that was stab'd of Alexander the Great that had almost lost all of the Queen of Sweden that was forced to resign of the sturdy Swiss that would not conform and all the other idle stories that they know how to make use of if Kings will not But I beseech you what grounds have you for these fears and jealousies of Incivility Did his Majesty ever turn his Kingdom into a Prison Did he ever weary out his Subjects so at home as to constrain them to seek a more hospitable habitation among Salvages and Canibals abroad This was the incivility that deformed his Fathers Reign and the Rock upon which we all ruined but the King observes his Sea-marks and has learnt more manners and is not so uncivil as Alexander the Great and his Royal Father were as to force them to rebel by forcing them to conform And though I have not the honour to be so intimately acquainted with his Majesty as to give him a Testimonial of the unblameableness of his Life and Conversation as you have very obligingly done yet thus much I dare say for him that he is as civil and good-natured a Prince as ever wielded the English Sceptre so that you need not doubt but that he will upon all occasions give his Subjects good-words though they give him bad ones and humour them like Children though they are never so froward and deserve to be scourged And therefore during his Reign you have no more ground to fear any danger of Incivility than I have of Popery so unnecessary and unseasonable are your Lectures of good manners at this time when his Majesty God be praised is as well provided of a Royal Nature as a Gentlemans Memory Thus far have you instructed him how to govern his Island by way of Precept but now we procede to the more instructive Topick of Example and here you have strung up as Sancho did his Proverbs an hundred idle stories of the fatal Catastrophe of ill-bred and uncivil Kings to fright him into meekness and good manners to which you might in my opinion have added one more how the Subjects of Great Britain because their King would not humour them like Children when they had a mind to play with his Crown nip'd his Prerogative suck'd his Blood subverted his Government and set up a glorious Regiment of their own I verily believe to have trumpeted this in his Majesty's ears as much as I am out of your Books for it would have been a more pertinent story for the use of Princes than Alexander the Great that had almost lost all the Roman Emperor that was stabb'd the sturdy Swiss that would not conform and the frolicksom Queen that gave the blank Town seal of which there came no harm But yet from these you threaten Kings with as much Effrontery as if you had them standing before you upon the Stool of Repentance whilst you lecture to them with the state of King Gill Scotch modern Orthodoxy with politick-Notes and Observations upon Emperors Roman and Grecian Kings and Queens School-boys and Schoolmasters I shall as briefly as I can examine them to prove you as very a Rat-historian as I have proved you a Rat-divine Your first Tale is of a Roman Emperour who when his Captain of the Life-guard came for the word by giving it unhandsomly receiv'd a dagger I suppose you mean Caligula who as Suetonius relates was stabb'd by Sabinus whilst he gave the word not as you will have it for giving it unhandsomly the murther having been plotted aforehand and though Josephus you know had a peculiar grudge against that Emperour as a most implacable enemy to the Jewish Nation and therefore to disgrace him as much as he can affirms that he was stabb'd immediately upon giving for the Word the name of a lewd woman though in Suetonius the Word is Jupiter the most sacred Word in their Religion yet will you there find that it was the execution of a premeditated Conspiracy and that the main cause of it was his frequent railing upon this Captains cowardize This is a Caveat to Kings not to presume too much upon their own Wit and their Subjects good nature and if they will be drolling upon them they may thank themselves if they receive a Dagger for a Repartee I have heard of another Roman Emperour who gave the Sword to the Captain of his Guard requiring him to use it for his defence if he govern'd well but if not to turn the point of it against himself As also of a Prince of Brabant who granted to his Subjects if himself or any of his Successours should ever attempt to violate their Ancient Priviledges a full Power of proceeding to the Election of a New Governour what disturbances ensued hereupon and how Kings approve the example I know not but this I do know that it was very weakly done to submit their Actions so entirely to the judgement of their Subjects and put it within the power of any Malecontent either to murther or depose them But being got into the Roman Empire I am you know in my own kingdom and therefore when you ask me whether had I lived in the dayes of Augustus I should not have made an excellent Privy Counsellour to him for his Father too was murther'd I would have been Privy Counsellour to Augustus with all my soul were it not that he reign'd so long ago so that had I ever been of His Privy Council I must either have been dead fifteen hundred years since or at least have been so very old that by this time I should have been altogether unfit for any publique employment though I had descended of your family of the de Temporibus otherwise I know not any Emperour of them all of whose acquaintance I should have been more ambitious He was a Prince admirable for the wisdom and magnanimity of his mind for the sweetness and facility of his manners he was one that delighted in nothing more than the entertainments of wit and ingenuity Virgil and Horace and Varius were admitted into his retired and cabinet Conversation as well as Agrippa and Mecaenas they were not only his Domesticks but his Familiars and his Confidents they conversed and laughed together as friends and companions And now who would not take it kindly to be honour'd with the favour and familiarity of so great a Prince a Prince of so good and so sweet a disposition a Prince so free from froth and groans a Prince so much to be admired for that Majesty which sat upon the forehead of his Masculine Truth and generous Honesty But had I been of his Privy Council I am confident I should never have given him my Advice to sacrifice three hundred of the Nobles and Citizens of the best Quality to the Ghost of his murther'd Father because his Natural Father old Octavius was not murther'd but being a Civil Gentleman of private condition and breeding and never having suffer'd any of his Tenants to be
