year of Q. Elizabeth she asserts her Spiritual and Ecclesiastick Supremacy in all Things and Causes whatever and creates an Oath to be tendered her Subjects for confirmation of that Power In the fifth of her Reign grown warmer in that Supremacy she imposes the Oath upon all her Ministers and Officers of the Government even to Lawyers Atturneys c. and particularly to be taken by ever Member of Parliament And the second Refusal of taking it after a first tender of it three Months before is made High Treason In the 13th of Her Reign All persons taking upon them by Colour of any Bull Writing or Authority whatever to absolve or reconcile any persons or grant or promise to any person or persons within Her Majesties Dominions any such Absolution or Reconciliation by any Speech Preaching Teaching Writing or any other open deed and if any person or persons shall willingly take or receive such Absolution or Reconciliation shall suffer pains of Death And also lose and forefeit all their Lands Tenements Goods and Chattels as in Cases of High Treason A very soure sort of Grape to set their Childrens Teeth an Edge with In the 23d of Elizabeth This Act is explain'd and confirmed and in fine the Person reconciling or reconciled to the Church of Rome Priest or Lay-man are Equally declared Traytors and so onwards till the very taking of Orders from Rome is High Treason and doomed to suffer as such Ay God knows a very just sentence if the Indictment be but true But I desire to know by what Legerdemain is this Reconciliation made High Treason Is either the Life or Dignity of the King or the Government struck at by my being a Member of This or That Communion by my believing This or That the Way to Heaven Can Faith in God be Treason against Man For that 's the Result of the point Can a Christians best Endeavour to save his own or his Brothers Soul be a Machination to destroy his Prince or his Country or can my praying or not praying to a Saint my adoring or not adoring the Eucharist render me a true or not true Leige-man If Errours in Faith can amount to High Treason and the Government is in Conscience obliged to treat 'em as such Lord have mercy upon us how came the Jews to live with that Impunity in the Common-wealth that instead of misbelieving in points of Doctrine believe not so much as in the Gospel or Christ himself No no the Sophistry of the matter lyes not there 't is not the Doctrine of a Romanist as to Godwards makes him a Traytor but his belief of the Popes being Head of the Church in Derogation to the Ecclesiastick Supremacy inherent to and Lodg'd in the Crown and so religiously asserted and maintained by the Protestant Laws of the Kingdom Hinc Illae Lacrymae There lyes the Apostacy the hideous yawning Gulph that swallows all Faith Duty Honour Loyalty and consequently calls for Axes Halters Gibbets and what not Is this the Treason then 't is well we have fixt it there tho' upon true Inspection the Impeachment will be found full as feeble here as before For this is but meer matter of Faith still all this while nor carries in it the least shadow of a Breach of the Subjects Duty to the Soveraign For Instance when this Law was made suppose a poor Roman Catholick of those Days by an Invincible power of perswasion rooted and grounded in him by an Article of Faith how rightfully is not the matter received from Age to Age and Generation to Generation in favour of the Pope cou'd not possibly believe her then She Majesty by her Accession to the Crown to be instantly the Spiritual Head of the Church in all matters and Causes whatever that otherwise before was utterly incapable even of so much as a Subdeaconship in a Country Parish and if St. Paul may be believed not so much as qualified for speaking in a Religious Assembly yet nevertheless this Roman Catholick lived under her Government with all the Allegiance and Fealty in all Respects of Obedience and believed himself in conscience so obliged to do as much as any other of her more believing Protestant Subjects would it not be a little severe to adjudge him a Traytor And that the Romish Opinion that the Spiritual Supremacy lyes not in the Temporal Prince is meer matter of Faith is demonstrable from the very Soveraign Power it self when so many successive Kings never believed they had that Supremacy themselves For Prerogative is of its nature so jealous that tho' never so considerable a Jewel in a Crown had they had Faith to have challenged it theirs they would have had wit enough to have worne it too What if our Protestant Kings and their Parliments for them believe that Supremacy wholy lodged in the Crown must their Roman Catholick Subjects be Traytors because they cannot be of their Belief If the Princes Belief must be the standart of the peoples Loyalty by the same Equity the Catholick Kings might have made it High-Treason in their Reign to assert that Supremacy in the Crown Then as the Protestant Kings do to deny it there now and consequently the Protestants then if such there had been might by Equal Justice have been Traytors too If Crown'd Heads must necessarily be believed