the King for that office the best of those they know which are many times most unfit But this may be remedied when his Majesty shall please to give leave to the Clergy of the Diocess to choose their own Diocesan their Choice notwithstanding submitted to the Kings approbation and Confirmation which was permitted by Justinian the Emperor and was in use in several of the best Ages of the Church or by some other method which may be advised by his great Council whereby the greatest assurance may be given that the best and fittest persons be preferred to Bishopricks for the Common people are envious and suspicious and what ever may be done by bad means they always think is so But if Bishops were promoted to their Sees with the gratulations and applauses of the whole body of the Clergy of the respective Diocesses all that passeth under their advice and consent would likely meet with the general satisfactions of the people as it would well deserve as long as the Clergy can have any Authority with them That is as long as the Nation continues Christian But the general Corruption of Manners and decay of Piety is the great and truest cause why the Bishops unenvied enjoy no part of that honour that our Ancestors Wisdome and Piety conferred upon their order conformably to all other the Ancient Christian Governments But when Virtue and Piety shall recover their esteem the reverence of the Clergy will return We are not like long to expect this happy Change for Vice is now arrived to a Plethora and like to burst by its own excesses And we well hope that the mischiefs which we suffer will cure that evil from whence they spring and prevent the greater Calamities that it further threatens However it becomes all good men to assist to support the present Government which is the cheapest the surest and the next way to arrive at a happy constitution of things This was the design of the Author of the Grand Question After the publication of that Book I laid by all thoughts of publishing this Treatise But perceiving that notwithstanding what he hath said the Right yet remains controverted and a Book is since printed wherein several things are objected in prejudice of this Right and more is expected I did review these Papers wherein I found I had prevented those objections and with a little application they would appear insignificant I did resolve to make this publick And besides that I apprehended some things material to the Question were omitted by the Grand Question that a several way of speaking things to the same purpose hath its advantage Our great Courts affect to have several arguments on the same side in great Causes and our Reporters publish them Besides herein several things are occasionally discourst of which makes it of further usefulness to the publick Our adversaries also were treated too kindly by him and had deserved sharper reflections than he makes upon them for their false and perverse Reasonings and ought to lose that reputation which they abuse to the hurt of the Government And further I thought it not for the honour of our faculty that never fails to supply the worst cause with Advocates That a question of this Nature wherein both Church and State Religion and our Civil Policy is concerned and the Right thereof not only clear and evident in it self but also useful to the State should have not one of the Robe to plead for it The friends of the Cause will not grudge to read two Books for the Right as well as several against it and the Adversaries of our Cause ought to suffer the like trouble themselves which they occasion to others These Considerations did induce me to publish this Treatise I am well pleased that I am ingaged in a good Cause that was suited to one of my slender Abilities Right is so strong an Argument for it self that it wants only light to discover it Whereas an unrighteous cause stands in need of disguisings and shadowings and all the Artifices and fetches of the Wit of abler men to give that a Colour at least which is destitute of Law and Right THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. THe Nature of the Right the obligation to use it the obvious indications of it and the benefit which may be reasonably expected in the exercise of it How it came to be drawn into question and how it can be fairly determined how it hath been opposed and upon what Reasons and Evidence the Right doth rely Chap. II. The general prejudice against this Right from an Opinion conceived that the Clergy ought not to intermeddle in Secular Affairs remov'd That Bishops have been employed in the greatest trusts by Emperors not hindred by the Church but this hath been envy'd to them by the Pope Chap. III. The Precedents that are produc'd from the Parliament Rolls against this Right are considered They prove not pertinent at most but bare Neglects not Argumentative or concluding against the Right Chap. IV. This Right cannot be prejudic'd by non user The Nature of Prescription that the Right in question is not prescriptible The Original of this Right that it is incident to Baronage The Bishops when made Barons and for what reason That all Offices whether by Tenure or Creation are Indivisable Chap. V. Bishops never pretended the Assise of Clarendon when said to be absent Bishops sat in Judgment upon Becket and his Crime and Charge Treason by which it is demonstrated that the Assise of Clarendon only put them at liberty but not under restraint from using their Right of Judging in Capital Causes Chap. VI. Bishops sat in Judgment upon John Earl of Moreton after King John the Bishop of Coventry c. for Treason Chap. VII An Opinion prevail'd and continued long that no Judgment in Parliament where the Bishops were absent was good and their absence assigned for Error to reverse Judgment in Treason in Parliament prov'd by the Petition of the Commons 21 R. 2. upon their protestation made 11 R. 2. And by that protestation it is evident they had a Right and that they saved it by that protestation They pretended they could not attend the matters then treated of by reason of the Canon But alledged no Law for their absence Chap. VIII Of Canons Canon law What effect Canons can have upon a Civil Right The Canons prohibiting the use proves the Right Chap. IX Bishops made their Proxies in Capital Causes which proves their Right and their thereby being virtually present and the lawfulness of making Proxies and such as they made Chap. X. A Repeal of the Parliament 21 R. 2. No prejudice to what the Bishops did in making their Proxies The Opinion of Bishops presence being necessary in Parliament continued in time of H. 5. Chap. XI Bishops actually exercised this Authority in 28 H. 6. in the Case of William de la Pool Duke of Suffolk Opinion of the Judges that Bishops ought to make Proxies in the Tryal of a
Peer in Parliament Of what consideration decency can be Chap. XII Their Sitting in Judgment not so much against the reason of the Canon as their assent to Bills of Attainder which was never condemned And the Nature of an Act of Attainder Chap. XIII Over-ruling a Plea of pardon doth not condemn the Criminal and therefore they may judge of such Plea Though they are not to be present at the making of a Judgment of Condemnation Quousque perveniatur in Judicio further explain'd And that which follows upon another thing is not always caus'd by it XIV Bishops one of the three Estates of all the Realms of Christian Europe And how they came to be advanc't to that dignity and trust The convenience of their not being divided in a distinct house from Lay Peers They cannot be detruded from that dignity no more than the Government can be chang'd which no Law can do Six Bishops of the twelve Peers of France and their Aristocratical power That all Governments are lawful that are lawfully establish't Chap. XV. William the Conqueror agreeable to all the Princes of that time put Bishops under Tenure by Baronies and all Baronies at that time feudal with the reason of his Policy and the inconvenience it produced Of the Curia Regis which consisted of the Baronage in which the Capitalis Justitiarius Angliae did preside Of the administration of Justice in that time And that the Baronage of England upon special Writs of Summons became a Parliament An account how all our present Courts derived out of it Of the Court of the High Steward and of the Court of Chancery and the reasons of its rise and growth and how inconvenient it is And how we recovered out of the inconveniencies of that Constitution of Parliament by representatives in the time of H. 3. And that this it being allowed can give no countenance to those that are desirous to change our present and better Constitution That in all this Change the Bishops suffered no diminuion But when the ancient reason of Baronage failed they are after to be considered under the new reason of Baronage Chap. XVI The remembrance of the old reason of Baronage became a prejudice in the Judges upon which T. Furnival Plea allowed that he held not per Baroniam An Entail of Baronies with lands after allowed The reason of Nobility changed and no man now Noble by his Acres Many men Summoned to Parliament and yet not Noble No prejudice to the immovable Right of Bishops to have Summons to Parliament and that objection answered Kings may erect new successive Nobility in Clergy-men That Bishops are of a distinct sort of Nobility and under that and other reasons they are considered as a distinct State Chap. XVII Of the three States which make the Government under the King that he is none of them The Objections against this answered And the reasons of their being distinct and the several Offices and Expectances in the Government that make them so That the several Orders of Peers make but one Baronage and in that there is a great trust and honour greater belongs to Bishops than Lay Barons in our present constitution Their Character and qualifications commend them to the highest trust and render them fittest Judges Chap. XVIII The Reason of Tryals per Pares and that the Bishops are competent upon that reason in Parliament though not so fit to be of the High Stewards Court The Law of M. Charta not Lex scripta Bishops ought to be tryed by their Peers How that Right came to be discontinued and that in Parliament they ought still to be Tryed by their Peers Chap. XIX The unreasonableness of maintaining an Opinion upon a single Objection against a matter evidently proved that Questions of this nature should be considered with candor and not opposed with meer possibilities Chap. XX. Several alterations in the Government since the Conquest that the Alteration in what concerns the Baronage the Bishops Right is to be considered in analogy to the Change That changes of Government for the better cannot again be altered but our zeal is required to defend the Government made better and they deserve ill that go about to reduce us to our old mischiefs by their Antiquity Chap. XXI The advantage of the Change in the constitution of our Parliament in the change of granting Subsidies And how the Lords are bound by a Bill of Aids Chap. XXII The beneficial Change that hath been made by the clause praemunientes in the Bishops Writs of Summons to Parliament which gives Authority for the Convocation By this we are discharged of Provincial Councils and Canons of the Church kept distinct from Laws of the State The Church kept in peace from rending Questions and Religion is conducted not by Laws but by Canons not force but perswasion which commends our Episcopal Government Chap. XXIII The danger we avoided of having our Baronage of England ambulatory and fixing of it in Families and an indefectible Succession in which the Right of the Peer-age of Bishops is established Chap. XXIV The advantages the Adversaries seek to their cause by aspersing the Bishops Remembrance of all the faults in all times committed by any of the Order that many of those faults are principally due to the Papal Vsurpation and the neglect of Kings to defend the Rights of their own Bishops and are all the Vitia Temporum the times of Popery Chap. XXV How inculpably our Bishops have been in administration of their Ecclesiastical Authority how faithful in their Temporal Trust and Asserters of the Rights of the people They have not been irreverent to Kings nor have they encroached any power in Civil matters in ordine ad spiritualia That the power that they challenge is meerly spiritual and they challenge nothing of Divine Right but the exercise of their Ministry which they cannot lay aside Mr. Selden's Arguments for Erastianism answered The Church of England doth not tye her self always to think and enjoyn as she doth at present The moderation of the Church in opinions her apprehensions of Schism just and great They are not answerable for the ejectment of the Nonconformists nor for the scandalous Lives of their Clerks nor their Chancellors nor abuse of Excommunications Why matters of Incontinency are committed to their censures They have exercised the power of the Keys against the Infractors of M. Charta and how it hath been guarded with the denunciations of the Church we have reason to expect as much from our Bishops to support the Government of Laws Chap. XXVI We have as much reason that the Protestant Bishops should be as constant to the Reformed Religion as Popish Bishops obstinate for Popery An Apology for their Vnanimity in Voting Their dependance not so great upon the Crown as to oblige them to disserve their Prince The King bestows nothing upon them but what is the Churches the great expectation the Government hath of their fidelity and performances That which advanced them must
wherewith shall it be Seasoned And if our Light be darkened how great is our Darkness The Bishops know that the World will not be kept in Order by meer Designations of Trust but by Execution of their Trusts not by abstract of Characters unless they are put on and effectively worn The World will not be put off that there is no Provision made in the Government for reasonable Expectancies of all that can make a People happy if we are disappointed in our just Expectations They know for what high Ends they are advanced to their Secular Dignities what was it that hath thus advanced them Was it not the reasonable Expectation that Christian Princes and Governors conceived of their excellent Virtues that they would out-doe all mankind in firm Constancy a vast and extensive Charity unrelenting Fortitude inflexible Justice unmoveable Faith and Loyalty and unbyassed Sincerity What Temptations can their Lordships have that they should not or we Reasons to believe that they will not put forth all those Christian Vertues in Heroical Degrees which the World will not give them leave to exert only in common measures They will find it necessary sure to be now Confessors for the Support and Happiness of a poor distracted Nation a vast and great People They will no doubt subdue the Greatest Potentate to Justice if there be any such who hath unhing'd the Government and sap'd the very Foundations of our Constitution and will never consent to the Pardon of such Sins that are not to be pardoned in this World nor in the World to come Can they suffer the true Christian Religion of which they are the chief Ministers and Curators to perish by their timidity and cowardise Can they suffer a great People committed to their charge to be destroyed into an Anarchy and desert that Prince whose Beneficiaries they are and not interpose for the saving of him and his Government by faithful and wise Counsel To suppose such things as are morally impossible is unreasonable and to fear where no fear is For they if they were wholly secular and were guided by nothing but a secular Interest can consider that the world is impatient of disappointments That they hate nothing more than deceits and abuse of trusts and that he that falls short and goes less than a just expectation falls into the lowest and vilest contempt and deepest scorn But this is not a time sure to lessen the Prelates to take from the Bishops any just advantage or honour when that the contempt in this later age thrown upon them and the whole Order Ecclesiastical and the mischiefs that have naturally ensued thereupon have brought our Nation Religion and Government to a most miserable state a most desperate plunge out of which I pray God we may be able to emerge The Contempt of the Bishops and Clergy made the People despise the publick Establishment chuse Teachers not