as well taken for being no Papist as Anothers for being a Protestant And That Proof I have given for 't There was indeed a perjurious Race of men that in despite of the Late Kings Piety and Practice Declarations Protestations and Sacramentall Professions to the Contrary brought him to the Block under the Same Pretence where at last he deliver'd himself up a Martyr for the English Communion But it is not with the Sacraments of men of Consciences as it is with the Oaths of Mercenaryes and the Covenants of Conspirators that look one way and work another But since my hand is in Doctor I 'le go a little farther with you I had the Honour in the late times and being Then in Exile to passe a matter of Eight months in the House of the Cardinal of Hesse where I was as kindly receiv'd as if I had been at my own Fathers I wanted neither Invitations nor Arguments to carry me over to the Church of Rome besides the Private Temptations of a Hopelesse Interest as to the King and a Broken Fortune Now if I had been so easily disposed to Truck my Religion for Mony as the whole Litter of the Town-Scriblers will have it I do assure you Doctor I could then have made my Market But after this Assertion of the Faith I was brought up in I do declare to you that I reckon my self yet bound as a Christian to entertain a Tendernesse for the whole Race of Mankinde I abhor the thought of seeing men of any Perswasion Worry'd for a bare Appellation I should reckon my self a Villain if I were not Iust and Grateful even to many Papists having in diverse Extremities receiv'd Offices of great Honour Piety and Humanity from People of That Perswasion Beside that Providence was pleas'd to make Some Loyall Papists the Instruments of delivering my Sovereign out of the hands of Other Protestant Rebells And yet after all This I am not such a Noddy as not to see the Plot though You may look further perhaps into a Mill-Stone then Another man But still I discern enough on 't to make my heart ake Pray'e forgive me this Digression He blunders in the next Paragraph at something as if he would hint to the Reader that L'Estrange has plaid Iack on both sides Now in good truth Doctor I never had that shifting Faculty and I dare Appeal to my most malicious Enemies to say that ever I falter'd in my Duty to my Sovereign in any kind or degree whatsoever And I can safely affirm that in Thought Word or Deed I did never so much as Countenance any disloyal Pretext toward his Majesty From This he passes into a Rapture concerning the Christians of Antioch and for a matter of a Page and three quarters Doll Common in her Fits was not half so wise as his Worship He takes me to task again Pag. 11. where I am commented upon for saying the Dissenters from the Church of England cannot any way be ayding in a Reformation but by their Prayers and good Wishes upon pain of Sedition Now certainly says he as men and Subjects under his Majesties Obeysance the Dissenters are as Capable and Legally of serving his Majesty in any such Commands as any other men or Subjects whatsoever Now my words are These Put the Case that the Design strikes at all that call themselves Protestants in Generall as well Non-Conformists as Church-men The Dissenters must yet range themselves under the Government to Oppose it and without intermedling any other way too then by their Prayers and Good Wishes upon pain of Sedition So that the Dissenters are not excluded any Publique Service but subjected to the Rules and Orders of Authority and not to Act beyond That Sphere any otherwise then by their Prayers and good wishes and the word REFORMATION not so much as mention'd in the Case But now Sir let me look to my self sor I think says he no man in his Right wits will conceive L'Estrange knows what he says and he wonders exceedingly that I should dare to tell you Doctor that Religion is a Spirituall Notion And for this Notion he would have me to be reputed and legally judg'd SEDITIOUS I am affraid that this worthy Gentleman takes Religion for a Manufacture You will now do me a kindnesse Doctor to give me a Hint upon what Statute I am to be Indicted for Notions To see now this Envious Creature again I never give you a kind word but I 'm sure to have a Lash for 't They are wonderfull things say I that you have done already and I am perswaded that you are yet reserved for more wonderfull things And This does the Malevolent spleen of B. W. interpret only a Ieer and Scoff in contradiction to the Sense and Proof of the whole Nation And so he calls it a Flurt at your Name to presage that Time shall render your Name as Famous to Posterity Pa. 21. as your Virtue has made it to the present Generation Yes yes Sir I do predict it over again that your Name shall be so For this grand Revolution wherein you have supported so Eminent a part will transmit your Name to future Ages so long as there shall be any Memorialls Extant of the present Government He is at me again for wounding and unworthily traducing the Wisdome and Iustice of the Governours of this Nation by turning their Transactions in this affair into meer Sophisticall Ridicule And this I get for saying as he has translated me Pag. 12. that none in his Right wits should take you for no Friend to the Church of England And now Dr. 