the Spiritual Heads of the Churches under their Obedience I wonder what strange stretch of Faith those Thousands of Christians must have that are born and bred Subjects to the Mahometan Grand Signior But that the Members of the Church of Rome may not look altogether so black for this unhappy Part of their Belief and that their asserting of that Spiritual Supremacy in their Pope does not any ways threaten either the Crown or the publick peace That wise and prudent Monarch King James the First shall be their Compurgator For as many Laws as that Prince made for the Defence of the Establisht Church of England and as great Industry as he used for the extirpation of the Romish Religion he was nevertheless pleased to allow the Pope tho' not Vniversal Head of the Church yet Patriarch of the West in which precinct of consequence must England be included And if so zealous a Protestant King thought it no Diminution to his own or his Churches Dignity to be of that Opinion and to grant the Pope that Prerogative what mortal High Treason against the Crown of England do the Members of the Popes own Church commit in throwing him in the East too a part of the World not much relating to us into the Bargain and so making him Vniversal Patriarch Jacob. Contr. Perron But some People will tell you 'T is almost an Impossibility to fancy any such things as Principles of Loyalty in a Romish Subject to a Protestant King. I shall not endeavour to confute this uncharitable Censure by the Vniversal Heroick Examples of that Parties Loyalty in the Battels of Charles the First so truly may I call it
THE EXAMINATION OF THE BISHOPS Upon their Refusal of Reading His Majesty's Most Gracious DECLARATION And the Nonconcurrence of the Church of England In Repeal of the Penal Laws and Test Fully Debated and Argued With Allowance LONDON Printed for H. W. and are to be Sold by most Booksellers MDCLXXXVIII THE EXAMINATION OF THE BISHOPS c. IT has pleas'd that Almighty Power which rules the Hearts of Princes to enlighten and adorn His present Gracious Majesty with such peculiar Beams of Mercy and Clemency those truly Royal Virtues that render Him the nearest Pourtraict of that Deity whose Vicegerent He is To win therefore the Universal Love of his People a Conquest worthy of and indeed reserved for His Great self He has set up the Standard of Compassion resolving to recover the alienated Affections of those of his Subjects whom the Administration of his Predecessors may have any ways rendred uneasie There are but Two things in the World dear to all Mankind Religion and Property The last of these I confess in the most moderate Distribution of Common Right has all along had its free course in the true Channels of Equity only the first has been a little restrain'd for Conscience has sometimes been shackled The Sighs therefore and Groans that have lately breathed from that Restraint have moved him to that Sacred Commiseration that He is resolved to break the Fetters that extort em The Penal Laws Which to effect He has already declared His Determination for that choice of Magistrates in Authority under Him that in His Princely Judgment He thinks will be most Hearty in contributing their best and ablest Endeavours for that Great End. To carry on this pious work 't is not at all to be doubted but the suffering party on all sides who are aggrieved by those Laws by the meer dictates of Self-preservation will be no ways wanting to throw off a Yoke they have so long so unquietly born And if all their Helps His Majesty as in Reason may be expected is so well secure of there remain only the Concurrence of the Church of England which if obtain'd His Kingdom would reap the Fruit and Himself the Honour of being the Founder of those lasting Blessings so much in themselves the more Glorious as that all Hands and all Hearts are assistant to their Creation But since the late Refusal of Reading His Majesties most Gracious Declaration seems to intimate the Church of Englands Aversion or at least their Leading Endeavours to create that Aversion to the Repeal of the Penal Laws and Tests the Design of this Address to our Episcopal Pastors is to examine the stress and tendency of those Laws and truly to reason and argue with our Pious Mother the Church of England why the Preservation of those Laws either is or ought to be any part of her Care and indeed how far those Statutes her sometimes Darlings are in themselves either Just Equitable or consistent with Christianity it self and how far she is equally if not more than the Dissenters obliged to abolish them Nor shall I endeavour to urge her Consent from any Resignation or Compliance those fainter motives of meer Generosity to the Pleasure and Will of the King that desires to have it so but enforce the Argument from the Bonds and Tyes of Conscience and Justice that require her Assistance to their Dissolution and hereby illustrate the Equity and Reasonableness of His Majesties Proposal and prove the Work it self no more than the incumbent Duty of every Christian Subject to labour to perfect For inquiry therefore first into