REPRESENTATION Of The Threatning Dangers Impending Over PROTESTANTS In GREAT BRITTAIN With an Account of the Arbitrary and Popish Ends unto which the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in England and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland are designed Neque enim satis amarint bonos Principes qui malos satis non oderint Plin. in Panegyr c. 53. Sedem obtinet Principis ue sit Domino locus id ibid. c. 55. Tantum tibi licet quantum per leges licebit Pacat. ad Theodos. August THey are great strangers to the Transactions of the World who know not how many and various the attempts of the Papists have been both to hinder all endeavours towards a Reformation to overthrow and subvert it where it hath obtained and prevailed For beside the innumerable Executions and Murders committed by means of the Inquisition to crush and stiffle the Reformed Religion in its rise and birth and to prevent its succeeding and settlement in Spain Italy and many other Territories there is no Kingdom or State where it hath so far prevailed as to come to be universally received and legally established but it hath been through strange and wonderful conflicts with the rage and malice of the Church of Rome The Persecutions which the Primitive Christians underwent by vertu ' of the Edicts of the Pagan Emperoâ—s were not more sanguinary and cruel than what through the Laws and Ordinances of Popish Princes have been inflicted upon those who have testified against the Heresies Superstitions and Idolatries and have withdrawn from the Communion of the Papal Church Nor were the Martyrs that suffered for the Testimony of Jesus against Heathenism either more numerous or worthier of esteem for vertu ' Iustice and Piety than they who have been slaughtered upon no other pretence but for Endeavouring to restore the Christian Religion to the simplicity and purity of its Divine and first Institution and to recover it from the corruptions wherewith it was become universally tainted in Doctrine Worship and Discipline How have all the Nations in Europe been soak't with the Blood of Saints through the Barbarous Rage of Popish Rulers whom the Roman Bishops and Clergy stirred up and instigated in order to support themselves in their secular grandure and in their Tyranny over the Consciences of men and to keep the World in Slavery under Ignorance Errors Superstition and Idolatry which the reducing Christianity again to the Rule of the Gospel would have redeemed mankind from and been an effectual means to have dissipated and subverted They of the Roman Communion having strangely corrupted the Christian Religion in its Faith Worship and Discipline and having prodigiously altered it from what it was in the Doctrines and Institutions of our Saviour and his Apostles they found no other way whereby to sustain their Errors and Corruptions and to preserve themselves in the possession of that Empire which they had usurped over Conscience and in the enjoyment of the Wealth and secular Greatness which by working upon the Ignorance Superstition Lusts and Prophanness of People they had skrewed and wound themselves into but by adjudging all who durst detect or oppose them to fire and Sword or to miseries to which Death in its worst shape were preferrable Nor have they for the better obstructing the growth and compassing the Extirpation of the Reformed Religion omitted either the Arts and Subtlities of Julian or the Fury and Violence of Galâ—rius and Diâ—cletian Whosoever hath not observed the Craft and Rage that have been employed and exerted against Protestants for these 170. Years must have been very little Conversant in Histories and strangely overlook't the conduct of affaires in the World and the Transactions in Churches and States during their own time And tho the Papists do not think it fit to put their Maxim's for preserving the Catholick Religion and converting Hereticks in Execution at all times and in every place yet some of their Writers are so ingenuous as to tell us the reason of it and that they do not forbear it upon Principles of Christianity or good Nature but upon motives of Policy and Fear lest the cutting one of our Throats might endanger two of their own However they have been careful not to suffer a period of twenty years to elapse since the beginning of the Reformation without affording us in some place or another renewed evidences of Papal Charity and of the Roman method of hindring the growth of Heresie either by a Massacre War or Persecution begun and executed upon no other account or provocation but meerly that of our Religion and because we cannot believe and practice in the matters of God as they do And having obtained of late great Advantages for the pursuing their malice against us more boldly and avowedly than at an other Season and that not only through a strange concurrence and conjunction of Princes in the Papal Communion who are more intoxicated with their Superstitions and Idolatries or less wise merciful and humane than some of their Predecessors of that Fellowship were but through having obtained a Prince intirely devoted unto them under the implicit guidance of their Priests to be advanced unto a Throne where such sometime used to sit as were the Terror of Rome the Safeguard of the Reformed Religion and the Sanctuary of oppresed Protestants they have thereupon both assumed a Courage of stirring up new and unpresidented Persecutions in divers places against the most useful best and loyallest of Subjects upon no other charge or Allegation but for dissenting from the Tridentine Faith and denying Subjection to the Tripple Crown and are raised into a Confidence of wholly Extirpating Protestancy and of reestablishing the Papal Tyrannies and Superstition in the several Countries whence they had been expelled or stood so depressed and discountenanced as that the Votaries and Partizans of their Church had not the Sway and Domination Nor need we any other conviction both of their Design and of their Confidence of Succeeding in it than what they have already done continue to pursue in France Hungary and Piedmont wheretheir prospering to such a degree in their Cruel and Barbarous Attempts not only gives them boldness of entertaining thoughts of taking the like Methods and Acting by the same measures in all places where they find Rulers at their beck and under their Influence but to unite and provoke all Popish Monarchs to enter into a holy War against Protestants every where that by Conquering and Subduing those States and Kingdoms where the Reformed Religion is received and established they may extirpate it out of the World under the Notion of the Northern Heresie If principles of humanity Maxim's of Interest Rules of Policy Obligations of Gratitude Ties of Royal and Princely Faith or the repeated Promises Oaths Edicts and Declarations of Soveraigns could have been a Security to Protestants for the Profession of their Faith and Exercise of their Worship in the forementioned Territories and Dominions they had all
that could be rationally desired for their Safety and Protection in the free and open profession and Practice of their Religion whereas by a violation of all that is Sacred among men of a binding vertu unto Princes except Chains and Fetters or that confer a Right Claim and Security unto Subjects the poor Protestants in those Places have been and still are persecuted with a rage and Barbarity which no age can parallel and for which it is difficult to find words proper and severe enough whereby to stamp a Character of infamy upon the treacherous cruel and savage Authors Promoters and Instruments of it Nor do's it proceed from a Malignancy of Nature peculiar to the Emperor the French King and the Duke of Savoy above what is in other Princes of the same Communion or that they are more regardless of Fame and less concerned how future generations will brand their Memories than other Papal Monarchs seem to be that they have suffered themselves to be prevailed upon to violate the Promises and Oaths they were bound by to their Protestant Subjects seeing the Emperour is character'd for a person of a meek and gentle temper and of the goodness of whose Nature thereremain some shadows interwoven with the bloody streaks of the Hungarian Persecution And the French King tho he stand not much commended for sweetness and Benignity of disposition is known to be unmeasurably Ambitious of having his name transmitted to Posterity in Letters of Greatness and Honor which his behaviour towards his Subjects of the Reformed Religion is no way 's adapted unto but calculated to make him hereafter listed with Nero and Julian As to the Duke of Savoy there seems by the whole course of his other Actions to be a certain Greatness of Mind in him not easily consisting with that savage and brutal temper which the Cruelties he hath exercised upon the Protestants in Piedmont would intimate and denote But it ariseth from the Mischievousness and Pestilency of their Religion their Bigottry in it and their having put themselves so entirely under the conduct of the Clergy particularly of the Jesuites who are for the most part a set of men especially the latter that through acting in the prospect of no other Ends but the Grandure Wealth and Domination of the Church of Rome do with an unlimited rage and a peculiar kind of Malice persecute all that have renounced Fellowship with it and care not if they Sacrifice the Honor Glory and Safety of Monarchs and bring their Kingdoms into contempt and desolation by rendring them weak poor and dispeopled provided they may wreck their spleen and revenge upon those whose Religion is not only dissonant from theirs but should it prevail to be the Religion of the Legislators and Rulers of Nations those springs of Wealth would be immediately dried up by which their Superior Clergy and all their Religious Orders are enriched and fed up in idleness And should the People come to be generally imbued with principles of Gospel Light and Liberty they would immediately shake off a blind and slavish Dependence upon Pope and Priests and thereby subvert the Foundation upon which the Monarchick Grandure of the Romish Church and their whole Religion is superstructed and destroy the Engine by which they are inabled to Lord it over the Bodies Estates and Consciences of men And if Protestants every where especially under Popish Rulers were not under a strange Infatuation they would look for no fairer Quarter from Papists than what their Brethren have met with in France and Piedmont nor would they rely upon the Faith of any King that stiles himself a Roman Catholick seeing Sacred Promises tremendous Oaths and the most Authentick Declarations are but Papal Arts and Tricks sanctified at Rome whereby to full Subjects into a Security and delude them into a neglect of all means for preserving themselves and their Religion till their Rulers can be in a condition of obeying the Decrees of the fourth Lateran Council that enjoins Kings to destroy and extirpate Hereticks under pain of Excommunication and of having both their Subjects absolved from Allegiance to them and their Territories given away to others and till without running any hazard they may comply with the Ordinance of the Council of Constance which not only releaseth them from all Obligation of keeping Faith to Hereticks but requires them to violate it and accordingly made Sigismond break his Faith to John Hus whom in dâ—fiance of the Security given him by that King they caused to be condemned and burnt Nor is the practice and late Example of the Great Louis designed for less than a pattern by which all Popish Princes are to act and his proceedings are to be the coppy Moddel which they who would merit the name of Zealous Catholicks and be esteemed dutiful Sons of the Church are to transcribe and limn out in lines of force violence and Blood and for the better corresponding with the Original to imploy Dragoons for Missionaries And tho I will not say but that there may be some Popish Princes who through an extraordinary measure of good Nature and from principles of Compassion woven into their Constitution previously to all notices of Revelation whether real or preâ—ended and who through Sentiments imâ—ib'd from a generous Education and their â—oming afterwards to be under the influence â—nd Management of wise and discret Counsellors may be able to resist the malignant â—mpressions of their Religion and so be preserved from the inhumanities towards â—hose of different perswasions from them in the things of God which their Priests would lay them under Obligations unto by the Doctrines of the Romish Faith yet there appears no reason why an understanding man should be induced to believe that the King of England is likely to prove a Prince of that great and noble temper there being more than enough both to raise a jealousie and beget a perswasion that there is not a Monarch among all those who are commonly stiled Catholicks from whom Protestants may justly dread greater Severities than from Him or look for worse and more Barbarous Treatments I am not ignorant with what candor we ought by the Rules of Charity and good manners to speak of all men whatsoever their Religion is nor am I unacquainted with what Veneration and Deference we are to Discourse of Crowned Heads but as I dare not give those flattering Titles unto any of which there are not a few in some of the late Addresses presented to the King by an inconsiderable and foolish sort of Dissenting Preachers so I should not know how to be accountable to God my own Conscience or the World should I not in my station as a Protestant and as a Lover of the Laws and Liberties of my Countrey offer something whereby both to undeceive that weak and short-sighted People whom their own being accommodated for a Season by the Declaration of Indulgence hath deluded into an Opinion that His Majesty cherisheth no thoughts of
peo 〈…〉 It will not be amiss to call over some 〈◊〉 his Majesties proceedings towards the 〈…〉 urch of England that from what hath 〈…〉 en already seen and felt both they and all 〈…〉 glish Protestants may the better know what they are to expect and look for hereafter Tho it be a method very unbecoming a Prince yet it shews a great deal of spleen to turn the former persecution of Dissenters so maliciously upon the Prelatical and conforming Clergy as his Majesty doth in his letter to Mr. Atsop in stiling them a party of Protestants who think the only way to advance their Church is by undoing those Churches of Christians that differ from them in smaller matters Whereas the severity that the Fanaticks met with had much of its Original at Court where it was formed and designed upon motives of Popery and Arbitrariness and the resentment and revengful humour of some of the old Prelates and other Church men that had suffered in the late times was only laid hold of the better to justify and improve it And tho it be too true that many of the dignified Rank as well as of the little Levites were both extreamly fond of it and contentiously pleaded for it yet it is as true that most of them did it not upon principles of judgment and conscience but upon inducements of retaliation for conceived injuries and upon a belief of its being the most compendious method to the next preferment and benefice and the fairest way of standing recommended to the favour of the two Royal Brothers Nor is it unworthy of observation that some of the most virulent writers against liberty of conscience and others of the most fierce Instigators to the persecuting Dissenters among whom we may reckon Parker Bishop of Oxford and Cartwright Bishop of Chester are since Adressing for the Declaration of Indulgence became the means of being gracioully lookt upon at Whitthall turned foreward promoters of it tho their success in their Diocesses with their Clergy hath not answered their expectations and endeavoures For as these two Mytred Gentlemen will fall in with and justify whatsoever the King hath a mind to do if they may but keep their Seas and enjoy their Revenues which I dare say that rather than lose they will subscribe not only to the Tridentine Faith but to the Alcoran so it is most certain that they two as well as the Bishop of Durham have promised to turn Roman Catholicks and that as Crew hath been several times seen assisting at the celebration of the Mass and that as Cartwright payd a particular respect to the Nuncio at his solemn Entrance at Windsor which some Temporal Lords had so much conscience and honor as to scorn to do so the Author of the leige Letter tells us that Parker not only extreamly favours Popery but that he brands in a manner all such for Atheists who continue to plead for the Protestant Religion 'T is an Act of the same candor and good nature in the King with the former and another Royal effect of his Princely breeding as well as of his Gratitude when he endeavours to cast a farther odium upon the Church of England and to exasperate the Dissenters against her by saying in the forementioned letter to Mr. Alsop that the reason why the Dissenters enjoyed not liberty sooner is wholly owing to the sollicitation of the Conforming Clergy whereas many of the learned and sober men of the Church of England could have been contented that the Nonconforming Protestants should have had liberty long ago provided it had been granted in a legal way and the chief executioners of severity upon them were such of all ranks orders and stations as the Court both set on and rewarded for it 'T is not their Brethrens having liberty that displeaseth modest good men of the Church of England but 't is the having it in the virtu ' of an usurped prerogative over the Laws of the Land and to the shaking all the legal foundations of the Protestant Religion it self in the Kingdom And had the Declaration of Indulgence imported only an exemption of Dissenters and Papists from rigours and penalties I know very few that would have been displeased at it but the extending it to the removing all the Fences about the Reformed Doctrine and worship and laying us open both to the tyranny of papists and the being overflowed with a deluge of their superstitions and Idolatries as well as the designing it for a means to overthrow the established Chur 〈…〉 is that which no wise Dissenter no more t 〈…〉 a conformable man knows how to digest 〈◊〉 I am not of Sr. Roger l'Estranges mind w 〈…〉 after he hath been writing for many yea 〈…〉 against Dissenters with all the venom and m 〈…〉 lice imaginable and to disprove the wisdo 〈…〉 justice and convenience of granting th 〈…〉 liberty hath now the impudence 〈◊〉 publi 〈…〉 that whatsoever he formerly wrote bears an exact conformity to the present Resolutions of State in that the liberty now vouchsased is an Act of Grace issuing from the supream Magistrate an 〈…〉 not a claim of Right in the people And as to r 〈…〉 cited expressions of the King they are onl 〈…〉 a papal trick whereby to keep up heats an 〈…〉 animosities among Protestants when both th 〈…〉 inward heats of men are much allay'd and th 〈…〉 external Provocations to them are wholly removed and they are meerly Iesuitick method's by which our hatred of one another may b 〈…〉 maintained tho the Laws inabling one part 〈…〉 to persecure the other which was the chie 〈…〉 spring of all our mutual rancour and bitterness be suspended It would be the sport and glory of the Ignatian Order to be able to make the disabling of penal Laws as effectual to the supporting differences among Protestants a◠the Enacting and rigorous execution of them was to the first raising and the continuing them afterwards for many years And if the foregoing Topicks can furnish the King arguments whereby to reproach the Church of England when he thinks it seasonable and for the interest of Rome to be angry with them I dare affirm he will never want pretences of being discontented with of aspersing Fanaticks when he finds the doing so to be for the service of the papal cause And if the forementioned instances of his Majesties behaviour to the Church of England to which he stands so superlatively obliged be neither Testimonies of his ingenuity evidences of his Gratitude nor effects of common much less Royal justice yet what remains to be intimated do's carry more visible marks of 〈…〉 malice and design both against the le 〈…〉 established Church and our Religion For 〈…〉 ing satisfied with the suspension of all 〈◊〉 Laws by which Protestants and they 〈◊〉 the national Communion might seem to be 〈…〉 urious to Papists in their persons and E 〈…〉 tes such as the Laws which make those 〈…〉 ho shall be