vouchsafe Him is that you do not know but he may lead a more unblameable conversation than the worst and wickedest men in the world were it not for one inexcusable fault his obstinacy in not assuming the Revenue of the Church to his own Use. So that my aspersion if it were true is upon your Principles so far from detecting any malicé to His Government that it would clear him of the only blemish that lyes upon his Reputation Sure you are half Guelph and half Gibelline you are every where so cross and contradictory to your self But as I have asperst the King with the only thing for which you would commend him so I have all along appropriated or impropriated all the Loyalty from the Nobility the Gentry and the Commonalty and dedicated it to the Church Why did any of the Kings Subjects fight for him beside the Clergy Had he any Commanders in his Army beside Bishops and Dignitaries Were not all his Battels fought under the Conduct of General Usher and Captain Bramhall against Dr. Cromwel and Dr. Ireton for with that Title were they Dub'd at Oxford by one J. O. in their Return from the bloody Conquest of Ireland Did not the Kings whole Infantry consist of poor Readers as the Kirk Foot did of Mass-Johns who brought in Covenant and Reformation in exchange for shooes and stockings But if you can name any of the Nobility Gentry or Commonalty that ventured Lives and Fortunes for the Royal Cause I believe we shall never be so impudent as to deny them their share of Loyalty and Service to their Prince And if you cannot I am sure I can name amongst them as gallant Examples of Courage and Integrity as perhaps no Age can parallel they fought and they suffer'd with the constancy and resolution of Martyrdom and nothing could in the least abate their zeal and their devotion to an opprest and an afflicted Prince and this because their Loyalty was founded upon Principles of Conscience and Religion and that is it that I have appropriated to the Church of England that it teaches the duty of Subjects in absolute and indispensable terms without leaving shifts evasions for disobedience whereas all other Parties tye it on with false and counterfeit knots so that by the help of reserves the Subject may be as much as ever at liberty to obey or disobey as himself shall deem convenient And when sometimes they shall have preached up the necessity of Allegiance in the most positive and comprehensive terms they will bring themselves off with so many clauses and exceptions as must utterly evacuate the obligation of their own Doctrines And if at any time they happen to be stubborn in their Loyalty their Prince is indebted for that either to chance or interest or inclination or some other uncertain and changeable Principle But the thing that I have appropriated to the Church of England is Loyalty upon firm and effectual Principles in so much that a man must be an Apostate before he can be a Rebel and renounce his Religion and his Duty to God before he can neglect his Allegiance and his Duty to his Prince This is the peculiar and distinguishing Article of the Church of England so that when you infer that I have impropriated it to the Clergy from the Nobility and Gentry you must first suppose that none of the Nobility or Gentry belong to her Communion And now are you not a modest and an honest Gentleman to charge me with such an unsufferable rudeness and disingenuity against so great a number of the bravest and most gallant spirits in the world Though this I know was intended only in pursuance of your Grand Design by such impudent Leasings to raise up a misunderstanding between the Clergy and all other Orders of men in the Kingdome And that is the bottom of all your malice and hatred to them that as long as they are able to keep and make good the Pulpits Loyalty will be the Religion of the people and they will not easily be wrought upon to listen to your Factions and Democratical insinuations And that is it whatever you pretend of the Dignitary of Lincoln that makes you and your Partners to gnash your teeth and knit your fists with so much impatience against the Order it self But were you capable of wit in your anger you would have let fly at them with some more plausible and probable aspersions and not think to bring them into discredit among wise and sober men with such rank and notorious fictions For this can only betray your malice and ill intentions and though you had right on your side it would be an invincible prejudice against your Cause and your Party that scruple not any Arts howsoever dishonest or dishonourable to do a despite to the Church of England I remember another Accusation which though it be not altogether so impudent as this yet when I first read it methoughts it was somewhat more pleasant that my Preface intermedles with the King the Succession the Privy Council Popery Atheism Bishops Ecclesiastical Government and above all it seems this is more sawcy than all the rest with Non-conformity and J. O. Why truly not unlike but it seems if you had resolved to write a Preface it is like you would have mentioned nothing more than your own private affairs and only informed the Reader of your losses at Picquet and the Gaming Ordinaries your adventures at the Bear-garden of Bern your encounters with the mighty race of Capons at Geneva your Remarques upon the wheel of Fortune and whipping of Gigs and your studies in the 5. Epist. to Marcellinus But alas my breeding and condition are too private to bless the world with such great and observable Memoires and therefore not having the advantage that You and Caesar had of writing my own Novels I was forced to intermeddle with the affairs of others the King the Council and above all J. O. And towards them all I have endeavourd the utmost Ingenuity and if I have fail'd I even ask their pardon I do them right And then though I have abused them never so unworthily I make them ample amends by this clause of additional Civility But however I have treated them I must confess I am bound to beg your pardon in particular because you your self have intermedled with none of these things And now did ever any fool in the world make so much noise and puther to so little purpose But of all the Examples that ever I read of the undue and brutish stirring of Passions I never met with any like that horrible and boobily noise that you have raised upon my pitying the folly of some men that can smell Jesuites and Gunpowder Plots upon every ordinary and accidental firing of a chimney upon this away you run like a man scared with the horrour of the discovery crying and roaring out to the Citizens nothing but fire fire and if they enquire where why it
Friend and Foe and eating up All Men Women and Children He that came off with Honour in threescore and seventeen Duels before he was one and twenty and in forty years more by Land and Sea fought as many pitcht Battels could not have made a more war-like sound Certainly you go as I have read of one in the 5 Epist. to Marcellinus for why should not I read your Fathers as well as you read mine always hung like a Justice of Peace's Hall with Pikes Halberts Peitronels Callivers and Muskets And if you could but victual your self for half a year in your Breeches it is not to be doubted but you would be able to over-run whole Countries Hungary Transylvania Bohemia and all the other territories of modern Orthodoxy The first Argument I made use of to remove all popular suspicions of Popery from the Government was the manifest inconvenience to the State that must arise from any alteration in the Church and this I proved from those impregnable principles of Loyalty that are peculiar to our Communion from all other Dissenters so that all design of Change being so manifestly imprudent and impolitick I thought it too wild a surmise for the Wisdome of the Government unless it were not only trinkled but bewitch'd to expose it self and therefore that there could be no other probable ground of danger but from the restlesness and seditious practices of the Fanatique Party that might possibly some time or other make way for the return of Popery by making disturbances in Church and State And to this purpose I gave a large Character of the peculiar Genius and the distinguishing principles of the Church of England from the Gibelline Faction But it seems you do not like my Characters and what is that to me am I obliged to justifie them because such Jack-Gentlemen