that have set about it found it easy to be effected even where they have had all the Advantage imaginable to execute it And we may be speedily convinced how unfeasable such a Design would have been in England and consequently how far from being either undertaken or thought of by a wise Prince If we consider the Difficulties which have attended it in Roman Catholick Kingdoms where all the Craft and Power of wise and mighty Princes and all the Strength and Rage of the Body of the People inflamed by Bigottry have been united to compass it Is it possible for the King 's most malignant Enemies who use to speak of him with the most unparalelled Undecency and brutal Rudeness to conceive or believe that he could be so prodigiously Indiscreet and Weak as to think of banishing or overthrowing the Protestant Religion or of bringing in or setting up the Roman Catholick by a Protestant and Antipapal Army And other he had not nor ever can be in a Condition to have in this Kingdom if we speak of the Bulk of one or of one that can be Numerous and Strong And for a few Roman Catholicks mingled here and there in Protestant Troops or for two or three Regiments whereof the Generality were of the Romish Communion in an Army of those of the Reformed Profession instead of their giving us just terrour of a Design for subverting our Religion they only served to animate and provoke those vastly larger Number of Protestant Officers and Soldiers to assert their Religion with the more Courage and Avowedness and to exemplify and adorn it better by their Lives And it is but for those who were in England in 1687. and 1688. to recollect themselves and consult their Memories and they must needs confess and declare if they have not renounced all Friendship with Truth when they disclaimed Loyalty to his Majesty That they never observed that Zeal in a Brittish Army for the Protestant Religion nor that open Boldness in pleading for it as when that Roman Catholick Prince was upon the Throne and some of that Communion enrolled among them and employed with them under the same Royal Standard But what clearer and fuller Evidence could the King give in Matter of Fact that he had no Intentions to undermine and much less to subvert our Religion than the Dispensation from Penal Laws which he granted unto Protestant Dissenters and the Liberty which he stated them in the Exercise of And through his giving it upon the only true Principle on which it could be done Justifiably namely That it is the natural Right of every Man to chuse in what Religion and in which way of Faith and Worship he will venture his eternal State he could not in Justice abstracting from his Friendship avoid granting Liberty likewise to the Roman Catholicks I do know there are some People whose Malice to the King makes them not only take every Thing by the wrong handle but which hath so perverted their Reasons as to cause them to draw Conclusions directly contradictory to the Premisses from which they infer them who endeavour to obtrude upon the Belief of such as are Weak and Credulous That the King 's giving Liberty was an Effect of his Enmity to our Religion and done in pursuance of a Design to destroy it But the two Poles are not at greater distance from one another than they are from Truth and good Sense who think the King would have given Liberty of Conscience and have set his heart upon the upholding and maintaining of it if at the same time he had given place unto and entertained the least thought of overthrowing and extirpating the Protestant Religion For that Wise Generous and Royal Concession of his was so far from lying in the remotest Subserviency to such a Design that nothing under Heaven can be imagined more effectually contributory to the preventing resisting and defeating an Attempt of that kind There are few but know what Connivance had been exercised to Roman Catholicks and how Gently they had been treated notwithstanding the many Laws they were obnoxious to during the last Years of King Charles's Reign while in the mean time vast Numbers of Protestants were harrassed spoiled and imprisoned and this not only by hounding out but by enforcing those of the Church of England to fall upon the Dissenters and to execute the Laws against them with great Severity Now by the King 's Noble Christian and Heroick Act of granting Liberty the Peevishness and Enmity of Protestants against one another was allayed and extinguished and they were at ease as well as leasure to employ their common Care and unite their mutual Strength against those of the Roman Communion whom they esteemed Enemies to them both And by being taken off from scratching biting and devouring one another they began to mingle Councels and to joyn their several Interests for obviating and obstructing the Growth of a third Party that stands in terms of distance both in Opinion and Ecclesiastical Charity to the one as well as the other For though the Liberty granted by the King to Protestant Dissenters did not incorporate them into the Communion of the Church of England but supposed the contrary and provided