carrying on the fire is but earnest in respect of what is designed farther to be payd them for the having been the great supporters of that war both by continued Recruites of men and repeated Supplies of treasure Tho it was Queen Mary's misfortune and proved the misery of Protestants that she was under the influence of popish Bishops and of Religious of several Orders by whom she was whetted on and provoked to those barbarities where-with her Reign is stained and reproached yet she had no Iesuites about her to whom all the other Orders are but punies in the arts of wheedling and frighting Princes forward to cruelty The Society being then but in its infancy and the distance between its Institution which wasin the year 1540. and the time of her coming to the Crown which was anno 1553. not affording season enough for their spreading so far abroad as they have since done nor for the perfecting themselves to that degree in the methods of butchery and in the Topicks whereby to delude Monarchs to serve and promote their sanguinary passions as they have in process of time attained unto Nor have the Protestants now any security for their Religion whereby it or themselves may be preserved from the attempts of his Majesty for the extirpation of both but what our Predecessors in the same faith had in the like kind tho not to the same measure and degree when Queen Mary arrived at the Throne For tho our Religion was of late Fenced about with more Laws and we had Royal promises oftner repeated for the having 〈◊〉 preserved and our selves protected in the Profession of it yet it is certain that it had not only received a legal establishment under King Edward the VI but had the Royal Faith of Queen Mary laid to pledg in a promise made to the men of Suffolk that nothing should be done towards its subversion or whereby they might be hindred in the free exercise of it But as neither Law nor promise could prove restraints upon Mary to hinder her from subverting Religion and burning Protestants so the obligation of gratitude that she was under to the men of Suffolk for their coming in so seasonably to her assistance against the Duke of Northumberland who was in the field with an Army in the name of the lady Jean Gray whom the Council had proclaimed Queen could not excuse them from sharing in the severity that others met with it being observed that more of that County were burnt for Religion than of any other Shire in England And 't is greatly to be feared that this piece of her example will not escape being conformed unto by the King in his carriage towards those that eminently served him as well as all the rest of it in his behaviour towards Protestants in general Nor is it possible to conceive that the Papists living at that ease and quietness which they did under his late Majesty of whose being of their Religion they were not ignorant as appears by the proofs they have wouchsav'd the world of it since his death would have been in so many plots for destroying him and at last have hastned him to his Fathers as can be demonstrated whensoever it is seasonable had they not been assured of more to be attempted by his Successor for the extirpation of Protestants than Charles could be wrought up unto or prevailed upon to expose his person and Crown to the danger and hazard of For as 't is not meerly a Princes being a Papist and mild gentle and favorable to Catholicks that will content the fiery zealots of the Roman Clergy and the Regular Orders but he must both gratify their ambition in exalting them to a condition above all others and serve their inhuman lusts and brutal passions in not suffering any to live in his Dominions that will not renounce the Northern Heresie so it is not more i 〈…〉 edible that they should dispatch a Prince by an infusion in a cup of Tea or Chocolate whom tho they knew to be a Papist yet they found too cold slow in promoting their designs than that they should have murder'd another by a consecrated dagger in the hand of Ravailac the one being both more easie to be detected and likelier to derive an universal hatred and revenge upon them than the other And as the Kings being conscious of that parriciâ—â— committed upon his Brother plainly tells us that there is nothing so abominable and Barbarous which he hath not a conscience that will swallow and digest so the promotion of the Catholick cause being the motive to that horrid crime we may be sure that what is hitherto done in favour of Papists falls much short of what is intended there being something more meritorious than all this amounts unto needful to attone for so barbarous a villany which can be nothing else but the extripating the protestant Religion out of the three Kingdoms Nor is it probable that the present King who is represented for a person ambitious of Glory would lose the opportunities wherewith the present posture of affaires in the world presents him of being the Umpire and Arbiter of Christendom and of giving check to the grandure and usurpations of a neighbouring Monarch to whom all Europe is in danger of becoming enslaved if he were not swallowed up in the thoughts of a conquest over the Consciences Laws and liberties of his own people and of subjugating his Dominions to the Sea of Rome and had he not hopes and assurances of aid and assistance therein from that Monarch as he is emboldned and encouraged thereunto by his pattern and example What the Papists have all along been endeavouring for the subversion of our Religion during and under the Reigns of Protestans Princes may yet farther inform and confirm us what they will infallibly attempt upon their having gotten one into the Throne who is not only in all things of theâ—â—â—n faith but of an humour agreeable unto their desires and of a temper every way suited and adapted to their designes Tho the protestant Religion had obtained some entrance into several States and Kingdoms and had made some considerable spread in Europe before it came to be generally received and established upon foundations of Law in England yet they of other Countries were little able to defend themselves from the power and malice of the Church of Rome and of Popish Princes and many of them were very unsucceful in endeavours of that nature till England in Queen Elizabeths time by espousing their cause and undertaking their Quarrel not only wrought out their safety but made them flourish This the Court of Rome and the Priests grew immediately sensible of and have therefore moulded all their Counsels ever since against England as being both the Bulwark of the protestant Religion and the Ballance of Europe All the late attempts for the extirpation of the protestant Religion in France and elsewhere are much to be ascribed to the confidence the Papists had
are aware of and that having proceeded so far they have nothing left for their security from punishments because of crimes committed but to put us out of all capacity of doing our selves Right and them justice and he must be 〈…〉 ll who do's not know into what that must necessarily hurry them It being then as evident as a matter of this nature is capable of what we are to expect and dread from the King both as to our Religion and Laws we may do more than presume that the late Declaration for liberty of conscience and the Proclamation for a Toleration are not intended and designed for the benefit and advantage of the Reformed Religion and that whatsoever motives have influenced to the granting and emitting of them they do not in the least flow or proceed from any kindness and goodwill to Protestant Dissenters And tho many of those weak and easie people may flatter themselves with a belief of an interest in the Kings favour and suffer others to delude them into a perswasion of his bearing a gracious respect towards them yet it is certain that they are people in the world whom he most hates and who when things are ripe for it and that he hath abused their credulity into a serving his Ends as far as they can be prevailed upon and as long as the present Juggle can be of any advantage for promoting the papal cause will be sure not only to have an equal share in his displeasure with their Brethren of the Church of England but will be made to drink deepest in the cup of fury and wrath that is mingling and preparing for all Protestants No provocation from their present behaviour tho it is such as might warm a person of very cool temper much less offences of another complexion administred by any of them shall ever tempt me to say they deserve it or cause me to ravel into their former and past carriages so as to fasten a blott or imputation upon the party or body of them whatsoever I may be forced to do as to particular persons among them For as to the generality I do believe them to be as honest industrious useful and vertuous a people tho many of them be none of the wisest nor of the greatest pr 〈…〉 spect as any party of men in the Kingdo 〈…〉 and that wherein soever their carriage eve 〈…〉 abstracting from their differences with thei 〈…〉 fellow Protestants in matters of Religion hath varied from that of other Subjects they have been in the Right and have acte 〈…〉 most agreeably to the interest safety of th 〈…〉 Kingdom But it can be no reflection upo 〈…〉 them to recall into their memories tha 〈…〉 the whole tenor of the Kings actings towards them both when Duke of York and since he came to the Crown hath been such 〈◊〉 might render it beyond dispute that the 〈…〉 are so far from having any singular room i 〈…〉 his favour that he bears them neither pit 〈…〉 nor compassion but that they are the objects of his unchangeable indignation Fo 〈…〉 not to mention how the persecutions tha 〈…〉 were observed alway's to relent both upon his being at any distance from the late Kingâ— and upon the abatement of his influence 〈◊〉 any time into Counsels were constantl 〈…〉 revived upon his return to Court and wer 〈…〉 carried on in degrees of severity proportionable to the figure he made at Whitehall an 〈…〉 his Brothers disposedness and inclination t 〈…〉 hearken to him surely their memories can not be so weak and untenacious but the 〈…〉 must remember how their sufferings wer 〈…〉 never greater nor the Laws executed wit 〈…〉 more severity upon them than since hi 〈…〉 Majesty came to ascend the Throne As it is no 〈…〉 many years since he said publickly in Scotland that it were well if all that part of th 〈…〉 Kingdom which is above half of the Nation where the Dissenters were known t 〈…〉 be most numerous were turned into a hunti 〈…〉 field so none were favoured and promote 〈…〉 either there or in England but such as wer 〈…〉 taken to be the most fierce and violent of a 〈…〉 others against Fanaticks Nor were me preferred either in Church or State for the learning vertu ' or merit but for the passionate heats and brutal rigours to Dissenters And whereas the Papists from the ve 〈…〉 first day of his arrival at the Governmen 〈…〉 had beside many other marks of his Grac 〈…〉 〈…〉 s special Testimony of it of not having 〈…〉 e penal Statutes to which they stood liable 〈…〉 t in execution against them all the Laws 〈◊〉 which the Dissenters were obnoxious â—ere by his Majesties Orders to the Judges 〈…〉 stices of the peace and all other Officers 〈…〉 vil and Ecclesiastical most unmercifully exe 〈…〉 ted Nor was there the least talk of lenity Dissenters till the King found that he 〈…〉 uld not compass his Ends by the Church of 〈…〉 gland and prevail upon the Parliament 〈…〉 r Repealing the Tests and cancelling the 〈…〉 her Laws in force against Papists which if 〈…〉 ey could have been wrought over unto 〈…〉 e Fanaticks would not only have been left 〈…〉 ttiless and continued in the hands of the 〈…〉 rious Church-men to exercise their spleen 〈…〉 pon but would have been surrendred as a 〈…〉 crifice to new flames of wrath if they of 〈…〉 e prelatical Communion had retained 〈…〉 eir wonted animosity and thought it for 〈…〉 eir interest to exert it either in the old or 〈◊〉 fresh method's But that project not sucâ—eeding his Majesty is forced to shift hands 〈…〉 d to use the pretence of extending comâ—assion to Dissenting Protestants that he may â—he more plausibly and with the less hazard â—â—spend and disable the Laws against Papists â—nd make way for their admission into all â—ffices Civil and Military which is the first 〈…〉 ep and all that he is yet in a condition to 〈…〉 ke for the subversion of our Religion And â—ll the celebrated kindness to Fanaticks is â—nly to use them as the Catt's paw for â—ulling the Chesnut out of the fire to the Monkey and to make them stales under whose â—hroud and covert the Church of Rome may undermine and subvert all the legal foundations of our Religion which to suffer themselves to be instrumental in will not in the issue turn to the commendation of the Dissenters wisdom or their honesty Nor is there more truth in the Kings declaring it to have been his constant opinion that conscience ought not to be constrained nor people forced in matters of meer Religion than there is of justice in that malicious insinuation in his Letter to Mr. Alsop against the Church of England that should he see cause to change his Religion he should never be of that party of Protestants who think the only way to advance their Church is by undoing those Churches of Christians that differ from them in smaller matters forasmuch as he
forefeiture of their lives to justice And as the imposing an Oath not warranted by Law is a high Act of Absolute Power and in the King an altering of the Constitution so if we look into the Oath it self we shall find this Absolute Power strangly manifested and displayed in all the parts and branches of it and the people required to swear themselves his Majesties most obedient Slaves and Vassalls By one Paragraph of it they are required to swear that it is unlawful for Subjects on any pretence or for any Cause whatsoever to rise in Arms against him or any Commissioned by him and that they shall never resist his power or Authority which as it may be intended for a foundation and means of keeping men quiet when he shall break in upon their Estates and overthrow their Religion so it may be designed as an encouragement to his Catholick Subjects to set upon the cutting Protestants throats when by this Oath their hands are tied up from hindring them It is but for the Papists to come Authorised with his Majesties Commission which will not be denied them for so meritorious a work and then there is no help nor remedy but we must stretch out our necks and open our breasts to their consecrated swords and sanctified daggers Nay if the King should transfer the Succession to the Crown from the Rightful Heir to some zealous Romanist or Alienat and dispose his Kingdoms in way of donation and gift to the Pope or to the Society of the Iesuites and for the better securing them in the possessioâ— hereafter should invest and place them iâ— the enjoyment of them while he lives thâ— Scotts are bound in the virtue of this Oatâ— tamely to look on and calmly to acquiescâ— in it Or should his Physitians advise him to 〈◊〉 nightly variety of Matron's and Maids as thâ— best remedy against his malignant and venemous heats all of that Kingdom are bounâ— to surrender their Wives and daughters to him with a du'tiful silence and a profound veneration And if by this Oath he can securâ— himself from the opposition of his dissenting Subjects in case thro recovery of their Reason a fit of ancient zeal should surprise them he is otherway's secured of an Asiatick tameness in his prelatical people by a principlâ— which they have lately imbib'd but neitheâ— learned from their Bibles nor the Statutes oâ— the Land. For the Clergy upon thinking that the wind would alway's blow out of one quarter and being resolved to make that a duty by their learning which their interest at that season made convenient have preached up the Doctrine of passive Obedience to such a boundless height that they have done what in them lyes to give up themselves and all that had the weakness to believe them fettered and bound for sacrifices to popish rage and Despotical Tyranny But for my self and I hope the like of many others I thank God I am not tainted with that slavish and adulatory doctrine as having alway's thought that the first duty of every member of a Body politick is to the Community for whose safety and good Governours are instituted and that it is only to Rulers as they are found to answer the main ends they are appointed for and to Act by the legal