much wiser than themselves And they have thereupon multiplied vain Opinions and Divisions and true Christianity is scarce had in any Consideration Atheism and Profaneness upon this Stock is come to an enormous Growth which thrives the faster by the vain Opinions and Immoralities of the mistaken Religionists by which the Atheists take the Measures of true Christianity and in Consequence of this Popery is arrived to a vast Increase in Power and Interest and threatens us and the little Remains of true Reformed Christianity with an utter Overthrow The true Christian Religion is not generally understood and hath lost almost all Credit and Belief in a Christian Nation So that it seems to me upon the Consideration of our present State almost necessary that the Truth of the Christian Faith should be again demonstrated in Flames to this Infidel flagitious and degenerate Age that the Stains of the Christian Religion must be washed off by the Blood of the Sincere Professors That the true Faith should be better understood as it will be by dying Thoughts and vain Opinions be destroyed and burn up like Hay and Stubble in the Fire of Persecution For then we shall understand what it is that is worth dying for and that which is not worth dying for is not worth disputing and dividing for in our Christian Communions with breach of Charity Then our Guides the Holy Order of Bishops and other Faithful Pastors of the Church may shew their Sincerity and appear of what Value they are of in the Conduct of Souls by their wise Apologies and Noble Confessions and Martyrdoms for the true Christian Faith and recover a due place in the Peoples Reverence and Esteem for their Successors And if God in all his wise Providence and Care which will never be wanting to his true Religion shall think it necessary by this means to recover and restore it let this Fiery Tryal come let it come And then I doubt not but we shall have our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 used in Scrripture for the Prelates of the Church to signifie the high Esteem they had of them and are the same with Leaders Captains and Commanders many Cranmers Ridleys and Latimers leading up their Troops of Confessors and a Noble Army of Martyrs who will again seal the Christan Religion with their Blood and a more Glorious Church shall recover out of the Ashes of this But God grant that we may dispose our selves by more easie Methods to recover out of our sickly Estate when we know our Disease and may be cured by more gentle Remedies But I am sure that nothing can save our Nation and Religion but an excellent Clergy and a high Esteem of them amongst the Laity And for this Reason I have earnestly concerned my self for the Bishops Right of judging in Capital Causes in Parliament that they may want no Capacity of making a gasping Nation live and thereby of recovering themselves and their Order into a high Veneration that they may more effectually administer to the Advancement of God's True Religion and Vertue and making this Kingdom happy for Succeeding Generations THE POSTSCIPT The POSTSCRIPT SIR I Now render you my hearty thanks for your free advise you gave me concerning the publishing of the Argument for the Bishops Right of Judging in Capital Causes in Parliament and for asserting their civil Honors and Rights in the Government Because it hath given me an occasion both of vindicating the most of the Inferiour Clergy from those Imputations which you have remembred to me and are commonly discoursed to their disadvantage whereby they have lost their Esteem with the People and also of rectifying the mistakes of some for their number is not great who have given too much cause therein of publick complaints You diswade me from giving any assistance to the Rights of the present Bishops for that the Clergy out of whom the Bishops must be made have entertained Principles that are destructive to the Government They affirm you say That it is in the power of a Prince by Divine Right to
will not assist to bring on the Popish Plot by disbelieving it and put us in fear of the Fanaticks by taking all the courses imaginable to provoke and exasperate them and upon their discontents which they maliciously heighten and by falshood and forgeries misrepresent To graft thereupon a Pretens of a Protestant Plot for a pretext to extirpate Protestanism and introduce Popery which they impudently pretend to be of a more firm Allegiance to the Government than the Reformed Religion I pray let it be considered that that which is tolerated is put under disgrace even for that it is tolerated and that which tolerates even for that it tolerats hath the Governing Authority and in so much as it indulgeth it obligeth to modesty and reason and. if that indulgence should be abused it may and will be retracted It was never intended by the House of Commons that the Church of England should be altered or modelled to an agreeableness to any form or sect of the separation or prescrib'd to by any of the Dissenters or that she should be made subject to any of their rules or opinions or her Liturgy laid aside for directories or which is worse undervalued to the profane way of extemporizing For as generally used and exercised it deserves no milder a stile That the Church should always govern by her own Wisdom in her own Province and in those things that appertain to her can never be deny'd her No man hath reason to say tho he hath great cause to dislike the separation and to have a bad opinion of the Dissenters that he had rather submit to Popery than to any form of the Separation for he need do neither except he pleaseth No man that thus expresseth himself but will be suspected to seek an occasion and pretens to become a Papist and to make a defection from the Church of England But if these Gentlemen have such a displeasure against Schism and Separation which certainly is the worst disease any Church can labor under and at this time threatens the destruction as well of the Protestant Religion it self as it doth to the Professors of all denominations let this sharpen their zeal against Popery which by its unhallowed arts hath occasioned and exasperated our Schism and put them upon the use of all means to reconcile if possible the Schism that the Papists have already made and by all means endeavor to continue and take away if possible the occasion of it for the time to come And thus defeat the Arts of the Priests and Jesuits for supplanting our Church It is a most deplorable thing that our Church should be kept rent and divided in danger of being lost between Rituality and scrupulosity Though the Scruples of the Nonconformists which I always thought and do still think groundless and unreasonable have often moved me into some passion against them yet upon consideration I think this their Scrupulosity may be of God and that some Men are by him framed to it That he hath provided it as a bare and obstacle in the Natures and Complexions of some devout Men against any Innovations whatsoever that dangerous ones may not steal upon the Church for the better maintaining the simplicity and purity of the Christian Religion and Worship But in saying this I have said nothing that is apt to give them a conceit of themselves but rather to humble them For the best Men are not govern'd by their Temper and Constitution but correct them by their reason and determine themselves by a clear and firm Judgement What affrightment all this while either to Church or State from this weak and pittyable Scrupulosity Where lyes the Treason or Sacriledge nay or so much as contumacy against our Ecclesiastical Governors which is so much upbraided to them The Christian Religion may be prejudiced by addition to as well as substraction from her rule The Church of Rome by her additions hath almost evacuated the Christian faith Besides there may be a fineness in the outward mode of religious Worship in its self very justifiable which may be not congenial to men of a course make The Worship of God will always savor of the manners of the People Men of dull capacity can scarce admit of any Ceremonys without danger of falling into superstition or being vext with endless and incurable scruple until for ease of their minds they throw them off But the wisdom of the best Law-makers hath considered in giving Laws what the People would bare and not what is best to be enjoyned and many things have been tolerated by them which they did not approve ne majoribus mal is detur occasio aut etiam ne vilescant sine moribus leges There is nothing more exposeth the Authority of Government to contempt then a publick and an open neglect of its Injunctions But where obedience to Laws is exacted under severe penalties where it doth not greatly import the common good to have them observed that Government is unequal and useth its Authority unjustifiable Leges cupiunt ut jure regantur The consideration of the sad effects the Schism in our Church hath occasioned the contempt that it hath brought upon our Ecclesiastical Governors That Religion it self is thereby made the scorn of Atheists That the Papists are thereby furnished with matter of objection reproach and scandal to the Reformation That every Age since it begun hath heightned the malignity of the Schism that it seems now to despise the Cure of the greatest Cassanders These considerations make it infinitely desirable to have it utterly extinguished There seems to be now left but one way of accommodating our Divisions and that is that we do not hereafter make those things wherein we differ matter and reason of Division That the Children of the Light and Reformation be at length as wise in this matter as the Church of Rome which is at unity with itself under more and greater differences then those that have troubled the peace of our Church which is sufficiently known to all Learned men Had it not been happy that this Schism had been prevented by the use of the power of the Church in Ecclesiastical dispensations If no Law had been made touching the matters that gave the first occasion to the Schism it had been in the Power of the Church to have prevented it No good Bishop but would have relaxed the Canons that enjoyned these Ceremonies about whose lawfulness there hath been so much Zeal mispent and unwarrantable heat and contention raised for the sake of peace and preservation of the Unity of the Church to men peaceable and otherwise obedient to her injunctions So dangerous it is to make Laws in matters of Religion which takes the conduct of Religion in so much from the guides of the Church The beginning of contention is like the breaking out of waters saith the wise man and they are assoon as begun more easily ended Before the Contenders have exasperated one another with mutual severities
the Jurisdiction of Bishops Novel 83. he decrees the like for Clerks as well for matters Civil as for Ecclesiastical Crimes reserving others to his officers and furthermore in case the Bishops cannot or will not take cognisance of them he refers them to his Magistrates Nay the Emperours proceeded further and did give Jurisdiction to Bishops not only over Clerks but also over Laymen Constantine the Great whose Law the Canonists ascribe to Theodosius made a very favourable constitution in behalf of Bishops whereupon he gives them the Cognisance of all civil Causes betwixt Lay-men upon the bare demand of one of the Parties albeit the other did not consent unto it in such sort as the Magistrates are bound to desist from the Cognisance of it as soon as one of the parties shall require to be dismist and sent thither whether it be at the beginning or middle or end of the suit Arcadius and Honorius derogating from this Law will have it to be by the joint consent of both parties and that by way of Arbitrement The same Emperours together with Theodosius do ordain That there shall be no appeal from the Episcopal Judgment and that their sentence shall be put in execution by the Serjeants and Officers of the Judges The two last Justinian would have to be observed for as for that of Constantine he did not insert it in his Books which Gratian hath confest in his decrees and whereas in the Code of Theodosius the inscription of the Title runs thus De Episcopali Judicio Justinian instead of it hath put De Episcopali audientia to shew that it is not properly any Jurisdiction that is bestowed upon them but a friendly and arbitrary composition to abridge process After this the Emperor Charles the Great in his Capitulary renewed the Law of Constantine and gave the same jurisdiction therein contained unto all the Bishops repeating the same Law word for word which the Popes have not forgot in their Decrees where they have inserted the Constitution of Constantine under the name of Theodosius just as Justinian did in his Books the Responses and Commentaries of Lawyers to give them the strength of a Law But I know there is a Question made by very Learned men Whether that Law of Constantine is not supposititious But whether it be or be not we have alledged enough without it to prove that Christian Emperors and the ancient Christian Church was not of the opinion of this Author and that his Citations so much as they are true are nothing to his purpose The cause or reason of those two Laws expressed in the Laws are For that the authority of Sacred Religion invents and finds out many means of allaying Suits which the Tyes and Forms of captious Pleadings will not admit of That the judgments of Bishops are true and uncorrupted That this is the choaking of those malicious seeds of Suits To the intent that poor men intangled in the long and lasting snares of tedious Actions may see how to put a speedy end to those unjust demands which were proposed to them But the Pope his Decretals the Court of Rome and other Ecclesiastical Courts are of old complained of as the source of Iniquity and injustice and of all the shufflings and tricks that ever could be invented in matter of pleading and that all Papal Christendome hath groaned miserably under them and I wish that we may never hear duly of any such complaints of our Ecclesiastical Courts It is worth observing how the Church and Common-wealth did Actions contrary to each other in pursuance of their several interests The Common-wealth endeavour'd to engage Bishops in the highest secular affairs and in their supream Judicatures and so the people would have it not doubting of such administrations as they might fairly expect from the Bishops ability Authority and Religion But on the other side the Church did as much decline them as she could and so far as she might she used her Restraint only in prohibiting them from medling for their own private gain in Temporal affairs Can. 14. Arles clericus turpis lucri gratia aliquid genus negotii non admittat but they did not take from them all opportunities both of doing good to their people and securing the Secular power of which they became part to their own assistance and without refusing their services to the Prince when required from which practice of the Church the Pope took advantage to put his peremptory restraints upon the Bishops and Clergy from intermedling in Secular affairs to make them the more submitted and dependent upon himself the better to arrive to his Ecclesiastical Monarchy The Dignities and favours that Bishops received at the Courts of Princes was the envy of the Pope and matter of quarrel against them and Petrus Blissensis upon such an occasion makes an Apologie to Pope Alexander the Third in an Epistle writ in the Name of the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury in defence of the Bishops of Ely Worcester and Norwich who attended then at Court upon the service of the King which because he hath been an Author produced by the other side in this Cause and because what he says for their being admitted into the Councels of Princes contains so many advantages to the Church and State I shall here transcribe Non est novum quod Regum Conciliis intersint Episcopi sicut enim honestate sapientia caeteros antecedunt sic expeditiores efficaciores in Reipub. administratione censentur quia sicut scriptum est minus salubriter disponitur regnum quod non regitur consilio Sapientum in quo notatur eos consiliis regum debere assistere qui sciant velint possint patientibus compati terrae ac populi saluti prospicere erudire adjustitiam Reges imminentibus occursare periculis vitaeque maturioris exemplis informare subditos quadam Authoritate potestativa praesumptionem malignantium cohibere He proceeds in his discourse and brings the examples of Samuel Isaiah Elisha Jehojada Zachary who were Priests and Prophets respectively and yet imployed in Princes Courts and Councels of Kings and adds Vnum noveritis quia nisi familiares Consiliarii Regis essent Episcopi supra dorsum Ecclesiae hodie fabricarent peccatores immaniter intolerabiliter opprimeret Clerum praesumptio laicalis then he adds advantages to Religion and policy hereby Istis mediantibus mansuescit circa simplices judicarius rigor admittitur clamor pauperum Ecclesiarum Dignitas erigitu relevatur pauperum indigentia firmatur in Clero libertas pax in populis justitia libere exercetur superbia opprimitur augetur laicorum devotio religio fovetur diriguntur judicia It is well known and I will not be so impertinent as to go about to prove that the chief Ministers of Religion have been the greatest men in Civil Government in all Nations and in all Religions as well as in ours and as certain it is this Author will never find reason or precedent of