't is your turn to be abus'd for he says that it was forreign and remote from the Scope and drift of your Evidence to give the Sectaries so great a blow as I affirm that Evidence to have done Which truely I take to be little lesse then Actionable for if a man shall be condemn'd in damages only for saying of a Taylor He 's but a Botcher because of the Loss it may cause him in his Trade of much greater Moment is it to disparage a Divine in so necessary a part of his Qualification to the hindrance of him in his Ecclesiastical Preferments For Fanaticism and Church-Dignities will not stand together Now see Sir what work he makes with my saying that It is a matter of absolute Necessity to fetch these Plotters out of their Holds From hence he concludes that I would have all the Dissenters from the Church of England to be destroy'd as Plotters which is none of my Proposition but only to put them to the Test that we may distinguish and Separate the Priests and Iesuits from Other People He comes now to passe Sentence upon me as a Blaster of the Kings Evidence and a favourer of the Conspiracy for supporting the Truth of Your Testimony and the Necessity of Proceeding Congruously upon it His next advance is to my Further Discovery of the Plot from your Narrative and Depositions He denies
the Detestable Plot a MYSTERY as if it were a denial of the Fact whereas I speak only of the Project or Contrivance not of the Fact tho' after all this Discovery there 's a great deal in matter of Fact that lies yet in the Dark And then he has a Bout with me for saying that it is no New thing for a Popular Outcry in the matter of Religion to have a State-Faction in the belly on 't Whereupon he modestly acknowledges that he cannot understand how Religion is concerned in the least Especially the difference betwixt the Church of England and the Dissenters from it Now as to the Plot We are told that Religion is the very Root of it and for the Dissenters they have almost all Sorts of Heresies among them which I take to be matter of Religion Besides that we have our Agenda as well as our Credenda and our Practical Cases relating to Civill Obedience Brotherly Charity Peace Order c. wherein the Dissenters do exceedingly differ from the Church of England in matters also of Religion He has Another Touch at me for arraigning the Iudgments of the Representatives of the Nation in Parliament in saying that nothing was ever more narrowly Sifted or more vigorously Discourag'd then This Conspiracy And yet says he the neglect of it was one part of the Earl of Danby's Charge which was not again without due Consideration of Authentique Proofs to make it good But bare Charges are no Proofs and 't is well for me that they are not for if they were B. W's Libell would have hang'd me Twenty times over But I am glad to hear the Dignity and Prudence of That Assembly so well supported for the world is well amended since the House of Commons was Libell'd for an Unanimous Clubb of Voters an Infernal Regiment of Pensioners Since they were call'd a Treacherous and a Lewd Parliament and since a Reverend Divine told some of the Members to their Teeth that they were a pack of as Arrant Rascalls as ever layd their Heads together And every day some Pamphlet or other to the same Tune There 's a long Paragraph Pag. 6. which is only a Huddle of words and not three Lines in the whole for a man to make either Earnest or Sport of The man is willing Sir to do you a Civill Office but then he goes so Awkwardly to work and with such a deal of Nauseous Fulsom Flattery 't is half a Vomit to think on 't But at last after mighty pains taken to no end he passes sentence upon Intents and purposes and has found it out at the long Run that the getting of a small Reward for my Pamphlet the vindicating of the Papists and crushing of the Fanatiques are the three Ends of my Scribling All which do assure you Dr. he speaks by Revelation but gives you in the Conclusion the hopes of making it out by Demonstrations to come By my Troth Sir this is a strange Mortification for a man to be ty'd in good manners to bear all this Impertinence as if he were oblig'd to his Persecutor He begins his 7th Page with a Flower and pray'e intend it But now warmly clad with These wonderfully Erroneous Considerations that incumbered his Disturbed Brains with the help of taking your Works to pieces he had now fallen under such a Conception from which the world might expect such a Product as was expected from the Mountain but you know that prov'd a Mouse This is nothing in the world but the water-Poets