His Majesties Succession are substituted in their Rooms In answer to this It is well known that the number of Protestants of the Church of England Employed by the King in His Court in His Council in His Courts of Judicature in Camp and all Places of publick Employments almost as far exceed the Roman Catholicks as our Clergy do theirs and yet we make so hideous a noise at the Conferring Places and Honours upon some deserving and Loyal Roman Catholicks and two or three Masters and a few Fellows of Colleges being Preferr'd which are but the effects of common distributive Justice and consentaneous to the Paternal care of such a Prince who would show some marks of favour to those few of His own Religion who are not now surely to be wholly Excluded Therefore in my judgement it shows a very ill Nature in those who own His Majesty to be their Lawful King and that He may at His Pleasure use the service of which of His Subjects He pleases to grudge His intermixing so few of His own Religion with others Besides this you cannot be ignorant that it never was the practice of any Prince or Government what Religion soever to imploy Subjects in Places of Trust who set themselves directly to oppose what by prudent forecast for the publick good they determined to Establish Now since the King for the Reasons published in His Gracious Declaration is so intent upon compleating this great work of General Freedom and securing those of His own Religion in common with the rest It cannot be thought reasonable or expedient that He should cherish and countenance those who so bitterly oppose him in it Especially since it is so apparent that even such who have shown great zeal for the support of the Crown upon the Heads of their Protestant Sovereigns now manifest not only an indifference and coldness but an unbecoming way wardness to the Kings Service In so much that some decline sitting in Commission with Roman Catholick Justices of the Peace and others think it honourable to quit their places rather than to make one step towards the Repeal so that even the Badges and Livery of Loyalty are changed from that to the King to that of the Church of England and those who make the greatest complaint of hard usage have themselves turned the Tables As to Dissenters it is their Interest to close with the Crown side for Protection and since they can derive this unlooked for favour from none but the King they should be the most ungrateful of Men if with chearfulness and sincerity they did not pay all possible Acknowledgments to His Majesties Bounty for it So that I do not wonder to hear them with great Asseveration say it was not for a Commonwealth they fought and were continually striving against the stream but it was to get the Weather-gage of Persecution It was to obtain this Liberty of Conscience which they never could expect from former Governments that provoked them to commit such Hainous things they now are ashamed of and which indeed they ought to Attone for in another manner than they have hitherto done They now declare that if they might have had the Tenth of that Liberty the Church of England now enjoys under our Gracious King they would never have lifted up an hand or opened a Mouth against the late Kings of blessed Memories and I think they are the rather to be believed because neither the Doctrine nor the Ceremonies of the Church of Rome are so much declaim'd against by them now as those of the Church of England
which they formerly reputed Idolatrous They now think themselves justified in their Espousing the Parliaments side from whom they expected and had Indulgence and please themselves to find another kind of non Addressors and as zealous persons to hinder the Repeal of Penal Laws against their Sovereigns declared desire as they were formerly for it Yet though the Scene be thus changed I hope there are sufficient numbers of such whom the Church of England will own to be her Children that will let no Dissenters out-goe them in Loyalty and Dutifulness to their Sovereign and who are well assured the King will have as great regard to them and our Church for their sakes and as freely permit them the enjoyment of the Exercise of their Religion and Benefices as to any provided they will concur with Him in the Repeal and be content to let their Fellow-Subjects of different Persuasions enjoy likewise their Liberty That the Members of the Church of England ought to yield this in common prudence and even for the Preservation of their own Religion I think there are many Reasons especially this that as yet the time is not clapsed but that when His Majesty convenes His Parliament sufficient Security may be obtained that the Church of England shall enjoy all the King hath promised and when by the Wisdom of the Houses such an Act is contrived as will answer the Kings desires of the Universal ease of His Subject the Church of England will feel as great effects of the Kings kindness as she can expect or desire and by the freedom all will enjoy there will be no more contests but who shall approve themselves most dutiful and deserving of His Majesties Clemency and Kindness Upon such a closure the Roman Catholicks and Dissenters will freely yield to the mutual security of the Church of England and that Church will regain its Reputation of Loyalty and confirm what you promise in her name of being kind to Dissenters and a Protestant Prince succeeding and finding things thus Amicably Composed will reap the benefit as the whole Kingdom will do of this happy undertaking of the King But on the contrary if the Majority of the Members of the Church of England in Parliament obstinately oppose the Kings desires they will oblige His Majesty to pursue other Methods and it will give occasion to all such as are no great well-wishers to our Church to urge its uncharitableness that rather than it will permit the King to exercise His Prerogative