the Lords and sate in one House they could not discharge that Office of a Representative so well as since they are divided from them and make a distinct House They could not well use that Freedom of Speech and Debate under the Observation of the great Lords upon whom the Principal Gentlemen had great Dependencies Their Consent was often very improperly such for he only truly and naturally consents who hath entire Freedom to dissent Si vis scire an velim effice ut possim nolle In the granting Aids for the Support of the Government and Defence of the Kingdom a Matter of the greatest Importance the Clergy Nobility and Commons stood divided and could not as the Ancient Constitution was by one Act of State be regularly and proportionably taxed according to the Exigency of the Affairs and their respective Abilities but those three Orders taxed themselves in such measures as they pleased which made the Kingdom Geryon-like a Monster of three Bodies Their several Concessions by this means not likely to be always equal and in the whole not competent to the instant necessity The Bishops Abbots and other Ecclesiastical persons of the Saxons time held their Lands free from all Secular Services besides Trinoda Necessitas viz. Expedition i. e. Supply for War pontium arcium extructio But King Ethelbald did grant that the Ecclesiasticks should be freed from all publick Charges except for the Building and Repairing of Castles and Bridges Ingulphus pag. 853. The like Immunity was allowed to the Clergy of the Empire by Honorius and Theodosius Lib. 4. Cod. Just de priv Dom. Aug. By the Great Charter their Priviledges were confirmed And for this reason the Clergy have taken themselves not of Right chargeable to Aids granted to the King by Parliament This Exemption hath been envied to them and made matter of Reproach though unduely in after Ages But notwithstanding this Exemption they have aided the Crown with Supplies frequently yet in such manner as asserted and saved their ancient Priviledge of being exempt that is they would not suffer themselves to be involved in a general Law but of their own Freedom and Will gave to the King which Concessions were notwithstanding not legal unless confirmed by Parliament to whom belonged always the power of judging of the Freedom and Ends of giving Aids and Benevolences and the necessity that required them But in the last Ages they have for their Commendation and Honor waved their pretences of Priviledge and Exemption and for the sake of Common Justice and the Publick Weal for avoiding being thought less in their Duty to the Publick than their Order required And for the better ascertaining and more equally adjusting the Parliamentary Aids they have submitted to be taxed by Acts of Parliament The Commons in Parliament we find as late as Henry 7. taxing only the Commons and that by Indenture between them and the King This Form of Grant is utterly exclusive of the Lords Power to charge the quantum times of Payment or ways of Levying of the Aids granted wherein they subject all Lands to the Levies thereof but the Lands of the Lords in Parliament or Land amortis'd to the Church Such an Indenture was made in Parliament held at Westminster 10 H. 7. and is pleaded at large in Rastals Entr. fol. 135. But of late our Government hath cleared it self from that grand inconveniency The Commons in Parliament and those whom they represent being far the greatest Proprietors they reasonably challenge it their Right to propound all Aids and appointing the Levies and Methods of raising them which because it must be agreed that the Commons in no congruity can tax the Lords authoritatively or impose upon them must have civilem intellectum that is the Commons in a Bill of Aids do propound that they will agree on the behalf of the Commonalty that they shall be taxed as the Bill propounds if the Lords for their part will agree the same CHAP. XXII NEither was our ancient Government without great faults and inconveniences in the conduct of Religion the principal care of all Governments on the one side by confounding Administrations which should have been kept distinct which was the fault of our Government in the Saxons time and by utterly disjoyning and severing the Church and State and not tying the Ecclesiasticks to a just dependency upon the State which was the Evil of after times that is to say the Ecclesiasticks were left to themselves to convene Councils and to make Canons without any dependence upon or relation to Parliaments The Constitution was such in the Saxons time that the Synods or Councils which govern'd in Religious matters were the same with their great Council or Parliament By these means all the Rules and Orders that were made in the matters of Religion were not Canons which are of the nature of Councils but Laws and obliged those that contravened them to temporal punishment The Church was thereby turned into a Dynasty and Religion was against its nature promoted by force which can onely truly obtain by persuasion And wheresoever this is in practice and use the Clergy to the great scandal of their Office will be entituled to all the Severities that shall be inflicted upon Dissenters Heretofore the Councils of the Church and the Authority of the State were unduly confounded After that we had Legatine Councils and Provincials convened by the Archbishops as they pleased not under the observation and controll of the Civil Power by which many inconveniences were occasioned many embroilments of the people happened the Authority of the Prince lessened and Civil Rights encroached upon the validity of several good Laws made in Parliament disputed clamoured against and sentenced as unlawful for want of a due subservience and dependence of the Ecclesiastical Conventions on Parliaments We had Imperium in Imperio or at least a Kingdom divided against it self This fault in our Government was help'd by Edward the Third our English Justinian he in the several Writs of Summons of the Bishops to Parliament made it a settled Rule that the clause of Praemunientes should be inserted requiring them therein to warn respectively Priorem Capitulum Ecclesiae vestrae C. ac Archidiaconos totúmque Clerum vestrae Diocesis quòd iidem Prior which if a Cathedral is the same as a Dean Archidiaconi totúsque Clerus vestrae Diocesis quòd iidem Prior Archidiaconi in propriis personis suis dictum Capitulum per unum idámque Clerus per duos Procuratores idoneos plenam ac sufficientem potestatem ab ipsis Capitulo Clero habentes praedictis die loco personaliter intersint ad consentiendum his quae tunc ibidem de communi concilio ipsius Regni nostri Divinâ favente Clementiâ contigerit ordinari And accordingly the several Bishops in obedience to such like Writs of Summons to Parliament to them directed summoned or warned their Deans or Priors Archdeacons and the Clergy by their Proxies
which have since made the Convocations or the Ecclesiastical Council of the Kingdom and are to meet at every Session of Parliament but to debate nothing but what is propounded and to publish nothing for Canons without the Royal Assent So that they are to act nothing but under the observation of Parliament This Convocation or Ecclesiastical Council other allowable Synods we have none ought not to convene but when a Parliament is sitting and continue no longer than the Parliament We ought to observe herein and applaud the excellent wisdom of our Government that in the very constituion of it hath provided for the peace of our Church by silencing Controversies which can never be determined with any effect such a wise expedient and course as the best instructed Christian Emperours did take by their Edicts prohibiting publick Disputations about subtil and nice Questions as Constantine Martianus Leo Anthemius Andronicus Heraclius to mention no more None but mad men and extravagantly presumptuous or utterly ignorant of Church History will ever hereafter go about by Acts of Councils to end Controversies but rather to shame the Dogmatizers out of their contentious zeal by shewing how little the ends and designs of Christianity are concerned one way or other in such Questions in which those that are most learned know least and a little learned ignorance would discharge most of them from any longer troubling the world And farther we must observe to the Honor of our Nation that it is so religiously wise as to commit the Care of conducting Devotions ordering the Decency of Publick Worship and censuring the Manners of Clerks to the Bishops and the Principal Clergy whereto their Religion Wisdom Devotion and Moderation bespeak them the fittest Persons No less remarkable is the Wisdom of our Government that it doth not make that which is properly the matter of Canons the Subject of their Legislation and thereby subject us to Temporal Punishments where the Admonitions of the Church and her Censures are more proportioned Remedies to the disobedient and froward Laws oblige us to punishments govern us by Fear and Awe oblige with Reason or without Reason because they are Laws They admit of no Ecclesiastical Relaxation or Dispensation and bind when the reason ceaseth In whatsoever thing relative to Religon a Law is made the matter is taken out of the Hands of the Church-men and no longer under their Government whose Government is a Ministry not Empire and Dominion They can institute nothing but what they may reasonably persuade Nihil tam voluntarium quam Religio Lact. We can have no more Religion or Truth than we can persuade Religion and Truth are to be promoted by moving the Will The Church rules by persuasion and her Canons oblige only for their Reason Religion for the sake of our own Edification and the Edification of others the Peace of the Church and Reverence of our Pastors and Teachers Canons in their own Nature are Temporary for the present necessity and convenience variable and mutable as the Edification of the Church shall require and the prudence of the Guides of the Church shall determine and therefore what is properly the Matter of Canons ought not to pass under Laws which are rigid and inflexible peremptory punitive and ungovernable And this magnifies the prudence and Christian Temper of our English Prelates CHAP. XXIII LAstly I observe what a dangerous Opinion our Judges sometimes had in reference to the Baronage of England viz. that it was in the Power of the King or in any Nobleman once summoned by Writ to Parliament as a Baron at the pleasure of the King to relinquish his place and determine the Nobility of his Family Which Opinion not being corrected would have made that State ambulatory and moveable upon which the whole Frame of the Government depends The Baronage of England is the Stabiliment of our Government and may be soon made too weak to support the other greater parts of the Building that rest upon it and are supported by it It is this that moderates between the two contending Interests of Prerogative and Liberty and prevents those violent Concussions which would otherwise unavoidably happen geminum gracilis Mare separat Isthmus Nec patitur conferre fretum si terra recedat Ionium Aegaeo frangat Mare Of what Importance therefore is it that we should be a Kingdom that cannot be shaken as much as Humane Wisdom can provide and frail Materials will admit That our Baronage should not hold their places precariously at the King's Pleasure and be deposed at his Will And yet our Judges after that Honor was fixed in the Families of those whom the King should appoint by Writ to hold that Honor and Place in the Commonwealth remembring that Baronage was at first a Service imposed ratione tenurae by Will the Conqueror Our Judges I say more able to judge of Private Rights than in Questions of State and Government being under a prejudice from the Consideration of the Original of our Baronies did allow the Plea of Thomas de Furnival who had been called to several Parliaments by Writ that he was no Baron for that he held not his Land per Baroniam vel partem Baroniae and therefore adjudged him no Baron Communia de Term. Sancti Hillarii Anno 19 E. 2. Rot. penes Remem Dom. Thes in Scaccario pro Thoma de Furnival Seniore exonerando But of this Cause they were not properly Judges the Lords themselves are the only Judges of the right Constitution of that House and they have anciently challenged a Writ of Summons de jure debito Justitiae for themselves and Descendents where they have been once summoned by Writ and answered that Writ and taken their place accordingly And the whole House doth constantly refuse to act until the Lord that complains of an Omission hath a Writ of Summons sent him What Apprehensions was had of this Honor by Thomas de Furnival and others in his time I know not But it might have been then and since it is well understood that that place which they sustain in the Government is of the highest Trust and the Benefits which redound therefrom to the Commonweal the greatest For they make the Government as well gentle and good as firm and stable These Noble Lords Marchers are placed between two great Contending Powers to preserve the due Boundaries and respective Limits and oblige them to Right and Reason by their Courage and Wisdom And for their Encouragement and Reward deserve the highest Honors and that they should be as they are immortal in their Families And accordingly it was resolved lately in the Case of the Honor of Purbeck in the Lords House that no Fine or Surrender of the Honor of a Baron can extinguish it But that notwithstanding it shall continue to his Heirs and Descendents And that upon the clearest and most important Reason for that the Constitution of the Government ought not as in its own Nature it cannot