Nonsense turn'd into Prose One Line more on 't would make me call for a Bason In the next Paragraph I am arraign'd over again for a Dishonourer of the Nation the Governours or Government the Protestant Religion and the Kings Wittnesses and all This for calling it the allmost Inextricable Labyrinth of the Plot. At the next word he makes half a Iesuit of me and says I vilisie the Doctor under a Disguise of Friendship And I think Says he he hath cause to rejoyce that he is not question'd for a Seditious Pamphleteer This Charge is founded Doctor upon my saying that none can fall foul upon my Further Discovery without wounding Your Evidence This gives him occasion to deny your Swearing that the Priests and Iesuits herd with Nonconformists and yet you tell us how they contrived the late War by inslaming Partyes that they had their Instruments in Scotland expressly to Preach to the Disaffected and that Blundel did actually teach the youth in the City of London Treasonable and Seditious Doctrine He says I 'm in Wrath and speaks as if I doubted your Evidence concerning the Pilgrims and the Forty thousand Black-bilts when my business is to set before the People the Danger of that defigne taking effect if the Priests be still suffer'd to lurk among the Fanatiques And then when I speak of Infidells as of those that will not believe this Mixture he turns the word Infidells into Dissenters and so makes a Slander of the Propriety only of the Term Pag. 8. Take notice I beg of you Sir how he poysons all my Respects towards you when I tell you that I have Read Consider'd and Study'd you and the Sense I have of the Roundnesse of your Periods the Luxuriancy of Your Invention where there is Scope for it the Franknesse of your Stile and the Harmony of Your Conceptions What is it that makes him call These Expressions Ironies but that he undervalues you as if you were a person that had no sort of Title to these Civilities Nay he will not so much as allow you the Common Faculty that Distinguishes Men from Brutes that is to say CONCEPTIONS For I know not says he of any Conceptions in all your Works He says indeed that if you had made your Trade of Living and getting Dinners by Scribling or had you employ'd your Genius That way if it had been in making a Play against your own Mother what work you 'd have made with your Syllogisms and Coherences c. This is some devillish Wipe Doctor if a body could but hit the drift on 't But for the Trade of getting Dinners by Scribling 't is the Honourable Trade of the Nation from the Prime Minister to the Sub-Sizer And truly Doctor as the world goes 't is well if an Honest man can keep himself clear of the Almes-basket or turning Mendicant from door to door Now he whips me up again for Poysonous Principles and Frothy Strains of Wit with Paper-Squibs audaciously Traducing and Flying in the Face of Governours and Government and this is only for saying that the present humour of France runs upon Poysoning the Enemyes of our Government altogether upon the Vein of Plotting What 's your Opinion Sir of these Inferences To the business now of being a Papist I do not remember says he Pag. 9. one Authentique Proof nor any other Rational Argument yet produced by L'Estrange that he is not a Papist Now I thought Sir that One mans Oath might be
Sir nor as I am a Christian did I come to the Knowledge of This directly or indirectly from any Member of the Family Why will you suffer a violent Passion to carry you thus beyond all bounds of Decency and Consideration It takes away your Reason Doctor and in these Fits rather then not do me a Mischief you care not what you say For you do no more believe me to be as you have represented me then I believe you to be the Ghost of Thomas Aquinas I have not deliver'd one syllable here without a due Respect both to what I say and to Whom I speak and if every Particle in This paper should be put to the Torture to force an Evidence from it against the Authour 't is no more then I look for But so secure am I in the Conscience of my own Integrity and so well satisfi'd in the Title I have to the Common Right of defending my self that I am not at all sollicitous about the Event of This Freedom And to shew you that I have not enter'd rashly upon This Undertaking I 'le give you a clear prospect of my Thoughts upon the Question with submission to be better inform'd where I 'm mistaken You cannot but observe Doctor that the stresse of B. W's Charge upon L'Estrange lyes with its whole weight upon These Four Poynts viz. that he Favours the Papists Lessens the Blot Disparages the Wittnesses and Arraigns the Government And all this serves only as a Common-place to work upon when any man is to be render'd Odious to the People For 't is a thing easily sayd greedily swallow'd of Violent Operation and hard to be disprov'd which is a very great disadvantage when a man comes to be arraign'd for his Thoughts without