and practices we shall easily assent to this Advocates Politiques in point of Treason Pag. 2. and do believe the Capital crime and punishment in the common Weal as the chief censure in the Church fall into contempt when made common by being affixed to every light transgression and trivial defect nor will I trouble your Lordship with tracing or a tedious animadversion of his historical observation of the clemency of Germanius indulgency of Aurelius or connivance of Theodocius and Gratianus admitting them as true his work is to make Papists square with primitive Christians and maintain his inference which he is well aware will be found a plain Non sequitur on his premises it is this a minori ad majus how much more reasonable will it appear to tolerate our brethren of the Roman Religion who are undeniably filii Christi sons of Christ by the mother Church which we in England use to call the surer side c. My Lord whatsoever the premises will allow I must be bold to say the inferences is stuffed with fancies which cannot be admitted in all the particulars of it it proceedeth with a plain petitio principii under controversie yea cleared in the negative This Advocate my Lord challengeth the freedom of the House under a filial relation as brethren He therefore affirmeth with confidence The Roman Catholicks are undeniably Filii Christi But he dealeth wisely in cleaving to the Bastard pleas on the Mothers side lest the very boldness of the claim should provoke the family to whip them out of doors Yet my Lord as undeniable as this Filial relation appeareth to him it would be considered whether their Mother hath not played the Harlot and so they may be found children of Adultery although living in Wedlock by our Law not admitting the childe to be rightly fathered covereth her sin and their shame Again it would be considered whether the Lord Jesus Christ hath not given the Church of Rome a bill of divorce and branded her as the Mother of Whoredoms spiritual Sodom Egypt and Babylon from whom all chaste Christians are charged to Separate with detestation lest they be defiled with her uncleanness It is more then probable that on a serious scrutiny this Advocates impudent claim of the Papists sonship to Christ may be silenced with Hosea 2.1,2.3 Plead with your mother plead with her she is not my wife neither am I her husband c. I will not have mercy upon her children for they be the children of Whoredomes for their mother hath played the Harlot she that conceived them â—…th done shamefully Again how came the maternity of the Christian Church to be confined to any place or peculiar people Is not the wall of partition between Nations pulled down and quite removed When was Rome thus espoused to Christ that all filii Christi must be Roman Catholicks at least on the mothers the surer side As if none could be members of his Church without being Provinces to the Roman Empire and Proselytes to their superstition Why may not Alexandria Antioch Galatia claim this Prerogative as well as Rome We may finde Rome conform to Babylon and called by that name as her Successor but that she succeeded to Jerusalem is a blinde bottomless suppoâ—ition Yet we grant the casting out of the Jews was the bringing in of the Gentiles let this Contract necessitating such as heretofore were to Jewdaize now to Romanize or to renounce their relation to Jesus Christ be cleared This is my Lord a most Popish brag without any bottom though this Advocate hath the confidence to tell your Lordship That it is a verity undoubtable so far as I could finde that that Church was formerly the reverend Mother of Christianism and the most ancient Law-maker and Judge heretofore of all Religion You may my Lord see what is the toleration desired for Roman Catholicks how high they would build the Popes Temple if Cyrus will give them liberty Rome cannot be if she may not be the Queen and Mistress of the World to whom all must bow as bound to her for their very being But my Lord this Advocate seemeth better read in Roman Legends then Scripture or Church Records otherwise he would have found Isa 2.3 the Law should and did go out of Sion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem And my Lord from this seed do spring the sons of Christ in this place the Lord himself preached hither were the Apostles confined from hence they dispersed themselves through the world hitherto the Christians appealed as to the Law-maker and Judge of Religion Jerusalem is my Lord called and known to be the Mother of us all If our sonship to Christ be cognoscible and determinable by our relation to any special place as the Mother of Christianism we are bound by natural affection to go on Pilgrimage and undertake the Holy War for the Holy Land or at least must have recourse to Antioch where Believers were first called Christians My Lord I will stand by the Historical demonstration thereof that Superstition was made the sum of Christianism and an universal Papacy affected before Romes Catholick Motherhood became a mask of sonship unto Christ and Christianism was found in our Island before Austin Romes proud bloody and superstitious Apostle came to plant Lastly my Lord admit we Romes Motherhood must degenerated children or branches be tolerated shall not scoffing Ishmael be cast out and prophane Esau lose his birthright though the one be undeniably the son of Abraham and the other of Isaac Is it not our Saviours rule Every branch that beareth not fruit must be cut off much more that which beareth wilde fruit Simple symbolical relation to Christ will not avail to entrance into heaven nor entertainment in the Church My Lord these premises being groundless the inference is easily evaded and admitting the Christians liberty by the Heathen Orthodox under the Arrians Jews among the Venetians and Moors among the Spaniards yet it will not follow with any Emphasis that we should much more tolerate our degenerate spurious brethren of the Roman Religion and the rather because their principles and experienced practices render them more unsociable then the very worst of these even destructive to Humane Society This exception my Lord is so legible that it stared this Advocate in the face in the very penning of this Apology He seemeth to obviate and answer it in his next Paragraph in which his furious freting terms do bespeak him thereby pinched to the quick he therefore stateth it in these angry expressions It is a most false Proposition and proceeded doubtless from gall and spleen that Roman Catholicks are altogether consociable or that they cannot live with us or any sort of Protestants in one Kingdom and Commonwealth without jars and tumults And so in the height of rage he lets fly at the Presbyterians and saith This is blown from their mad turbulent and presumptuous pulpits whom he pursueth with many invectives