against the afflictive Inconveniencies of it and though it did not entitle them unto and make them capable of the Dignities and Emoluments of the Church which his Majesty neither pretended nor challenged a Power to do yet through his suspending the Execution of the penal Laws which he was told he might do in virtue of that executive Power of Laws and of Administration of Government which was lodged in him by the Constitution and inseparable from his Title Right and Sovereignty there was not only a Cessation of Arms between those of the National Church and them but a Coalescence in Friendship and Zeal for their common Religion though they couâ—d not embody together for Communion in all the parts of Christian Worship and for the exercise of Church Discipline And besides the taking off the Reproach and the wiping away the Infamy which lay upon our Religion through our persecuting one another and which made us the Subjects of our Enemies Râ—â—â—ery and the Objects of their Scorn there were so many real Advantages accâ—â—ing to it by the Liberty which the King granted That theâ—e cannot be a blacker Malice out of Hell than to perveâ—t this Royal and Christian Act of his Majesty from being an Argument of his innocent and honourable Intentions towards our Religion into a Topick whereby to insinuate into the Belief of those of a narrow Compass of thought that it was only in order first to supplant our Religion and then to destroy it And it argueth an Ingratitude which our Language is indigent of Words to express the hainousness of that any Protestant Dissenters should not only concur in such a Sentiment but value themselves upon the Vivacity Strength and Penetration of their Judgment that they could foresee and discover this
King why any should have pretended that it was in danger of being Supplanted and much less in any Jeopardy of being overthrown And every wise Man was then and is now much more sensible That all those noisy and clamorous Suggestions which were so industriously spread abroad of Designs laid and carried on for the Extirpation of our Religion were fictions of Knaves to impose upon Fools And which were promoted and given out to blacken the King and to mislead a credulous and unthinking People The great End of it being to impose upon the Understandings infect and pervert the Consciences of the Subjects thereby to undermine the Throne and shake the Government by Slanders and Reproaches thrown upon his Majesty For he was so far from entertaining a Thought of this nature and tendency that he offered his Protestant Subjects all the legal Security they could desire besides what they actually had by the then established and existent Laws for the Preservation of their Religion and for the Maintenance of the Church of England in its lawful Jurisdiction and Authority Nay at such a distance was he in his Intentions from any ill Design against our Religion that he was willing even to the Diminution of his own Royalty and Grandeur both to have granted a Stipulatory Law which should have had the Force and Vertue of a Magna Charta or Constitutional Contract and to have made it a Fundamental in the Government in all other Reigns And to give farther Evidence of his alienation from and abhorrency of that with which he hath been so impudently and malitiously charged he was ready to have gratified the peevish Humours as well as to have extinguished and removed the vain Fears and needless Jealousies of his Subjects by consenting to a Thing not very reconcilable to true Politicks but directly inconsistent with any Design he was capable of harbouring to the prejudice of our Religion namely That the Prince and Princess of Orange should have been named and admitted Guarantees of what should have been agreed and enacted for the Preservation of our Religion on the Bottom and with the Provision only of Liberty of Conscience for Dissenters And as there was not the least just Ground of suspecting his Majesty guilty of any secret Intentions of subverting our Religion his open avowed and candid Behaviour as well as his Publick and Royal Declarations lying in direct Opposition to such a concealed Machination so had it been possible for him to have so far departed from Kingly Wisdom and Justice and from true English Politicks and to have renounced the Veracity Compassion and Generosity which are so natural unto and inseparable from him as to have inwardly entertained and latently persued a Purpose and Project of that kind yet it was so impracticable and physically as well as morally impossible to be executed that instead of serving to awaken Fears in any discreet and sensible Men it could at most but have administered matter for Entertainment and Diversion and provoked us to laugh at the Weakness and ridiculous Bigottry of those that had Suggested such Councels unto him For surely we will not so scandalously reproach the Protestant Religion nor so ignominiously detract from the Integrity Zeal Industry and Learning of our Universities National Clergy and of many of our Layick Protestants as to imagine and much less to grant that