Rules that are Chalcks out unto them Whether it be from my dulness or that my understanding is of a perverser make than other mens I cannot tell but I could never yet be otherway's minded than that the Rules of the Constitution and the Laws of the Republick or Kingdom are to be the measures both of the Soveraigns Commands and of the Subjects obedience and that as we are not to invade what by concessions and stipulations belongs unto the Ruler so we may not only lawfully but we ought to defend what is reserved to our selves if it be invaded and broken in upon And as without such a Right in the Subjects all legal Governments and mixt Monarchies were but emptie names and ridiculous things so wheresoever the Constitution of a Nation is such there the Prince who strives to subvert the Laws of the Society is the Traitor and Rebel and not the people who endeavour to preserve and defend them There is yet another branch of the foresaid Oath that is of a much more unreasonable strain than the former which is that they shall to the utmost of their Power assist defend and maintain him in â—he exercise of this Absolute Power and Authority which being tack't to our Obeying without reserve make us the greatest Slaves that either are or ever were in the universe Our Kings were heretofore bound to Govern according to law and so is his present Majesty if a Coronation Oath and faith to Hereticks were not weaker than Sampson's cords proved to be but instead of that here is a new Oath imposed upon the Subjects by which they are bound to protect and defend the King in his Ruling Arbitrarily It had been more than enough to have required only a calm submitting to the exercise of Absolute Power but to be injoined to swear to assist and defend his Majesty and Successors in all things wherein they shall exert it is a plain destroying of all natural as well as Civil Liberty and a robbing us of that freedom that belongs unto us both as we are men and as we are born under a free and legal Government For by this we become bound to dragg our Brethren to the Stake to cutt their Throats plunder their Houses embrew our hands in the Blood of our Wives and Children if his Majesty please to make these the Instances wherein he will exert his Absolute Power and require us to assist him in the exercise of it As it was necessary to Cancell all other Oaths and Tests as being directly inconsistent with this so the requiring the Scotts to swear this Oath is the highest reveng he could take for their Solemn league and Covenant and for all other Oaths that lust after Arbitrariness and Popish Bigottry will pronounce to have been injurious to the Crown But no words are sufficient to express the mischiefs wrapt up in that new Oath or to declare the abhorrency that all who value the Rights and liberties of mankind ought to entertain for it nor to proclaim the villany of those who shall by Addresses give thanks for the Proclamation There may a fourth thing be added whereby it will appear that his Majesties assuming Absolute Power stands recorded in Capital Letters in his Declaration for liberty of Conscience For not being contented to omit the requiring the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy and the Test Oaths to be taken nor being satisfied to suspend for a season the enjoining any to be demanded to take them he tells us that it is his Royal will and pleasure that the foresaid Oaths shall not at any time hereafter be required to be taken which is a full and direct Repealing of the Laws in which they are Enacted It
could to give them relief in a legal way Where as if any thing enflame and exasperate t 〈…〉 Nation to revive their sufferings it wi 〈…〉 arise from a resentment of the unworth 〈…〉 and treacherous carriage of so many 〈◊〉 them in this critical and dangerous ju 〈…〉 cture But the Terms which thro their A 〈…〉 dressing they have owned the receivi 〈…〉 their Liberty and Indulgence upon does in peculiar manner enhance their guilt again 〈…〉 God and their Countrey and strangely ad 〈…〉 to the disgust and anger which lovers 〈◊〉 Religion and the Laws of the Nation hav 〈…〉 conceived against them For it is Hot onl 〈…〉 upon the acknowledgment of a preroga 〈…〉 in the King over the Laws that they hav 〈…〉 received and now hold their Liberty b 〈…〉 it is upon the condition that nothing be preach 〈…〉 or taught amongst them that may any ways tend 〈◊〉 alienate the hearts of the People from his Majesti 〈…〉 person and Government He must be of an u 〈…〉 derstanding very near allied unto and approaching to that of an Irish man who do 〈…〉 not know what the Court sense of that clau 〈…〉 is and that his Majesty thereby intends th 〈…〉 they are not to preach against Popery nor t 〈…〉 set forth the Doctrines of the Romish Church i 〈…〉 terms that may prevent the peoples being i 〈…〉 â—ected by them much less in colours th 〈…〉 may render them hated and abhorred T 〈…〉 accuse the Kings Religion of Idolatry or 〈◊〉 affirm the Church of Rome to be the Apoc 〈…〉 lyptick Babylon and to represent the Articl 〈…〉 of the Tridentine Faith as faithful Ministers 〈◊〉 Christ ought to do would be accounted a 〈…〉 alienating the hearts of their hearers from t 〈…〉 King and his Government which as they 〈◊〉 in the foresaid Clause required noâ— to do 〈◊〉 they have by their Addressing confessed t 〈…〉 Iustice of the Terms and have undertaken 〈◊〉 〈…〉 old their liberty by that Tenor. And to give 〈…〉 em their due they have been very faithful 〈…〉 itherto in conforming to what the King 〈…〉 xacts and in observing what themselves have 〈…〉 ented to the equity of For notwithstan 〈…〉 ing all the danger from popery that the Na 〈…〉 on is exposed unto and all the hazard that 〈…〉 e Souls of men are in of being poysoned 〈…〉 i th Romish principles yet instead of prea 〈…〉 ing or writing against any of the Doctrines of 〈…〉 e Church of Rome they have agreed among 〈…〉 emselves and with such of their Congre 〈…〉 ations as approve their procedure not so 〈…〉 uch as to mention them but to leave the 〈…〉 rovince of defending our Religion and of 〈…〉 etecting the falshood of papal Tenets to the 〈…〉 astors and Gentlemen of the Church of Eng 〈…〉 nd And being ask'd as I know some of 〈…〉 em that have been why they do not preach 〈…〉 gainst Antichrist and confuse the papal Do 〈…〉 rines they very gravely reply that by prea 〈…〉 ing Christ they preach against Antichrist 〈…〉 nd that by Teaching the Gospel they Re 〈…〉 te Popery which is such a piece of fraudu 〈…〉 ent and guilful subâ—erfuge that I want words 〈…〉 o express the knavery and criminalness of it What a reserve and change have I lived to see 〈…〉 n England from what I beheld a few years 〈…〉 go It was but the other day that the Con 〈…〉 rmable Clergy were represented by some of 〈…〉 he Dissenters not only as favourers of 〈…〉 opery but as endeavouring to hale it in upon 〈…〉 s by all the methods and ways that lay within 〈…〉 heir circle and yet now the whole defence of 〈…〉 e Reformed Religion must be entirely de 〈…〉 olved into their hands and when all the 〈…〉 ces are pulled up that had been made to 〈…〉 inder Popery from overflowing the Nation 〈…〉 ey must be left alone to stemm the inun 〈…〉 ation and prevent the deluge They among 〈…〉 e Fanaticks that boasted to be the most avo 〈…〉 ed and irreconcilable Enemies of the Church 〈…〉 f Rome are not only become altogether si 〈…〉 ent when they see the Kingdom pesterd with 〈◊〉 swarm of busie and seducing Emissaries but 〈…〉 e both turned Advocats for that Arbitrary 〈…〉 aper whereby we are surrendred as a prey 〈…〉 nto them and do make it their business to detract from the reputation and discourage the laboures of the National Ministers who with a zeal becoming their Office and a learning which deserves to be admired have set themselves in opposition to that croaking fry and have done enough by their excellent and unimitable Writings to save people from being deluded and perverted if either unanswerable consutations of Popery or demonstrative Defences of the Articles and Doctrines of the Reformed Religion can have any efficacy upon the minds of men Among other fulsom flatteries adorning a Speach made to his Majesty by an Addressing Dissenter I find this hypocritical and shameful adulation namely that if there should remain any seeds of disloyalty in any of his Subjects the transcendent goodness exerted in his Declaration would morâ—isie and kill them to which he might have added with more truth that the same transcendent goodness had almost destroyed all the seeds of their honesty and mortied their care and concernment for the interest of Iesus Christ and for the Reformed Religion Their old strain of zealous preaching against the Idolaâ—ry of Rome and concerning the coming out of Babylon my people are grown out of fashion with them in England and are only reserved and said by to recommend them to the kindness and acceptation of forraign Protestants when their occasions and conveniencies draw them over to Amsterdam Whosoever comes into their Assemblies would think for any thing that he there hears delivered from their pulpits that She which was the Whore of Babylon a few years ago were now become a chast Spouse and that what were heretofore the damnable Doctrines of Popery were of late turned innocent and Harmless opinions The Kings Declaration would seem to have brought some of them to a melius inquirendum and as they are already arrived to believe a Roman Catholick the best King that they may in a little time come to esteem Papists for the best Christians The keeping back nothing that is profitable to save such as hear them and the declaring the whole Counsel of God that are the Terms upon which they receiyed their Commission from Iesus Christ and wherein they have Pauls practice and example for a pattern would seem to be things under the Power of the Royal prerogative and that the King may supercede them by the same Authority by which he dispenses with the penal Statutes Which as it is very agreeable unto and imported in his Majesties Claim of being obeyed without reserve so the owning this Absolute Power with that annex of challenged obedience does acquit them from all obligations to
subverting our Religion and also further to enlighten and confirm others in the just apprehensions they are possessed with of the design carrying on in Grear Brittain and Ireland for the extirpation of Protestancy and that the late Declaration for Liberty of Conscience is emitted in subserviency thereunto and calculated by the Court toward the paving and preparing the way for the more facile accomplishment of it And while Mercinary Sycophants by their Flatteries infect and corrupt Princes and by their Representing them to the World in Colours disagreable from their tempers and dispositions and in milder and fairer Characters than any thing observable in them either deserveth or correspondeth with do delude Subjects into such Opinions of them as beget a neglect of means for preserving themselves 't is become a necessary Duty and an indispensable Service to mankind to deal plainly and above board that so by describing Kings as they are and setting them in a true and just Light we may prevent the Peoples being further imposed upon or if through suffering themselves to be still deceived they come to fall under miseries and persecutions they may lay all their Distresses and Desolations at the door of their own folly in not having taken care how to avoid what they were not only threatned with but whereof they were warned and advertised For as I am not of Sr. Roger l'Estranges mind That if we cannot avoide being distrustful of our Safety yet it is extreamly vain foolish and extravagant to talk of it so I am very sensible how many of the French Ministers by painting forth their King more like a God than a Man and by possessing their people with a belief of Wisdom Justice Grace and Mercy in Him of which they knew him destitute they both emboldned him to attempt what he hath perpetrated and laid them under snares which they know not how to disentangle themselves from in order to escape it Nor would the King of England have acted with that neglect of the future Safety of the Papists nor have exposed them to the resentment and hereafter revenge of three Nations by the Arbitrary and Illegal steps he hath made in their favour if he intended any thing less than the putting Protestants for ever out of capacity and condition of calling them to a reckoning and exacting an account of them which neither He nor they about him can have the weakness to think they have sufficiently provided against without compelling us by an Order of à la mode France Missionaries to turn Catholicks or by adjudging us to Mines and Galleys according to the Versailles President for our Heretical Stubborness or which is the more expeditious way of converting three Kingdoms to cause murder the Protestant Inhabitants according to the pattern which his Loyal Irish Catholicks endeavoured to have set anno 1641. for the conversion of that Nation Had his Majesty been contented with the bare avowing and publishing himself to be of the Communion of the Church of Rome and of challenging a Liberty tho against Law for the Exercise of his Religion it might have awakened our Pity and Compassion to see him embrace a Religion where there are so many impediments of Salvation and in doing whereof he was become obnoxious unto the imprecation of his Grandfather who wished the curse of God to fall upon such of his Posterity as should at any time turn Papists but it would have raised no intemperated heats in the minds of any against him much less have alienated them from the Subjection and Obedience which are due unto their Soveraign by the Laws of the several Kingdoms and the Fundamental Rules of the respective Constitutions Or could he have been contented with waving the rigorous Execution of the Laws against Papists of whatsoever Quality Rank or Order they were and with the bestowing personal and private Favours upon those of his Religion it would have been so far from begetting rancor or discontent in his Protestant Subjects that they would not only have connived at and approved such a procedure and those little Benignities and Kindnesses but had the Papists quietly acquiesced in them and modestly improved them it might have been a means of reconciling the Nation to more lenity towa 〈…〉 them for the future and might have iâ— fluenced our Legislators when God sh 〈…〉 vouchsafe us a Protestant on the Throne 〈◊〉 moderate the Severities to which by thâ— Laws in being they are obnoxious and 〈◊〉 render their condition as easie and safe 〈◊〉 that of other Subjects and only to take car 〈…〉 for precluding them such places of poweâ— and trust as should prevent their being ab 〈…〉 to hurt us but could bring no damage or iâ— convenience upon themselves But thâ— King instead of terminating here anâ— allowing only such Graces and Immun 〈…〉 ties to the Popists as would have been 〈◊〉 nough for the placing them in the priva 〈…〉 Exercise of their Religion with Security 〈◊〉 them and without any threatning dangeâ— to us He hath not only suspended all thâ— penal Laws against Roman Catholicks but 〈◊〉 hath by an usurped Prerogative that is par 〈…〉 mount to the Rules of the Constitution and 〈◊〉 all Acts of Parliament dispensed with anâ— disabled the Laws that enjoin the Oath of A 〈…〉 legeance and Supremacy and which appoi 〈…〉 and prescribe the Tests that were the Fenceâ— which the Wisdom of the Nation ha 〈…〉 erected for preserving the Legislative A 〈…〉 thority securing the Government and keeping places of Power Magistracy and Offic 〈…〉 in the Hands of Protestants and thereby 〈◊〉 continuing the Protestant Religion and Engli 〈…〉 Liberties to our selves and the generation that shall come after us And as if this werâ— not sufficient to awaken us to a consideration of the danger we are sin of havinâ— our Religion supplanted and overthrown He hath not only advanced the most viole 〈…〉 Papists unto all places of Military comman 〈…〉 by Sea and Land but hath established many of them in the Chief Trusts and Offi 〈…〉 of Magistracy and Civil Judicature so th 〈…〉 there are scarce any continued in Poweâ— and Employment save they who have 〈◊〉 ther promised to turn Roman Catholicks 〈◊〉 who have engaged to concur and assist 〈◊〉 the subverting our Liberties and Religion uâ— der the Mask and disguise of Protestan 〈…〉 〈◊〉 is already evident that it is beyond the â—â—lp and relief of all Peaceable and Civil â—eans to preserve and uphold the Protestant â—eligion in Ireland and that nothing but force â—nd an intestine War can retrieve it unto â—nd reestablish it there in any degree of safe 〈…〉 Nor is it less apparent from the Arbiâ—â—ary and Tyrannous Oath ordained to be â—â—quired of His Majesties Protestant Subjects 〈◊〉 Scotland whereby they are to swear Oâ—â—dience to Him without Reserve that our Reâ—â—gion is held only precariously in that Kingâ—â—m and that whensoever he shall please to â—â—mmand the establishment of Popery and 〈◊〉 enjoin the