any possibility of clearing himself It is a thing that extreamly Confounds and Misleads us in This Affair the Governing of our selves by the Common Forms of speaking and according to the Vulgar understanding of the matter in hand As for the purpose we make a Favourer of the Plot a Favourer of Popery and a Favourer of Papists to signify for the most part one and the same Thing And 't is no matter which comes out First when we would throw Dirt at a man Whereas in Truth and Equity there is a great difference betwixt them as will better appear by taking them apart and distinguishing the One from the Other By the Papists is properly intended the whole Party among us of That Perswasion By Popery the Opinions or Religion of That Party By the Plot is to be understood the Conspiracy which is a Third Consideration separate from the Other Two So that a man may be a Favourer of the Plot against the King and Government and yet an Enemy to the Opinion of the Papists and to the Party For we see That the same Designe has been formerly Carry'd on and Executed by men of Opposite Iudgements And likewise a man may have a Kindnesse for the Opinion and yet be an Enemy to the Plot As in Despite of Detraction we have seen many Instances And Lastly a man may have a Tendernesse and Charity for the Party without Leaning at all to the Opinion and with a perfect detestation of the Execrable Confederacy Well Doctor but you will tell me that This Popish Plot is a Complicated Plot and not barely a Plot upon the Government but a Plot also supported upon Popish Principles and carry'd on by a Popish Party for the Extirpation of the Protestant Religion It is not Sir to extenuate the Guilt and the Foulnesse of This Plot if I tell you that the Fanatical Revolution matcht it in every point There was First a Confederacy and then a Design layd a Change of Government resolv'd the Lawfullnesse of it Debated and Asserted and the Instruments that carry'd it on were the Fanatical Party And all Terminated in the Snppression of the Protestant Religion That is to say if the Church of England was Protestant Or if Otherwise and if they that destroy'd This Glorious Church were Protestants Themselves from such Protestants good Lord deliver us But you will say Sir that Prelacy Ceremonyes Habits and set Forms of Prayer are not to be accounted matters of Religion I beseech you Sir what Religion is there in a Messe of Porridge or in looking out at the Window to see what a Clock ' t is And yet I take it to be a very material Transgression in point of Religion to throw That Porridge in the face of my Father in the One case or to resuse upon his command to look out at the Window on the Other For Religion consists in Doing as well as Believing and in the Conservation of Unity and Order The Resemblance betwixt the Face and the Glasse is scarce liker then these Two Cases and I do not know why the same way of Reasoning may not hold as well too upon things so agreeing betwixt Themselves The Popish Plot is Impious for so much as concerns the destroying of the King and the laying of the Nation in Confusion and bloud And so was the Schismaticall Plot too And This is a poynt that all men even of all Perswasions in Religion that have either Honour or Brains will easily accord But you 'l say that This Plot is prov'd by Witnesses and Iudgments and give me leave Doctor to tell you that the Other was also prov'd by Fact and the Final Execution of a Fore-layd Design Well but you 'l say Sir that the Iesuits Principles are Bloudy and Dangerous As That of Keeping no Faith wiih Heretiques and the Doctrine of Absolving Subjects from their Obedience to such Princes These are Hellish Positions 't is true but in the History of our Late Troubles and in That of the Kirks Proceedings in Scotland you I find these Maxims taught in the very Schools and Pulpits Nay and warranted too by the most Eminent States-men and Divines and not only so but authoriz'd by General Assemblyes and the Votes and Declarations of a Mock-Representative of the Commons of England Nay and it went further yet for all these diabolicall Illusions were put in practice They sought the Lord for a Complement of the Wickednesse they put the King to Death as by a Revelation and glory'd in the thing done as a favourable Dispensation of Providence Once again Sir There were none but Papists you 'l say in This Plot there were none but Schismatiques in the Other so that vou see the streights of the Church of England betwixt these two Extreames and the Danger is as mortal on the Right hand as on the Left And give me leave to think Doctor that as the Danger is Equall so the Affliction is much bitterer from those of our Own Family then from strangers the Prophet David himself seem'd to stagger a little under the weight of it If it had been an Open Enemy he could have born it but to be wounded by Those with whom he had taken Counsell and walkt in the House