those of the Roman Communion were able to have disputed our Religion out of the Kingdom or to have baffled us out of our Belief and have withdrawn us from the Faith and Worship which we profess and practise by Arguments from Scripture Reason or Tradition And indeed had they been Qualified for and in a Condition to have done it that way I do know no Cause unless we will disclaim both the being Men and the being Christians why we should have taken it ill to be conquered at those Weapons or been angry with them that should gain a Victory over us by such honourable and divine Means But this they were so ill prepared and uncapable to effect That all their Essays and Efforts of that kind against our Religion served only to render it the more triumphant and to confirm us the better in it And it had been the best Policy which the Religious of the Roman Fellowship could have used and I dare say will be thought so if ever they should be furnished with such another Opportunity to have confined themselves to the Service of their Altars and to the discharge of the Devotional Functions of their respective Orders and the performing the Ministrations incumbent upon them towards those within the Pale of their Church or at most to have employed themselves about the Subjects of common Christianity and of good Morals and not to have disturbed us in the possession of our Religion by Polemical Writings Controversal Tracts and by Oral Disputes For those Methods were so eminently subservient to the Truth and Glory of our Religion and to the Reputation and Credit of our Divines and of other learned Persons of our Communion that if they be wise they will never venture to tread any more in those Paths unless they have a mind to embark in a Plot against themselves and to lose that Esteem which we are willing to preserve for them notwithstanding all our Differences in Religious Matters For under all their Mistakes whereof some are of the highest Importance yet we ought to own and respect them as Christians and to pay them the deference that is due unto them not only upon the score of the Condition and Quality of many of them but upon the account both of their moral Accomplishments and of their natural and acquired Parts in which great Numbers among them are remarkably Eminent And as there was not the least shadow of Probability that the Roman Catholicks could have disputed us out of our Religion so it is to 〈◊〉 an Affront to the common reason of Manking to believe that they could have overthrown it by Force and Violence For notwithstanding that many have had the Malice to say this and some the Weakness to entertain it yet besides the Impracticableness of the Thing the King had both the Wisdom and Goodness not only to disclaim it by Words but to disprove it by signal Matters of Fact And unless worldly Interest Ambition Passion and Wrath had so darkened and distorted our Understandings as either to extinguish or pervert the use of our discursive Faculties we could never have allowed our selves to think that the King would attempt to do that in a way of Force which there were a hundred to withstand and oppose for every single Individual that can be supposed inclinable to have joyned in the Execution of it Surely a very little Knowledge of the World and a mean Acquaintance with History would help to instruct some unthinking and half witted People how difficult if not impracticable this has been found in other Nations where it hath been attempted Nor have any
to be the Motive and End of it But this may be catalogued among other of the thankful Returns which some of them have rendered the Compassionate and Good King for his snatching them as Firebrands out of the burning where he both found them and might have suffered them to have continued till they had been consumed And for gathering such Vipers as those I am speaking about off from the Dunghill where the Laws had laid them and placing them in his Bosom till they had recovered Life Warmth and Vigour to sting him by those Censures and Reproaches which are as false as they are black and villanous And I would ask those Persons If the King cast out and drove away the Devil Persecution by Belzebub or in virtue of so hellish a Conspiracy against our Religion by whom have the Gentleman at Kensington and his Tools and Co-operators at Westminster done the same Is Liberty to Dissenters not only an innocent and harmless Thing but eminently useful to the Strength Glory and Success of our Religion under one that finds it his present Interest to call himself a Protestant while in the mean time it is questionable what Religion he is of if he be of any at all and must the same Liberty and to the same People be a Plot upon and an Engine for the undermining and blowing it up and for burying all those that profess it under the Ruins of it when granted by a Catholick Monarch Surely it would not unbecome some nor be unworthy of their second Thoughts to consider That if the Prince whom they have Abdicated for this and other good Offices had not expressed the Bowels and exerted the Courage to break the