as you do not approve them If you have any thing to except you know the Law and the Press is open but your bare dislike will no where pass for a confutation And to tell us that you find on either side only the natural effect of such Hyberbole's and Oratory that is not to be believed is in a great many words only to say I lye It may be so but yet that satisfies no body And yet tell me can you deny the Loyalty of the Church of England both in its principles and practices if you cannot whatever I have said in her commendation is undeniably true and then it is you that lease Can you deny that the regular Clergy are the most zealous Assertours of the Rights of Princes and that they and only they teach subjection to be an indispensable duty of Religion without false reserves and limitations Can you deny that those Subjects that stuck to the Communion of the Church of England ever stuck to hazard Lives and Fortunes out of devotion to their Prince Can you prove that every any forsook the Royal Cause in its greatest distress that did not first forsake the Church of England Can you deny that the main Article that distinguishes ours from all other Communions is that we vest the Crown in an Ecclesiastical Supremacy which is one half of the Sovereign Power whilst they challenge it either to themselves or some foreign Jurisdiction that has no more ground of Claim beside bare confidence to exercise any Authority in the Kings Dominions than the King has in his These are the Elogies I gave to the Church of England If they are such Hyperboles as are not to be believed that is to say if they are lyes make it good or else confess your impudence to call them so not only without proof or evidence but against Experience and Demonstration And so for my contrary Character of the Fanatiques that too is all a lye or such an Hyperbole as is not to be believed and so I am answer'd but if that be all you have to say I am very well satisfied too You had done them some kindness if you had undertaken to prove either that the Preachers never taught the people Aphorisms of Disloyalty and Rebellion or that they were never engaged in actual War against their lawful Prince by their Instigation or that any of them have renounced their old Principles though they could never be prevail'd with so much as to acknowledge their Crime either to God or the King These are plain Cases of Conscience so that till they have done this if they were ever guilty they are so still And therefore when you only tell us that I have dress'd them all up in Sambenita 's painted with all the Flames and Devils in Hell All the service you do your brethren is to inform the World that whoever will draw a Fanatique to the life must get the Devil to sit for his picture and if a man cannot describe them without dressing them up in Sambenita's I cannot help that this I am sure of that I have not made one false stroke or ill feature that I cannot justifie to any Artist I am not concern'd how ugly the piece is so it be but like and yet you your self have not been able to tell me one fault that I have committed I am only sorry that they are so very deformed as you have represented them for I never suspected before you informed me either that they were so bad or the Devil so good But I know what it is that so much girds you though your guilty Conscience dares not touch it viz. that I have there proved that nothing but the Good Old Cause lyes at the bottom of all your present Schism and that the most zealous Patriots of Conventicles are such as have given the World but very little ground to suspect them from their profess'd Principles or open Practices of the least tenderness of Religion and kindness to Monarchy so that nothing better can ever be expected from them than factions and republican Designs I know this twinges to the quick it is so observable all the Kingdome over that as you cannot endure to hear it so you dare not deny it And now your appearance has amply verified the truth of the Observation When at the same time that you come forth to vindicate the Innocence and Peaceableness of the Non-conformists and pass your word to the King that they shall never lift up disloyal thought against him you cannot forbear to let us see how warmly you are concern'd to justifie the late Rebellion In that the King had turn'd his whole Kingdome into a Prison that many thousands of his Subjects were constrained to seek habitations abroad every Countrey even though it were among Savages and Canibals appear'd more hospitable to them than their own that his whole Reign was deformed with Sibthorpianism i. e. with his affecting an absolute and arbitrary Government that himself and his party were the cause of the War that the Parliament took up Arms in defence both of their Liberty and Religion and that their Cause against the King was like
you have order'd the matter was enacted purely in favour of himself and his own Party You have brought things to that pass that were it not for that you might erect a new Court of Justice and hang them all for any thing they have to plead in their own defence For as you tell the story they are the only guilty persons in reference to the late Rebellion Your Charge against his Royal Father is the very same with the Inditement that was peferred against him both by and before the high Court of Justice only the manner of your Expressions is suited to the alteration of time and circumstances But he fought against a Cause that was only too good to be fought for he began a War against the Religion and the Liberty of his Subjects and forced them to take upArms in their own defence against Tyranny and Arbitrary Government for so you would have called it had you written in those happy days though now the word is Sibthorpianism i. e. as you describe it an endeavour to invade his Subjects Proprieties and subvert the Fundamental Laws and for that Cause only involve his Kingdoms in a long and bloody War And though he were sworn to maintain all the Ancient Constitutions of the Realm yet he deformed his whole Reign with indefatigable pains to destroy them and when he perceived that he could obtein his wicked and tyrannical Ends no other way he pursued them through all parts of his Dominions with Blood and Violence and at last upon this Rock ruined himself and his Kingdoms So that all the mischiefs of the late War are to be scored purely upon his head but as for all those that took up Arms against him their Cause was so over-just and warrantable that it was only too good to have been fought for And now what could you have said worse of the worst Prince that ever wielded Sceptre than what you have here said of the very best However this methinks is but an odd way of ensuring the good Behaviour of the Non-conformists for the time to come when you stand upon the Justification of their Innocence for the time past And it shews you to be a man of Judgment whilest you have so little Wit as to appeal to their former Practices as a sufficient Security of their future Peaceableness and by their harmlesness poor Lambs in reference to the late War encourage us to trust to their good Nature and Modesty for ever For if they were so innocent as to that Rebellion saving that they fought for a Cause only too good to have been fought for they are safe enough from ever fighting for any Cause too bad to be fought for And yet I shrewdly suspect we owe this very declaration of the Causes being too good to be fought for rather to your Cowardize than your Loyalty