people to enter into the Comâ—union of the Church of Rome He expects 〈◊〉 have his Will immediately conformed â—nto and not to be disputed or controlled â—ut lest what we are to expect from the â—ing as to the extirpation of the Reformed â—eligion and the inflicting the utmost Seveâ—ties upon his Protestant Subjects that Papal â—ge armed with power can inable him unâ—â— may not so fully appear from what hath â—een already intimated as either to awaâ—en the Dissenters out of the Lethargy into which the late Delaration hath cast them or 〈◊〉 quicken those of the Church of England to â—hat zealous care vigilancy and use of all Lawful means for preserving themselves â—nd the Protestant Religion that the impenâ—ent danger wherewith they are threatned â—equires at their hands I shall give that farmer Confirmation of it from Topicks and motives of Credibility Moral Political and â—istorical as may serve to place it in the â—rightest light and fullest evidence that a â—atter future and yet to come which is onâ—â— the object of our prospect and dread and â—ot of our feeling and experience is capaâ—le of It ought to be of weight upon the minds â—f all English Protestants that the King of â—eat Brittain is not only an open and avowed â—apist but as most Apostates use to be a â—ery Bigot in the Romish Religion and who 〈◊〉 the Leige Letter from a Jesuite to a Broâ—â—er of the Order tells us is resolved either to convert England to Popery or to die a Martyr Nor were the Iewish zealots of whose rageful transports Iosephus gives us so ample an account nor the Dervises among the Turks and Indians of whose mad attempts so many Histories make mention more brutal in their fanatical Heats than a Popish Bigot useth to be when favoured with advantages of exerting his animosity against those who differ from him if he be not carefully watched against and restrained Beside the innumerable instances of the Tragical Effects of Romish Bigottry that are to be met with in Books of all kinds we need go no further for an evidence of it than to consult the Life of Dominick the great Instigator and Promoter of the Massacre of the Waldenses and the Founder of that Order which hath the Management of the bloody Inquisition together with the Life of Henry the third of France who contrary to the advice of Maximilian the Emperor and the repeated intreaties of the wisest of his own Councellors the Chancellor de l'Hospital and the President de Thou not only revived the War and Persecution against his Reformed Subjects after he had seen what Judgments the like proceedings had derived upon his Predecessors and how prejudicial they had proved to the Strength Glory and Interest of his Crown and Kingdom but he entred into a League with those that sought to depress abdicate and depose him and became the Head of a Faction for the destroying that part of his Subjects upon whom alone he could rely for the defence of his person and support of his Dignity Nor were the Furies of the Duke de Alva heretofore or the present Barbarities of Louis the Fourteenth so much the effects of their haughtie and furious tempers as of their Bigottry in their inhumane and sanguinary Religion That the King of England is second to none in a blind and rageful Popish Zeal his behaviour both while a Subject and since he arrived at the Crown doth not only place it beyond the limits of a bare suspition but affords us such evidences of it as that none in consistency with principles of wisdom and discretion can either question or contradict it To what else can we ascribe it but to an excessive Bigottry that when the Frigat wherein he was sailing to Scotland anno 1682. struck upon the Sands and was ready to sink he should prefer the Lives of one or two pittiful Priests to those of men of the greatest Quality and receive those mushrom's into the Boat in which himself escaped while at the same time he refused to admit not only his own Brother-in-Law but divers Noblemen of the Supreamest Rank and Character to the benefit of the same means of deliverance and suffered them to perish tho they had undertaken that Voyage out of pure respect to his person and to put an Honor upon him at a Season when he wanted not Enemies Nor can it proceed from any thing but a violent and furious Bigottry that he should not only disoblige and disgust the two Universities of whose Zeal to his service he hath received so many seasonable and effectual Testimonies but to the violation both of the Laws of God and the Kingdom offer force to their Consciences as well as to their Rights and Franchises and all this in favour of Father Francis whom he would illegally thrust into a Fellowship in Cambridg and of Mr. Farmer whom he would arbitrarily obtrude into the Headship of a Colledg in Oxford who as they are too despicable to be owned and stood for in competition against two famous Universities whose greatest crime hath been an excess of zeal for his person and interest when he was Duke of York and a measure of Loyalty and Obedience unto him since he came to the Crown beyond what either the Rules of Christianity or the Laws of the Kingdom exact from them so he hath way's enough of expressing kindness and bounty to those two little contemptable Creatures and that in methods as beneficial to them as the places into which he would thrust them can be supposed to amount unto and I am sure with less scandal to himself and less offence to all Protestants as well as without offering inj 〈…〉 to the Rights of the University or of coâ— pelling those learned grave and vene 〈…〉 ble men to perjure themselves and act 〈◊〉 gainst their Duties and Consciences T 〈…〉 late proceedings towards Dr. Burnet a 〈…〉 not only contrary to all the measures of Jâ— stice Law and Honor but argue a stran 〈…〉 and furious Bigottry in His Majesty for Po 〈…〉 ry there being nothing else into which 〈◊〉 man can resolve the whole tenor of his prâ— sent Actings against Him. Seeing setting 〈◊〉 side the Doctor 's being a Protestant and a Mâ— nister of the Church of England and his havinâ— vindicated the Reformation in England froâ— the Calumnies and slanders wherewith 〈◊〉 was aspersed by Sanders others of the Roman Communion and the approving himself in some other Writings worthy of thâ— Character of a Reformed Divine and of thaâ— esteem which the World entertains of him for knowledg in History and all other part 〈…〉 of good learning there hath nothing occurred in the whole tenor and trace of hiâ— Life but what instead of Rebuke and Censure hath merited acknowledgments and the Retributions of Favour and Prefermenâ— from the Court. Whosoever considers his constant Preaching up passive Obedience to such a degree and height as he hath done May very well be surprised at the whole method of
their present actings towards him and at the same time that they find cause to justify the Righteousness of God iâ— making them the Instruments of his persecution whom in so many way 's he had sought to oblige they may justly conclude that none save a Bigotted Papist could be the Author of so infutable as well an illegal and unrighteous returns For as to all whereof he is accused in the Criminal Letters against him bearing date the 19. of April 1687. I my self am both able to assert his innocence and dare assure the World that none of the persons whom he is charged to have conspired with against the King would have been so far void of discretion knowing his principles as to have transacted with 〈◊〉 in matters of that kind but whether 〈◊〉 Letters since that to the Earl of Midle 〈…〉 with the Paper inclosed in one of 〈…〉 m have administred any Legal ground 〈◊〉 their Second Citation I shall not take up 〈…〉 me to determine and will only say that 〈◊〉 I heartily wish he had not in those Letters 〈…〉 orded them any probable pretence for 〈…〉 oceeding against him so there are excesses 〈◊〉 Loyalty in them to attone for the utmost 〈…〉 discretions his words are capable of being 〈…〉 rested unto nor can any thing but Papal Malice and Romish Chicanerie construe and â—ervert them so far contrary to his inten 〈…〉 on s as to make crimes and much less to 〈…〉 ake Treasons of them Now as nothing 〈…〉 n be of more portentous Omen to British â—nd Irish Protestants than to have a Popish 〈…〉 igott exalted to Rule over them so thro 〈◊〉 concurrence of ill nature and a deficienâ—y in intellectuals met in him with his fuâ—ious Zeal and Bigottry they are the more â—o expect whatsoever his Power inables him â—o inflict that is severe and dreadful 'T is possible that a Ruler may be possessed with a â—ondness and Valuation of Popery as the only Religion wherein Salvation is to be obtained and thereupon in his private Judgment and Opinion sentence all to eternal Flames who cannot herd with him in â—he same Society and yet he may thro a great measure of Humanity and from an extraordinary proportion of compassion and meekness woven into his nature hate the imbrucing his hands in their Blood or treating those with any harshness whose supposed misbelief is their only Crime and that finding them in all other respects vertuous peaceable and industrious He may leave them to the decretive Sentence of the Soveraign and infallible Judg without disturbing or medling with them himself Nor is it impossible but that there may be a Prince so far Bigotted in Popery as to have inclination and propensity to force all under his Authority to be of his Religion or else to destroy and extirpate them yet thro being of that largeness of Understanding and Political Wisdom as to be able to penetrate into the hazards of attempting it and to foresee the Consequences that may ensue upon it in reference to the Peace and Safety of his Government as well as the Wealth and power of his Dominions he may come to check and stiffle his furious Inclinations and chuse rather to leave his Subjects at quiet than to impoverish weaken and dispeople his Countrey either by destroying them or by driving them to abandon his Territories in order to find a Shelter and Sanctuary in other places But where as in the King of England a small measure of Understanding accompanied with a large share of a Morose Fierce and ill Nature and these attended with Insolency and pride as they usually are in weak and froward people come to have a Bigottry in such a Religion as Popery superadded to them whose Doctrines and Principles instigate and oblige to Cruelty towards all of other perswasions there Protestants do find nothing that may incourage to hope for security and protection under a Prince of that temper and complexion but all that does affect and impress their minds bidds them prepare for persecution and to look for the utmost rigours and severities that pride malice brutal zeal backt and supported with force and power can execute and inflict And how much such a Princes Religion proves too weak to restrain him from uncleannesses and other immoralities by so much the more is he to be dreaded in that he thinks to compound for and expiate Crimes of that nature by his cruelty to Hereticks and his offering them up in Sacrifices of Attonement to the Triple Crown Nor are the Priests either displeased with or careful to diswade Princes from Offences of that kind tho they know them to be great provocations to God and of mischievous example to Subjects seeing they are Masters of the Art of improving them to the Service of Holy Church and the Advantage of the Catholik Faith. For instead of imposing upon those Royal Transgressors the little and Slavish Pennances of Pilgrimages whippings and going barefoot they require them to make satisfactions for those and the like Crimes by the pious and meritorious Acts of murdering Protestants and of extirpating the Northern Heresie And as one of the French Whore's of State is reported to have been a person that hath principally instigated to all the Cruelties against the Reformed in France so no doubt but as she did it under the influence and conduct of her Confessors to compensate for her Adulteries so she advised and perswaded Louis to it upon motives of the same nature Nor do they who have the guidance of Consciences at Whitchal want matter of the same kind to improve and work upon and as there are of the licentious Femal's that will be glad of attoning for their filthy pollutions by Acts so agreeable to the Articles of their Religion so there are some who as they have influence enough upon the King to councel Him to the like Method's so they will find Him sufficiently disposed to compound for his Loathsome and Promiscuous scatterings at a rate so sutable to his temper as well as to the Doctrines of the Papal Faith. If any be deluded into a good Opinion of His Majesty and brought to flatter themselves with expectations of their being protected in the profession of the Protestant Religion they may be easily undeceived and prevailed upon to change their Sentiments if they will but consider his behaviour towards Protestants in the post wherein he formerly stood and what his carriage was to them while he was fixed in a meanner and more subordinate station than now he is Tho there have been many whose behaviour in their private condition would have rendred them thought worthy to Rule if their actions after their advancement to Governing power had not confuted the Opinion entertained concerning them yet there have been very few that have approved themselves 〈◊〉 just and merciful after their attaining to Soveraignty whose carriage in an inferior station had been to thâ— dammage and general hurt of mankind 〈◊〉 far as their
narrow power and intereâ—â— would extend It ought therefore to lay uâ— under a conviction what we are to expecâ— from His Majesty on the Throne when wâ— find the whole thread and series of his conduct while a Subject to have been a continued design against our Religion and an uninterrupted plot for the subversion of our Laws and Liberties 'T is sufficiently known how active he alway's was to keep up and inflame the differences among Protestants and how he was both a great Promoter of all the severe Laws made against Dissenters and a continual instigator to the rigorouâ— Execution of them So that his affirming it to have been ever his judgment that none ought to be oppressed and persecuted for matters of Religion nor to be hindred in Worshipping God according to their several perswasions serves only to inform us either with what little Honesty Honor and Conscience Hâ— acted in concurring to the making of the foresaid Laws or what small faith and credit is now to be given to his Declaration and to what he hath since the Emission of it repeated both in his Speech to Mr. Penn and in his Letter to Mr. Alsop And to omit many other Instances of his kindness and Benignity to the Fanaticks whom he now so much huggs and caresseth it may not be amiss to remember them and all other Protestants of that Barbarous and illegal Commission issued forth by the Council of Scotland while He as the late Kings High Commissioner had the management of the affaires of that Kingdom by which every Military Officer that had command over twelve men was impower'd to impannel Juries try condemn and cause to be put to death not only those who should be found to disclaim the Kings Authority but such as should refuse to acknowledg the Kings new modelled Supremacy over that Church in the pursuance and execution of which Commission some were shot to death others were hang'd or drowned and this not only during the conti 〈…〉 〈◊〉 oâ— the Reign of his late Majesty â—ut 〈◊〉 〈…〉 e a year and a half after the preâ—â—nt King came to the Crown But what â—eed is there of insisting upon such little parâ—â—culars wherein he was at all times ready 〈◊〉 express his malice to Protestants seeing 〈…〉 e have not only Dr. Oates's Testimony 〈…〉 d that of divers others but most authen 〈…〉 ck proofs from Mr. Coleman's Letters of 〈…〉 s having been in a Conspiracy several years 〈…〉 r the subversion of our Religion upon the 〈…〉 eritorious and sanctified Motive of extir 〈…〉 ating the Northern Heresie Of which be 〈…〉 de all the Evidence that four Successive â—arliaments arrived at I know several who 〈…〉 nce the Duke of York ascended the Throne have had it confirmed unto them by â—ivers forraign Papists that were less reâ—â—rved or more ingenuous than many of 〈…〉 hat Communion use to be To question 〈…〉 he Existence of that Plot and his present Majesties having been accessory unto and in 〈…〉 he head of it argues a strange effrontery and 〈…〉 mpudence thro casting an aspersion of weakness folly and injustice not only upon those three Parliaments that seem'd to have reâ—ained some zeal for English Liberties but by fastning the same imputations upon the 〈…〉 ong Parliament which had shew'd it self at all times more obsequious to the will of the Court than was either for their own Honor or the safety and Interest of the Kingdom and who had expressed a Veneration for the Royal Family that approached too much unto a degree of Idolatry Whosoever considers that Train of Councels wherein the King was many years engaged and whereof we felt the woful effects in the burning of London the frequent Prorogation and Dissolution of Parliaments the widening and exasperating Differences among Protestants the â—â—irring up and provoking Civil Magistrates and Ecclesiastical Courts to persecute Dissenters and the maintaining Correspondencies with the Pope and Catholick Princes abroad to the dishonor of the Nation and danger of our Laws and Religion cannot avoid being apprehensive what we are now to look for at his hands nor can he escape thinking that he esteems his Advancement to the Crown both a reward from heaven for what he hath done and plotted against these three Kingdoms and an opportunity and advantage administred unto him for the perfecting and accomplishment of all those Designes with which he hath been so long bigg and in travel for the destruction of our Religion the subversion of our Laws and the reestablishment of Popery in these Dominions The conduct and guidance under which His Majesty hath put himself and the fiery temper of that Order to whose Government he hath resigned his Conscience may greatly add to our fears and give us all the jealousie and dread that we are capable of being impressed with in reference to matters to come that there is nothing which can be fatal to our Religion or persons that we may not expect the being called to conflict with and suffer For tho most of the Popish Ecclesiasticks especially the Regulars bear an inveterate malice to Protestants and hold themselves under indispensable Obligations of eradicating whatsoever their Church stiles Heresie and have accordingly been alway's forward to stirr up and provoke Rulers to the use and application of force for the destruction of Protestants as a Company of perverse and obstinate Hereticks adjuged and condemned to the Stake and Gibbet by the infallible Chaire yet of all men in the Communion of the Romish Church and of their Religious Orders the Jesuites are they who do most hate us and whose Councels have been most sanguinary and alway's tending to influence those Monarchs whose Consciences they have had the guiding and conducting of to the utmost Cruelties and Barbarities towards us What our Brethern have had measured out to them in France thro Father de la Chaise's influence upon that King ' and thro the bewitching power and domination he hath over him in the quality of his Confessor and as having the direction of his Conscience may very well allarm and inform us what we ought to expect from His Majesty of Great Brittain who hath surrendred his Conscience to the guidance of Father Peters a person of the same Order and of the like mischievous and bloody disposition that the former is 'T is well observed by the Author of the Reasons against repealing the Acts of Parliament concerning the Test that Cardinal Howard's being of such a meek and gentle temper that is able to withstand the Malignity of his Religion and to preserve him from concurring in those mischievous Councels which his purple might seem to oblige him unto is the reason of his being shut out from acquaintance with and interest in the English affaires transacted at Rome and that whatsoever his Majesty hath to do in that Court is managed by his Ambassador under the sole direction of the Jesuites So that it is not without cause that the Jesuite of Leige in his