the Penal Laws I shall make bold to trace the Grounds of their Rise and Original After the Death of Queen Mary her Protestant Sister Elizabeth being seated on the Throne under so fair a Prospect of establishing her Religion as having the Half if not the Majority of the Nation of Her Perswasion all Hands were set at Work for so glorious an Enterprize But the main Engine was That the Reformers having before their Eyes the late severity of her Sisters Reign the Protestant Church either truly or rather seemingly ashamed as time will shew of the Romish Cruelty the Popular out-crys against Smithfield Fires was conscious that she had no means so proper to recommend her self to the Peoples Esteem as the avoiding all those occasions of Odium which had render'd the Romish Church so much the Object of their Aversion and therefore the Change must be wrought and Affections won by the opposite Extremes of Mercy and Moderation These Measures for a while seem'd terrible but alas in few years Indulgence appeared a too slow-pac'd Progress of Reformation for still notwithstanding the Encouragement of a Protestant Queen and the Establishment of our Church the Ecclesiastick Advances went on too leisurely and Conversions not fast enough to satisfie either the Churches Itch of Power or Warmth of Zeal under the looser Reins of Toleration For whilst the Popish party were connived at and permitted any Liberty of their Worship their Church though falling could not want some few unshaken Members at least that would still follow even its very Ruines and perhaps the Romish Priests though thrown out of Church Preferment could not or would not forbear to confirm and encourage their thin and scatter'd Party and possibly through an indispensable as they thought Duty to that Communion in which invincibly perswaded they only expected Salvation they might not omit either Arguments or Industry as Opinion wants neither to render their Religion nevertheless lovely for the Cloud it wore which indeed is but natural to all Religions whilst they think their own either the only or at least the nearest way to Heaven These Remora's how small stops soever to her advancing Glory the Church of England beholding with Impatience and repining even at her smallest Favours to the Romish Party whilst but the least Impediments to her yet unsatisfied Ambition for to be Vppermost was not enough unless she could be All too began to think of some more expeditious way for the weeding out of Popery and to look out for a sharper Pruning Hook than meer Teaching and Preaching to do the Work of Reformation set agog therefore upon Dispatch and Execution she felt the Itch of her Forefathers and if Honour and Reputation could be safe she should not scruple at a little of the old-fashion'd Shamble-work to gain her Point But considering that to punish Dissent in Religion and barefac'd too with Death would carry too much the looks of Old Smithfield and so beslain her own long boasted Gentleness and Innocence she is therefore put to no little Study and Invention to over-leap this Difficulty and accomplish her Projection till at last she lights upon this incomparable Stratagem to Mask her Designs and smooth All viz. to punish Recusancy with DEATH under the black and dismal Brand of HIGH-TREASON The Measures and Gradations used and made towards raising this Artful Superstructure take in short as follows In the first
of Hypocrisy and Imposture And to be plain with our later Protestant Law-makers the Shamm past so current then that it has been practised ever since Is there any one Law made against our later Nonconformists whose preamble does not run upon this Topick the Breach of the Peace and the undermining the very Foundations of the Government and all for deserting the Church of England and meeting in their own Religious Assemblies to offer up their Prayers and Devotions to God according to their Consciences Was there ever a late Conventicle disturb'd with any other Warrant than as Riotously and Routously assembled and thereupon punisht with Fines Imprisonments and Sequestrations sometimes even to the Ruines of whole Families Does not the same Masquerade run through all the Penal Laws And the very meer meeting to Worship God charged with no less than Sedition and Tumult But wherein lyes the Sedition and Tumult Was it in their so meeting No sure For as the Intention makes the Guilt the Intention was only a Religious Worship and not a State-disturbance Was the Sedition then in the Doctrines they Preach'd If so why was it not proved against them Their Meeting-House Doors stood open and their Enemies were both potent and numerous enough to hear and detect any Seditious Design or Doctrines against the Crown or State. And the Law was furnisht both with Rods and Axes to punish any Crime of that kind according to its Demerit before the Penal Laws were so much as thought on No tho' that was the Pretence it pincht not there The Dissenters grew too numerous and the Church of England began to see her Grandeur shrink and her Dominion lessen and therefore her Old Arts must once more be her Refuge