of being served with all His Subjects of what denomination soever He pleases to make use of and that Men of different Professions in Religion may enjoy the favour of the Kings Indulgence they will put themselves out of His Royal Protection and absolve Him from His promise therein and the upshot of all will be that by His Majesties steady pursuit of this great work which He firmly believes will conduce so much to the universal good of His Subjects In a few years by such sedulous countenancing all those who will strenuously co-operate with Him to effect it the Dissenters will obtain the Majority of Voices in Parliament which if once effected those Members of the Church of England who have Obstructed the Repeal will be at the mercy of Dissenters and if the King be not their best Friend may fall short of what they may now so effectually obtain I shall conclude with a short Paraphrase upon the Words His Majesty used to His Privy Council March the 8th 1686. concerning this Indulgence in which the substance of what need be said in justifying the Kings granting it are clearly laid down First His Majesty shows the practice of former Ages and the success of them That although an Vniformity in the Religious Worship had been Endeavoured to be Established within this Kingdom in the successive Reigns of Four of His Majesties Royal Predecessors assisted by their respective Parliaments yet it hath proved altogether ineffectual This is obvious to every one that reads the History of those times and well know to those that lived in the beginning of the Rebellion for Dissenters were then so encreased that they were numerous and powerful enough to overthrow not only the Church of England but the Monarchy that defended it The Kings Words are That the Restraint upon the Consciences of Dissenters in order thereunto viz. to Conformity had been very prejudicial to this Nation as was sadly experienced in the horrid Rebellion in the time of His Majesties Royal Father The King then pitcheth upon the true and principal cause of all those Calamities that befel the blessed Martyr and were freshly commencing again in the later time of His Majesties Royal Brothers Reign which are best expressed in the Kings own Words That the many Penal Laws made against Dissenters in all the foregoing Reigns and especially in the time of the late King had rather increased than lessened them If therefore our Gracious King out of an excess of love and Paternal care did not study the Universal benefit ease profit and enriching of His people He might have pursued former Precedents But as a Wise and Compassionate Prince He searcheth diligently for the true Causes and while too many are busying themselves in Traducing His zeal for His Religion as if it were the only concern of His Royal Cares He Demonstrates to all His Subjects how much more sollicitous He is to find some better Method whereby at once He may Establish His Throne and those of His Successors in a stable peace and security and give Ease Freedom and Riches to all His People of what Persuastion soever Therefore declares That nothing can more conduce to the peace and quiet of His Kingdom and the increase of the Numbers as well as the Trade of the Subjects wherein the greatness of a Prince does more consist than in the extent of His Teritories than an entire Liberty of Conscience That His Majesty may likewise obviate all the great scruple such as you raise as if He did this for any private ends you have His Royal Word to the contrary when He tells all His Subjects That it hath been His Opinion as most suitable to the Principles of Christianity that no Man should be Persecuted for Conscience sake which His Majesty thinks is not to be forced By this His Majesty shows that He grounds not His judgement upon the agreeableness or ungreeableness of it to the interest of any Church but as it is suitable to the uery Principles of Christian Religion and having by this shown His Royal Intentions how to proceed upon that bottom during His own Reign out of a well grounded Confidence that it may be a rule and standard to His Royal Successors He closeth all with this Maxim That it can never be the true Interest of a King of England to endeavour to force Conscience Have not all Men from hence and all His Majesties Actions reason to think there is a Clemency Benignity and tenderness in the King
they will leave you first if they do you must either leave them when it will be too late for your Safety or else after the squeasines of startling at a Surplice you must be forced to swallow Transubstantiation n Remember that the other day those of the Church of England were Trimmers for enduring you and now by a sudden Turn you are become the Favourites do not deceive your selves it is not the Nature of lasting Plants thus to shoot up in the Night you may look gay and green for a little time but you want a Root to give you a continuance It is not so long since as to be forgotten that the Maxim was It is impossible for a Dissenter not to be a REBELL Consider at this time in France even the new Converts are so far from being Imployed that they are Disarmed their sudden Change maketh them still to be distrusted notwithstanding that they are Reconciled What are you to expect from your dear Friends to whom when ever they shall think fit to throw you off again you have in other times given such Arguments for their excuse o Besides all this you Act very unskilfully against your visible Interest if you throw away the Advantages of which you can hardly fail in the next probable Revolution Things tend naturally to what you would have if you would let them alone and not by an unseasonable Activity lose the Influences of your good Star which promiseth every thing that is prosperous p The Church of England convinced of its Errour in being Severe to you the Parliament whenever it meeteth is sure to be Gentle to you the