to Persons or Territories by the Civil Authority Their Convocations are convened by the King 's Writ they debate nothing without his Leave Their Results become Canons and receive Sanction by the Royal Authority and do not pretend to infringe any Temporal or Civil Right or Law And besides their Convocations are always to be held sittting Parliaments and no longer not at any other times And whatever they debate or resolve is under the Observation of Parliament Nequid detrimenti capiat Respublica The Bishops make no Laws about Religion apart by themselves neither have they any Negative against any that are propounded and therefore are not answerable for any that are made or not made They have not the definition of Heresie but the Law hath declared it since the Reformation And the Writ De Heretico comburendo is since abrogated by the Christian Temper of a Parliament principally consisting of such Members that were conformable to the Institutions of the Church of England that is the legal Establishments of this our Christian Commonwealth The Church of England is no more her own present Establishments than the present thoughts of any man is the man himself as the thoughts of a man are more refined and unreprovable as the man grows wiser so do the Laws and Constitutions the Orders and Rules of a Church or Christian Republick alter amend and improve as the Wisdom and Virtue Religion and Devotion of the Government and the principal parts thereof in Church or State increaseth or advanceth Our Bishops have had and that with the greatest reason greater apprehensions of Schism and Separation than of Errors in Opinion which occasioned it as of worse importance to the Christian Faith than the Errors themselves Besides that a man cannot help being mistaken in many things but it is in every mans power to be modest and peaceable and wise to sobriety and hold the unity of the faith in the bond of peace and charity and not to revile and deprave that which hath the publick approbation though he cannot thereto fully assent It is great iniquity and unrighteousness to pretend to Liberty of Conscience as their right and in the mean time not to tolerate the publick appointments and what is authoritatively allowed and approved If Controvertible Opinions are allowed a Warrant for making a Sect and separate Communion and Churches are denominated and distinguished by them and consequently such Opinions are advanced unduly unto the same necessity of belief as Articles of Faith what will become of the Christian Verity where will it be recognized and purely professed how distinguished how understood how ascertained amidst the number of Opinions contended for by the several dogmatizing Sectaries with more zele than the undoubted and uncontrovertible Articles of Faith Nay I will adventure to say further on their behalf that Schismatical Separations would not offend them so little do they affect to be Magisterial but for that if this Disease should grow Epidemical there would be no such thing as a Christian Church and the Christian Religion would perish from the earth without a miracle It is onely designed by our Church that those whose Subscriptions are required should thereby onely signifie their allowance of the Liturgy and Articles as fit to be used and allowable What Plea then can our Separatists have for a Toleration for themselves who by their Separation seem unwilling to tolerate the publick Establishment either from our Governours Civil or Ecclesiastical or from one another in their divided ways To reform or change to these mens pleasures is impossible for that they cannot they positively differing from each other be all pleased in any one possible Establishment Besides that untill we cease to be Schismaticks and to be of separate and divided Communions upon the score of any dislike or but probable exception to what is publickly received or allowed the altering any thing for our satisfaction will be but applying the Cure to the Symptoms a cutting off one head of the Hydra By this way to effect an union is as impossible as it would be to empty the Ocean without stopping the cur-of the Rivers The Bishops are as all men by how much they are better learned are of the greatest Moderation in Opinions and can tell how duely to rate and value them according to the Prejudice or Advantage they do to the Ends of our Religon those several Opinions that have been contended with furious and rending Zeal in the several Ages of the Church to the Scandal of that peaceable Institution They can have a better Opinion of that man who hath unhappily entertained the less probable side of the Questions controverted if he opines with Modesty than they have of him that holds the most probable part thereof with a Sectary-Zeal Seperation from Contempt and Disdain of those of a different persuasion Their Moderation is known unto all men of it their Opposers have had very sensible Experience the several Dissenters cannot disown it but must confess that they have had severally kinder Usage from the Episcopal Men than their several Parties have from one another By their Learning Wisdom and Moderation which is most eminently known and observed in many of them and hath recommended them to the highest Esteem they must be allowed their Enemies being Judges to be the fittest Arbiters of the Controversies and the most likely and probable Procurers of the Peace of Christendome All the Dissenting Parties have reason to look upon them as their Common Sanctuary and Defence against the Outrages of each other But in this they must be pardoned if they being under a Law or Rule of their Superiors made as they think in a matter lawful act accordingly and do not disobey for their sake who think otherwise though in the mean time they pity their Scruples Indeed the Terms of the Nonconforming Ministers have been made hard upon them But that hath been from Reasons of State which the late unhappy Wars occasioned and they were ejected out of their Livings by Statute-Law And on the other side it is true that many men not to fit for that Holy Function have enjoyed Church Benefices but neither this can the Bishops help For they cannot reject a Clerk presented to a Benefice or eject him but as the Law will so sacred is the Right of Patronage and so fixed by the Law are Ministers in their Livings which is not Nice in the manners of Clerks and the Bishops cannot be severer than the Laws So that if some men not of the most unblamable conversations have kept their Livings and some of very unexceptionable Lives have been ejected The unhappy Nonconformists are directed where to make their Complaint But as there is little Cause of complaint on this part of the Episcopal Authority and function viz. Their Superintendency over the Pastors of their Dioceses So we shall observe how they have behaved themselves in the Exercise of the Power of the Keys For what is done therein by their Chancellors
govern as he pleaseth that the power of the Laws is solely in him that he may if he please use the consent of Parliaments to assist the reason of his Laws when he shall give any but it is great condescention in Kings to give a reason for what they do and a diminution to their most unaccountable Prerogative You say That they are for a Popish Successor and no Parliament and do as much as in them lies give up our antient Government and the Protestant Religion the true Christian Faith to the absolute will of a Popish Successor giving him a Divine Right to extirpate God's true Religion established amongst us by Law and to evacuate our Government by his absolute pleasure Our Government by a King and Estates of Parliament is as antient as any thing can be remembred of the Nation The attempt of altering it in all ages accounted treason and the punishment thereof reserved to the Parliament by 25. Ed. 3. The conservancy of the Government being not safely to be lodg'd any where but with the government it self Offences of this kind not pardonable by the King because it is not in his power to change it This is our Government and thus it is established and for ages and immemorial time hath thus continued a long Succession of Kings have recognized it to be such And just now when we are under the dread of a Popish Successor some of our Clergy are illuminated into a mystery that hath been concealed from the beginning of Governments to this day from the wisdom of all Princes and Ministers of State That any authority in the Government not derived from the King and that is not to yield to his absolute Will was rebellious and against the Divine Right and Authority of Kings in the Establishment against which no usage or prescription to the contrary or in abatement of it is to be allowed That all Rights are ambulatory and depend for their continuance upon his pleasure So that though the Reformation was made here by the Government established by Law and hath acquired civil Rights not to be altered but by the King and the three Estates These men yet speak say you as if they envied the Rights of their own Religion and had a mind to reduce the Church back again into a state and condition of being persecuted and designed she should be stript of her Legal Immunities and Defensatives and brought back to the deplorable helpless condition of Prayers and Tears do utterly abandon and neglect all the Provisions that God 's providence hath made for her protection Nay by this their new Hypothesis they put it by Divine Right into the power of a Popish Successor when he pleaseth at once by a single indisputable and irresistable Edict to destroy our Religion and Government And these opinions you say they are the more inclined to entertain For That they believe no Plot but a Presbyterian Plot for of them they believe all ill and call whom they please by that hated name and boldly avow that Popery is more eligible than Presbytery for by that they shall have greater revenues and more Authority and Rule over the Lay-men This is a heavy charge if true but it is imputable I am sure but to a few and not so generally as some malevolent men of the Popish Faction are industriously busie to have it For if it were I confess it might choque the constancy Resolution and Zeal of the most addicted to the service of the Church men and make them at least very indifferent in their concerns For these mistakes are so gross and inexcusable that they ought to be permitted to suffer the smart of their own follies and to be corrected by the evils they are drawing down upon themselves with their own hands They deserve to suffer as betrayers of their own Country and to be prosecuted with greater shame and ignominy by all of the Reformed Religion than the Traditores were by the antient Christians These their diserting of the true Christian Faith being much less excusable then that of theirs and of greater mischief as of deeper malignity How many of the Clergy-men are thus misled we know not but they seem many more than they are because they are most in view and come often under observation frequent publick houses and talk loud because they want the Complement of their preferments But certainly Sir what you say to be the declared opinions of some Clergy-men is the business now of the Papists to propagate Hoc Ithacus velit magno mercantur Atridae These are agreeable to and indeed make up the most modern Project and Schem of the Popish Plot. Since the discovery of their first design of killing the King and massacring of the Protestants They have taken such courage by observing how little power we have to prevent their design that they have us in scorn and in the vilest contempt They now think that we are not worth destroying but by our own hands that we are not worthy of their trouble or the charge of Executioners of their providing How entertaining is it to his Holiness to find the Church of England the impregnable Bulwark of the Reformed Religion easily fall into his hands by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons without the trouble of attacking her either by force or Argument which hath hitherto wanted success and the attempts always attended with dishonor and mischief to his See How pleasant will it be to him to see us perish and our destruction to be from our selves With this he will answer all the irrefragable Apologies of the Church of England for her departure from the Communion of the Romish Church Then he will say with triumph our Church destroyed her self and perished by a Divine Fate for her unwarrantable and Sacrilegious Schism for so he will call our follies and impute them to Divine infatuations The manner of our destruction will be a better Argument and of more force against the Doctrine of the Reformation than all the Arguments of all the Doctors of that Church to this day For this purpose since the Discovery of the Popish Plot it is that Sir Robert Filmers Books were Re-printed together and recommended by the Title Page and the publick Gazet to our reading Since the Discovery of the Plot we have had variety of Books Printed to the same purpose viz. To prove that all Kings as Kings are absolute by Divine Right Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have had men imployed to search all our antient Records and Histories to find out something more antient than our Parliaments as now constituted that it may serve as a pretence to take them away Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have the memory of our late calamitous War revived to raise a Pannick fear of another and to make the King believe that the genius of the Nation is Rebellious and that the Protestant Religion it self is to be apprehended by Kings It is
forme so as they may seem to come from the Fanatick party to render the King jealous of them as they are of the Libels against the Parliament and their proceedings to breed misunderstandings between the King Parliament and People It is since the Popish Plot was discovered that Fanaticisme is represented more intolerable than Popery That the Popish Plot evident to the satisfaction of the King and several Parliaments and of our greatest Judicatures is yet told us not to be so certain as that the Fanaticks are Traitors in their hearts though they own no principles as the Papists do that warrant Treasonable practices And these Mercenaries as frankly as if they had for the dividing of the Nation a Warrant so to do call all Fanaticks that oppose Popery desire Parliaments and expect they should use that power that is lodged in them to keep out Popery and preserve our Government and to bring to punishment those wicked men that have notoriously designed to destroy it The belief of the Popish Plot in the mean time is by scoffs and paltry Rhimes permitted publickly to be sung in the Streets put out of Countenance and those that believe it exposed as a sort of credulous Fools or designing Knaves Such a vile esteem the Papists now have of us that they prosecute us with their scorn and use us as if we were below their hate They think our divisions which they have made have already destroyed us and they now hire a sort of Scaramouchy Zanys Merry Andrews and Jack-Puddings to insult over us and make sport at our miseries These pleasant Knaves cry with one side of the Face and laugh with the other but in the mean time they cry in jest but laugh in good earnest He that had the art of imitating a grave Spaniard with one side of his body and a brisk French man on the other side rendred both Nations ridiculous These vain fellows deprave every thing they meddle with and what ever they say of Church or State Religion or Policy is raillery and abuse and Pamphleting scurrility Lord under what seeming fatality do we labor that it can be thought to the Service of the Church or State to employ such Knaves We are used like Samson bound and our Eyes put out and made sport for the Philistims By these pyd Pipers our young men are seduced and danc'd down a precipice though these merry Knaves have not skill enough to commend them for Rat-catchers if our City should be infested with that vermin as they say the Town of Hammel once was But the Daemon that appeared there a pyd Piper who destroy'd their Children as well as their Rats was not more mischievous to that Town than these motley Knaves are to the Kingdom and Nation It is an insufferable indignity that the tragical State of our Nation should become almost daily the matter of a Rascally Farse the very anguish and groans of the Nation turned into Laughter and Mockery such a barbarity was never used to a Nation It is an excess of Petulancy to make abstract misery in the very form of it mimically represented matter of Mirth and Laughter These men were born out of time and were fit for no age but that of Nero of whose consort they should have been when he played the Destruction of Troy to the Burning of Rome But I do not doubt but His Majesties Justice will e're long overtake these incendiaries that are so pleasant at the embroilment of his Kingdom when it shall be duly represented to him what beautefeau's they are and unmerciful deriders of the Calamities of his People which they occasion or promote tho they think they may pass any thing of this kind upon the Nation made vain with trifling false wit and Buffoonery It is now Twenty years since our Nation was infected with this sort of wit and now we are to dye of the disease and we have a Fiddle provided for us that have been bit with this venemous Tarantula to dance and frisk us to our destruction not to our cure and yet we pay the Fidler This thing wit the greatest debauchment of this age hath depraved not only the manners but the Judgment and understanding of the Nation too It hath been accounted the best accomplishment of men in place the best part of the Learning of this last Age It is not the reason of the Leviathan so much as the vanity of wit that hath propogated atheism and corrupted our manners This hath made our Judgments insincere and trifling and our determinate resolutions in matters of the greatest moment slight and Phantastical introduc't idleness and neglect of solid Learning which requires labor and application to obtain while this extemporary faculty has been accounted an admired accomplishment There is a sort of wit very commendable which Tully calls celeritas in verbis and the Greek Epigram 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is a pleasant entertainment in conversation and a commendable refreshment where our minds are tired with anxious and graver business and the troubles and cares of human life but this ought to observe its times its proper subjects it ought to be confined to Table talk an evening compotation and the hours of mirth and the relaxation of our mind It may be used decently in a Comical Farce but it is not allowable in Satyr most undecent is the use of it in Tragedy But yet it hath insolently interposed in our Politicks governed publick Councels sometimes determined debates in Parliament hath made our Pulpits contemptible our Theology trifling It is admitted to resolve the greatest Questions and determine Cases of Conscience to establish and refix Church Gevernment hath usurped an authority to alter and pull down Governments and to render them tottering when they are as firmly establisht and fixt as a Rock That Wit that is abhorred by all men that are wise and honest is that versatile shifting squinting distorting of the understanding that it views nothing truly and represents things not according to their true nature but under false Fantastical Schemes which they affix to them to abuse the judgments of others a man can never arrive to any perfection in this faculty untill he is become false and lost his truth and modesty and none but weak men are entertained with it and such who do not desire to understand truth but to serve a turn and love to be deceived and deceive themselves for advantage it is in perfection in old Knaves and admired by young Coxcombs It is the Hypocrisie of the Tongue a plausible mode of lying and slandring and at best but a pleasant Knavery It will render ridiculous or culpable by false representations the most noble and heroical actions and put false colors upon most detestable Villanies It can discredit a man by honoring him and make a thing incredible by the very mode of believing it making a man ridiculous it concludes him at the same time unworthy and to confute the most avowed Truths there