Chains and to remove the heavy and insupportable Loads which many peaceable and innocent People had long worn and groaned under meerly for their Opinions and Practices in matters of pure Revelation how probable it is if not morally certain that they would have been still in their old Circumstances and Conditions of Calamity and Suffering Nor would either the Prince of Orange had the Inclination and Fortitude to relieve them nor those Assemblies since the Revolution which we call Parliaments have had the Compassion and good Nature to have consented and concurred to the easing of them For as the Generality of those stiled the Representatives of the Nation retain still their antient peevishness and rancour to Dissenters so he whom they have placed on the Royal Throne governs himself by no other Principle or Measures but those of Ambition and Interest nor would he for saving and obliging the Dissenters have ventured upon any Thing that might be disagreable to the Humour of the Two Houses or which might have cooled or abated the Inclinations of the Commons to be lavish in their Grants of Money Neither would those Sons of Sceva have taken upon them to dispossess the Kingdom of the devouring Spirit of Persecution if they had not been sensible of the Glory which redounded to the King by the Example he had set them Nor was it upon Motives of Honour and Justice that Liberty to Protestant Dissenters came to be established by a Law otherwise that Freedom would upon those very Inducements have been extended to others by the same Act But it was from Fear that the retrenching that which through the Mercy of the King they had gotten into possession of might have lost them the Affections Service and Assistance of the whole Fanatick Party and have made those People turn Jacobites upon the Foot of Interest that have not Conscience nor Principles of Vertue and Loyalty to be so But besides this proof arising from Fact by the King 's suspending penal Laws in Matters of Religion and his granting Liberty to Protestant Dissenters which puts it in a Meridian Light that he could not cherish any Thoughts or Intentions of overthrowing our Religion he was pleased to exert his Goodness in a second Matter of Fact and in a surprising Act of Grace which carried convincing demonstrative Evidence along with it that he harboured no such Design in prejudice of the Reformed Doctrine and Worship as have been calumniously fastened upon him The Generous Princely and Merciful Act which I mean was his Receiving Entertaining and Relieving the French Refugees which as he was under no legal Obligations of doing so there were Discouragements enough lay before him to have hindered and prevented it I know Sir that you cannot have forgotten with what Readiness he admitted them into his Kingdom what welcome and compassionate Entertainment he gave them and how he not only invited and required his Subjects to harbour and relieve them but to what Measure and Degree he exercised and extended his own Royal Benevolence and Charity towards them Nor was he satisfied with the bare taking them under the wing of his Protection and making them Sharers in his own and his Peoples Bounty but he entertained divers of them into his Service and admitted some of them into his Friendship and Confidence So that whosoever will allow himself leave and time calmly to consider either the King 's own Religion in which he was both Sincere and Zealous or the Terms of Amity he stood in with the King of France which he had neither Reason nor Inclination to depart from will not be able to avoid acknowledging unless he can reconcile Contradictions that his Majesty could have no other Inducement for the doing of it but that he judged it an evil Thing as well as an unwise for any Prince to persecute and drive away his Subjects meerly for their differing in Religious Matters from what was legally Established and Embraced and Professed by the Bulk and Generality of the People and that he esteemed it a Duty which he owed to God and to Mankind to entertain and succour such as suffered for their Consciences in Things purely Divine For as the King could not be insensible that it was not very Grateful to a great Number of his Protestant Subjects to see so many indigent and necessitous Foreigners received into the Nation who would not only by their Skill and Industry gain away much of the Manufacture Traffick and Employ from them but who by their frugal and paâ—â—â—monious Living would be able and therefore sure both to underwork and undersell them So it could not escape his Majesty's Knowledge and Belief that it would not be very pleasing and acceptable to the French King to see those who carried their Reâ—entments against him along with them whithe soever they went and who will be always meditating and cherishing Revenge to be so tenderly Pitied compassionately Received and safely Covered and Protected by a Prince that was not only his Allie but a Roman Catholick Yet under that view and with a cognizance of all this did the merciful King admit entertain and treat them with the same Royal Goodness and Generosity as if they had been People of the Romish Communion drove out of some Protestant Country for their