for it seems you think all Causes cost too dear when they are bought with danger or blood and though both their Religion and their Liberty were invaded you would have advised them rather than fight to let them both go And as little as you would have fought for the Good old Cause you would have fought much less for his Majesties Restauration in that it was forsooth to do it self without our Officiousness you had not leased if you had said against it too However his Majesty for any thing you would have had done for him might have been beyond Sea still unless God would have been pleased to have restored him by miracle and have march'd before him as he did before the Camp of Israel and rain'd down fire from Heaven upon the Rump and all their Adherents For men ought to have trusted God and not have taken the Work out of his hands by their own Officiousness he knows how to bring all things about in their best and proper time And these are pretty good evidences of your good-will to his Majesties Government First in that you scarce commend any thing of it since his Return beside the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion and then secondly in that you are so much concern'd to disclaim the Merits of those Persons that were Actors and Instruments in it by denying the Efficacy of any humane means towards bringing it to pass and casting it intirely upon the immediate Care of divine Providence So that if it were to do again you would advise his Subjects to forbear all endeavours of his Restauration and leave it to be brought to pass by the Providence of God or suffer it to do it self without their Officiousness We understand you But now have you not made an admirable Apology for the Loyalty of the Non-conformists by denying that they can possibly be ever guilty of any such thing as Rebellion for if the late War were none it is certain there never was nor will be any and I think upon this supposition and upon this alone we may pronounce them both innocent and secure as to this Crime But thus we see that whenever the Cause of Non-conformity appears at top the Good old Cause ever did and ever will lye at bottom or as your self express it if it were a War of Religion i. e. Fanaticism at top it was a War of Liberty i. e. a Commonwealth at bottom That is your old and your new Cause and you sink into it with the dexterity of fat Sir John Falstaff In a word it is your close and comfortable Importance And now after all your kind and courtly Expressions almost in every page towards the Act of Oblivion and Indemnity and on the contrary rating me for shewing no more respect to it than to remember some old stories in despite of its Authority and lastly commanding me to let all those things of former times alone and mind my own business You your self have not made bold with it at all by reviving the Adventures of Sibthorp and Manwaring and raking into all the Deformities of the late King 's whole Reign and transcribing a long History out of a certain long Gazette of the true Cause and Original as you dream of the Rebellion So that we now perceive your meaning in all this idle noise about the Act of Oblivion is to limit the Remembrance of the late War to such occurrences as you think may be of advantage to such as acted in and for the Rebellion but as for the suffering and loyal Party they must be obliged and conjured to seal up their Lips and smother their Resentments however if I had been profane or disingenuous in offending against the sacred Act of Oblivion I am sure you have out-gone me have done that and more For that looks back no farther than the year 37. but yet there are some old Sibthorpian Gentlemen still alive that might possibly have had an hand in carrying on Impositions of money in the late Kings time and thereby contributing not a little to our late Wars now these men are still obnoxious to Justice for all their
only shelter but abett their pride and insolence Those vices that meer moral Philosophy would banish humane conversation take shelter under the protection of zeal and those heats that bare reason would quench in humane nature are kindled at the Altars of Religion and they usually nourish this glowing coal in their bosoms till it burn out all their bowels of natural pity and compassion This is enough but yet it is not all for as their zeal is implacably fierce and bitter against all that oppose them so is it salvagely rude and censorious against all that are not as extravagantly mad raving as themselves aspersing men of a silent and composed piety with the odious names of hypocrites and Luke-warm Formalists and abhorring nothing more than the vertues of Christian meekness and discretion But if this be Religion then farewel all principles of humanity and good nature farewel that glory of Christianity an universal love and tenderness to mankind let us bid adieu to all the practices of charity let us renounce all pretences to the meekness and innocence of a Christian Spirit Let our B. Saviour be branded as the greatest Incendiary in the world let his Laws be cancell'd as arts and precepts of Sedition let us banish Religion humane converse as the mother of all rudeness and incivility and let us at last go to the school of Atheism and Impiety to learn good manners And yet all this is the unavoidable event of fixing peoples care and zeal upon this imaginary godliness call'd Grace as distinguish'd from all morality or the obligations of natural Religion in that whilest their minds are busied and satisfied with this phantastick nothing it appeases their Consciences in the neglect of their useful and material duties and prevents all endeavours of possessing them with serious and effectual Resolutions of vertue and true goodness I must beg your pardon if I have discoursed too warmly and copiously upon this Theme it is you see of very weighty Consequence both to the welfare of mankind here and their eternal salvation hereafter and upon this mistake meerly are founded all Abuses and Impostures of Religion whatsoever viz. when men fancy it to be some secret they know not what and therefore I here declare that I still adhere to my opinion with the seriousness of a dying man and that I shall be content to stand or fall for ever by my integrity in this belief But what can we think of you must you not be deeply concern'd in a matter of such sad and serious importance to whiff it all away with so childish a conceit as this that this is first to turn Grace into a meer fable and then to give the moral of it At least must we not suppose you profoundly learned to be so very fond of such a poor crawling fancy that were it not ridiculous for its sence would be unpardonable for its wit and yet you are so highly opinion'd of it that you have reserved it for the disert of your book and serve it in for the last jest to give a farewel to the whole entertainment One pregnant conceit I had almost overpass'd in hast give me but leave to record it and I have done viz. that I have made the passage to Heaven so easie that one may fly thither without Grace as Gonzales to the Moon only by the help of his Ganzas Now I would fain know what likeness there is between flying without Grace and with Ganzas do but make me out the wit of the similitude and I will cast you in the sence of the argument into the bargain The Plot or Hypothesis of the fourth Play is debauchery tolerated That is to say I have in some of my Books represented his Majesty this Declaration to issue out to all his Loving Subjects for