needs no more than to raise a fit of laughter upon it which has the same effect with the men of Wit and their vain admirers as reducing a false proposition to an absurdity Thus the reason of this age is governed by our risibility The Popish Writers have thus tickled us with their Wit that we are ready to dye and perish laughing and we know not nor care to Judge what does truly concern our preservation And by improving the vanity of some youngsters they have drawn them to question the Truth of the Popish Plot and some can believe every hour of the day when they meet with a merry Popish Pamphlet that there is a Protestant Plot on foot though they believe it I am sure not much longer than they are reading it I will not grudge my pains in furnishing a short Demonstration of the Popish Plot since it is of such importance to the saving of these men and the whole Nation which possibly may fix their minds notwithstanding so vain they be into a belief of it which I have made short that it may be the better remembred which I do in kindness to them since it was lately and may be so again shortly a criminal matter to bring the truth of it into question and they are by all honest men reckoned as Plotters themselves who doubt it The Plot has been declared by the Kings Proclamation and four Parliaments one of them consisting of Pensioners and Dependents on the Court which for eighteen years together were giving Demonstrations of their Loyalty to their Prince almost forgetting the publick Weal A solemn National Fast has been Indicted by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Authority of the Kingdom for averting the mischiefs thereby designed and solemnly Celebrated by the whole Nation in which certainly they did not mock God and deride his providence Many unparalleld Villanies have been committed for the stifling concealing and suppressing the discovery of it which however wicked the Papistical sort of base false and degenerate Christians are we cannot without breach of Charity towards them think they would commit cheaply and without cause and to no purpose They have murdered a Minister of Justice because he had the knowledge of it and left nothing undone that they thought necessary to Assacinate another for strenuously opposing it They have attempted upon the Lives of our Witnesses by perjuries and forgeries they have endeavored to charge them with the most infamous crimes endeavored to destroy them in their Lives and Reputations too in a forme of Justice They have attempted by fears and rewards upon the integrity of all our Witnesses to draw them to retract their Testimony against the Plot for which some of their Agents have been judicially censured One Gentleman to the Pillory Fined a 1000 l. and Condemned to a years imprisonment so evident and notorious was his offence and by the Court thought so heinous That it provoked the passion of the Court and they seemed to exceed the ordinary Rules of Justice for that they judged the Case to be of an exorbitant and transcendent nature The Plot of the Meal Tub is so sublimated a piece of wickedness the last accomplishment of villany it hath out-done all former and will never be out-done in after ages The Papists by the Discovery of the first Plot became less hopeful in a Massacre and of effecting their purpose by force They dare not now kill the King for that the World would not now believe it to be done by Mr. Claypole and his accomplices which must have born the blame from the Papists and he and they long since Executed as Traitors if that part of the Plot against the Kings Life had not been prevented by being detected I say the first design of the Plot being rendered less feasible by the discovery they keep the King alive with care as well for their avoiding the rage of the Nation as to lessen the credit of the Plot But contrive to destroy as many as they thought fit to be Massacred in forme of a legal process and to charge them with a design of raising Rebellion against the King They had made a List of a great number whom they intended to charge principal Nobles and worthy Gentlemen about the Town had prepared witnesses to swear the charge against them and would with more ease after the first Conviction and Execution have sworn all that they had a mind to destroy into the same guilt And thus all the truly Religious the noble good and virtuous of our Nation that had courage enough to own assert and defend the true Christianity and our Government must to the eternal dishonor of our Nation and Religion have suffered the execrable death of Traitors We have reason to think them humane when they only designed a Gun-powder Treason or a Massacre and our abhorrence of this usage dischargeth in us all reluctancy to Martyrdom Let them bring us to the Stake as Martyrs then we shall bear our Testimony to the truth of the best Religion and our Lives will not be cheaply lost but by this means we must be forced to dishonor this Religion by our deaths by a Massacre or a Gun-powder Plot the vileness cruelty and treachery of that Apostate Church had been declared to all the World and that false Religion as well as the professors of it had been rendered detestable for which end a good man would scarce refuse to dye but by this means they would have forced us to personate their own proper Crimes and Villanies and dishonor our own peaceable and holy Religion A man of Honor prefers his Honor to his Life and would redeem it by his Death But by this means we were though innocent to lose our Lives by dishonor and to fasten a stain upon our Memories by our death The Priests their impudent Lyes at their deaths in denying the matters of the Plot of which they were upon clear evidence Convicted and Sentenced must have past for truths and all our worthy men dying with protestations of their innocence must to the everlasting infamy of our Religion and Nation been accounted false and impious at their last breath there is no reason to be assign'd of the patience of God or Man towards such miscreants but that they may have time to add one impiety to another until an easie vengeance triumphs over them for though this last mentioned Plot is cleared beyond all exception their Faces are hardened and they are not yet ashamed but have since contrived and suborned Witnesses to swear the very Discovery of the first Plot to be a false contrivance of a Plot against the Papists To this purpose they suborned a Son by perjury to commit parricide against his Father the greatest Sin against Earth the other the greatest affront against Heaven What a Religion is this that must be thus supported Nay as if they did not fear or care to loose the favour of their most indulgent Prince which they have possest since he
all I cannot imagine they can pretend an umbrage from the Holy Scriptures for such unheard of opinions The Jews indeed had a Government and Laws of Gods framing and appointment and a King of their own choosing and such a King as they desired by God's permission they had But their form of Government ought with less reason to be the Rule of all kingly Governors because it was a Government chosen by themselves then the Laws of the Jews ought to be the Laws of all Nations which they are not though made and enacted by God himself Christ would not make himself a Judge in a private Right submitted to him He determined the right of the Roman Empire by the possession of Soveraign Authority and such as the whole world had made it his Disciples were obliged to acknowledge it by their Obedience and Submissions which is the summ of the Apostles Doctrin in this matter The Christian Religion instituted no form of Governments but enjoyns us to be obedient to those we have not only by express command in the case but by its general Rules of a most refined improved and extensive morality But though I said the Scriptures have not prescribed or directed any universal Form of Government yet the Scripture hath declared the falshood of this new Hypothesis of Kingly Government to be Jure Divino or by Divine Right For St. Peter 1 Peter 2.13 and 14. stiles Kings as well as the Governors under him the ordinance of man which cannot have any other sense but that men make them and give them their powers By St. Paul the power of Government indeed is called Gods Ordnance Rom. 13.2 but that is for this reason because in general God approves of Governments as necessary to the well being of Mankind for the improvement of humane nature for the punishing of Vice Encouragement and security of virtue without them it being impossible to live honestly and in peace And he hath made them the under Ministers of his providence and care over Mankind and expects of them that they should promote his true Honor and Worship in the World which will be always accompanied with the exercise of all civil Virtues These two different places must be so understood that they may be both true and by no other interpretation can they be reconciled and made consistent It is impossible that any thing can be of mans appointment which is of Gods Ordination there can be no such thing as a Co-legislative power of Men with their Maker Government therefore is from God as he hath made Governments necessary in the general order of things but the specification thereof is from Men and the best definition that can be made of Government is in the words of both the Apostles put together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and such Governments which men make God approves and requires our obedience to them upon all those reasons which make Governments necessary The natural and easie consequence and result of these Scriptures is this which I desire those Gentlemen to observe That whatsoever is not lawfully established by men no Law of God not the Christian Law doth oblige us to obey The Christian Religion doth equally condemn in the reason of its Institutions Usurpation and Contumacy Where the Apostle admonisheth us that if we be free we should not become servants he hath by virtue of that Admonition made it commendable not to suffer the Encroachments of power over us Most certainly therefore as the Christian Religion doth not prejudice the Soveraign Rights of Princes such as they are in the several forms and Modells of Monarchical Governments non eripit terrestria qui regna dat coelestia as Sedulius so doth it not enlarge them when by the Gospel God made us free from his own positive Laws to the Jews he did not intend thereby de Jure to render us slaves to the Arbitrary pleasure of Men. No Man intends by any thing in the Scripture that all mankind is obliged to any one form of Government and therefore all Men are left to their own It hath not therefore altered the terms of Government and Obedience that every Nation hath Established for themselves but hath confirmed and strictly obliged the observance of them To Obedience to Government we are obliged by as many ties as there are Christian Virtues and he must disown his Christianity that departs from his due Allegiance And since our Saviour is declared King of Kings and Lord of Lords all Kings Christian Kings especially are to govern in Imitation of his mercy and goodness and in subserviency to the Interest of his Religion and Kingdom Regum timendorum in proprios greges Reges in ipsos imperium est Javis cuncta supercilio moventis Whence then is this absolute Authority of Kings if it come neither from God nor Man Give me leave now to inform you that these opinions render you all Traytors guilty of Treason of State perduellionis rei obnoxious to be punished as Traytors by an Authority lodged in Parliament In the Constitution of the Government You your selves must needs condemn your selves to have forfeited all your own who hold such Principles that tend to destroy every Mans Right by resolving all things into the absolute pleasure of a Monarch in which you mostly disserve the King and are contrary to His Majesties late Declaration The Men of these Principles the less of the Government they are entrusted with the better for the less they have to give up and betray I confess if I could believe that this Doctrin was become Orthodox among them and the prevailing opinion of the Clergy I should conclude us to be the most unhappy people under the Sun This is an Hypothesis indeed that will bring on new Heavens and a new Earth but such wherein no peace or Righteousness can ever dwell But I deem all such as are Defenders and Promoters of it do deserve a civil Excommunication more smarting then their Ecclesiastical and to be condemned to live upon and only feed themselves with their thin speculations and to be excluded from any share of that Government that they professedly in their Principles betray to be punished as seditious persons and most mischievous Schismaticks far more intolerable in this matter than the scrupulous brother-hood for their boglings at an indifferent and insignificant Ceremony For that to the ruin of our Religion and destruction of the publick peace they divide from that polity to which by drawing here their first breath they made Faith and to which the condition of their birth doth oblige them they falsify that which Arrian in his Epictetus calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than which nothing is more sacred and inviolable By creating themselves a new Allegiance and obtruding it upon their fellow Citizens and Members of the same Kingdom they set up a Kingdom within a Kingdom more dangerous and mischievous than the Papal Imperium in Imperio which certainly will be introduced if this Modern and