Consciences and Exiles here for the Religion which he himself professed Now can any that live not in an avowed enmity to Truth and good Sense either be perswaded themselves or hope to impose upon the Faith of others That a Prince who had designed to root the Protestant Religion out of his Kingdoms would do a Thing so inconsistent with and obstructive of it as this was And yet there are some whose Malice against the King hath so distorted their Understandings as that they will not only undertake to reconcile his forementioned Behaviour to the French Refugees with the Conspiracy he was embarked in for extirpating our Religion but will make use of his Kindness unto them as a Topick of argumentation whence and whereby to prove and confirm it But we must beg those Men's Pardon if we cannot hinder their insolent Flippency yet to claim the Liberty of exposing and controuling their foolish and ridiculous as well as false and slanderous Dictates For can any thing lie in a directer Opposition to a Purpose of subverting our Religion than for a Prince who harbours such a Project to do all that lies within the Circle of his Wisdom and his Power to encrease and multiply the Numbers whose Principles will oblige them to the use of all Lawful ways and means at least if they use not worse to oppose it and whose Interest and Safety consists in hindering it Surely the great Body of native Protestants were enough if not by far too many either to have been wormed out of our Religion by Fraud or to have it wrested from us by Force that there was no necessity for encreasing the Honour of the Conquest or raising the Glory of the Triumph to have added to our Number and Strength by the Reception and Entertainment that was given to Foreign Protestants Nor is it credible that if his Majesty had been embarked in such a Design as he hath been slandered with that he would have given Encouragement to those Reformed which fled hither from France to have planted and settled in all parts of his Dominions where they pleased when he could not but know and believe that their very Presence among us and our daily Sight of them would awaken our Jealousies of what some Roman Catholick might think Lawful to be done in prejudice of our Religion and who would daily tell us what had been practised for the Extirpating it elsewhere But the good King being conscious to himself that he had no sinister Intentions to the Legally established Doctrine and Worship he envied us no means that might quicken and provoke our Care for the Preservation of them And though he regretted and was infinitely sorry that there was cause any where administred of publishing how poor People professing the Reformed Religion had not only been decoyed into the Catholick Communion by the little and mean Arts of Missioners and and bribed and bought to be Converts to the Romish Faith by those that managed a publick Treasure to that end but had been dragooned into the Church by armed Troops yet he was willing we should have such resident in our several Neighbourhoods who might relate and confirm those Things unto us and he hoped that by his receiving and countenancing such Persons in his Dominions as would daily entertain us with Accounts of this Nature which we could not hear without Scandal and Indignation we should have been satisfied and assured that it lay in an Antipathy to his Nature to imitate any such Examples But no means how proper and convictive soever in themselves which the King could use for laying and extinguishing our Jealousies and Fears of his harbouring Intentions against our Religion could be of efficacy to operate upon us with any Success after our having through Plenty Pride and Wantonness grown weary of Tranquility and Ease and thereupon had imbibed Prepossessions and Prejudices against his Majesty's Person and Government and suffered our selves to be wrought up and exasperated by a few Demagogues and Boutefeuxs who were bribed by the Prince of Orange and instigated by his promising them the Spoils of the Crown Kingdom and Church to the highest ferment of blind brutal and godless Rage Nor has the compassionate and merciful King been requited as he ought and deserved by the French Refugees to whom he made his Kingdoms both an Asilum and a Sanctuary and his own Treasure and the Wealth of his People a Fund of Succour and Subsistance when they knew not where with safety to hide their Heads nor how to get Bread to preserve them from Starving But notwithstanding all the Hosannahs they gave him at first they were many of them in a little time the forwardest to cry Crucify him And contrary to all the Measures of Discretion and Prudence as well as of Thankfulness and Gratitude they have been some of them the warmest Inflamers of the Rebellion and have taken Arms in great Numbers for supporting the Usurper But Sir allow me to subjoin a third Matter of Fact by which the King gave all the Evidence and Assurance to his People that the most Incredulous and