The Nonconformists must be crusht and supprest and to avoid all imputations of Oppression and Cruelty Sedition and Riots must be the charge against them and the Law gilded over with that fair Title to make it swallowable 'T is true indeed the Law here did not reach to Death however it took care to make their Purses if not their Veins bleed for it and that too sometimes with so total a Drein that whole Families have been reduced to the condition of starving which is the very next door to it And all things consider'd Liberty next to Life is so dear that whole years of noysome Imprisonment have been very little the easier punishment Having given you this true Pourtraict of our Penal Laws I shall only add some few Lineaments more and so finish the piece And to make a farther Ballance betwixt our selves and Rome in that point how unchristian or unwarrantable soever all such Penal Inflictions for meer Conscience may be the Church of Rome has or at least fancies she has some little Pretext for such Laws For under her famous Tenent of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and her Confinement of Salvation only within her own Boundaries she may have sometimes consented to the Practice of now and then cutting off a stray Sheep to terrifie the rest of the Flock from leaping the Fold as imagining to her self in so doing and in now and then Sacrificing one or two lost Sons of Perdition for such she accounts them and thereby lopping off some corrupt Member already past hope of Redemption she only secures possibly the whole Body as she thinks from Apostacy and Damnation And consequently such exemplary Acts though of the greatest Rigour are only intended as absolutely necessary for that Great End Vniversal Salvation But alas our more Charitable Church that pretends not to bound the Grace of God but by a larger latitude and more extended Operation of the Blood of Christ Equally allows Salvation to true Zeal and Piety in both Churches and indeed in all Christian Professions Under all this Concession I say our Protestant Church utterly wants this Loop-hole and upon true Examination will be found wholly inexcusable if not impardonable For in executing of her Sanguinary Laws in punishment of meer matter of Conscience she cuts off not like Rome the supposed Members of Perdition but even those Professors of Christianity which by her own Confession may be equally with her self the Sons of Grace and Coheirs of Salvation Nay I 'le venture to add one bold Word more because a true one The Church of England in her once executing of her sanguinary Laws is undoubtedly guilty of more Barbarity than the ten Primitive Heathen Persecutions For in all cases of Suffering for Religion 't is an undeniable Maxim That He that makes the Martyr least thiks he makes him The bloodiest Pagan Tyrants in all their studied Arts of Blood and Christian Massacre did not believe that they butchered the then only Professors of Truth and Heirs of Heaven But on the contrary in Devotion to their own supposed true Deities they thought they only executed Apostates Blasphemers and Infidels for such they accounted the Christians as profest Deserters of their Heathen Gods and Sacrifices Nor is the forementioned Romish Case much different as lying under the unhappy Belief of Hereticks irreparable State of Damnation But all this while our Church of England I am sorry to her Shame it must be spoken out-do's the very Heathens themselves in enacting and executing those Penal Laws by which she cuts off those very Members of Christianity who if true Zealots in their Profession she owns are in the number of the Elect of God And if any true Zealots amongst them those certainly that have Courage and Constancy to DIE for their Religion are not the least of them and consequently she cannot deny but in executing those Laws she both makes the Martyr and knows she makes him too And if she 's so blameable in her Severity against the Romanists much more criminal must her Rigour against the Dissenters be whom she owns to differ from her self in little more than Ceremonies and Punctilio's Nay the Ferment has sometimes boyl'd so high that our Protestant Church has put her Zeal upon the stretch to find means to vent her Indignation when some of those very Laws against Recusancy have been extended against the Protestant Dissenters and the greatest part of their Sufferings received from the Lash of those Laws I shall not pretend to dive so far as to ascertain whether that Comprehension was originally design'd by those Laws or otherwise an artificial Superstructure to serve a State turn but either way the severity of those Laws is not a little notorious where so trivial Matters of Dissent in Religion as has been said before have been so cruelly treated But if our Protestant Church cannot possibly be reconciled to Liberty of Conscience and therefore these Laws were her Weapons against it her more generous way at least more agreeable to a Christian Profession had been first fairly to have overthrown it by Dint of Argument before she had made use of Dint of Steel to do it by And for that purpose I wonder how that famous Bishop Taylor has past for so great