I shall not mention would have taken so many bold wide and illegal stepps for the supplanting our Religion and Laws and for the introduction and establishment of Popery and Tyranny and this not only to the losing and disobliging his former Votaries and Partizans but to the strange allarming and disgusting most persons of honor quality and interest in the three Kingdoms were he not beside the being under the sway of his own Bigottry and the strong ballance of a large measure of ill nature bound by ties of implicite obedience to the Commands of that extravagant and furious Society to the promoting of whose passions and malice rather than his own safety and glory or the lasting benefit of the Roman Catholicks themselves the whole course of his Government hitherto seems to have been shapen and adapted The occasion and subject of the late contest between him and the Pope which hath made so great a noise not only at Rome but thro all Europe may serve to convince us both of the Extraordinary zeal he hath for the Society and of the transcendent power they have over him and that 't is no wonder he should exact an obedience without reserve from his Subjects in Scotland seeing he himself yields an obedience without reserve to the Iesuites 'T is known how that by the Rules of their Institution no Iesuite is capable of the Myter and that if the Ambition of any of them should tempt him to seek or accept the dignity of a Prelate he must for being capacitated thereunto renounce his Membership in the Order Yet so great is His Majesties passion for the Honor and Grandure of the Society and such is their domination and absolute power over him that no less will serve him neither would they allow him to insist upon less than that the Pope should dispense with Father Peters being made a Bishop without his ceasing to be a Iesuite or the being transplanted into another Order And this the old Gentleman at Rome hath been forced at last to comply with and to grant a Dispensation whereby Father Peters shall be capable of the Prelature notwithstanding his remaining in the Ignatian Order the Iesuites thro their Authority over the King not suffering him to recede from his demand and His Majesties zeal for the Society not permitting him to comply either with the prayers or the Conscience and Honour of the Supream Pontiff Not only the Kings unthankfulness unto but his illegal proceedings against and his arbitrary invading the Rights of those who stood by him in all his dangers and difficulties and who were the Instruments oâ— preventing his exclusion from the Crown and the Chief means both of his advanc 〈…〉 ment to the Throne and his being kept in are so many new evidences of the ill w 〈…〉 he bears to all Protestants and what they a to dread from him as occasions are admin 〈…〉 stred of injuring and oppressing them a 〈…〉 may serve to convince all impartial a 〈…〉 thinking people that his Popish malice to o 〈…〉 Religion is too strong for all principles of H 〈…〉 nor and Gratitude and able to cancel t 〈…〉 Obligations which Friendship for his pers 〈…〉 and service to his interest may be suppos 〈…〉 to have laid him under to any heretofor Had it not been for many of the Church 〈◊〉 England who stood up with a zeal and v 〈…〉 gour for preserving the succession in t 〈…〉 right line beyond what Religion co 〈…〉 science Reason or Interest could co 〈…〉 duct them unto he had never been able 〈◊〉 have out-wrestled the endeavours of thr 〈…〉 Parliaments for excluding him from the I 〈…〉 perial Crown of England and had it n 〈…〉 been for their abetting and standing by 〈◊〉 with their swords in their hands upon th 〈…〉 Duke of Monmouth's descent into the Kingdom anno 1685. he could nothave avoid 〈…〉 the being driven from the Throne and th 〈…〉 having the Scepter wrested out of his hanâ— Whosoever had the advantage of knowin 〈…〉 the temper and genius of the late King an 〈…〉 how affray'd he was of embarking into an 〈…〉 thing that might import a visible hazard t 〈…〉 the peace of his Government and dra 〈…〉 after it a general disgust of his person wi 〈…〉 be soon satisfied that if all his Protestant Subjects had united in their desires and coâ— curred in their endeavoures to have ha 〈…〉 the Duke of York debarred from the Crow 〈…〉 that his late Majesty would not have onâ— scrupled the complying with it and th 〈…〉 his Love to his dear Brother would havâ— given way to the apprehension and fear 〈◊〉 forfeiting a love for himself in the hear 〈…〉 of his people especially when what wa 〈…〉 required of him was not an invasion upoâ— the fundamentals of the constitution of th 〈…〉 English Monarchy nor dissonant from th 〈…〉 practice of the Nation in many repeated i 〈…〉 stances Nor can there be a greater evidence 〈◊〉 the present Kings ill nature Romish Bi 〈…〉 ry and prodigious ingratitude as well 〈◊〉 of the design he is carrying on against our 〈…〉 ligion and Laws than his carriage and be 〈…〉 viour towards the Church of England tho 〈◊〉 cannot but acknowledg it a righteous 〈…〉 gment upon them from God and a just 〈…〉 nishment for their being not only so un 〈…〉 ncerned for the preservation of our Reli 〈…〉 n and liberties in avoiding to close with 〈…〉 e only methods that were adapted there 〈…〉 to but for being so passionate and indu 〈…〉 ious to hasten the loss of them thro put 〈…〉 g the Government into ones hands who 〈…〉 s they might have foreseen would be 〈…〉 e to make a sacrifice of them to his belo 〈…〉 d Popery and to his inordinate lust after 〈…〉 spotical and arbitrary power And as the 〈…〉 ly example bearing any affinity to it is 〈…〉 t of Louis the 14 th who in recompence to 〈◊〉 Protestant Subjects for maintaining him 〈◊〉 the Throne when the late Prince of Con 〈…〉 assisted by Papists would have wrested the 〈…〉 own from him hath treated them with Barbarity whereof that of Aâ—â—iochus to 〈…〉 ards the Jews and that of Diocletian and 〈…〉 aximian towards the primitive Christians 〈…〉 ere but scanty and impersect draughts so 〈…〉 ere wants nothing for compleating the pa 〈…〉 lel between England and France but a little 〈…〉 ore time and a fortunate opportunity and 〈…〉 en the deluded Church men will find that 〈…〉 er Peters is no less skilful at Whitehall for 〈…〉 nsforming their acts of loyalty and merit 〈…〉 wards the King into crimes and motives 〈◊〉 their ruin than Pere de là Chaise hath shewn 〈…〉 mself at Versailles where by an Art peculiar 〈◊〉 the Iesuites he hath improved the loyalty 〈…〉 zeal of the Reformed in France for the house 〈◊〉 Bourbon into a reason of alienating that 〈…〉 onarch from them and into a ground of 〈◊〉 destroying that dutiful and obedient
found to have taken Orders in 〈…〉 e Church of Rome obnoxious to death or 〈…〉 ose other Statutes by which the King hath 〈…〉 ower Authority for levying two thirds of 〈…〉 eir Estates that shall be convicted of Recu 〈…〉 cy but by an usurped prerogative and an Absolute power he is pleased to suspend all 〈…〉 e Laws by which they were only disabled 〈…〉 rom hurting us thro standing precluded 〈…〉 rom places of power and trust in the Government So that the whole security we have in time to come for our Religion depends upon the temperate disposition and good nature of those Roman Catholicks that shall be advanced to Offices and Employments and does no longer bear upon the protection and support of the Law and I think we have not had that experience of grace and favour from Papists as may give us 〈…〉 just confidence of fair and candid treatment from them for the future Now that we may be the better convinced how little security we have from his Majesties promise in his Declaration of his protecting the Arch Bishops Bishops and Clergy and all other his subjects of the Church of England in the free exercise of their Religion as by Law established and in the quiet and full enjoyment of their possessions without any molestation or disturbance whatsoever which is all the Tenour that is left us 't is not unworthy of observation how that beside the suspending the Bishop of London ab Officio and the Vice Chanceller of Cambridg both ab Officio and Beneficio and this not only for Actions which the Laws of God and the Kingdom make their duty but thro a sentence inflicted upon them by no legal Court of Judicature but by five or six mercinary persons supported by a Tyrannous and Arbitrary Commission his Majesty in his Proclamation for Toleration in Scotland â—earing date the 12. of February doth among many other Laws cass disable and dispense with the Law enjoining the Scots Test tho it was not only enacted by himself while he represented his Brother as his high Commissioner but hath been confirmed by him in Parliament since he came to the Crown Surely it is as easie to depart from a promise made in a Declaration as 't is to absolve and discharge himself from the obligation of a Law which he first concurred to the enacting of and gave the creating Fiat unto as the late Kings Commissioner and hath since ratified in Parliament after he was come to the Throne As there is no more infidelity dishonor and injustice so there is less of absolute power and illegality in doing the one than the other Nor is it possible for a rational man to place a confidence in his Majesties Royal word for the protection of our Religion and the Church of England men's enjoying their possessions seeing he hath not only departed from his promise made to the Council immediately after his Brothers death but hath violated his Faith given to the Parliament of England at their first Session which we might have thought would have been the more sacred and binding by reason of the grandure state and quality of the Assembly to which it was pledged If we consider how much protestants suffered what number of them was burnt at the stake as well as murderd in Goals beside the vast multitudes who to avoid the rage and power of their Enemies were forced to abandon their Countrey and seek for shelter in forraign parts and what endeavoures of all kinds were used for the Extirpation of our Religion under QueenMary we may gather and learn from thence what is to be dreaded from James the II. who is the next popish Prince to her that since the Reformation hath sat on the Throne of England For tho there be many things that administer grounds of hope that the Papists will not find it so easie a matter to bring us in shoals to the stake nor of that quick and easie dispatch to suppress the protestant Religion and set up Popery at this time as they found it then yer every thing that occurs to our thoughts or that can affect our understandings serves not only to persuade us into a belief that they will set upon and endeavour it but to work us up to an assurance that his Majesty would take it for a di 〈…〉 ution of his glory as well as reflection upon his zeal for the Church of Rome not to attempt what a woman had both the courage to undertake and the fortune to go thro with And there is withal a concurrence of so many things both abroad and at home at this juncture which if laid in the ballance with the motives to our hope of the papists miscarrying may justly raise our fears of their prospering to a very sad and uncomfortable height Whosoever shall compare these two Princes together will find that there was less danger to be apprehended from Mary and that not only upon the score of her Sex but by reason of a certain gentleness and goodness of nature which all Historians of judgment and credit ascribe unto her than is to be expected from the present King in whom a sourness of temper fierceness of disposition and pride joined with a peevishness of humour not to bear the having his will disputed or controlled are the principal ingredients into his Constitution and which are all strangely heightned and enflamed by contracted distempers of Body and thro furious principles of mind which he hath imbib'd from the Iesuites who of all men carry the obligations arising from the Doctrines of the popish Religion to the most outragious and inhumane excesses Nor can I forbear to add that whereas the cruelty which that Princess was hurried into even to the making her Cities common shambles and her streets Theatres of murder for innocent persons for which she became hated while she lived and her memory is rendred infamous to all Generations that come after was wholly and entirely owing to her Religion which not only proclaims it lawful but a necessary duty of Christianity and an act meriting a peculiar Crown of Glory in heaven to destroy Hereticks 't is to be feared there will be found in the present King a spice of revenge against us as we are Englishmen as well as a measu 〈…〉 heap't up and running over of furious 〈◊〉 zeal against us as we are Protestants 〈◊〉 the wrath he bears unto us for our depar 〈…〉 from the Communion of the Romish Chu 〈…〉 and our rebellion against the triple Crow 〈…〉 the war wherein many of the Kingdom wer 〈…〉 engaged against his Father and the issue of it in the execution of that Monarch is what he hath been heard to say that he hopes to revenge upon the Nation And all that the City of London underwent thro that dreadful conflagration 1666. of which he was the great Author and Promoter as well as the Rescuer and Protector of the Varlets that were apprehended in their spreading and
in the late King and his Brother of their giving no discouragement nor obstruction to so holy a design and thereupon as the first Edicts for infringing the liberty and weakning and oppressing Protestants in France and the persecution in Hungary commenced and bore date with the Restoration of the Royal Family and multiplied and encreased from year to year as they grew into farther assurance of the Royal Brothers approving as well as conniving at what was done so that for the abolition of the Edict of Nant's and the total suppression of the Reformed Religion in France was emitted upon his present Majesties being exalted to the Throne and the encouragement he gave them to a procedure which as he now justifies he will hereafter imitate It were to suppose English Protestants exceedingly unacquainted with the History of their own Nation to give a long deduction of what the Papists have attempted foâ— the extirpation of our Religion while we had Princes on the Throne whose belief and principles in Christianity led them to assert and defend the Reformation and who had courage as well as integrity to punish those that conspired against it Their many Conjurations against Queen Elizabeth's person and their repeated endeavours of bringing in Forraigners and of betraying the Nation to the Spaniards who were to convert the Kingdom as they had done the West-Indies by killing the Inhabitants are sufficiently known to all who have allowed themselves leasure to read or who have been careful to remember what they have been often told by those that have inspected the Memoires of those times The Gunpowder plot with the motives unto it and the extent of the mischief it was shapen for together with the insurrection they were prepared for in case it had succeeded and the forraign aid they had been solliciting and were promised and all for the extirpation of English Hereticks are things so modern and which we have had so many times related to us by our Fathers that it is enough barely to intimate them The Irish Massacre in which above two hundred thousand were murderd in cold blood and to which there was no provocation but that of hatred to our Religion and furious zeal to extirpate Hereticks ought at this time to be more particularly reflected upon as that which gives us a truè scheme of the manner of the Church of Rome's converting Protestant Kingdoms and being the Copy they have a mind to write after and that in such Characters and lines of blood as may be sure to answer the Original At the season when they both entred upon and executed that hellish conjuration they were in a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the private exercise of their Religion yea had many publick meeting-places thro the means of the Queen and many great friends which they had at Court and were neither disturbed for not coming to Church nor suffered any severities upon the account of their profession but that â—ould not satisfie nor will any thing else 〈…〉 less they may be allowed to cut the 〈…〉 roats or make bonefires of all that will 〈…〉 ot join with them in a blind obedience to 〈…〉 e Sea of Rome and of worshipping St. Pa 〈…〉 ick The little harsh usarges which the Papists at any time met with there or in England they derived them upon themselves 〈…〉 y their Crimes against the State and for their Conspiracies against our Princes and their Protestant Subjects For till the Pope had â—aken upon him to depose Queen Elizabeth and absolve her Subjects from their Allegiance and till the Papists had so far approved that Act of his holiness as to raise Rebellions at home and enter into treasonable confedaracies abroad there were no Laws that could be stiled severe enacted in England against Papists and the making of them was the result of necessity in order to preserve our selves and not from an Inclination to hurt any for matters of meer Religion Such hath always been the moderation of our Ru 〈…〉 ers and so powerful are the incitements to lenity which the generality of Protestants through the influence and impression of their Religion especially they of a more generous education have been under towards those of the Roman Communion that nothing but their unwearied restlessness to disturb the Government and destroy Protestants hath been the cause either of enacting those Laws against them that are stiled rigorous or of their having been at any time put into execution And notwithstanding that some such Laws were enacted as might appear to savour of severity yet could they have but submitted to have dwelt peaceably in the land they would have found that their meer belief and the private practice of their worship would not have much prejudiced or endangered them and that tho the Laws had been continued unrepealed yet it was only as a Hedg about us for our protection and as Bonds of obligation upon them to their good behaviour To which may be added that more Protestants have suffered in one year by the Laws made against Dissenters and to the utmost height of the penalties which the violation of them imported and that by the instigation of Papis 〈…〉 and their influence over the late King and his present Majesty than there have Papists from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign to this very day tho there was a difference in the punishments they underwent However we may from their many and repeated attemps against us while we had Princes that both would and could chasten their insolencies and inflict upon them what the Law made them obnoxious unto for their outrages gather and conclude what we are now to expect upon their having obtained a King imbu'd with all the persecuting and bloody principles of Popery and perfectly baptised into all the Doctrines of the Councils of Lateran and Constance And it may strengthen our faith as well as increase our fear of what is purposed against and impends over us in that they cannot but think that the suffering our Religion to remain in a condition to be at any time hereafter the Religion of the State and of the universality of the people may not only prove a means of retrieving Protestancy in France and of assisting to revenge the barbarities perpetrated there upon a great and innocent people but may leave the Roman Catholiks in England exposed to the resentment of the Kingdom for what they have so foolishy and impudently acted both against our Civil Rights and Established Religion since James the II. came to the Crown and may also upon the Government 's falling into good hands and Magistrates coming to understand their true Interest which is for an English Prince to make himself the Head of the Protestant cause and to espouse their quarrel in all places give such a Revolution in Europe as will not only check the present Career of Rome but cause them repent the method's in which they have been ingaged These things we may be sure the Papists