perversly Obstinate among them could have desired or needed to convince them in what opposition unto and remoteness it lay from his Thoughts to injure us in the Possession of our Religion and much less to rob us of it and that was by his refusing those Ships of War as well as Land Troops which were offered him by the French King for withstanding the Invasion of the Prince of Orange and for enabling him to suppress those that might sly to Arms and rise in his own Dominions to disturb his Reign or to joyn with the unnatural Invader in case he Landed For setting aside a few Things which the Judges told him he might do according to Law and some inconsiderable Triffles wherein his treacherous Counsellors misled him by telling him it was to renounce the Prerogative which the Constitution had vested in him to decline asserting them so conscious was he to himself of having neither done nor designed any Thing whereby his Protestant Subjects might be tempted to withdraw with any Shadow of Reason and Justice their Allegiance from him that no allarms of Conspiracies against or suspected Treacheries unto him at home nor the fullest and most uncontroulable Certainty of Ships being prepared and Forces ready to embark upon them abroad to make a Descent into his Dominions and hostily to assault him could prevail with him to accept those Succours which a Neighbouring Monarch offered him as well in Friendship to himself as in Kindness to his Majesty It ever hath and always will be found true That whosoever hath been Designing though never so secretly an Injury or Mischief to another he will be constantly Suspicious of the Person against whom he intended it and will use all the Precautions he can and lay hold upon every Mean that offereth to put him whom he had contrived to wrong out of a Condition to avoid the Blow and
Conspiracy of Rulers and Priests in order to govern the Mob and the better to squeeze Money from the credulous Yea there are some of them who deride a Deity and value themselves upon the believing no other Being or Mâ—des of one but Matter Figure and Motion And though I do not know whether many oâ— any of them went into the Revolution themselves and afterwards drew in others with a purpose to expose and lampoon our Religion yet this I am sure of That what we have done against the King and in the involving the Kingdoms into a bloody and expensive War upon so little Cause and Provocation as was administred is more adapted to render Persons Anâ—i-scripturists and Atheists than all the Arguments in Hobbs's Leviathan or in his Book de â—ive are Was not the late Lord Lovelace who could not speak without an Oath Blasphemy or Execration Or the surviving Fleetwood Sheppard whose whole Wit is employed to burlesque the Bible and mock at an invisible Being and who had the blasphemous Audacity to say to Two Bishops who desired leave of him to pass thro his Lodgings to see the Raree Show exhibited the other day at Whitehall That he would not grant it though the Virgin Mary were there with her Child at her Back to beg it of him and which they had not the Zeal and Courage for God and their Religion as to rebuke him for lest they should have offended the Man at Kensington who is fond of him for his Piety and Vertue quem pro Jove habent I say were not those I have mentioned very likely Persons to have engaged to assist in the Revolution upon Motives of Religion or in order to preserve and defend the Reformed Doctrine and Worship Can any Man think that Secretary Trenchard can be under the Influence of Religion in any Busi or Undertaking or can make it the Motive or End of what he does who concerted with the Prince of Orange how to betray and ruin the King and became engaged to him to use all means he could to do it and this at the very time when he was suing for a Pardon and who after the Grant and Receipt of one came over and made his Majesty all the Promises Words could express of his serving him with Loyalty and Fidelity so long as he lived But as there is no necessity now of telling which of these Promises he has performed whether those made at the Hague or those given at Whitehall that being sufficiently declared by a long and ample Series of Actions so I think it will be easily granted that this Man could act under no Impression of Religion nor upon the Motive or to the End of saving or serving it who could come under two such opposite and contradictory Obligations at the same time as the yielding an unchangeable Fealty and Obedience to the King and the undertaking to betray and divest him of his Royal Power were Or is it possible we should believe that my Lord L and the honourable Speech-maker and Haranguer of the Mob at Norwich and Lyn could embark in promoting the late Change out of any Concernment for the Protestant Religion or in order to protect it who though they profess to be Protestants when they are Well and in Health yet who at every time when they are Sick or when they have apprehensions of Dying do constantly send for Romish Priests to administer unto them all the helps and give them the assistances