a Doctor of the Church all this while and his Treatise upon that subject call'd Liberty of Prophecying not yet answer'd or at least the Author under no small Ecclesiastick Fulminations if no other way to answer it for so terrible a Blow against the Churches long main Favourite Bulwark her Penal Laws 'T is true some People will object What are all these Laws to the CHURCH when enacted only by the Civil Power as an Expedient for its own Security and Defence and therefore warrantable and lawful nor in any respect are chargeable upon the Ecclesiasticks Alas this is such a feeble Objection that 't is scarce to be named without Blushing As if the Clergy did not act in Parliament by their Representatives nay the very Bishops sitting there in Person assenting to and undoubtedly little less than Original Founders of those Laws But grant it as they say the meer Establishment of the Civil Power The Clergy by owning the Justice and asserting the Necessity of such Laws for Defence of their Church the Lay-Power in this Case is little more than the Cats Paw to rake out the Chesnut Nor are the Civil Rulers and Temporal Power of a Christian Government any ways more authorised to outgo the Gospel Moderation and Clemency for any Politick Consideration whatever than the more immediate Oracles of Truth the Preachers themselves And this the great Legislators of those Penal Statutes very well knew and therefore as I told you before they cunningly converted Recusancy into High Treason and Non-conformity into Riots and Routs to find something tho but seemingly justifiable for the Fangs of their Laws to lay hold of and so boulster'd up their Penal Statutes to make them able to walk upright I 'le only put this one Question to all the Doctors of our Church With what Conscience can a Church that owns it self Fallible establish Laws to punish Dissenters in Religion when by her own Concession of Fallibility she neither has nor CAN have any Certainty or Assurance how strong soever she thinks or hopes her own Foundation but that she punishes those that possibly may be more in the Right than her self more especially in those Professions that found their Dissenting Doctrins on her own Basis the Scripture I cannot tell what Equity wiser Heads may find out for the Ordination of Penal Laws but truly in my Opinion the Great Prince of Peace that reprimanded the Drawing of that Sword that cut off but the Ear of the High Priests Servant tho in his own immediate Cause very little intended the raising his Church or the propagation of his Gospel by either Axes or Gibbets or Gaols or Dungeons And He that left us the Standard of Christianity in the Innocence of Doves never commission'd us the Rapine of Vultures and though we are conceded the Subtilty of Serpents I know no warrant that he gave us either for the Stings or the Poyson of them And tho my Zeal for Truth makes me thus plain in detecting the only Shame and Frailty of the Reform'd Church I hope she has Goodness enough to forgive the Boldness of a Blushing Son who is no otherwise solicitous than for her covering her own Nakedness And that I may truly term it such the Reformation that otherwise may boast her Purity and Principles only founded on Holy Writ and all the rest of her Doctrins and Practices derived from those sacred Oracles will be only found tripping here and in all her support of Scriptural Records in all other Points I am afraid must have recourse even to the exploded Authority of TRADITION only for her Penal Laws For I shrewdly suspect that Lollards Towers and Inquisition Houses let her mince it as she will will be found the only Precedents for the Estates she has confiscated the Families she has beggar'd the Gaols she has fill'd besides her sometimes loading of Gibbets and ripping up the Bowels even of her own Co-Disciples because Dissenting Professors of Christ and all by her Penal Laws Nor will it suffice for an Excuse to insinuate that the Establishment of Religion and Conformity of Worship on one side and the Preservation of Peace and Tranquillity of the State on the other side exact the necessity of such rigid Laws Though by the by the Peace of States is rather destroy'd then upheld by such Laws for what Civil War in almost all the Christian World that directly or indirectly has not had the Oppression of some Religious Party its greatest if not only Incendiary No to gain the first of these great Ends let the Teachers and Professors of our Establish'd Church live up to the heighth of their Profession and re-call the Wanderers and reduce the Strays into the Fold by their own convincing Examples of Christian Piety a much more commendable way of making Proselytes than the foremention'd rigid Arts of Conversion And for the second great End the Governments Security if her Temporal Fences are not strong enough let her make stronger and if any of her Dissenters are the disturbers of her Peace let her single out the Guilty from the Innocent and wreak her just Vengeance where 't is deserved and not punish the