monstrously extravagant opinion can prevail by a general Credence It is criminal and no less dangerous to the being of any policy to restrain the legislative Authority and to entertain Principles that disables it to provide remedy against the greatest mischiefs that can happen to any Community No Government can support it self without an unlimited Power in providing for the happiness of the people No Civil establishment but is controlable and alterable to the publick Weale What ever is not of Divine Institution ought to yield and submit to this Power and Authority The Succession to the Crown is of a civil nature not established by any Divine Right Several Kingdoms have several Laws of Succession some are Elective others Haereditary under several Limitations All humane Constitutions are made tum sensu humanae imbecillitatis under reasonable exceptions of unforeseen accidents and Emergencies that may happen in humane Affairs and so they must be intended and so interpreted The several limitations of the descent of the Crown must be made by the people in conferring the Royal Dignitie and power which is more or less in several Kingdoms The descent of the Crown is governed according to the presumed will of the People and the presumption of the peoples will is made by measuring and considering what is most expedient to the publick good whereas private Estates are directed in their descent according to the descendents And this is the reason that the descent of the Crown is governed by other rules than private Estates Only one daughter and not all as in private Estates shall succeed to the Crown because the strength of the Kingdom is preserved when continueds united and the peace and concord of the people better Established A son of the second venter shall inherit which is not allowed in private Estates because a son of the second venter is equally of the blood of the great Ancestor upon whom the Crown was first conferred by the people or after he had got into the Throne obtain'd their Submissions may equally participate of his Virtues If the Royal Family be extinct it belongs to the people to make a new King under what limitations they please or to make none for the Polity is not destroyed if there be no King created and consequently in case of this cesser or discontinuance of the Regnum there may be Treason committed against the people By all which it is evident that the succession to the Crown is the peoples right And though the succession to the Crown is Hereditary because the people so appointed it would have it so or consented to have it so Yet in a particular case for the saving the Nation the whole line and Monarchy it self it may be altered by the unlimited Power of the Legislative Authority We have been more just to the Royal Succession than the wonderful Sir Robert Filmer for his Hypotheses will not allow at all of Hereditary rightful Succession For the establishing the right of the Universal Empire of the World in Adams right heir since this illuminato hath enlightned the world in this secret no Successor can derive any hereditary right from his Predecessor His Title can be only his own possession for no man can claim by descent the Usurpation of his Father but he that is not conscious to the wrong and is bonae fidei possessor under the presumed right and title of his Father I would be understood to speak as the matter can be considered in a free Reason not under the prejudice of any positive municipal law for to such laws the right of Crowns as the Renowned Knight will have it are not submitted So that here in this matter their Knight fails them and can give them no help Their other Friend the great Leviathan Maker is so far from establishing an Hereditary Succession that he leaves Kings to be rightfully assaulted deposed and destroyed by any person that can who stands in danger of being destroyed by the King though justly condemned to death Leviathan Part. 2. Cap. 21. Those saith he that have committed a Capital Crime for which they expect death have the liberty to defend themselves by Arms as well as the Innocent But I mention him only to render him detestable for I take his Books to be the dehonestamenta humani generis But I desire them to regard the sense of all Mankind in the words of Isiodorus Pelusiota 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This Governed the Judicious and Learned Dr. Falkner for when he had carried Christian Loyalty as high as he could to the honor of our Religion and the benefit of the World for which we are all extreamly beholden to him he concludes thus in his excellent Book called Christian Loyalty That if any Prince undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or to give it up into the hands of another Sovereign Power or that really acts the Destruction or the Universal calamity of his People he tells us Grotius thinks that in his utmost extremity the use of a defence as a last refuge ultimo necessitatis presidio is not to be condemned provided the care of the Common good be preserved And if this be true saith he it must be upon this ground that such attempts of ruining de ipso facto include a disclaiming the governing of these persons as Subjects and consequently of being their Prince or King what unreasonableness is there then in shutting the door upon him and making it fast against him by an act of State who hath excluded himself by his principles and designs For the truth of the fact I shall only refer you to Secretary Coleman his Letters wherein he saith that his Masters interest and the King of France his interest is one and the same and their design their glorious design the same viz the extirpating the Northern Heresie how far the King of France hath complied with the design the cruel Persecution and exils of his Protestant Subjects who at the time of that letter were under the security and protection of the Laws of that Kingdom the Faith of that Crown do declare to the world And by what secret influences I know no the is made so great his conquests so easie and expedite that he is like to do the work himself here in England and go away with all the Glory But if the work must lye upon our hands let no man think with himself that Popery is not to be introduced here because the numbers of Papists are few for that will not render the design impracticable but the execution of it were cruel and barbarous a whole Nation upon the matter must be corrupted from the Faith of the true Religion or destroy'd One single arm of an ordinary strength not resisted may assassinate a whole Nation Let no man betray his Country and Religion by pretending the example of the patience and sufferance of the Primitive Christians for our rule The Reformed Religion hath acquired a civil right and the protection of Laws if we
ought not to loose our Lives Liberties and Estates but where forfeited by Law we ought much rather not to loose them for the profession of the best Religion which by Law is made the publick national Religion And it is strange that some men of the same Religion in profession can think that notwithstanding it makes no matter what is done to a man if he be Religious but if he be not so the least publick injuries and injustice may be resisted vindicated remedyed and by right defended by old Laws or new ones to be made for that purpose The Christian Religion was publisht when the whole world was Pagan and therefore it was submitted to such usage as the Governments would give it But when the Christian Faith had by miracles of patience declared it self to be of Heaven and of a Divine Original According to the Prophecies on that behalf it took possession of the Empire and Crowns and Scepters became submitted to the Cross and the Christians acquir'd a civil right of Protection and Immunity which they ought not they cannot relinquish and abandon no more than they can destroy themselves or suffer violence and cruelty to destroy the Innocent Such as thus perish shall never wear a Martyrs Crown but perish in the next world for perishing in this This will be interpretatively Crucifying Christ afresh after he is received up into Glory i. e. After his Religion is exalted into dignity and honor and civil Authority If the senate of Rome had been Christians they would never have given up the Government to a Pagan Augustus with a power to him and his Successors to make laws for extirpating the Christian Faith what is said of the Christian Religion and Paganism holds between the Reformed Religion and Popery If any man is so vain as to say that an unalterable course of Succession is established amongst us by Divine Right I say he is a man fitted to believe transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope he is deeply lapsed into fanaticism he dreams when he is awake and his dreams are dreams of phrensie There are somethings so false that they cannot be disproved as somethings are so evidently true that they cannot be proved This proposition hath no color to ground it self upon no medium to prove it no argument for it which is to be answered nor nothing more absurd than it self to reduce it to But if any shall add that this Doctrin is the Doctrin of the Reformation and adventure to tell the people so they are the most impudent falsaries that ever any age produced when there is scarce a Child but hath heard what was done said and maintained by the Clergy of England in the case of Mary Queen of Scots a Popish Successor in the earliest time of our Reformation here in England Our Age is blessed with a Clergy renownedly Learned and Prudent by the Providence of God and the piety of our Ancestors they possess good though not to be envyed Revenues and Honors It is scarce possible they should have many among them that can countenance a proposition so wickedly impious and sacrilegious that we cannot have new Laws but must loose the old at the pleasure of a Popish Successor against not their own interest and the Rights of the Church but against the Rights and Liberty of Religion it self For she is capable of Franchises and Immunitys which ought above all things to be most zealously asserted and defended by her Ministers can they themselves with their own hands ever pull down her Hedg and destroy her Defensatives and expose her helpless to the rage of her implacable Enemies and suspend all the Legal security she hath for her preservation upon the Life of our present King whom God long preserve If Kings be admitted to have a power to make Laws One Proclamation may establish the Popish Religion amongst us which the Papal Bulls so long as that See continues will never be able to effect Next to Religion her self the Revenues of the Church challenge their faithful care for they are at best but Usu-fructuary Trustees of her Endowments for the Succession which they will wretchedly betray to an Arbitrary Successor if they do not repress such Opinions that pretend to change the Government into an absolute jure Divinity Monarchy which will leave nothing jure divino but it self and the Popedom Kings for their so doing have the authority of Sir Robert Filmer who affirms in his Treatise called the Power of Kings Fol. 1. That the Laws Ordinances Letters Patents Priviledges and Grants of Princes have no force but during their Life if they be not ratified by the express consent or at least by the sufferance of the Prince following who had a knowledge thereof This is but the necessary consequence and result from the Doctrine of the absolute power of a Prince for in such Government the Concessions of a Predecessor can no more oblige the Successor than he can Govern when he is dead and the Successor must be absolute in his time as the Predecessors were in theirs But in vain is the Net spread in the sight of any Bird this deceit is of so gross a thread that it cannot pass with the common people much less upon our Clergy but I will not dissemble what may be the true reason of the seduction of some young good natured Gentlemen of the Clergy They perswade themselves that if these principles and opinions of the Unlimited Power of Kings had been received the late Wars had been prevented Not rightly considering that if such opinions had never been broached or Universally rejected that War could never have ensued and we should together with peace have enjoyed our ancient Government which our Ancestors transmitted to us without that miserable inter-regnum I would not be perversely understood by any man as if I went about to justify our late War This is all I say that every Government once established will continue for ever if all the parts of it would unalterably consent to preserve it to which their narural Allegiance doth oblige them And never any Prince endeavored to change the Government but where part of the people were first willing or content to have it so Those false flatterers that go about to remove the boundaries of power and change the Government are the greatest enemies to the quiet and happy Reigns of the Kings and the peace and prosperity of Kingdoms And if they do adventure to call the ir fellow Subjects by any opprobrious names of disloyalty because they will not joyn with them in such change they are as absurdly impious and insolent as any Prince or State would be who should challenge another as free and absolute as himself for his Tributary and Vassal and traduce him for a troubler of the World because he would not Compose the Quarrel thus injuriously sought with the surrender of his Crown and dignity I desire these Gentlemen to consider that the happiness of a Nation is best
by which it became capital is not understood as he tells us in the place before cited I shall not trouble the Reader with unfolding the matter But why doth he trouble himself to make Kings Fathers of their Countries some cannot be so and some have no mind to be so and yet they ought to be Kings And some that have not been Kings have been so and so styled as the great M. Tully for defeating the Catiline Conspiracy He was by decree of the Senate call'd Pater Patriae Those are with reason truly called Patres patriae which either relieve their Country from miserable pressures which is the civil death of a Nation and for this reason our King hath the honor of being called Pater Patriae and we hope that he will wear that honorable Title upon a second deliverance of us from a most deplorable condition Or else such who bring the Nation to an exalted state of happiness so much beyond their old state of things that they seem to give the Nation a new civil Life Being and Birth For his etymological argument from the notation of the Word it is too putid to be insisted upon tho not more ridiculous than his Hypothesis But for that the reduction of our duty to our King to the fifth Commandment may seem to give some advantage to the Hypothesis with Fathers who know no bounds of their power over their Children It must be observed that the Decalogue is not a compleat Rule of Morality The decalogue comprised the Principal Laws of that common Wealth which God their Law giver by a most Solemn Act of his Legislation did more awfully oblige them to observe God that time was their King Rebellion was as Idolatry and the sin of Witchcraft and the Defection of one of their Cities to Idolatry was punished as a revolt and Rebellion Deut. 13. v. 15. He had provided for his honor and worship and their Allegiance in the first Table and did design by the 5th Commandment to lay the Foundation of all positive morality by providing for a Reciprocation of kindnesses by injoyning the gratitude and fitting returns of Children to their Parents and by putting Children under obligations to be taught and instructed by their Parents But our duty to Governors is more duly referred to all the other Commandments because Government secures the observation of those Laws to us by which we enjoy our selves and ours freed from the Violations of Lust Appetite Fraud and Violence We do not honor our King by relief in his fortune which is commanded to be done by our Parents in the precept of honoring them our subsidies and Aids are not to that purpose but contributions to the charges of the Government they are the just price of our immunity protection from fraud and violence for which cause pay we tribute But whosoever he be that hath more respect for this Knights works then I have may find him more gently treated by a very worthy Gentleman in a very candid and judicious book called Patriarcha non Monarcha But what is the meaning of these flattering Books they cannot but be nauseous to His Majesty who is a very wise Prince and knows how sensless such Books are and besides they make the People afraid and the Nation unquiet from the apprehensions they give that the Government will be changed Notwithstanding the King hath given such solemn assurance to the Nation by his late Declaration that we shall have frequent Parliaments and that he will govern by Law They would have had a better market for the Divinity they bestow upon Princes with Alexander after he had lost his Virtue and with those Vile Emperors whose Names are Regum opprobria for such the flatterers of antient times Deifyed those who had ceas'd to be men