the toleration of debauchery in opposition to that of the fifteenth of March for the indulgence of tender consciences Whereas ever since our happy Restauration we have out of our special zeal and care for the interest and security of the Church of England executed with all severity all penal Laws against whatsoever sort of Non-conformists and Recusants but yet finding by the sad experience of 12 years how ineffectual all forcible courses are either to reduce or restrain dissenters We think our self obliged to make use of that unhoopable Power that is naturally inherent in us not granted by Christ but belonging to us and our Predecessors under the broad Seal of Nature next and immediately before him By vertue whereof we have and claim an absolute dominion not only over the consciences of all our subjects but over all the Laws of God and man so as to repeal or dispense with their obligation as shall from time to time seem good to our Royal Will and Pleasure And therefore that we may obviate and prevent those mischiefs that are likely to befal our Kingdom from the sobriety and demureness of the Non-conformists our Will and Pleasure is to give a free and uncontroulable Licence to all manner of vice and debauchery and of our Princely Grace and Favour we release to all our Loving Subjects the obligation of the ten Commandments and all Laws of God and Statutes of this Realm whatsoever contrary to the contents of this our Declaration And we require of all Judges Justices and other Officers whatsoever that the execution of all manner of penalties annexed to the Laws aforesaid whether by Pillories Whipping-posts Gallies rods or axes c. be immediately suspended and they are hereby suspended From whence we hope by the Blessing of God to give some check and allay to the insolence of fanatick Spirits and by debauching our good people out of all tenderness of Conscience to free our Kingdoms from those great and grievous annoyances wherewith they perpetually disturb our Government and at last bring back all the advantages of peace and good-fellowship both to our Self and all our loving Subjects c. Such a Declaration as this had been a stabbing proof against me and home to your purpose But when you have exhibited so foul a charge without so much as referring to any passage of mine to make it good you prove nothing at all but that you have a bold face and a foul mouth For we all know you are not so unskilful at improving the smallest and most inconsiderable advantages that had you been furnish'd with any shadow of proof you would have smother'd it and therefore when you have produced none your Readers easily conclude that the only reason is because you know none Yes but however I have said as much as amounts to the same reckoning But what have you to do with my reckonings mind your own accounts and take care to ballance your expences with your incoms Assure your self I shall never trust you to be any of my Auditors for I find you are as ignorant in Computation as in Logick But yet that which amounts to this summ is this that it
Accession from the Publique So that had you this or any other honest way of livelihood it might stop your mouth from bawling perpetually for the seisure of Church Revenues only in hopes of creeping into some small Office at the division of the Prey for I am apt to believe though all that know you know so ill of you that they will take it for a very strein of Candour and Courtship that all your rudeness to the Church does not proceed from meer malice to that and revenge upon the Dignitary Want will put any man that delights in Gaming out of humour but of all discontents there is nothing so peevish and so clamorous as when pride and poverty meet together in the same Gamester But that which seems to strike the greatest damp upon your mind and of which you make the oftenest complaints is that I talk so much of Pillories Whipping-posts Galleys Rods and Axes that is to say the Podâ—strabae the Tilethrae the Otagrae the Rhinolabides and the Cheilostrophia these are villainous Engines indeed but take heart Numps here is not a word of the Stocks and you since the Act of Indemnity is past and sure need never stand in awe of any more honourable Correction however suppose the worst you have read Seneca and Epictetus And what though your worth should sometime or other prefer you to the Pillory and that is not impossible yet it is no very painful Engine and Philosophers can endure any thing but smart it is only intended to make men look a little simply and put them out of countenance awhile but for confidence let you alone And now having thus far followed your dance it is time I hope to advance to serious Counsels You cry out of persecution So did Hugh Peters and so did Venner and so might all Malefactors when brought to Justice but that most of them are more modest than the most of you This is but seizing upon words and forcing them to sound or signifie any thing to your own purpose But unless all execution of Laws upon offenders deserve this hard name it is not enough for you to complain you are persecuted when you are only punish'd It is the cause that makes the only difference and you ought first to make out the iniquity of the Laws and to make good your obligation to disobedience before you can set up this out cry But to this you reply that you suffer for Conscience for Conscience what is that but that you would take advantage of it and report that I affirm there is no such thing as Conscience I would say it is for nothing For Conscience it self is an indeterminate thing and has no more certain signification than the clinking of a Bell and that is as every man fancies And though you are wont to discourse of it as though it were an infallible Oracle in your breasts or a Pope in your bellies yet had you but skill enough to anatomize your selves you would find nothing there beside Lights and Liver and Stomach and Guts and perhaps a deceitful heart for in the heart the Jews seated it of old though the Cartesian Philosophy has of late pearch'd it up into the Glandula Pinealis But wherever it resides it is not any principle of action distinct from the man himself being the very same individual thing with the mind soul and understanding so that there is no other real difference between a man and his Conscience than between a man and his mind or rather between a man and himself And therefore when you make such an heavy ditty about your being persecuted for your Conscience sake the result of it is that you are persecuted for your mind sake or suffer only because you have a mind to suffer For whatever Conscience is this is certain that it is neither the rule nor the reason of its own Actions but it is bound to guide and govern it self and all its determinations by the measures and prescriptions of its duty and that only can warrant either the wisdome or the innocence of its proccedings And therefore in any case to plead only Conscience for any action without specifying some particular Principle upon which it grounds it self and its dictate is in effect to plead any thing or rather nothing For without some certain direction distinct from it self it may signifie any thing what you please or if you please nothing And it may as well be call'd Pride Ignorance Passion Humour Peevishness Melancholy Rudeness Frenzy and Superstition as Conscience for whenever a mans mind is possest or abused with any of these unhappy Passions that to him is his Conscience And therefore if ever you intend to make out