Dissent it self which as being meer matter of Religion is wholly uncapable of such Crime for the sake of any corrupted Members that either are of or Herd under the Covert of such or such a Congregation of Christians For to do that work by the undistinguishing merciless Hand of her Penal Statutes is so little conformable to the Evangelical Precepts that I am afraid the doing such notorious Ills that Good may come of it whatever Religious Security or Gospel Propagation may be intended by them these Penal Laws I say that can swallow the Estates Fortunes Liberties and Lives of their weaker Brethren and fellow Christians instead of being either Christian or Just or any ways related to 'em will at last appear much nearer of kin to that famous Rover that wanders round the World to seek whom he may devour insomuch that their Ordination will be found little less than borrowing Engines from Hell to help to set up Heaven Now to the Case of the Church of England if these are her Penal Laws for I shall not trouble my self with a tedious recital of the several Statutes of that nature as being all but Scions from the same Root I should gladly know what Beauties or rather invisible Charms the Church of England can find in these Statutes to be in the least solicitous for their preservation For alas maugre all her Volumes written upon the Unreasonableness of Separation from her Communion and her Justification of her zealous Indeavours for Conformity unless the Means and Methods used to obtain it as these Laws were intended for such be equally Justifiable her whole Pretensions fall to the Ground Nor will it excuse her to say that they were chiefly enacted in Terrorem as being but seldom put in execution as if a studied ill Deed were therefore more excusable because
committed suppose but once in an Age when a foul Act for that very Cause should rather appear the more deform'd as 't is the Rarity that makes the Monster Besides Queen Mary had that Plea to make for what were 206 Protestants even by Foxes Muster-Roll burnt for Religion in her five years Reign to the some millions of Protestants in those days when half the Kingdom was of that Persuasion an infinite larger number to câ—ll out so many Sufferers from than all the Popish Priests that Rome has sent over these 130 Years past or shall do in as many more to come To return therefore to His Majesties Proposal of Abrogating these Laws 't is a greater Duty upon the Church of England to abolish 'em than in the Dissenters themselves for as 't is a Yoke imposed upon their weaker Brethren in it self wholly unjust the Sufferer under that Yoke in endeavouring to break it only acts by the Motives of Self-defence the common Principle of Nature But the Imposer of that Yoke is tyed by the Obligations of Religion it self to repeal and repent his own Act of Injustice Besides if all Arguments of Conscience cannot prevail and Policy not Equity though Heaven forbid so uncharitable a Thought is our Churches Guide yet even then too What do's she yield up in abolishing those Laws Why truly nothing For whilst the Government continues in the Hands of a Prince of the Romish Religion those Statutes will utterly lye dead for the Royal Indulgence a Prerogative in the Crown will never put them in execution And if abolisht however the next Protestant Prince has the power of Resumption if his Conscience shall think fit to give them a Resurrection What reason therefore has the Church of England for her Nonconcurrence to a Proposal so equitable when she has not so much as the least Pretext even of meer Interest it self for her Refusal But this I am sure as the Church of England can have no solid Reasons to oppose their Repeal the State has very substantial ones to inforce it For as TRADE is the greatest support and strength of a Kingdom I know no Politicks so conducing to the Commerce and Wealth of a Nation as Liberty of Conscience What greater Encouragement to Naturalization And England that is not overloaded with People can have no fairer Inlet to bring in whole Families and Estates and indeed the Wealth of the World besides the opening that Current of Commerce even amongst our present Natives which the late Restraint of Worship had so much shut up than Liberty of Religion Nor can I better instance the Effects of this Policy than in the growth of the Dutch Greatness and the decay of the Spaniard from their different Extreams of National Conduct in that Point I am certain His Majesty resolves to eternize his Glory by being the truest Pater Patriae of all the Crown'd Heads since the Conquest nor has He a fairer Prospect of making His Kingdom a true Paradise of PEACE and PLENTY but by taking this Pattern at least from the first Paradise that is by making the Lyon and Lamb lye down in Peace together our long Disunions being no otherways to be reconciled and our Enmities husht but by this only Vniversal Pacification I shall only add this last Consideration The execution of our Penal Laws and the restraint of Conscience has been the greatest Blow that ever was given to the Hereditary Right of the Subjects of