they made Gods and when they had left nothing about them that was tolerable they magnified their power which was already most intolerable If the Kings hereafter would but read the History of Kings under that conclusion that a wise observer of Humane Events made after a long observation and experience and would make experiments of the truth of it in their own reading Kings would be glorious and the Nations they govern happy and full of peace They would find therein so many effectual Documents to fear God and regard men and govern them righteously Si Vitam spectes hominum si denique Mores Artem vim fraudem cuncta putes agere Si propiùs spectes fortuna est arbitra Rerum Nescis quid dicis sed tamen esse putas At penitus si introspicias ultima primis Connectas solus rector in orbe Deus Alciat People can be no happyer than Government and Laws design to make them though they do not alwayes answer the good designments of the Government To what purpose then are these new Hypotheses fram'd and published Kings are exempted by their Office and the sacredness of their persons from all fears but the fears of Nature and these can never be discharg'd Those who do ill will fear ill Eternally tho their power were made little less than omnipotent for the frame of Humane Nature hath made it necessary to be so Besides God hath made one thing against another there is a Divine Nemesis interwoven in the Nature of things and God will always govern the World Omne sub regno duriore regnum The great Mogul at his inauguration swears that his People shall be at peace at home and victorious abroad afflicted neither with plague nor famine but enjoy Health and Plenty all his days This seems extraordinary Pompous and Arrogant but it means no more than this that he will govern them so vertuously that Gods Providence shall be always propitious to his People and is no more in plain English than what our Church offers up in her publick prayers for the King viz. That he may govern us in Wealth Peace and Godliness that he may live long and so govern us ought to be every honest mans Prayers But after all these vain Hypotheses contriv'd for making Kings absolute it will be more easie for Kings to make their reigns unquiet and turn their Kingdoms into Shambles But lastly to revive the Antient Zeal of the true members of the Church of England against Popery To rectify the mistakes of some Gentlemen of the Clergy about the Dissenters And of our late Parliaments and their proceedings in reference to them Let it be considered how unreasonable their apprehensions are of any danger to the Church of England from the desires of the House of Commons of some indulgence or toleration in favor of the Dissenters at this time especially when the Protestant Religion is so shrewdly beset she hath reason now sure to take all such for her friends that are heartily Enemies to Popery tho not so skillful as they should be to ward off its assaults Since the Papists presume to call them Fanaticks tho exactly conformable to the Church of England that
and contumelies which at every Return encrease until both sides loose either their virtue or the Reputation of it Can any man imagine that any prejudice can accrew to the Church of England if she did enlarge her Communion by making the conditions of it more easie especially if this may be done without annulling any of her institutions which the better instructed Christians will always and the Weak may in time devoutly observe But till they can they may be received and retained of her Communion and not be rejected by her censures tho they do not submit to all of them at present Will it be any prejudice that the Number of her Bishops be encreased and that suffragans be appointed or approved by the present Bishops in partem sollicitudinis as was enacted by the statute 26. H. 8. cap. 14. Which Law was repealed by 1. 2. P. M. and revived by 8. Eliz. cap. 1. These suffragans were not intended to participate of their honors or Revenues Had it not been much more eligible to have dispensed with invincible scruples rather than a schism should have been occasioned which the longer if continues will be more incurable and with greater difficulty accommodated as it grows likewise more mischievous Is it fit that the peace should be hazarded or the Nation put with reason or without reason in fear of it Or a Kingdom turned into a Shambles for a Ceremony or a Ritual in our publick Worship which if omitted would leave the exercise of it solemn and decent For no man knows the obstinacy of inveterate prejudices founded perhaps in the very complexions and Natures of the dissenters hardned also in their way by observing how little effect Laws have had for reducing their Numbers and also how unpracticable any severity is in the present broken and distracted state of the Nation Why may not standing at the Sacrament be tolerated tho kneeling is the devoutest gesture and to me most agreeable when it is a posture of Prayer enjoyned in the Primitive Church in their solemn meetings for Divine Worship between the Feasts of Easter and Whitsuntide Why may not the signing of the Cross in Baptism for the sake of peace and unity be dispensed with where desired when the Sacrament is intire without it Why may not our publick Liturgy be changed and altered tho it may be defended as it is and as it is entertains the devotions of the best men meerly for this reason because it is not liked in some parts of it by some men yet truly devout Besides it is the wish of some excellent persons of the Church of England that our publick offices were more and those we have not so long and that the Church had a greater Treasury of Prayers and by variety of Forms for the same Office were enlarged in her spirit of Prayer and her publick Devotions heightned Why may not the Rubrick be altered as general scruples shall arise by the Authority of the Church which would not lessen her Authority but advance the esteem of her Wisdom in the exercise of it when she useth it for edification It is much better sure to give place to an innocent opinion when entertained by considerable Numbers tho a mistake then to keep up contention and strife Peace in the Church is better than precise and nice orthodoxness and Union is to be preferred before unnecessary truth which is of no more importance to our salvation then one of Euclids propositions tho to be sure not so certain and of less use The business of the Church is not to make men great Clerks to improve us to the subtilty of the Schools but to build men up in the Faith and Love of God by which they may be instructed to every good Work Her aim is not to make men courtly in their behavior in our Churches but truly devout and true devotion will never fail to make the Publick Worship solemn and advance it beyond a decent formality But I would not be mistaken it is not the Dissenters I intend to befriend but the Church of England for as for them I declare I have no liking to any thing they say or do and am especially dissatisfyed with their very bad manners It is difficult to abstain from an invective but that I think it would be thrown away upon them and that they are at present incorrigible This is not the season for instructing their Wisdoms we must wait for the mollia tempora fondi I thus conclude since that excellent person the Dean of Pauls hath been treated by them with such petulancies and rude insults for his Sermon of the mischiefs of separation If a discourse managed with almost irresistible reason candor temper and Address be matter of exasperation and they turn again and are more hardned in their obstinacies and become more confirmed in their separating way nothing but their own thoughts and the consideration in what a desperate condition they have brought the reformed Religion by their Separation will reclaim them But it is expected that Governments should be wise that they manage and controul the Follies and Weaknesses of those committed to their care that they may do the least mischief to themselves and others and by prudent and practicable methods amend and reform them The most froward weiward and stubborn Children give their Parents the most care and opportunities of exercising the most tender love for them tho they can take no complacency in their awkerdness The Church of England is concerned to retain all her Children in her Family to shut out none by abdication that their numbers be not few and she be ashamed when she speaks with her Enemy in the Gate Not to provoke any of them to wrath least they forsake her and turn against her when distresses shall come upon her She hath reason at this time sure to make her Discipline easie and to learn of the Church of Rome to be more comprehensive Their Doctrin of comprehension is so large that it destroys the Religion to encrease the Number of Professors but I mean no more than that positive and alterable institutions may give place to the peace security and preservation of Religion it self to whose service they were first fram'd and design'd It hath been heretofore of old it hath been said Mores Leges in potestatem pertraxerunt suam Plato form'd an Idea to himself of a Common Wealth without respect to the manners of men but he writ another which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Origen in his Book against Celsus applyes to Moses the Answer of a famous Law-giver who asked 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Answer was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And we all know what God permitted to the Jews in the matter of Divorce for the hardness of their Hearts When all is said People must be govern'd as they can But in the mean time it is pity any of our zeal and indignation should be mispent when we have use for it all against
the Church of Rome the source whence all our divisions spring To which we owe the first separations that were made in our Chutch which appears by undenyable Records published by Dr. Stillingfleet in his Book called the Unreasonableness of Separation How they have propagated multiplyed exasperated and promoted our divisions to tell you would make a Volume besides no Protestant is now to know it I have only this further to observe that the Church of Rome at first only design'd by the Arts of dividing us and breaking us into several Communions to disgrace the Reformation to make our Spiritual Governors Pastors and Teachers lose their Authority with the People To deprave our Religion with licentious opiniastre and absurd dogmatizing to load our departure from that Church with the mischief of innumerable Schismes and to make us reconcileable to the Tyranny and impostures of that Church from the vain opinions and licentiousness of the Sectaries who have been seduced managed inflamed and made wild by their imposturous Arts and Deceits This I believe was only at first designed by the Priests but now they apparently design by the Dissenters to destroy the Church or by the Church to destroy the Dissenters that they more easily come to rights with her They imagine the Dissenters are very numerous and that the Nation is fallen into two great parts that the Dissenters numbers are vast But God be thanked they neither make our grand Jury men nor the common Halls of the City of London for choosing the Lord Majors or Sheriffs And I challeng any man to give me a List of all the Names of Dissenters that were of the House of Commons in our two last Parliaments I am sure they will not make an Number but they reckon the Numbers of Dissenters by the care they have taken to encrease it They used great art to continue the Separation when His Majesty was restored Since Laws have been made to raise the Animosities of Dissenters but scarce ever executed for repressing them If for any reason of state the Laws here and there and for a spurt have been exacted secret comforts and supports have been given to their Preachers of greatest Authority with them And when they have seem'd to preach with the courage and zeal of confessors to their Auditors they have been assured not only of indemnity but have received rewards How prosperously did the work of separation go on by these Councils of our Achtlophels by these means they concluded it would be heightned that it would admit of no terms of an accommodation How insolent were their Harangues more taking with their deluded Auditors while they apprehended them acted with an invincible zeal of Religion What Animations did their People receive to defy the Church and her Authority when their Preachers despised Fines and Imprisonment to their seeming out of pure zeal against her Order It is well known several of them were in Pension and no men have been better received by the D. than J. J. J. O. E. B. and W. P. c. Ringleaders of the Separation Besides that Popish Priests have been taken and executed for preaching in Field meetings in Scotland They have raised there a sort of Euthusiasts more wild and mischievous than any we had amongst us in the times of licentiousness They have had notwithstanding great Lords that have patronis'd them who were always well received in their applications in their favor at St. James's and several of their Preachers who were not Priests have received exhibitions and pensions for their Encouragement It was necessary that the Fanaticism planted in Scotland should be very loathsome to make that Nation abate any of their zeal for the Protestant Religion or to neglect their fears and apprehensions of Popery or to make the least step towards it Awake you drowsie Sleepers open your Eyes the Sun is risen there is light enough to fill your sight if you would look up and were wiling to see Could any thing be conceiv'd more apt to bring the Church of England into contempt and scorn with those of the separation then to have Laws made in her favor penal Laws which are thought to be of her procurement and not executed Vain and Ineffective anger is always returned with contumely scorn and hatred Cupide conculcatur nimis ante metitum And so it hath succeeded in this case nothing hath been more passable than the basest Scurrility upon the Church the Bishops and the Clergy The Atheist the impious and profane have listed themselves Fanaticks that they might have the greater Liberty of reviling Religion it self with impunity Consider how the Church of England is used which is truly the Bulwark of the Protestant Religion About ten years since they designed to slight her works and demolish her by a general indulgence and toleration And now they intend to destroy her Garrison those that can and will defend her against Popery By one of their Pamphleteers the separation is called an usurpation upon the Government and all the Dissenters as such only Rebels and Traitors to the King The same Gentleman would perswade the World that the ready way to extirpate Popery is by rooting out of Fanaticism whither saith he the Fanaticks bring on the Jesuits plot or the Jesuits the Fanaticks is not a farthing matter But in the mean time that the Papists have a plot on foot needs no proof That any sort of Protestants are engaged in a plot cannot be proved But all honest Protestants of the Church of England think it more righteous to punish the Deceivers and pitty the Deceived and wish them only cut off that make divisions It is one way of curing or rather of extinguishing the disease to Kill the Patient But no Prince did ever yet provide Cut-Throats for his People in epidemical diseases instead of Physitians But if the Papists could arm other Protestants against Dissenters there would be the less work for Papists to do And they will be sure to requite them for this favor with Polyphemus his curtesie For to give the Devil his due they are not themselves so fond of Massacres and destruction of Hereticks as to envy that employment to any other that will undertake it They had rather any other party of Men should do the Drudgery for them Besides what one sort of Protestants shall execute upon another will give them better pretence and more hardiness if they wanted either Pretence or Resolution to destroy such as they call Hereticks to execute the like destruction upon the Church Protestants who certainly differ more from the Papists then the Separatists do from our Church Sure there is good Reason they should be more sharply treated by the Papists than they treated the Dissenters And if they are in such sort us'd they must lay their hands upon their mouths and be silent before their Persecutors and acknowledg the righteous judgment of God in bringing such tribulation upon them from their Enemies wherewith they troubled their own Brethren