appointed by that Church for Men in their last Hours I am loath to multiply many Instances in confirmation of what I have affirmed and the chief Leaders and Actors in the Conspiracy for dethroning the King are so well known that I need not do it Even they whose Character should oblige us to believe that the preserving the Protestant Religion was the chief if not the only Motive upon which they acted in the late great Turn that was made in this Kingdom were as far from having it in their Eye or Aim as any other were Nor will any that know the Men allow that either Jack Boots or Cambrick Sleeves embarked in dethroning and driving away the King out of any Regard unto or Concernedness for the Reformed Doctrine and Worship but that they did it out of Pique and Revenge and upon the Motives of Ambition and Covetousness in the one to get a Bishoprick and in the other to preserve one For not to speak of the Rings and Seals which the Doctor through an Hypocrisy peculiar to himself that weareth Cambrick Holland Scots Cloath Sleeves instead of Lawn boasteth of as Pledges of the Kindnesses of Ladies for the Services he has done them can that Man live in the practical Belief or be under the awe of a Deity and much less act upon any sincere Motives of serving Religion but meerly to serve himself upon it who when he was dipt in all the Councels and Conspiracies for commencing and compassing the Revolution could yet at the same time in his Letters to the Earl of Middleton not only make solemn Protestations of his Loyalty to the King but have recourse for Proof and Evidence of it to the Sermons full of Duty and Fealty to the King which he had preached at the Hague as well as at London And as those Letters are in print to remain Records and Registers of his Irreligion and Hypocrisy so I am mistaken in the Rules of Phisiognomy if the Punishment that waits for him and which he hath so much deserved and whereof he hath had advertisment in Dreams be not legibly written in his Forehead Nor could any true Church of England Man whether Ecclesiastick or Laick have accession to the Invasion and to the deposing of his Majesty or he gained over to approve them without renouncing all the Doctrines and Principles of that Communion which relate to Civil Government and the Duties of Subjects to their Rulers And that may serve sufficiently to shew that they acted not in these Matâ—â—rs upon Motives of Religion because the very Things they did plainly interfered with the whole Religion which they professed and owned And there was such an outragious Rape committed by it upon their Principles and such an open deflouring of the Chastity which their Church had hitherto preserved in point of Allegiance to Lawful and Rightful Monarchs that were it not that great Multitudes of that Communion both preserved their own Innocency and have loudly condemned the Crime of their quondam Brethren and Fellow-members their whole Church would for ever lye under the same Blot and Infamy which those very Men namely your Tillotsons Burnets and Sherlocks c. have used heretofore to cast and fasten upon others And as for those called Whigs which were the warmest Promoters of the Revolution and are supposed more than others to have acted in it upon the Motive of Securing our Religion I will make bold to say of many of them and that both with Truth and Justice That they have
that traded thither to disclaim being Christians and only to own themselves Hollanders who knew no Religion but Profit nor had other Ends or Aims save to gain and heap up Wealth And besides many other Instances which might be assigned of their abandoning all Care and Concernment for the Protestant Religion in other Nations when the doing so is reconcilable to their Safety and worldly Advantage it may not be amiss to put you in remembrance of their furnishing Lewis the XIII with Ships to subdue Rochel when it was the chief Cautionary Town as well as the strongest and most opulent which the Reformed in France had to entitle them to a quiet and peaceable Enjoyment of their Religion Nor is it unseasonable to ask That if they embarked to assist in the dethroning of the King of Great Brittain out of zeal for preserving the Protestant Religion to these Nations how comes it then that they have so little interposed with their Confederate the Emperour for some Lenity and Favour to his Protestant Subjects in Hungary And that they have not dealt with their other Allie the King of Spain for abolishing the Inquisition And that he would not continue to make Bonfires of his Subjects whensoever any of them turn Protestants Nay their entering into the Conspiracy for subduing and deposing his Majesty was so far from being done from Motives relative to the Honour and Safety of the Protestant Religion that it was laid and forwarded by the greatest Falshood and Treachery that ever either a Crowned Head or a Republick was guilty of For what can be more inconsistent with good Morals namely with Truth and Justice or less reconcilable to the Principles of Christianity than not only to attack a King upon his Throne with