occasioneth them to give it that name of Treason yet if this advocate had pleased to consider the Law he might have seen a proditorious appeal and subjection to and advancement of a forraign power and potentate over and opposite to the Soveraign Majestie of this Kingdom in every Roman Popish Priest and there is the Ratiâ— formalis of the Treason and makes it such quia malum in se as well as quia prohibitum But my Lord that which sticks in the stomack of these Romen Catholicks is the power of which their Priests are deprived He tells your Lordship The Priests were wont here in England to sit in the chair of Government and by their Oracles and Decrees the people of this Land were onely wont to he directed both in Chancery Rolls and Ecclesiastical Courts You may see my Lord to what pitch the Roman Catholicks would screw their desired liberty that the to esse of our Laws may depend on their Priests Anathema the places of trust and honor be by them possessed judgement be by them dispenced and all civil Offices be at their command to commend their sociability by executing the writ de Hereticus comburendis on the bare say of a Priest that this man is an Heretick My Lord all Lawyers that lay away this liberty are strange and irrational and desired to be repealed 2. My Lord the little reason of this Corrector of the reason of our Law is worth observation In his blinde passion he supposeth and suggesteth it to be made treason to be a Priest and manageth all his invectives against the Law as if it were against the name Priest which in its general nature and vulgar acceptation denoteth cui administrator of holy things between God and his people And so we know Moses consecrated a Priest Christ was and is a Priest our Church call Ministers Priests and every true Saint is a Priest and the Law must needs seem unreasonable that shall make it Treason for a man to be a Priest in so large a sense as he by an ignoratio Elenchi renders it but could his heat have admitted him to have cast an eye on the Statute he would have found the Traytors to have been Jesuits Seminary Priests or other Priests made or ordained out of the Realm or in the Realm by any power authority or jurisdiction derived challenged or pretended from the sea of Rome And so the Treason to consist not in their being simple Priests but in their being Roman Priests subjected to and advancing a Forreign Power and Authority above their natural Prince He may my Lord on enquiry finde Priests yea Popish Priests when converted from the Papacy have enjoyed the liberty of Subjects and not been judged Traytors though he profoundly fancieth the Treason to be in the general appellation and as such scolds at the Law as unreasonable and so runs into the third misdemeanor to be observed viz. 3. His inâ—olency in presuming to reproach the renowned Queen Elizabeth as illegitimate and an usurper of the Crown and so charging these Laws to have been the products of her fears and jealousies against Mary Queen of Scots whom he determined to have been the just heir of the Crown all which with a right Roman Catholick spirit he bottometh on the Popes declaring her illegitimate it is indeed true he doth mention our own Acts of Parliaments which did declare her such but my Lord his foundation is the Popes Sentence and Censure otherwise his argument were the same against Queen Mary as against Queen Elizabeth who also was declared illegitimate and he would have seen Acts of Parliament appropriating the Crown to her as well as they had sometime taken it from her My Lord come not the the Roman Catholicks with a very submissive spirit to supplicate their liberty thus to reproach our Princes and Laws and so demanding the repeal of Penal Laws against themselves as a matter due and just But if my Lord tha jealousies of Queen Elizabeth as an Vsurper were the onely reason and cause of those Statutes how was it that these laws did not cease with their cause after King James right heir according to this Advocates account come to the Crown These laws were not onely continued but renewed and rendred more severe as the Catholick insociability manifested by their bloody and barbarous conspiracies against him whom their Pope could not declare illegitimate had constrained My Lord I have made bold to confider the Argumentation of this Advocate for the toleration of Roman Catholicks The remaining part of his Book is but a Rhetorical swada in which there are many words and sentences obnoxious to exception but knowing that your Lordship is more judicious then to be courted by words without weight I will not trouble your Lordship with any observation of them but humbly commit the cause to your grand and pious consideration not doubting but your zeal to the Protestant Religion the interest of our Nation honor of our King and glory of our Church almost ruined by Scismaticks on a suspicion that it would strike hands with Roman Catholicks will prove more fervent then to be extinguished or abated by the water of these false suggestions furious expostulations or fair spoken perswasions and that your Lordship will never engage your self to indulge an interest directly contrary to our Laws Church Religion and Scripture duty In which confidence I commend your Lordship unto the Grace that is able and will establish you to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and rest My Lord Your Lordsships most devoted humble Servant C. D. July 8. 1661. FINIS