But there are better ways of putting an end to the Popish Plot then by putting it in Execution for them That is to say by suppressing that contumacy that is grown so rife in the Dissenters against the Church of England by putting the Revilers of her Establishment and Order under the severest Penalties By the Church her condescentions and indulgences to those that are weak and scrupulous the peaceable Dissenters such condescentions will not abate but magnifie her Authority The Church of England will not be by this means lost but her Governance preserved especially if the Relaxation that shall be made proceeds from her ex mero motu and is not imposed upon her by any secular Authority Nay she will become by this means more ample and venerable What Glories will shine upon the Heads of the Bishops We shall all rise up call them blessed They will attain an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here and receive divine Honors while they live Their Order will be recover'd into the highest Veneration and it will never be after a question in the English Church whither the Order of Bishops be Apostolical The Parliament will make all Laws yield and comply to such happy peaceable and gratious Intendments All the People will honor them as their common Saviors that shall thus snatch us from the very Brink of Ruine and render the Designs of the implacable Enemies of the Church ready to take effect to the destruction of our Religion and the Nation utterly defeated But what punishments can we think too severe upon any that shall be guilty of such insolent Iniquity as not to allow that liberty to the Church which they seek as a favor from her to themselves that will not let the Church escape their Censures when she gratiously exempts them from her Censures and pittys their Errors and Follies What Fines and Imprisonments Pillories and Scourgings do they deserve that persecute the Church with Revilings when they themselves are tolerated Their condemnation must be just what ever their doom be themselves being Juges They will suffer as Evil doers and disturbers of the peace not for their Religion but for a most extravagant and intolerable unrighteousness They who will not tolerate others are themselves for that reason most intolerable Against these our Laws are to be sharpen'd and their iniquities to be punished by a Judge But the Statute of 35 Eliz. which punisheth dissatisfactions and peaceable withdrawings from the publick worship with exile and death declares how odly the business of the Separation hath been managed and with what disadvantages to the Church as it doth also the impracticableness of Laws that make perhaps invincible prejudices and modest and peaceable dissatisfactions capitally criminal The execution of this Law is scarce possible It is by no means agreeable either to the Christian temper of our Church or His Majesties great Clemency of which he hath assured us in the general course of his Reign And especially for that that Law hath been very rarely proceeded upon A Gentleman that lay in Cambridge Goal under the Judgment of that Law was reprieved by His Majesty with a great dislike expressed by him against that and such like severities What ever extravagances of a few wild Fanaticks of that Age occasion'd that Law the State of the Separation and of the Nation being quite alter'd from what it was then the execution of this Law now would be something like a Sheriffs serving a Writ out of Date in another County which can have no effect but mischief to himself While our Dissenters are thus reasonably indulged and strictly obliged to their peaceable behavior they can give no apprehensions to the Government either in Church or State This is all that is designed and all that they ought to have and this certainly would be readily yielded them in this present juncture especially if the Evils of the late unhappy times did not stand upon their score But I perswade my self that this course if it had been heretofore taken would have prevented one great cause of our late Troubles so it will in such measure prevent them from returning as the separation can be accounted the cause of them As for the Sacriledge and Spoil which was then made upon our Church it could never have happen'd but upon the dissolution of the Government nor can it ever happen again That War would have been impossible if the Church-men had not maintained the doctrine that Monarchy was Jure Divino in such a sense that made the King absolute and they and the Church in consequence perished by it But God be thanked we see the Church again restored to her endowments grown wiser than to desire to hold that precariously and at pleasure she doth enjoy by an unmovable legal Right Of the three Estates of this Kingdom for to suspect any such thing of the King would be unpardonable blasphemy there can be no reasonable Suspition Though of the House of Commons it is be come now lawful to suspect and say any thing that is evil But no man but the Villains that design by dishonoring them to change the Government hath reason to entertain such a thought The Members of the Commons in our latest Parliaments were all upon the matter entirely conformable to the Church of England They were persons of the best Estates Reputation and Honor in their Countries And they or such as they are like to make our succeeding Parliaments I have leave to put them under the imprecation of the severest Curse if ever they do sacrilegiously impair the Church her Revenues And I desire it may be assisted with the hearty and passionate desires of all good Christians that so the curse I now pronounce may operate upon them who shall incur it He that designs contrives or consents to spoil the Church of any of her Endowments may a secret curse wast his substance Let his Children be Vagabonds and beg their bread in desolate places Besides I know it is meditated and design'd by many and the best Men that use to be sent to Parliaments to redeem in part that infamous Sacriledge that was committed in the times of H. 8. When the Appropriations of Rectories made to religious Houses which had the cure of the Parish and ought at the dissolution of the Monasteries to be presented to were vested in the Crown whereby not only the Church was rob'd but the People cheated of their Tythes which were theirs to give tho not to retain and their praemium for the Priests Ministrations which are now often most slenderly and sometimes scandalously performed As also to disencumber her Revenue of the Charges and impositions of First-fruits and Tythes which were imposed and exacted by the Pope upon his pretence of being the oecumenical Pastor and High Priest of the Christian Church and at that time confer'd upon the Crown and are as unreasonably continued as any thing can be that hath a Law for a pretext But for this a
compensation may be given to the Crown and some way will be found out for Augmentation of Vicaridges and reindowment of Churches that lost all in that unparrallel'd Sacriledge committed by the unsatiable Avarice of that haughty and luxurious Prince These designs employ the care of a great Number of our principal gentlemen to purge the sin and dishonor brought upon the Nation by that extraordinary King But if there were reason for any fear that the Nation could again incur the guilt of sacriledge What Warranty can this give to any of her Clergy to slack or abate the Zeal that is due for the purity of her Doctrine prudence of her discipline and her commendable decent and intelligible devotion Are they worthy to be named of her that are ready to dissert her out of fear of a remote possibility that she may not always have such largesses as she now bestows upon her Sons Will they prefer the gift to the Altar and declare all their godliness to be gain To suffer Popery for such a consideration to be induc'd upon her is a far worse and more detestable sacriledge than that they pretend to fear This is to make the Anathemata of the Temple to inserve to the dishonor of the Numen To desecrate the Altar for the sake of the gift and will by the just judgment of God I fear bring the abomination of desolation again into our holy places Let none of her Sons for the obtaining a dignity or a capacity for a double benefice betray her by neglecting her interest thinking with themselves that she will otherwise be supported for this their doings is no less than the sin of Judas who took money to betray our Lord imagining that he would by a Miracle rescue himself from the hands of those to whom he sold and betray'd him The honest of our Clergy will have little satisfaction when that day comes when they shall be reduc'd to Prayers and Tears if they are failing in any thing that they may lawfully do to prevent that miserable State Their Tears will be as water spilt upon the ground and their Prayers wiil never find acceptance with God nor be returned into their own bosom Disce Miser pigris non flecti numina votis Proesentemque adhibe dum facis ipse Deum But above all those fine men are not to pass unreproved who are preparing Pretences for their Revolt to the Roman Church They tell us that the Reformation is depraved and Popery it self is much amended since the Reformation that it is not so grosly superstitious tho her superstitions are still enough to stifle Religion nor so fabulous in her Legends she need make no new ones since she gives Authority still to the old nor so imposterous in her cheats for her Priests have not been hocus pocuses of late us'd so many tricks of Legerdemain and presented their puppey plays of moving squeaking images since the Reformation as before But they may know that the reason why we have not maintained the dignity of the Reformation intire is this for that Popery hath not been utterly extirpated from amongst us tho their frequent Treasons and their notorious seductious have deserved it By its continuance amongst us and the resorts of their Priests hither it hath created and fomented divisions amongst us and corrupted her Children from their obedience to her guidance and instructions but she her self is still the same she was the Reformation of the Church is still intire She hath made good her departure from the Church of Rome her Adversaries have not been able to convict her of any fault therein and by an easie victory she hath triumphed over all their oppositions And tho Popery appear not altogether so deformed by her Priests Artificial dress and the Representations they make of her to seduce us and entice us to come again under her yoke yet we know she hath more established her Tyranny by the Council of Trent and more corrupted her Morals by her modern Casuists since the Reformation and thereby hath rendred her self more detestable and for ever to be avoided But though it may be true that the Popish world is beholden to the Reformation and Popery it self is thereby amended in some overt things and reformed in those Countries that have not reformed from her For in the Light of the Reformation they have seen Light and have been ashamed of some of their works of darkness do not bring into present use some of their gross Impostures and some worse than Pagan superstitions Yet when this Light is extinguished it will be a most dismal and eternal Night upon the Christian world If we return to her our Ears will be bor'd and we shall be irredeemably enslaved The spirit of Popery if it returns and possesseth us again that hath been walking in the reformed Countries as in dry places seeking Rest and finding none and finds us thus swept and garnished will bring with it seven Devils more wicked than it self and our last estate will be worse than the first The Pride Cruelty and Avarice Domination and Luxury of their Priest-hood will be aggravated upon us and the minds of the Laity more lowly depressed by superstition and ignorance The Gospel of Cardinal Palavicini will be the Canon of the Christian Religion or it may be something worse for who can tell what will be the Religion that that Church will offer in process of time to the World under the Christian Name When the Pope by his pretended infallibility may make the Christian Religion what he please by interpreting adding altering or detracting with an uncontroulable Authority For us therefore to become Papists to return to the Church of Rome acknowledge the Popes infallibility there is no other way to become Papists is virtually to betray the Christian Faith to renounce our Allegiance to our Lord Christ to prefer the Bulls of a Prophane Pope to the Holy Oracles of God and the Revelation of Jesus God Blessed for ever With this Religion therefore we can never make an accommodation We may as well make a Covenant with Hell This as Dr. Jackson one of the glories of the Church of England in his Book call'd the Eternal Truth of Scriptures vehemently admonisheth us admits no terms of Parly for any possible Reconcilement whose following words to this purpose I shall here transcribe The natural separation of this Island from those Countries wherein this Doctrine is professe shall serve as an Everlasting Emblem of the Inhabitants divided Hearts at least in this point of Religion And let them O Lord be cut off speedily from amongst us and their posterity transported hence never to enjoy again the least good thing this Land affords Let no print of their Memory be extant so much as in a Tree or Stone within our Coast Or let thir Names be such as remain here after them be never mentioned or always to their Endless shame Who living here amongst us will not imprint these or the like wishes in their Hearts and daily mention them in their Prayers Littora Littoribus contraria fluctibus undas Imprecor arma armis pugnent ipsique Nepotes which he thus renders Let our forain Coasts joyn Battel in the Main Ere this fowl Blasphemy Great Britain ever stain Where never let it come but floating in a Flood Of our our Nephews their Childrens Blood I shall only subjoyn my hearty Desires and Prayers that we may all fear God and be zealous for his true Religion Honor the King and firmly adhere to the Government and in our several places steadily oppose and resist those Villains that are given to change And that by our Union we may defeat the crafty Designs of our cruel and implacable Enemies who if they can continue those Divisions they have made amongst us by their wicked Arts will certainly at length destroy us Who are bent upon our Destruction though they themselves perish with us and we cease to be a Nation and our Language be forgotten in a forain Captivity Sir Now I have given you my Answer to your Reasons to disswade me from publishing the Argument for the Bishops by representing how few of the Clergy can with Reason be thought guilty of Opinions so mischievous to the Church and State which you charge to have generally corrupted them and how easily and with little consideration they will be laid aside by them I will make no other Apology for the publishing this than that I have communicated these thoughts to no Man alive either of the Church of England or any other Demomination or consulted any Mans advice about it That I can serve the design of no party of men herein nor any particular design of my own I wish they can be serviceable in the least Degree to publick Good I have had them by me a great while and have consider'd them under the several Varieties of Temper that our Bodies are disposed to which induce different thoughts and various Apprehensions in most things under the several passions that the fluctuation of publick Affairs have occasioned under the Ebs and Flows of Hopes and Fears in reference to the state of the Kingdom for some length of time And finding them to have the same appearance and to give me the same satisfaction in all the several Postures and Views that I could take of them I assure my self I was sincere when I thought and that they result meerly from my Judgment such as it is uncorrupted that I am not perverted or biased by any secret passion or desire of any sort which many times lurk and steel upon us deceive us unawar's and undiscernedly abuse us Sir the Summ of my Apology is this that I know my self sincere of honest Intentions mov'd by nothing but a hearty love and affection to our King Religion and Country and for what any man shall think of me I am not Solicitous Yours T. H. FINIS