whom they were in League without giving him Warning or seeking for Reparation of Injuries if he had done them any and without desiring an Adjustment of Differences and Misunderstandings where there were such but to invade his Kingdoms with a Naval and Land Strength after the solemnest Protestations made to the King himself by Cittars their Ambassador here and the greatest Assurances given immediately by the States General to the Marquess d'Albeville his Majesty's Envoy there That they had no Design against him and that their Preparations were not in order to disquiet him on his Throne or disturb the Peace of his Kingdoms but that they were for a purpose meerly relative to themselves and in which his Majesty was no ways interested So that after so fraudulent and perjurious an Act the Commencement of the War being in Violation and Contempt of actual and subsisting Treaties I do challenge any Man to believe without doing violence to his Mind that the Dutch are in the practical Belief of any Religion and much less that they co-operated to the Revolution out of care to preserve the Reformed Doctrine and Worship to these Three Nations Alas It was upon other Inducements that they concurred to involve these Nations in War and Blood which we might easily have discovered but would not For they no sooner observed the King's putting an end to Persecution in his Dominions and thereby doing that which might have reconciled his People to one another and should have united them all to him nor sooner found that he had too much Honour and Courage and withall bore more Love and Tenderness to his People to suffer them either to be wormed or insulted out of their Trade And had likewise perceived that as he was an admirable Oeconomist of the publick Treasure so he was a great Encourager of all over whom God had set him to Industry and Vertue but that they grew immediately thereupon apprehensive that we would become more Strong and Opulent than would be for their Interest or prove consistent with the Tricks and Rapines they had been accustomed to practise in ways of Commerce And as these were the Provocations upon which they desired to see his Majesty dethroned so the Ambition of the Prince of Orange of whom it may be said in the Words of Tacitus That cupido dominandi cunctiâ— affectibus flagrantior that all his Lusts as well as his Obligations give place to his Aspirings after Sovereignty together with the Discontents in England which the Means and Methods to our Happiness had filled us with administred them an Opportunity of stepping in to ruin the King and to make us miserable which they easily foresaw would be the effect of it And as they speedily had the Satisfaction to see the first performed so they have now also the Pleasure to behold us impoverished and weakened to that degree which was the second Thing they longed for That an Age under the mildest wisest and justest Government will not restore us to that Condition at least in their Opinion as to beget either their Jealousy or their Envy or which may hinder them from wresting from us what parts of our Trade they please For they are a People that will call it Friendship to us to rob us ubi solitudinem â—â—ciunt pacem appellant to borrow another of Tacitus's Phrases Noâ— will any meanâ— in human View prevent our becoming in a very litâ—le time the Contempt of all Nations about us for Weakness and Poverty and much less raise us again to that State of Strength Opulency and Glory in which we were but the calling home the King with all the Expedition we can and combining together with united Hearts and Hands to shake off the Usurper with his Benâ—ings and Ginckles Qui se partem nostrae Republicae faciunt that I may use an Expression of Tacitus but are in an apparent Conspiracy with the High and Mighty at the Hague to reduce these Kingdoms to a Feebleness and Indigency out of which they have a Design we shall never emerge Nor did the great Man who keeps his Palace at Kensington bring an Army into England and serue himself to the Throne upon any Motives of saving the Protestant Religion or out of any Intentions of kindness and good will to it but meerly upon the Impulse of Pride Haughtiness and Ambition and to gratify his Aspirings after a Crown I am not ignorant how he hath been represented and painted forth by your Temporizing Mercenary and Sycophant Divines as the Saviour of our Religion and Liberties and that the godly Saint and the heavenly divine Man would not have violated all the Tyes and Bonds of Nature and trampled upon the Precepts of the Decalogue and the Sanctions of the Bible but upon the Inducements of Zeal for God and his holy Religion which by Examples taken from Phineas and Ehud transform Murther into Sacrifices and by Presidents derived from the Israelites borrowing the Ear-rings of the Egyptians consecrate and hallow Rapines and Robberies The Panegyricks upon him on this Account of your Tillotsons Tenisons Patricks and Burnets c. are more Frontless and Fulsom than what your Shadwels Settles or any of your Grubstreet Poets who claim a Dispensation of Lying