next Heir bred in the Country which you have so often Quoted for a Pattern of Indulgence a general Agreement of all thinking Men that we must no more cut our selves off from the Protestants abroad but rather inlarge the Foundations upon which we are to build our Desences against the Common Enemy so that in truth all things seem to conspire to give you ease and satisfaction if by too much hast to anticipate your good Fortune you do not destroy it q The Protestants have but one Article of Humane Strength to oppose the Power which is now against them and that is not to lose the advantage of their numbers by being so unwary as to let themselves be divided r We all agree in our Duty to our Prince our Octjections to his Belief do not hinder us from seeing his Virtues and our not complying with his Religion hath no effect upon our Allegiance we are not to be Laughed out of our Passive Obedience and the Doctrine of Non-Resistance though even those who perhaps owe the best part of their Security to that Principle are apt to make a Jest on 't s So that if we give no Advantage by the fatal Mistake of misapplying our Anger by the natural course of things this Danger will pass away like a shower of Hail fair weather will succeed as lowering as the Sky now looketh and all by this plain and easie Receipt Let us be still quiet and undivided firm at the same time to our Religion our Loyalty and our Laws and so long as we continue this Method it is next to impossible that the odds of two hundred to one should lose the Bet except the Church of Rome which hath been so long barren of Miracles should now in her declining Age be brought to Bed of One that would out-do the best she can brag of in her Legend t To conclude the short Question will be Whether you will joyn with those who must in the end run the same Fate with you If Protestants of all sorts in their behaviour to one another have been to blame they are upon the more equal terms and for that very reason it is fitter for them now to be Reconciled Our Disunion is not only a Reproach but a danger to us those who believe in modern Miracles have more Right or at least more Excuse to neglect all Secular Cautions but for us it is as justifiable to have no Religion as wilfully to throw away the humane Means of preserving it THE REPLY SIR IT is a most undeniable truth that fashionable Addresses are very little to be regarded and the temper of the Nation as little to be known by them as we can know Men to be of one inclination because they were one sort of habit but when they flow from Gratitude Duty and Interest and not from fear or resentment they are good symbols of unconstrainedness and sincerity and to whom soever presented ought to be kindly received I own not my self a Dissenter from the Church of England and upon that score find not my self concerned in all that you write relating to them but assure you I am one of those that have a propensity of mind ready to receive any impression of Reason and who am so sensible that a great part of the comforts of humane Life and Oeconomy of Government is lost to those who confine their Charity good Esteem and Candor to those only of their own Opinion That you and I differ mostly in that you confine your thoughts for the publick to the subdivision of Protestants only whereas I think they ought to be enlarged likewise to all Honourable Virtuous and Loyal persons of other denominations and neither Fear or Resentment ought at this time to make us swerve from that Golden Rule of doing to others as we would have others do to us b It is true that in small wounds in the fleshy parts only the sympathetick way of Cure and closing the wound in its own blood with bandage of clean Linnen will serve but where amputations and lacerations are such as Seclusion and Rebellion sovereign wound salves are requisite You allow your Dissenter to act by natural instinct as other Animals do that can lick themselves whole and you dress their wounds with so gentle a touch as if you were unconcerned whether they were cur'd or not and least they should infandum renovare dolorem reflect upon the fresh bleeding wounds you give them a dose of Opium It is true you blame the Patient for his precipitateness in using the Remedies nearest at hand without examining not only the skill and ability but the good intention of the Chirurgion and the vertues of his Remedies but this is all Artifice that you may get the Patient to commit himself to your care and that you might possess him with an Opinion that none else had the true method of healing which is not fair practice to decoy him from using the certainest and most assured help this Island can afford c Here you change the Scene and transform your Patient into a passionate Wooer who is fallen in love with a new Friend and since you presume it will be an hard task to make him quit his new Amours for his late coy and scornful Lady you are contriving a Fascination and would garnish his Bridal Feast with a Mene Tekel a
undutiful Subject that will brand your Sovereign with being an Idolater So that if there were no other Reason for that single inference every Loyal Subject should be for Repealing the Test and be so far from dispensing with any Dissenter for broaching this Doctrine which might tempt some judaizing Zealots to stone him that non obstente all the Indulgence they should be proceeded against as enemies to the Kings Crown and Dignity and that should be all you should get by ridiculing such words as the Kings Prerogative impowers him to use h That self-preservation may cause agreement of several interests to disarm a common Persecutor is no Paradox or that the men of Taunton and Tiverton shall become Loyal when the prime ground of their disloyalty is taken away nor that in this comprehensive liberty the Quakers though no Christians with some who may object Antichristianity against others should not