â—xercising his Absolute Power in whatsoever Acts he pleaseth over his own Subjects wheâ—her after the French fashion in commanding them to turn Catholicks because he will â—ave it so or after the manner of the Grand â—eignior to require them to submit their Necks to the Bow string because he is jeaâ—ous of them or wants their Estates to pay â—is Janizaries The united Provinces are they whom he bore a particular spleen and indignation unto when he was a subject and upon whom he is now in the Throne he resolves not only to wreak all his old malice but by conquering and subduing them if he can to strengthen his Absoluteness over his own People and to pave his way for overthrowing the protestant Religion in great Brittain without lying open to the hazards that may otherwise attend and ensue upon the attempting of it And instead of expecting nothing from him but what may become a brave and generous Enemy they ought to remember the encouragement that he gave heretofore to two varlets to burn that part of their Fleet which belong'd to Amsterdam an action as ignominious as fraudulent and that might have been fatal to all the Provinces if thro a happy and seasonable detection and the apprehension of one of the miscreants it had not been prevented He knows that the States General are not only zealous assertors of the protestant Religion but alway's ready to afford a Sanctuary and a place of Refuge to those who being oppressed for the profession of it elsewhere are forced to forsake their own Countries and to seek for shelter and relief in other parts And as he is not unsensible how easie the withdrawment and flight is into these Provinces for such as are persecuted in his Dominions so he is aware that if multitudes and especially men of condition and Estates should for the avoiding his cruelty betake themselves thither that they would not be unthoughtful of all ways and means whereby they might Redeem their Country from Tyranny and restore themselves to the quiet enjoyment of their Estates and liberties at home But that which most enrages him is the Figure which the two Princes do make in that State of whose Succession to the Crown the Protestants in Brittain have so near a prospect and the Post which the Prince filleth in that Government so that he dare neither venture to difinherit Them nor impose upon them such Terms and Conditions as their Consciences will not suffer them to comply with while either these States remain Free or while such English and Scotts as retain a zeal for Religion and the ancient Laws and Rights of their respective Countries can retreat thither under hopes of Admission and Protection And so closely are the interests of all Protestants in England and Scotland woven and inlaid with the interest of the united Netherlands and such is the singular regard that both the one and the other bear to the Reformed Religion the liberty of Mankind and their several Civil Rights that it is impossible for his Majesty to embarque in a design against the One without resolving at the same time upon the ruin of the Other Neither will the One be able to subsist when once the Other is subdu'd and enslaved As Philip the II. of Spain saw no way so compendious for the restoring himself to the Soveraignty and Tyrannous Rule over the Dutch as the subjugating of England that hel'p to support and assist them which was the ground of rigging out his formidable Armado and of his design against England in 1588. so his Brittish Majesty thinks no method so expeditious for the enslaving his own People as the endeavouring first to subdue the Dutch. And as upon the one hand it would be of a threatning consequence to Holland could the King subjugate his own People extirpate the protestant Religion out of his Dominions and advance himself to a Despotical Power so upon the other hand could he conquer the Dutch we might with the greatest certainty Date the woful Fate of great Brittain and the loss of all that is valuable to them as men and Christians from the same moment and Period of time They are like the Twins we read of whose Destiny was to live and die together and which soever of the two is destroyed first all the hope and comfort that the other can pretend unto is to be last devoured Now after the advances which his Majesty hath made towards the enslaving his Subjects and the subverting the Reformed Religion in his Kingdoms he finds it necessary before he venture to give the last and fatal stroke at home and to enter upon the plenary exercise of his Absolute Power in laying Parliaments wholly aside in cancelling all Laws to make way for Royal Edicts or Declarations of the complexion of the former and in commanding us to turn Roman Catholicks or to be dragoon'd I say he thinks it needful before he proceed to these to try whether he can subdue and conquer the Dutch and thereby remove all hopes of shelter relief comfort and assistance from his own People when he shall afterwards fall upon them And how much soever the Court endeavoures to conceal its design and strives to compliment the States General into a confidence that all Alliances between them and the Crown of England shall be maintained and preserved yet they not only speak their intentions by several open and visible actions but some of them cannot forbear to tell it when their blood is heated and their heads warm'd with a liberal glass and a lusty proportion of wine Thence it was that a Governing Papist lately told a Gentleman after they two had drunk hard together that they had some Work in England that would employ them a little time but when that was over they would make the Dutch fly to the end of the World to find a resting place Delenda est Carthago is engraven upon their hearts as being that without which Rome cannot arrive at the universal Monarchy that it aspires after It was upon a formed design of a war against the united Provinces that the King hath for these two years stirr 〈…〉 up and incited as well as countenanced a 〈…〉 protected the Algerines in their Piracies th 〈…〉 thro their weakning and spoiling the Du 〈…〉 before hand it may be the more easie a maâ—ter for him to subdue them when he sh 〈…〉 think fit to begin his hostilities 'T is in oâ—der to this that he hath entred into neâ— and secret Alliances with other Princes thâ— purport of which is boldly talk't of in Loâ—don but whether believed at the Hague I caâ—not tell For as Monsr Barrillion and Monsâ— Bonrepos present Transactions at Whitehal relate to something else than meerly to the aâ—fair of Hudsons Bay so Prince Georges erranâ— to Denmark is of more importance than bare visite or a naked compliment to hiâ— Brother 'T is upon this design that all thaâ— great Marine preparation hath been so lonâ— making in the
several ports of England buâ— to the hindring the execution whereof somâ— unexpected and not foreseen accidents havâ— interposed And it is in subserviency not to be disquieted at home while he is carrying on this holy war abroad that the Declaratioâ— for liberty of Conscience in England and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland are granted and published 'T is well enough known how that after the French King had among many other severities exercised against Protestants made them uncapable of Employments and commands yet to avoid the consequences that might have ensued thereupon while he was engaged in war against the Emperor the King of Spain and the States of Holland and to have the aid ' of his Reformed Subjects he not only intermitted and abated in many other rigours towards them but in Anno 1674. restored them to a capacity of being employed and preferred And that this did not flow from any compassion tendernes or good will towards them his carriage since the issue of that war and the miserable condition he hath reduced them unto do's sufficiently testify and declare Nor can we forget how that the late King after a rigorous execution of the penal Laws for several years against Dissenters yet being to enter into an unjust â—ar against the united Provinces Anno 1672. â—ot only forbore all proceedings of that kind â—ut published a Declaration for suspending the â—xecution of all those Laws and for the alâ—owing them liberty of Assembling to worâ—hip God in their separate meetings withâ—ut being hindred or disturbed What â—rinciple that proceeded from and to what â—nd it was calculated appeared in his behaâ—iour to them afterwards when neither the â—anger the Nation was in from the Papists â—or the application of several Parliaments â—ould prevail for lenity towards them much less for a legal Repeal of those impoâ—itick and unreasonable Statutes Nor does â—he present Indulgence flow from any kindness to Fanaticks but it is only an artifice to stiffe their discontents and to procure their assistance for the destroying of a Forraign Protestant State. And it may not be unworthy of observation that as the Declaration of Indulgenct Anno 1672. bore date much about the same time with the Declaration of war against the Dutch so at the very season that his present Majesty emitted his Declaration for liberty of Conscience there were Commissions of Reprisal prepared and ready to be grantrd to the English East India Company against the Hollanders but which were suppressed upon the Courts finding that they whom the suspending the Execution of so many Laws and the granting such liberties Rights and immunities to the Papists had disgusted and provoked were far more numerous and their resentments more to be apprehended than they were whose murmurings and discontents they had silenced and allay'd by the liberty that was granted Now as it will be at this juncture when the Protestant Interest is so low in the World and the Reformed Religion in so great danger of being destroyed a most wicked as well as an imprudent Act to contribute help and aid to the subjugating a people that are the chief Protectors of the protestant Religion that are left and almost the only Asserters of the Rights and liberties of Mankind so it may fill the Addressers with confusion and shame that they should have not only justified an Act of his Majestys that is plainly designed to such a mischievous End but that they should by the promises and vows that they have made him have emboldned his Majesty to continue his purposes and Resolutions of a war against the Dutch. Which as it must be funestous and fatal to the Protestant Cause in case he should prosper and succeed so howsoever it should issue yet the Addressers who have done what in them lyes to give encouragement unto it will be held betrayers of the Protestant Religion both abroad and at home and judged guilty of all the blood of those of the same Faith with them that shall be shed in this Quarrel That Liberty ought to be allowed to men in matters of Religion is no Plea whereby the Kings giving it in an illegal and Arbitrary manner can be maintained and justified Since ever I was capable of Exercising any distinct and coherent Acts of Reason I have been alway's of that Mind that none ought to be persecuted for their Consciences towards God in matters of Faith and Worship Nor is it one of those things that lye under the power of the Soveraign and Legislative Authority to grant or not to grant but it is a Right setled upon mankind antecedent to all Civil Constitutions and Humane Laws having its foundation in the Law of Nature which no Prince or State can legitimately violate and infringe The Magistrate as a Civil Officer can pretend or claim no power over a people but what he either derives from the Divine Charter wherein God the Supream Instituter of Magistracy has chalk't out the duty of Rulers in general or what the people upon the first and original Stipulation are supposed to have given him in order to the protection peace and prosperity of the Society But as it does no where appear that God hath given any such power to Governors seeing all the Revelations in the Scripture as well as all the Dictates of Nature speak a contrary language so neither can the People upon their chusing such a one to be their Ruler be imagined to transferr and vest such a power in him for as much as they cannot divest themselves of a power no more than of a Right of believing things as they arrive with a credibility to their several and respective Understandings As it is in no mans power to believe as he will but only as he sees cause so it is the most irrational imagination in the world to think they should transferr a Right to him whom they have chosen to Govern them of punishing them for what it is not in their power to help Nor can any thing be plainer than that God has reserved the Empire over Conscience to himself and that he hath circumscribed the power of all humane Governore to things of a civil and inferior nature And had God convey'd a Right unto Magistrates of commanding men to be of this or that Religion and that because they are so and will have others to be of their mind it would follow that the People may conform to whatsoever they require tho by all the lights of sense Reason and Revelation they are convinced of the falsehood of it seeing whatsoever the Soveraign rightfully Commands the Subjects may lawfully obey But tho the persecuting people for matters of meer Religion be repugnant to the light of Nature inconsistent with the fundamental Maximes of Reason directly contrary to the temper and genious as well as to the Rules of the Gospel and not only against the safety and interest of Civil Societies but of a tendency to fill them with confusion and to arm Subjects
Papists in that case we may confidently believe that the King instead either of Assenting to such a Bill for separate favour to Protestants or persevering in his Compassion and Kindness of continuing the Suspension of the Laws against Dissenters he would from an inveterate enmity as well as from a new contracted resentment be stirred up and enraged to the putting the Laws in execution with greater rigor and severity than hath been seen or felt heretofore And all that the Addressers would then reap by the Declaration would be to undergo the furious effects of brutal rage in their Persecutors and to be unpittyed by the Kingdom and unlamented by their fellow Protestants Or should His Majesty in favour to his good Catholicks resolve against the meeting of a Parliament or to adjourn and prorogue them whensoever he shall find that instead of confirming what he hath done they shall make null his Declaration vote his pretended prerogative illegal and arbitrary and fall upon those mercinary and perjured Villains who have allowed him a power transcendent to Law yet even upon that supposal which is the best that can be made to support mens hopes in the continuance of the present Liberty the Protestant Dissenters would have but slender Security all the tenure they have for the duration of their Freedom being only precarious and depending meerly upon the Kings Word and promise which there is small ground to rely upon Nor can he be true to them without being false to his Religion which not only gives him leave to break his Faith with Hereticks but obligeth him to it and to destroy them to boot and that both under the pain of damnation and of forfeiting his Crown and losing his Dominions And how far the Promise and Royal Word of a Catholick Monarch is to be trusted unto and depended upon we have a modern proof and evidence in the behaviour of Louis de Grand towards his Reformed Subjects not only in repealing the many Edicts made and confirmed by himself as well as his Ancestors for the free exercise of their Religion but in the method's he hath alway's observed namely to promise them protection in the profession of their Faith and practiâ—â— of their Worship when he was most steâ— fastly resolved to subvert their Religion a 〈…〉 was about making some fresh advan 〈…〉 and taking some new step for its extirpatiâ—â— Thus when he had firmly purposed not 〈◊〉 suffer a Minister to continue a year in tâ—â— Kingdom he at the same time publishâ—â— an Edict requiring Ministers to serve b 〈…〉 three years in one place and not to returâ— to the Church where they had first officiateâ— till after the expiration of twentie years 〈◊〉 the same manner when he had resolveâ— to Repeal the Edict of Nantes and had givâ— injunction for the Draught by which it wâ—â— to be done he at the same season gave thâ— Protestants all assurances of Protection anâ— of the said Edicts being kept inviolablâ—â— To which may be added that shameful anâ— detestable Chicanery in passing his Sacreâ— and Royal Word that no violence shoulâ— be offered any for their Religion tho at thâ—â— very moment the Dragoons were upoâ— their march with orders of exercising a 〈…〉 manner of cruelties and barbarities upoâ— them So that His Majesty of Great