the justice of your Cause or the equity of your Grievances you must give over this hovering and uncertain pretence of Conscience in general and betake your selves to some more distinct and particular pleas and that is to appeal to the adequate rule and measure of humane actions and that is to all divine and humane Laws and if from either of these you can plead any express warrant to excuse your disobedience to the Constitutions of the Church in Gods Name plead it and then but not till then it will appear that you indeed suffer for the Cause of a good Conscience But if you have none then the case is plain that you suffer for nothing And yet it is as plain that you have not any other imaginable ground or pretext of reason to justisie your peevishness to the Ecclesiastical Laws beside the indisputable pleasure of your own proud and imperious minds for you are run off of all your old Cavils and know not what you would have beyond the satisfaction of crossing the Commands of Royal Authority For as for all your general clamours against the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of Princes that they invade Gods Royalty lay waste the Consciences of men usurp upon their Christian Liberties first they signifie no more than the general plea of Conscience that whenever Superiours impose any Commands upon Subjects that they have no mind or stomach to obey they then entrench upon Gods Supremacy as the only Lord of Conscience and then it subverts all Government and cancels all Humane Laws in that they neither do nor can pass any Obligation upon any Subjects but only as they are bound upon their Consciences and lastly they will never stand to this themselves when they are urged with those horrid mischiefs that must perpetually overtake the Government if the plea be once admitted in general terms and without exception This then being quitted the Magistrate may and sometimes must restrain men in their pretences or perswasion of Religion without seating himself in Gods Throne or invading their Subjects Consciences or offering violence to their Christian Liberties And then have they nothing to pretend in their own excuse but the unlawfulness of the particular Commands themselves and this brings them to a sweet pass when they are kept to it
Clamours that have the face to compare three easie and harmless Rites with the Yoke of Moses and the Tyranny of Antichrist But thus split a Straw and lay it cross a Fanaticks forehead and as hard as it is it shall break the back of his Conscience I could have wish'd you had been as much refreshed and edified with the Arch-Bishop's Testimony as with Mr. Hales's that so instead of quoting a single Passage you might have taken upon your self the grateful penance of transcribing his whole Book and then you would have obliged us with that remarkable Prophecy wherewith he shuts up his Antiquities There is nothing more to be fear'd and provided against in this well-constituted Church of England than lest the Clergy whilst it takes pains in the Word and Truth and is with the greatest Observance subject to the Soveraign Power should be set forth as a Prey and Spoil to the Lavish and Spend-thrifts and be torn by the Reproaches and Contumelies of the Ignorant and exposed to the Affronts and Insolences of the Rascal-Rabble If this shall ever happen more heavy Scourges from God and sadder times than those of Queen Mary's Reign may justly be expected And yet thus it has been and thus it must be wherever it is the humour and fashion to vilifie the Priesthood Religion becomes contemptible with its Officers and where that loses its Esteem and Reverence Government loses its support and security And this was at the bottom of our late wild and wanton Rebellion that the People were debauch'd into a slight regard of all things Sacred and Civil by the bold and juggling suggestions of a few ambitious and sacrilegious Malecontents and then it was not only easie but natural to put Affronts upon all the Proceedings of Authority to bear down all its Remonstrances and run the Common-wealth into flat Anarchy and open War You see how little Execution is to be done upon the Church of England with the But-end of an Arch-Bishop as you express it with equall Wit and Manners Here the Quotation of my Lord Verulam which you could produce to my confusion would in my opinion have been much more to the purpose but to tell us what you can say without saying it is only to talk to your self Or the story of Pork that you forbear to tell too because you say I know it but I say I do not know it or if I did you should however have had the Manners to have told it for his Majesties sake because he knows how to make use on 't But another Qualm that is upon every turn throwing you into groaning Fits is that after all my seeming and pretended zeal for the Church of England for which you have the greatest kindness in the World were it not for the Pick-thankness and Pick pocketingness of the Clergy I shall be found by any unpack'd Jury of Divines little better than a rank Erastian a word you have pick'd up out of Bishop Bramhal though for any thing you know that may signifie a Wizard or a Magician yes or a Jewish Zealot i. e. a notorious Rogue and Cut-throat But be it what it will this too was as all the rest are J. O's grievance And you are both Crafty Colts that when you know your selves unable to answer Arguments presently spurn at them with some false and foul Recrimination I scorn'd to take any notice of his Braying and so I should of yours but that I perceive some weak and well meaning Brethren that are only wont to skim and skip over Books to be a little startled at the Impeachment because I all along discourse of the Power of the King and not of the Church though the reason of it is very obvious viz. because the Subject I design'd and proposed to treat of was the Power of the King and not of the Church so that if you and J. O. are aggrieved at any thing it is for no other cause than that I have stuck close enough to my own Argument and too close to yours Now Sir as you well remember you have for want of wiser Remarques calculated at least ten times over in what Year of the Lord and upon what day of the Month my several Books were born and then if you will compare it you will find that the juncture of Affairs to which the first was accommodated was at a certain Season after the Chatham Adventure when you began to lift up your Heads and to Nose your Governours and to make bold demands in the name of your Consciences against the late illegal Impositions of King and Parliament And you know what innumerable swarms of Pamphlets you were perpetually sending abroad only to declare to all his Majesties good Subjects that either were already out of humour or had a mind so to be that if himself or any other Civil Magistrate whatsoever shall presume to challenge or exercise any Authority over their Free born Consciences in any matters of Religion whatsoever he usurps upon the Royalty of God and involves himself in the guilt of Tyranny and Persecution This was loud and broad enough to alarm the Church of England we understood the men and their meaning and had no mind believe me to have that comfortable settlement restored to Church and State by his Majesties happy Restauration unravel'd by these Men's bold and insolent Pretences And therefore divers Persons out of pure Love for the Church and Loyalty to their Prince and Zeal to their Countrey set themselves to beat back all your new Republican Pleas of