England their natural Properties and Immunities given and sealed to them by Magna Charta it self For who can call his Liberty or Estate his own whilst a Superiour Opinion in POWER shall seize our Persons and confiscate our Estates for no other cause but difference of Worship and Faith and neither Person Estate or Liberty redeemable under a less Composition than renouncing of God for Conformity of Worship absolutely against Conscience is little else And all this Capital Offence so unfixt and so undeterminable a sort of Transgression that a Man has only a meer Lottery to be in the Right or the Wrong For the blackest Criminal in one Reign has been the whitest Saint in the next and so vice versâ over again witness the Reigns of Edward the Sixth Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth where the Protestants were the Devils one while and the Papists another Nay in the Reign of Henry the Eighth both Papist and Protestants were at one time in the wrong For 't was remarkable in his Reign that in the same day have Papists been hanged for Traytors for disowning his Church Supremacy and Protestants burnt for Hereticks for denying of Transubstantiation Thus in their turns have all Religions and Opinions lain under the Scourge of the severest of Laws and all for want of that Obedience to a Law which Humanity it self is utterly unable to pay For though our Breach or not Breach of all other Laws either Humane or Divine lyes in our own free will and choice To conform or not conform to this or that Belief is wholly above the power of Man Faith only being Irresistible And if our worldly Well-being and all we enjoy in this Life depends upon such caprichious Decrees of Law certainly the Great Charter of our Liberties and Estates that confirm'd 'em both under no such Condition or Restriction is not a little invaded by the Penalties of such Laws And I cannot tell what greater or more glorious Design His Gracious Majesty can undertake than by repairing so deep a Breach wrought through the very Fundamentals of his Peoples original Freedom and Birthrights Nor is there or has been a greater Friend or Patron of the Church of England than His present Majesty who himself alone tenders Her the Means and Opportunity to wash off those long Stains and Blots which either the petulance or remissness Her Protestant Defenders of Her Faith through these Penal Statutes have cast or left upon Her and so to restore Her to Whiteness and Innocence Having made this fair Inquest into the Penal Laws I shall take a little Search too into the TEST and lay down those Reasons that equally oblige us to concur with His Majesty in a Repeal of that too In order to which it behoves us first to sum up all the great and popular Arguments if I may so call 'em tho in reality rather the Language of Fears and Jealousies than the Voice of right Reason daily urged for the Preservation of the Test viz. That the whole Defence of the Protestant Religion relyes on that Basis If the Test were once abrogated the Church of England would soon be blown up when all Offices both Ecclesiastical and Civil and all Power and Authority both in Church and State shall be lodged in Roman Catholick Hands and what not To answer which hideous and formidable Outcry we 'll begin first with the pretended Dangers threaten'd the Church of England by Repeal of the Test Not to insist upon His Majesties reiterated WORD and HONOVR His inviolable Engagements
to maintain the Church of England as now by Law establisht in her uninterrupted Rights and Priviledges all her Churches and Church-livings whatever thereunto belonging c. in it self alone no little Security But waving that Plea the Ecclesiastical Government and the Church of England neither are nor can be shaken or toucht by the Abrogation of the Test the Test being indeed no part of her Defence For first the very taking of the Test is no part of the Qualification of any of the Clergy of England nor was ever so much as mention'd or thought upon to be imposed to tender'd to the Clergy No as jealous as the Founders of that Test were or pretended to be of the Danger of Popery and as zealous as they could be for the Security of the Protestant Religion they very well knew the Church of England had two impregnable Bulwarks the two great Acts of VNIFORMITY that themselves alone sufficiently establisht guarded and preserved the Church of England in all Points without any Fortification from the Test nor indeed was the Test wanted in the Ecclesiastick Administration those very Statutes being a greater and stronger Test before For by those Statutes is the whole Liturgy the Administration of the Sacraments and indeed all the Canons and Articles of the Church supported For by the Fence of those Laws first no Romanist can possibly be admitted into the Clergy unless under the most damnable Hypocrisie which no Human Test can discover an Hypocrisie too no ways beneficial to the Romish Cause whilst tyed up to the Divine Service as now by Law establisht Secondly No other Divine Service as the Mass or the like can be introduced into our Churches already