Brit 〈…〉 tain hath a pattern lately set him anâ— that by the Illustrious Monarch whom hâ— so much admires and whom he makes iâ— his ambition and glory to imitate Noâ— are we without proofs already how insigni ficant the Kings promises are except to de lude and what little confidence ought tâ— be put in them The disabling and suspen ding the 13 th Statute of his late Parliameâ—â— in Scotland wherein the Test was confirmed and his departing from all his Promises Registred in his Letter as well as from those contained in the Speech made by the Lorâ— Commissioner pursuant to the Instructionâ— which he had undoubtedly received together with his having forgotten and recedeâ— from all his Promises made to the Church oâ— England both when Duke of York and since he came to the Crown are undeniable evidences that his Royal Word is no more Sacred nor binding than that of some other Monarchs and that whosoever of the 〈…〉 rotestants shall be so foolish as to rely â—pon it will find themselves as certainly â—isappointed and deceived as they of the 〈…〉 ormed Religion elsewhere have been 〈…〉 d while they of the established way find 〈◊〉 small security by the Laws which the â—ing is bound by his Coronation Oath to obâ—erve the Dissenters cannot expect very â—uch from a naked Promise which as it â—ath not a solemn Oath to enforce it so 't is â—oth illegal in the making and contrary to 〈…〉 he principles of his Religion to keep Nor is 〈◊〉 unworthy of observation that he hath â—ot only departed from his promises made â—o the Church of England but that we are told 〈◊〉 a late Popish Pamphlet Entitled A New Test 〈◊〉 the Church of Englands Loyalty published 〈…〉 as it self say's by Authority that they were 〈…〉 ll conditional to wit by vertue of some â—â—ntal Reservation in his Majesties breast â—nd that the Conformable Clergy having fai 〈…〉 ed in performing the Conditions upon which they were made the King is abâ—olved and discharged from all Obligaâ—ion of observing them The Church of England say's he must give his Majesty leave â—ot to nourish a Snake in his bosom but rather â—o withdraw his Royal protection which was proâ—ised upon the account of her constant fidelity Which as it is a plain threatning of all the Legal Clergy and a denunciation of the unâ—ust and hard measure thy are to look for So it shakes the Foundation upon which all credit unto and relyance upon his Majesties Word can be any way 's placed For tho Threatnings may have tacit Reserves because â—he right of executing them resides in the Threatner yet Promises are incapable of all â—atent conditions because every Promise vests 〈◊〉 Right in the Promise and that in the virâ—ue of the words in which it is made But 〈◊〉 is the less to be wondred at if His Majesty 〈…〉 y to Equivocations and Mental Reserves being â—oth under the conduct of that Order and a Member of the Society that first taught and â—racticed this treacherous piece of Chicaâ—erie However it may inform the Dissen 〈…〉 s that if they be not able to answer the End for which they are depended upon or be not willing in the manner and degree that is expected or if it be not for the interest of the Catholick cause to have them indulged in all these cases and many more the King may be pronounced acquitted and discharged from all the Promises he hath given them as having been meerly stipulatory and conditional And as he will be sure then finem facere ferendae alienae personae to lay aside the disguise that he hath now put on so if they would reflect either upon his
being the best Justification of him that Governs and giving the truest Satisfaction to them that are Ruled so he who enjoy's the love of all his people needs not look for promises of being assisted stood by and defended by any one Party or Faction among them there being none from whom he can have the least apprehension of opposition and danger It was the want of a Legal Title in Oliver Cromâ—el and his Son Richard to the Government that first begot this 〈…〉 vice of Addressing and brought it upon 〈…〉 e stage in these Brittish Nations and it was 〈…〉 e Arbitrary procedures of the late King as 〈…〉 is of his present Majesty and their acting 〈…〉 on a distinct bottom from that of the three 〈…〉 ingdoms that hath revived and does con 〈…〉 nue it Nor is there any thing that hath 〈…〉 ndred those two Princes more contempti 〈…〉 e abroad and proclaimed them weaker 〈◊〉 home than their recurring unto and 〈…〉 lliciting the flatteries and aid of the 〈…〉 ercinacy timorous servile and for low 〈…〉 nd personal ends byass'd part of their 〈…〉 ubjects and thereby telling the World 〈…〉 at neither the generality nor the most ho 〈…〉 orable of their People have been united in 〈…〉 heir Interest nor approvers of the Coun 〈…〉 els that have been taken and pursued And 〈…〉 f any thing did ever cast a dishonor upon 〈…〉 he English Nation it hath been that loath 〈…〉 ome flattery and slavish Sycophancy wherewith the Addressers both now and â—or some years past have stuff't their apâ—lications to the two Royal Brothers The Thrâ—nâ— that is sustained and upheld by the Pillars of Law and Justice needs not to 〈…〉 hew out unto its self other Supporsers nor 〈…〉 lean upon the crooked and weak s 〈…〉 lts of the insignificant and for the most part de 〈…〉 ceitful as well as bâ—ib'd Vows of a sort of men who will be as ready upon the least disgust to cry cruciâ—y to morrow as they were for being gratified may be in their â—usts humours and revenges and at the best in some separate concern to cry Hosanna to day I shall decline prosecuting what concerns the honor or dishonor of him to whom the Adresses are made or how politick or impolitick the countenancing and encouraging them is and shall apply my self to this new set of Addressers and endeavour to shew how foolish as well as criminally they have acted Nor is it an argument either of their prudence or honesty or of their acting with any consistency to themselves that having so severely inveighed against the Addresses that were in fashion a few years ago and having fastned all the imputations and reproaches upon those that were accessory to them which that rank of Addressers could be supposed to have deserved they now espouse the practice which they had condemned and in reference to as Arbitrary and an unjustifiable an Act of His present Majesty as the most illegal one the late King was guilty of or the worst exercise of prerogative for which any hereâ—ofore either commended or promised to stand by him For tho the matter and subject of the Aâ—bitrary Act of him now upon the Tbrone be not as to every branch of it so publickly scandalous as some of the Arbitrary proceedings of the late King were as relating to a favour which mankind hath a just claim unto yet it is every way as illegal being in reference to a priviledg which His Majesty hath no Authoriâ—y to grant and bestow And were it not that there are many Dissenters who preserve themselves innocent at this juncture and upon whom the temptation that is administred makes no impression the world would have just ground to say that the Phanaticks are not governed by Principles but that the measures they walk by are what conduceth to their private and personal benefit or what lyes in a tendency to their loss and prejudice And that it was not the late Kings usurping and exerting an Arbitrary and illegal power that offended them but that they were not the Objects in whose favour it was exercised 'T is also an aggravation of their Folly as well as their Offerâ—câ— that they should revive a practice which the Nation was grown asham'd of and whereof they who had been guilry begun to repent thro having seen that all the former Declarations Assurances and Promises of the Royal Brothers which tempted to applications of that kind were but so many juggles peculiar to the late Breed of the Family for the deceiving of mankind and that never one of them was performed and made good But the transgression as well as the imprudence of the present Addressers is yet the greater and they are the more criminal and inexcusable before God and men in that they might have enjoyed all the benefits of the Kings Declaration without acknowledging the Justice of the Authority by which it was granted or making themselves the scorn and contempt of all that are truely honest and wise by their servile Adulations and their gratulatory Scribles unbecoming Englishmen and Protestants They had no more to do but to continue their meetings as they had sometimes heretofore used to do without taking notice that the present Suspension of the Laws made their Assembling together more safe and freed them from apprehension of fines and imprisonments Nor could the King how much soever displeased with such a conduct have at this time ventured upon the expressing displeasure against them seeing as that would have been both to have proclaimed his hypocrisie in saying that Conscience ought not to be constrained nor people forced in matters of meer Religion and a discovering the villanous design in subserviency to which the Declaration had been emitted so it were not possible for him after what he hath published to single out the Dissenters from amongst other Protestants and to fall upon all before matters are more ripe for it might be a means of the abortion of all his Popish Projections and of saving the whole Reformed interest in Great Brittain Neither would the Church of England men have envied their tranquillity or have blamed their carriage but would have been glad that their Brethren had been eased from oppressions and themselves delivered from the grievous and dishonorable task of prosecuting them which they had formerly been forced unto by Court injunctions and commands And as they would have by a Conduct of this nature had all the Freedom which they now enjoy without the guilt and reproach which they have derived upon themselves by Addrâ—ssing so such a carriage would have wonderfully recommended them to the Favour of a true English Parliam 〈…〉 which tho it will see cause to condem 〈…〉 the Kings usurping a power of suspending t 〈…〉 Laws and to make void his Declaratio 〈…〉 yet in gratitude to Dissenters for such a behaviour as well as in pitty and compassio 〈…〉 to them as English Protestants such a Parliament would not fail to do all it
the Laws of Christ when they are found to interfere with what is required by the King. But whether Gods Power or the Kings be superior and which of the two can cassate the others Laws and whose wrath is most terrible the judgment day will be able and sure to instruct them if all means in this world prove insufficient for it The Addressers know upon what conditions they hold their Liberty and they have not only observed how several of the National Clergy have been treated for preaching against Popery but they have heard how divers of the Reformed Ministers in France before the general suppression were dealt with for speaking against their Monarchs Religion and therefore they must be pardoned if they carry so as not to provoke his Majesty tho in the mean time thro their â—â—lence they both betray the Cause of their Lord and Master and are unfaithful to the Soules of those of whom they have taken upon them the spiritual guidance As for the Papers themselves that are stiled by the name of Addresses I shall not meddle with them being as to the greatest part of them fitter to be exposed and ridicul'd either for their dulness and pedantry or for the adulation and sycophancy with which they are fulsomly stuffâ— than to deserve any serious consideration or to merit reflections that may prove instructive to Mankind Only as that Address wherein his Majesty is thanked for his restoring God to his Empire over Conscience deserveth a rebuke for its blasphemy so that other which commends him for promising to force the Parliament to raâ—iâ—y his Declaration tho by the way all he says is that he does not doubt of their concurrence which yet his ill succ 〈…〉 upon the closetting of so many Member 〈…〉 and his since Dissolving that Parliament shews that there was some cause for the doub 〈…〉 ting of it I say that other Address merits severe Censure for its insolency against th 〈…〉 legislative Authority And the Authors of 〈◊〉 ought to be punished for their crime com 〈…〉 mitted against the Liberty and Freedom 〈◊〉 the two Houses and for encouraging th 〈…〉 King to invade and subvert their most essen 〈…〉 tial and fundamental Priviledges and withou 〈…〉 which they can neither be a Council Judi 〈…〉 cature nor Lawgivers After all I hope the Nation will be so in 〈…〉 genuous as not to impute the miscarriages 〈◊〉 some of the nonconformists to the whole part 〈…〉 much less to ascribe them to the principles o 〈…〉 Dissenters For as the points wherein the 〈…〉 differ from the Church of England are purel 〈…〉 of another Nature and which have no re 〈…〉 lation to Politicks so the influence that the 〈…〉 are adapted to have upon men as member 〈…〉 of Civil Societies is to make them in a specia 〈…〉 manner regardful of the Rights and Fran 〈…〉 chises of the Community But if some nei 〈…〉 ther understand the tendency of their ow 〈…〉 principles nor are true and faithful unto them these things are the personal faults of thos 〈…〉 men and are to be attributed to their ig 〈…〉 norance or to their dishonesty nor are thei 〈…〉 carriages to be counted the effects of thei 〈…〉 Religious Tenets much less are others of the party to be involved under the reproach an 〈…〉 guilt of their imprudent and ill conduct 〈…〉 Which there is the more cause to acknow 〈…〉 ledg because tho the Church of England ha 〈…〉 all the reason of the World to decline Addressing in that all her legal Foundation a 〈…〉 well as Security is shaken by the Declaration yet there are some of her Dignitaries and C 〈…〉 gy as well as divers of the Members of he 〈…〉 Communion who upon motives of Ambition Covetousness Fear or Courtship hav 〈…〉 enrolled themselves into the Liâ—â— of Addre 〈…〉 sers and under pretence of giving thanks 〈◊〉 the King for his promise of protecting 〈◊〉 Arch-Bishops Bishops and Clergy and a 〈…〉 〈…〉 erof the Church of England in the free Exer 〈…〉 of their Religion as by Law established 〈…〉 ve cut the throat of their Mother at 〈…〉 ose breasts they have suckt till they are 〈…〉 own fat both by acknowledging the usur 〈…〉 prerogative upon which the King assumes 〈◊〉 Right and Authority of Emitting the De 〈…〉 ration and by exchanging the legal standâ—â—g and Security of their Church into that 〈…〉 ecarious one of the Royal word which 〈…〉 ey fly unto as the bottom of her Subsistence 〈…〉 d trust to as the wall of her defence And 〈◊〉 most of the Members of the Separate So 〈…〉 ties are free from all accession to Ad 〈…〉 essing and the few that concurred were 〈…〉 eerly drawn in by the wheedle and impor 〈…〉 nity of their Preachers so they who are 〈◊〉 the chiefest Character and greatest repu 〈…〉 tion for Wisdom and Learning among 〈…〉 e Ministers have preserved themselves 〈…〉 om all folly and treachery of that kind The Apostle tells us that not many wise not â—any noble are called which as it is verified 〈◊〉 many of the Dissenting Addressers so it â—ay serve for some kind of Apology for their 〈…〉 ow and sneaking as well as for their in 〈…〉 iscret and imprudent behaviour in this matâ—er And it is the more venial in some of â—hem as being not only a means of ingra 〈…〉 iating themselves as they phansie with â—he King who heretofore had no very good â—pinion of them but as being both an easie â—nd compendious method of Attoning for Offences against the Crown of which they were strongly suspected and a cheap and expenceless way of purchasing the pardon of their Relations that had stood actually 〈…〉 ccused of high Treason Nor is it to be doubted but that as the King will retain very little favour and mercy for Fanaticks when once he has served his Ends upon them so they will preserve as little kindness for the Papists if they can but obtain relief in a legal way And as there is not a people in the Kingdom that will be more 〈…〉 oyal to Princes while they continue so to govern as that fealty by the Laws of God 〈…〉 or man remains due to them so there are none of what principles or communion soever upon whom the Kingdom it its whole interest come to ly at stake may more assuredly and with greater confidence depend than upon the generality of Dissenting Protestants and especially upon those that are not of the Pastoral Order The severities that the Dissenters lay under before and their deliverance from oppression and disturbance now seconded with the Kings expectation and demands of thanksgiving Addresses were strong temptations upon men void of generosity and greatness of spirit and who are withall of no great Political Wisdom nor of prospect into the Consequences of Councils and tricks of State to act as illegally in their thanks as His Majesty had done in his bounty So that whatsoever animadversion they may