be considered For in the Kings Indulgence the Subjects are not considered as conforming to Canons and Constitutions of Churches but as obedient grateful or useful and industrious Surely in a populous maritine City we wonder not nor is it thought inconvenient that Turks and Jews Chinesses Abyssines Japanners or Persions Italians French or Spaniards or any other remote Nations frequent the Exchange and exercise their several Religions provided they enrich it by Traffick and it is a much pleasinger sight than to see the streets thronged with beggars in as differently patched Coats sounding one uniform doleful note of want to cause pity and compassion It is most true that if a Popish Successor were in reality such a one as he was sometimes represented we should need to suspend our belief of his Clemency and that we have been under most shameful and I may say of too many even wilful mistakes concerning our Royal Sovereign is a most demonstrable truth and since He gives so many Arguments that it is not for the bringing in of Popery but for the securing not only His Roman Catholicks but of all His other Subjects from the lash of Penal Laws that he grants this Indulgence whereby all Industrious peaceable Men may follow their imployments without being obnoxious to Fines Imprisonments or Death for want of Uniformity It will not surely be the Question Whether the Priests words of Consecration can Annihilate the Sacramental Bread but whether it be more Kingly for our Sovereign to feed His whole Family or starve some whilst others are too much pamper'd It is not the mystery of the Sacrament so much troubles some as it is that a Roman Catholick King should have more kindness for Protestant Dissenters than those who would be esteemed the zealousest for the Church of England can afford them i Mens heads are much easilier laden with then unladen of suspicions how light soever they be they generally Ballast the Vessel and where ever jealousie enters with it croud in Legions of evil Spirits If one had as many eyes as Pores it would fit them all with destain'd Optick Glasses or Prismes to give deceitful Colours to every Object And that which is most troublesom in this passion is that it is with great difficulty master'd especially when it is heightned by Interest You have a great dexterity to improve this by Affrightment Calumny and Detraction which you couch in such General Terms as it is difficult to get a grasp of them Therefore I must pass by what is Common place and tell you that a Secretary of the Cabals of the Usurpers or to the famous E. of Shaftsbury could not have given a livelier Description of the Imployment of these Emissaries than you have done but you do wifely not to expose persons lest we should know who they are that are imploy'd on the errand which is only to alienate the Subjects Affections from their Sovereign and to excite the peoples jealousie If any be imploy'd that have been detected and are now sincere they are fitter to discover the former methods for being wedges of the same wood they are fittest for the work of pinning or cleaving But to hang a scandal in the Air like a Cloud that none can know where the shower may fall is not done like a Gentleman of your Morality and Vnderstanding k This character of a Juggler is so drawn to the life that one would swear you were looking all the while in the Glass while you used the Pencil Dissimulation is such a changling that it is all Vizard-mask with several foyles seperable by sleight of hand so that one may sooner find Faith in an Affrican than in such a shift-coat But till you can prove such are Commissionated to work Dissenters to comply with the King all the Water runs but by the Mill. l That there are mercinary Men is no such News that need be told with such cumlocution Those that use such tools will find them often need the whetting and they must be vain spend-thrifts which I think you cannot say of our King that pour their Mony into a bottomlels purse Oates Ignoramus Juries and pensionary witnesses were more proper Cattle to be fed with such Provinder than Dissenting Ministers if I be not mistaken in them The King neither needs nor will ever imploy such Instruments He knows better how to manage his Exchequer than to waste it on such Hirelings who sell their Conscience and Service by inch of Candle m From Eye-witnesses and Contributors themselves I have heard that several Charities to Non-conformist Ministers were put under their Preaching Cushions and I do not much wonder that these Benevolences which were as good as Glebe and Tithe enabled them to resist the Temptation of taking Benefices with the condition of renouncing the Covenant c. But that there should be any among them now who for such filthy lucre design to Morigage the Protestant Religion which you must suppose or nothing I shall never believe upon your bare suggestion In former times by keeping up the Schism they might hope for some favourable Revolution whereby they might be capable of liberal Maintenance but that the Rigor of their Creditors shall drive them to put on the Cowl or Scapular or co-operate with those that design it shall be no Article of my Faith n It seems you were sensible of the weakness of this Medium and now the Dissenters must Preach the Gospel for envy The forward Ministers amongst them are much obliged to you since it seems they are either Judas's to sell the Cause for Silver or must be branded with one of the Devils Characters Accusers of the Brethren and whether you lessen their crimes in saying those who act this Cholerick part believe not themselves but therein sin against their Consciences and only pursue higher directions I leave to others to judge What wages such may get here they best know But I think it must be a severe punishment they may expect hereafter May we not be more charitable to judge that such Men are so far from personating a