Sedition and to assert his Majesties Prerogative against all your old Shifts of Dis-loyalty Among the rest I had no more Wit than to thrust my self too forward into the Scuffle and to pursue you too close through all your peevish Clamours and Pretences For when I saw men of known and approved Enmity to the present State buzze abroad such Exorbitant Principles among the Common-People as flatly contradict all the Principles and defeat all the Obligations of Government I could not I ought not to refrain from lashing such Lewd Designs with some Warmth and Smartness of Reproof and if I have any where overlash'd it was out of an over-vehement Concern for the Peace and Prosperity of my Countrey though for my own part I am not sensible of any one Expression that is chargeable with the least Harshness or Incivility I have only express'd ill things by their Proper Names and whereas both your self and J. O. pour fourth in every Page incessant complaints of Railing and Reviling that is but an Uncivil Word that you may throw at any man that you are not fond of and it proceeds merely from your Old prodigious Pride and Partiality to your selves who whilst you make it both your Recreation and Employment to invent or blazon Slanders against the Innocent rave and fome at all Conviction of guilt against your selves I have challenged you often enough to specifie but one foul or false word in
length approved and publish'd special care being taken I still relye upon the Kings word that the small alterations of it in which it differs from the English Liturgy should be such as might best comply with the minds and dispositions of the Scots and prevent all grounds of fear or jealousie and chiefly to avoid all misconstruction that some Factious Spirits would have put upon it as a badge of that Churches dependance upon the Church of England if it had been the same with the English Service-Book totidem verbis And this was the Liturgy that no doubt might be an occasion of exasperating the Bramble-Faction that were already ripe for Rebellion and resolved to improve all disgusts whether just or unjust real or pretended to authorize their disloyal resolutions But to let you into the main Mystery the circumstance that gave life and vigour to their designs was the Act of Revocation that it seems hapned to be set on foot not long before by which the King intended the Revocation of those Lands of the Church that in the minority of King James the Great Men had to the prejudice of the Crown seized on and shared among themselves to which the Occupants having no other Title beside impudent Sacriledge and Usurpation the King thought he might justly challenge them for his own Use at least from the present Possessours A course warranted as himself still tells me both by the Laws of that Kingdom and the frequent examples of his Royal Progenitors And this you may believe was provocation enough to put them into an uproar and the People were perswaded as I am informed by a good Authour from the mouth of a Noble Lord that the intendment of the Act was to revoke all former Laws for suppressing of Popery and setling the Reformed Religion in the Kirk of Scotland and this raised such Tumults that the King was forced to desist from the prosecution of the Act under that Title and to carry it on though with much opposition under another Name of a Commission of Surrendries a thing so offensive to the stomachs of the Lords of the Erection as the Lay Impropriators were there call'd that they could never digest it but first according to the usual method vented their choler in Libels and then in Rebellion For though they were satisfied for their Tythes to the utmost farthing according to the Rates of purchasing in that Kingdom yet this fretted them that they saw themselves rob'd of the dependence of the Clergy and Laity upon their Power and of that Sovereign Command and Superiority which they had by the tye of Tythes exercised over them several wayes as the King will inform you And this was the reason of State beside the ease of his Subjects that moved his Majesty to issue out this Commission For before the greatest part of the Laity were Vassals by Tenure and all the Clergy slaves by custom to the Nobility And therefore they immediately set themselves to work the People to a disaffection to his Majesties Government and to perswade them that these were the contrivances of the Bishops and that under them there were dangerous innovations design'd upon their Religion So that 't is plain as the King observes that before either the Service-Book or Book of Canons so tragically now exclaimed against were thought on the seeds of Sedition and discontent were sowen by the Contrivers of the Covenant first upon the occasion of the Revocation next upon occasion of the Commission of Surrenders and lastly upon occasion of his denying honours to some of them at his last being in that Kingdom of which he has there given a large and particular account and this brought forth first private traducing his Government and then publique Libels And now by this time Sedition was grown so ripe and ready to seed that it wanted nothing to thrust it out and make it shoot forth into an open Rebellion but some fair and specious pretence They could not yet compass the Cloak of Religion whereby to siel the eyes and muffle the face of the Multitude for by none of the three former Occasions could they so much as pretend that Religion was endanger'd or impeach'd But so soon as they got but the least hint of any thing which they thought might admit a misconstruction that way they lost no time but took Occasion by the fore-lock knowing that either that or nothing would first facilitate and then perfect their designs Now the occasion they took of fetching Religion within the reach of their Pretences was the new Liturgy And this produced I still relye upon the Kings Authority the late wicked Covenant or pretended Holy League Though following the pattern of all other Seditions they did pretend Religion yet nothing was less intended by them For when they had sayes the Royal Understanding received from us full satisfaction to all their desires expressed in any of their Petitions Remonstrances or Declarations their persisting for all that in their tumultuous and rebellious Courses doth demonstrate to the world their weariness of being govern'd by us and our Laws by our Council and other Officers put in Authority by and under us and an itching humour of having that our Kingdom governed by a Table of their own devising consisting of Persons of their own choosing A Plot of which they are very fond being an abortion of their own brain but which indeed is such a monstrous birth as the like has not yet been born or bred in any Kingdom Jewish Christian or Pagan Of which he afterwards describes a particular Plat-form as it was put in practice at Edinburgh And thus observe it you shall still find a Common-wealth and Sacriledge at the bottom of all Rebellion that appears under the mask and pretence of Religion And it was these men that raised the Tumults and trinkled the Rabble into all those disorderly courses that by degrees brought forth the Covenant and the War And it is pretty observable that the first Remonstrance at Edinburgh was made in the name of the Men Women Children and Servants who being urged with the Book of Service and having consider'd the same the Children as well as the rest humbly shew c. These were followed by the Burghours and the Burghours by the Gentry and Nobility And so at length did the Scotch-war break out in which the Liturgy was no more concern'd than the Children of Edinburgh whose tender Consciences it seems were offended at it though in truth they deserved to be soundly whipt for beginning a War for the Cause when the Cause was too good to be fought for And now consider whether you had not been better advised to let this business of the War alone when you can no other way bring your Clients off with reputation unless the King will be content to suffer Himself his Royal Father and his Loyal Subjects to be impeach'd of their Rebellion For the blame of it must light somewhere and therefore if the