deserve should they be proceeded against according to their demerit yet it is to be hoped that both they and the Addressers of the former stamp may all find room in an Act of Indemnity and that the Mercy of the Nation towards them will triump over and get the better of its Iustice. As it would argue a strange and judicial infatuation should they proceed to farther excesses and think to escape the punishment due to one Crime by comitting and taking Sanctuary in another thro improving their compliments into actions of treachery so all their hope of pardon as well as of lenity and moderation from a true Protestant and rightly constituted Authority depends upon their conduct and behaviour henceforward and their not suffering themselves to be hurried and deluded into a co-operation with the Court for the obtaining of a Popish Parliament All their endeavours of that kind would but more clearly detect and manifest their treachery to Religion and the Kingdom it not being in their power to ontvote the honest English part of the People so as to help the King to such a House of Commons as he desires and were it possible that thro their assistance in conjunction with violence and tricks used in Elections and Returns by the Court such a â—ouse of Commons might be obtained as would be serviceable to Arbitrary and papal Ends yet neither the King nor they would be the neâ—rer the compassing what is aimd at it being demonstrable that the Majority of the House of Lords are never to be wrought over to justify this illegal Declaration or to grant the King a Power of Suspending Laws at his pleasure nor to give their Assent to a Bill for Repealing the Test Acts and the Statutes that enjoin and require the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy And if they should be so far left of God and betrayd by those among themselves whom the Court hath gained as to become guilty of so enormous an Act of folly and villany and should the Election of the next Parliament be the happy juncture they wait for and the improving their interest as well as the giving their own votes for the Choice of Papists into the House of Commons be what they mean by an essential proof of their Loyalty and of the sincerity of their humble Addresses and that whereby they intend to demonstrate that the greatest thing they have promised is the least thing they will perform for his Majesties service and satisfation as in that case they will deserve to forfeit all hopes of bei 〈…〉 forgiven so it would be an infidelity to Go 〈…〉 and Men and a cruelty to our selves 〈◊〉 our Posterity not to abandon them as betray 〈…〉 of Religion expunge them out of the Roll 〈◊〉 Protestants strip them of all that where 〈…〉 free Subjects have a Legal Right and not 〈◊〉 condemn them to the utmost punishment 〈…〉 which the Laws of the Kingdom adjudg th 〈…〉 worst of Traitors and Malefactors unto There are some who thro hating of them do wish their miscarrying and offending t 〈…〉 so unpardouable a degree that they ma 〈…〉 hereafter be furnished with an advantage both of ruining them and the whole Diâ—senting party for their sakes But as the lov 〈…〉 that I bear unto them and the perswasio 〈…〉 and belief I have of the truth of their Religious principles do make me exceeding solic 〈…〉 tous to have them kept and prevented from being hurried and transported into so fata 〈…〉 and criminal a behaviour so I desire 〈◊〉 make no other excuse for my plain dealin 〈…〉 towards them but that of Solomon who tell us that faithful are the wounds of a friend whi 〈…〉 the kisses of an Enemy are deceitful and that h 〈…〉 who rebukes a man shall find more favour afterwards than he who flattereth with the tongu 〈…〉 POSTSCRIPT SInce the fore-going Sheets went to the press and while they were Printing off there is come to my hands a new Proclamation Dated at Windsor the 28. of Iune 1687. for granting further Liberty in Scotland and which was published there by an Order of the privy Council of that Kingdom bearing Date at Edinburgh the 5. of Iuly This Superâ—â—tation of one Proclamation after another in reference to the same thing is so apportioâ—ed and parallel to the late French method of Emitting Edicts in relation to those of the Reformed Religion in that Kingdom that they seem to proceed out of one mint to be calculated for the same End and to be designed for the compassing and obtaining the like effects For as soon as an Alarm was taken at the publishing of some unreasonable and rigorous Edict there used often to follow another of a milder strain which was pretended to be either for the moderating the severities of the former or to remove 〈…〉 d rectify what they were pleased to call 〈…〉 isconstructions unduly put upon it but 〈…〉 e true End whereof was only to stiffle and 〈…〉 tinguish the jealousies and apprehensions 〈…〉 at the other had begotten and excited and â—hich had they not been calmed and allayd 〈…〉 ight have awakened the Protestants there 〈◊〉 provide for their safety by a timely withâ—rawing into other Countries if they had â—ot been provoked to generous endeavoures â—f preventing the final suppression of their â—eligion and for obviating the ruin which 〈…〉 at Court had projected against them and â—as hastning to involve them under Nor 〈…〉 es my suspition of his Majesties pursuing â—e same design against Protestants which â—e great Louis glories to have accompli 〈…〉 ed proceed meerly from that conjun 〈…〉 ion of Counsels that all the world observes â—etween Whitehall and Versailles nor meerâ—â— from the Kings abandoning his Nephew â—nd Son in Law the Prince of Orange and not 〈◊〉 much as interposing to obtain satisfaction 〈◊〉 be given him for the many injuries dam 〈…〉 ages spoiles and robberies as well as 〈…〉 fronts done him by that haughty Monarch â—hen one vigorous application could not 〈…〉 il to effect it nor yet meerly from that â—greeableness in their procedures thro the â—ing of Englands imitating that forraign Po 〈…〉 ntate and making the whole course that 〈…〉 at h been taken in France the Pattern of 〈…〉 ll his actings in Great Brittain but I am â—uch confirmed in my fears and jealousies 〈…〉 y remembring a passage in one of Mr. Cole 〈…〉 ans Letters who as he very well knew what 〈…〉 e then Duke of York had been for many 〈…〉 ears ingaged in against our Religion and 〈…〉 ivil Liberties and under what Vows and 〈…〉 romises he was not to desist from prose 〈…〉 ting what had been resolved upon and un 〈…〉 ertaken so he had the confidence to say 〈…〉 at his Masters design and that of the King of 〈…〉 ance was one and the same and that this â—as no less as he farther informs us than 〈…〉 e exâ—â—â—pating the Northern Heresie Had the â—ing of England acted with
sincerity from 〈…〉 at noble principle that conscience ought not to be constrained nor people forced in matters of meer Religion as he would delude weak and easie people to believe and had not all his Arbitrary and illegal proceedings in granting Liberty to Dissenting Protestants been to subserve and promote other designes which it is not yet seasonable and convenient to discover and avow he would have then acted with that conformity to the Principle he professeth to be under the influence and Government of and with that consonancy and harmonious agreeableness in all the degrees of Indulgence vouchsased to those of the Reformed Religion in England and Scotland that differ from them of the established way that there would have needed no second Proclamation apporting new measures of Liberty and favour to Scotts Dissenters seeing they would have had it granted them at first in the same latitude and illimitedness that it was bestowed upon the English nonconformists But when Princes carry on and pursue mischievous designes under the palliations of Religion publick good and the Right of Mankind it comes often to pass thro adapting their methods to what they mean and intend and not to what they pretend and give out that their crafty projections by being not sufficiently accommodated to their purposes prove ineffectual to the compassing what was aim'd at and this forceth them to a new game of falsehood and subtilety but still under the old varnish and gloss and obligeth them to have recourse to means that may be more proportioned than the former were for their reaching the End that they ubtimately drive at Thence it is that those Rulers who are engaged in the prosecution of wicked and unjustifiable designes are necessitated not only to apply themselves to opposite Methods towards different parties and those such as must be suited and apportioned to their discrepant interests without the accommodating of which they can neither hope to mould them to that tame and servile compliance nor work them up to that active and vigorous abetting of their malicious and crasty projections as is necessary for the rendring them succesful but they are forced to vary their proceedings towards one and the same Party and that as well when the ways they have acted in towards them are found inadequate to the End unto which they were calculated as when the mischief hid under them comes to be too soon discovered This weak and short-sighted people fancy to arise from an uncertainty in Princes councels and from their being at no consistency with themselves but they who can penetrate into affairs and that do consider things more narrowly can easily discern that all this variation diversity and shifting of methods in Rulers actings proceed from other causes and that it is their stability and perseverance in an illegal and wicked design that compels them to those crooked and contrary Courses either for the gaining the unwary and ill applyed concurrence of their Subjects to the hastning distress and desolation upon themselves or for the throwing them into that lethargy and under that supiness as may hinder them from all endeavours of obstructing and diverting the evils that their Governours are seeking to bring upon them Nor is there a more certain indication of a Princes being engaged in a design contrary to the good and happiness of the Society over which he is set than his betaking himself to illegal ways upon pretence of promoting the ease and benefit of his people or according as he finds his Subjects to differ in their particular interests his applying himself to them in methods whereof the contrariety of the one to the other renders them the more proper and adapted to ensnare the divided factions thro accosting each of them with something that they are severally fond of Legal means are always sufficient to the pursuing and compassing legal Ends and whatsoever is for the general good of the Community may either be obtained by courses wherein the generallity find their united interest and common felicity or else by application to a Parliament freely and duly chosen which as it represents the whole politick Society so there may be expected most compassion and tenderness as well as wisdom and prudence for redressing the grievances easing the troubles and providing for the benefit and safety of all that are wrapt up in and represented by them And as every Prince who sincerely seeks and pursues the advantage of his People will so adjust and attemper all his actions towards them that his whole carriage shall be uniform and all the exercises of his Governing power meet in the benefit of the Community as so many lines from a circumserence uniting in their Centre so there needs no other proof that these two or three late Actions of His Majesty which a foolish sort of men are apt to interpret for favours and to account them effects of compassion and kindness are but to conceal his malice and to subserve as well as cover some fatal and pernicious design that he is carrying on against his Protestant Subjects than that while he is gratifying a few of them in one thing he is at the same time robbing all of them of many and that while he is indulging the Dissenters with a Freedom from the penal Laws for matters of Religion he is invading the properties and subverting the Civil Rights of the three Nations and changing the whole Constitution of the Government He that strips us of what belongs unto us as we are English and Scotts men cannot mean honestly in the savours he pretends to vouchsafe us as we are Christians nor can he that is endeavouring to enslave our persons and to subject our Estates to his Arbitrary lust and pleasure intend any thing else by this kindness granted to Fanaticks in matters of Religion than the dividing them from the rest of the People in what concerns the Civil Interest and external happiness of the Community and to render them an engaged Faction to assist and abet him in enthralling the Kingdoms Whosoever considers the whole Tenor of his Majesties other Actings in proroguing and dissolving Parliaments when he finds them uncompliant with his 〈…〉 pish and despotical Ends his keeping on 〈…〉 ot a formidable Arâ—â— against all the 〈…〉 aws of the Land and upon no other in 〈…〉 ention but to maintain him in his Usurpa 〈…〉 on s over our Rights and to awe us into 〈…〉 tame and servile submission to his Preroga 〈…〉 ve will His filling all places of Judicature â—ith weak as well as Treacherous persons who instead of administring Justice may be â—he Instruments of Tyranny his robbing men of their Estates by judicial forms and under â—retence that nullum tempus occurris Râ—gi after they have been quietly enjoyed by the Subjects for several hundred years his advanâ—ing none to Civil or Military Employs but whom he hath some confidence in as to the finding them ready to execute his despotical â—njunctions and his esteeming no persons
to the cutting of one anothers throats yet Governors may both deny Liberty to those whose principles oblige them to destroy those that are not of their mind and may in some measure Regulate the Liberty which they vouch save to others whose opinions tho they do not think dangerous to the peace of the Community yet thro judging them erroneous and false they conceive them dangerous to the Soules of men As there is a vast difference betwixt Tolerating a Religion and approving the Religion that is Tolerated so what a Government doth not approve but barely permitts and suffers may 〈◊〉 brought under Restrictions as to time plac 〈…〉 and number of those professing it that sha 〈…〉 assemble in one meeting which it wer 〈…〉 an undecency to extend to those of th 〈…〉 justified and established way Now wha 〈…〉 soever Restrictions or Regulations are E 〈…〉 acted and ordained by the Legislative Aâ—thority in reference to Religions or Religio 〈…〉 Assemblies they are not to be stop't disable 〈…〉 or suspended but by the same Authority th 〈…〉 Enacted and ordained them The King say 〈◊〉 very truely that Conscience ought not to 〈◊〉 constrained nor people forced in matters of me 〈…〉 Religion but it does not from thence follo 〈…〉 unless by the Logick of Whitehal th 〈…〉 without the concurrence of a Parliamen 〈…〉 he should suspend and dispense with the Law 〈…〉 and by a pretended preroragtive relieve an 〈…〉 from what they are obnoxious unto by th 〈…〉 Statutes of the Realm His saying that th 〈…〉 forcing people in matters of Religio 〈…〉 spoils Trade depopulates Countries discour 〈…〉 geth Strangers and answers not the End 〈◊〉 beinging all to an Uniformity for which it 〈◊〉 employ'd would do well in a Speech to th 〈…〉 Houses of Parliament to perswade them t 〈…〉 Repeal some certain Laws or might do we 〈…〉 to determine his Majesty to assent to suc 〈…〉 Bills as a Parliament may prepare and offe 〈…〉 for relieving persons in matters of Co 〈…〉 science But does not serve for what it 〈◊〉 alledged nor can it warrant his suspending th 〈…〉 Laws by his single Authority And by th 〈…〉 way I know when these very Argument 〈…〉 were not only despised by His Majesty an 〈…〉 ridiculed by those who took their Cue fro 〈…〉 Court and had wit to do it as by the prâ—sent Bishop of Oxford in a very ill natur 〈…〉 Book called Ecclesiastical Polity but whe 〈…〉 the daring to have mentioned them woul 〈…〉 have provok'd the then Duke of York's i 〈…〉 dignation and have exposed the party th 〈…〉 did it to discountenance and disgrace T 〈…〉 question is not what is convenient to 〈◊〉 done in some measure and degree and 〈◊〉 reference to those whose Religion does n 〈…〉 oblige them to destroy all that differ fro 〈…〉 â—om when they have opportunity for it 〈…〉 t the point in debate is who hath the leâ—â—l power of doing it and of fixing its bounds â—â—d limits It was never pretended that the 〈…〉 ing ought to be shut out from a share in spending and Repealing Laws but that the â—â—le Right of doing it belongs to him is â—hat cannot be allowed without changing 〈…〉 e Constitution and placing the whole Le 〈…〉 slative Authority in His Majesty And as it is 〈◊〉 Usurpation in the King to challenge it and 〈◊〉 treachery in English Subjects to acknowledg 〈…〉 so the inconveniences that this or that â—arty are in the mean time exposed unto 〈…〉 ro the Laws remaining in force are raâ—â—er to be endured than that a power of 〈…〉 ving case and relief farther than by con 〈…〉 vance should be confessed to reside in â—â—y one in whom the Laws of the Comâ—unity have not placed it 'T is better to â—â—dergo hardships under the Execution of â—â—just Laws than be released from our â—roubles by a power Usurped over all Laws â—or by the one the measures of Government 〈◊〉 well as the Rights and Priviledges of a Na 〈…〉 on are destroy'd whereas by the other â—â—ly a part of the people are afflicted and â—â—duly dealt with While we are Govern'd 〈◊〉 Laws tho several of them may be in 〈…〉 st and inconvenient yet we are under a â—â—curity as to all other things which those â—aws have not made liable but when we â—ll under an illimited prerogative and Abso 〈…〉 e Power we have no longer a Title 〈◊〉 or a hedg about any thing but all lies â—â—en to the lust and pleasure of him in â—hom we have owned that power to be 〈…〉 ated A Liberty is what Dissenters have 〈◊〉 Right to Claim and which the Legislative â—uthority is bound by the Rules of Justice 〈…〉 d Duty as well as by Principles of Wisdom 〈…〉 d Discretion to grant And I am sorry 〈…〉 at while they stood so fair to obtain it 〈◊〉 a Legal and Parliamentary way any of 〈…〉 em by acknowledging a Right in another 〈◊〉 give it and that in a manner so subver 〈…〉 e of the Authority of Parliaments should 〈…〉 ve rendred themselves unworthy to receive it from them to whom the power of bestowing it does belong Not but that a Toleration will be alway's due to their Principles but I know not whether the particular men of those Principles who have by their Addresses betray'd the Kingdom may not come to be judged to have forfeited all share in it for their crime committed against the Constitution and the whole Politick Society Nor is there any thing more just and equal than that they who surrender and give away the Rights both of Legislators and Subjects should lose all grace and favour from the former and all portion among the latter And how much soever some Protestant Dissenters may please themselves with the Liberty that at present they enjoy in the vertue of the two Royal Papers yet this may serve to moderate them in their transports of gladness that they have no solid Security for the continuance of it For should a Parliament null and make voide the Declaration for Liberty and impeath the judges for declaring a power vested in the King to suspend so many Laws and for forbearing upon the Kings Mandat to execute them the freedom that the Dissenters possess would immediately vanish and have much the same destiny that the Liberty had which was granted unto them by the Declaration of Indulgence anno 1672. Or should the Parliament be willing to grant ease and Indulgence to all Protestants by a Bill prepared for Repealing of all the Laws formerly made against them and should only be desirous to preserve in force the Laws relating to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Statutes which enjoin the Tests of whose Execution we never more wanted the benefit in order to our preservation from Popery and which an English Parliament cannot be supposed willing to part with at a time when our Lives Estates and Religion are so visibly threatned to be swallowed up and destroyed by the