constituted or assigned for the Divine Service of the Church of England The strength of these two Laws His Majesty very well knows and is so far even from the Thought of hurting or infringing the least Particle of either or those Laws or the Security our Church has do's or can receive from them by abrogating any Penal Laws or Tests whatever that on the contrary there is not undoubtedly that farther Confirmation of those Laws and the Religious Observance of them or any thing conducing thereunto that may or shall be offer'd to His Majesty in Parliament that His Majesty shall not readily assent to and as inviolably maintain If then the Church of England Her Administration and Government as 't is plain stand of themselves alone secure and firm without any borrow'd Prop or Support from the Test whatever the Test therefore is only a Buttrice or at least so intended to the Civil Magistracy as first Excluding all Roman Catholicks from all Offices of Trust in the State. Secondly From all Domestick Services near the Person of the King. And Thirdly From all Right to Session in Parliament These three Incapacities are by the Test thrown upon the Romanists And for confuting all Suspicions and Jealousies let us examine how the loosening of all these three Restrictions can tend to the Subversion of the Protestant Religion as now by Law establisht In the first place as to the Civil Government What Office in the State can a Roman Catholick hold any ways empowering him to prejudice the Church of England Suppose even in the Courts of Judicature for if any Apparition of any such Power 't is there Were Romanists imagine in all those Offices Why may not a Sir Thomas Moor be as honest as a Lord Chief Justice Hales and execute his Office with as great Integrity and Justice Why not Men of equal Abilities be of equal Uprightness in all Religions Besides the Distribution of Meum and Tuum more especially when Liberty of Conscience shall be past into a perpetual Law and all Penal Inflictions for matter of Religion thrown out of their Jurisdictions will then be the whole Business that lyes before them and wherein is a Roman Catholick Judge any more incapacitated for the administring of Justice than another Man Moreover in a Kingdom where their number is so truly inconsiderable as scarce the Two hundredth Man in the Nation if they have hopes of making any Converts or any Indeavours that way it can only be done by holding the Scale of Justice upright and in all Posts of Trust by keeping up the steddiest Standard of Right and Equity as the only means thereby to recommend and endear themselves to the World and wipe off those Blemishes that the mistaken Jealousies and Popular Misapprehensions have so long so unkindly cast upon them And This and This only they are very sensible is their Chart to steer by and their Great Pilot their Royal Master the best read Student in the Arts of Empire that possibly ever graced a Throne equally knows to be His only Course and undoubtedly as sacredly resolves to make it so And if the Judges of the Land suppose of the Romish Religion besides their Oaths that bind 'em and His Majesties Honour that shall influence them to it have these Obligations more and above even of INTEREST to their very Religion it self to move in so regular a Sphear of Justice where lyes our Danger And if this higher Station will be so Inoffensive what can the poorer Justices of the Peace or the inferiour Subministration of the Government signifie in Popish or not Popish Hands But in this Case I have heard some People say Alas What stretch of the Laws will not such Judges make Perhaps for instance pick a hole in the Abby-Lands and start some dormient Title or other to revert them to the Church of Rome a Patrimony that will not a little enrich the Romanists and advance their Cause This idle Objection was scarce worth naming as if the stretching of our Laws in that Point was not as notorious and Arbitrary as a total Violation of the Subjects Right and rending the whole Frame of the Laws in sunder But to check this idle Surmize If a Romish Parliament it self in the Reign of Queen Mary with the very Restoration of the Romish Religion and Papal Supremacy into the Saddle never so much as attempted to revert those Lands Nay on the contrary their whole Title was confirm'd to the present Possessours by a Decretal from Rome it self as was then so solemnly done by Cardinal Pool the then Popes Legate How groundless must the Fear be of any Thought or Attempt of reverting them now Or why must the Romish Judges in any kind subvert or undermine the Laws contrary to all their best Politiques in the present State of England to no true advantage either to themselves or their Church and possibly to be answerable for it with their Heads if they live to the next Protestant Prince To come next to the Officers of his Majesties Houshold c. To have those Posts too barricado'd with Tests and the Imperial Dignity so shackled as to be debarr'd the Choice of its own Menials nay even of its Conversation it self is an Insolence put upon Majesty as had been scarce tolerable