King having been at a vast expence in his first Expedition was forced to summon a Parliament for fresh Supplies but they no sooner met than they justified their Dear Brethren as they call'd the Kirk-Rebels and so fall to their old complaints of Grievances and Arbitrary Government and the illegal Proceedings of the Kings Ministers of State and these things they must and will have redress'd before they will take any business of money into consideration and so long baffled the Kings expectations that he having no hope of any Supply from them dissolves them and resolves to cast himself upon the assistance of his better affected Subjects and accordingly finds the greatest part of his Gentry and Nobility so sensible of their own Duty and Loyalty and of those affronts that were put upon his Regal Power by these men in the late and former Parliaments that by their own voluntary Contributions they raised an Army more than sufficient to have reduced the Rebels to obedience But being over-ruled by the advice of some that were alwayes too near to all his Councils and that were no friends to his Prerogative though perhaps they were no enemies to Monarchy he condescends to a Treaty and that concludes as these men would wish in referring the whole Controversie to the decision of a Parliament And this produced the fatal Long-Parliament that chiefly consisted of the most Seditious Members of all his former Parliaments For though the greatest part of the Gentry were loyal and dutiful enough yet it so hapned that the Commonalty had been preached into malecontentedness by the Puritan Preachers they thought no man a Patriot of his Countrey or fit to be trusted in Parliament that was not a profess'd enemy to the Prerogative and that did not oppose Taxes and Tyranny And if any one had been so stubborn as to deserve punishment for Sedition and had been imprisoned or gon to Law with the King for the non-payment of a Sess of twenty or forty shillings that gain'd him the hearts of the whole Countrey and so upon the merit of their sufferings it came to pass that the most eminent Persons of the Presbyterian Faction came to be so generally elected Knights and Burgesses in this as well as all other Parliaments of his Reign but now their discontent was heightned partly by their former just imprisonments partly by that affront that as they supposed was put upon them in the dissolution of the late Parliament And therefore having once again got possession of the House and perceiving the Kings necessities to be greater than ever and withall their own Party to be stronger and more numerous than ever they resolved to appear more boldly than ever and to make something of so great an advantage And so they immediately fall upon accusing the King and his Ministers of all the crimes that could render them odious to the people they charge him with designs of reestablishing the Roman Religion of subverting the fundamental Laws of setting up Arbitrary Government of laying aside all Parliaments with a Thousand other Clamours and Calumnies making use of every Accident to raise matter of Accusation And if you will look into the grand Remonstrance of the state of the Kingdom that was the first Declaration of the War you will find that they imputed all misfortunes whatsoever to the King and his evil Council The loss of the Rochel Fleet the diversion of the War from the West-Indies to the successess attempt upon Cales the Peace with Spain the breach with France the dissolving of former Parliaments for their stubbornness the destruction of the Kings Timber in the Forest of Dean the Monopolies of Sope and Salt the Sale of Nuzances the design of Coyning Brass money the depriving seditious men of the comfort and conversation of their Wives by close Imprisonments Misdemeanours in all Courts of Justice Bribery Extorsion and buying of Offices Suspensions of painful learned and pious Ministers the decay of Trade the loss of Merchants Ships by the Pyrates of Dunkirk with all other good or bad Accidents that befel the Government were imputed 1. To the Jesuited Papists who hate the Laws as the Obstacles of that change and subversion of Religion which they so much long for 2. To the Bishops and the corrupt part of the Clergy who cherish Formality and Superstition as the natural Effects and more probable Supports of their own Ecclesiastical Tyranny and Usurpation 3. To such Counsellours and Courtiers who for private ends engaged themselves to further the Interest of some foreign Princes or States to the prejudice of his Majesty and the State at home Though the Root of all this mischief was a Malignant and pernicious design of subverting the fundamental Laws and Principles of Government upon which the Religion and Justice of this Kingdome are firmly establish'd And then the common Principles by which they moulded and govern'd all their particular Counsels and Actions were 1. To keep up a misunderstanding between the King and his people by their Leasings 2. To keep down the Purity and power of Religion 3. To bring in Arminianism 4. To trinkle the King against his Parliaments Where by the way you may see that you are not the first Authour of your own notions your whole Book is but a short Rehearsal of the Remonstrances Speeches and Declarations of the Rebels But now must all things stand stock still till these and a Thousand grievances more are redress'd his Ministers must be impeached of high Treason and if he expected any comfort from them he must buy it with the blood of his best Subjects and his fastest Friends But you cannot here reasonably expect a compleat account of all their Injustice their Folly their Impudence and their Hypocrisie when the whole World can scarce contein the History of their Wickedness I am sure it can never equal it However it is plain that they were now resolved upon the Rebellion and so made demands accordingly For the summe of all their Messages Remonstrances and Declarations was only to chalenge the Soveraign Power it self and all the parts and branches of the Prerogative They petition'd no more than that the King would be pleased to betray and give up his Friends to their Malice as in the Pique of the five Members that he would deliver up all Castles and Forts and the whole Power of the Militia into their hands That they might have the choosing of all the Lords of his Council and of all great Officers of State the Government and Education of his Children the Power to hang Delinquents as they shall think fit and the liberty of excepting whom they pleased out of the Kings general Pardon and that no Peer be permitted to sit in the house of Peers but by consent of both houses Upon these and the like Terms to which they stuck with an impregnable Obstinacy from first to last they would apply themselves to settle his Revenue and supply his necessities and make him the most glorious