with the greater vigour and to execute what they intend with more bloody rage Can any man that is not void of common sense believe that we are safe and out of danger when every true Protestant is in daily hazard through their Sham-plots and by their hiring and suborning vile and execrable Villains to Swear Treason against those that have any zeal for our Religion and Civil Liberties How can we be supposed arrived at any measure of Safety when there are an Hundred things absolutely necessary to be done towards our preservation wherein the King tho' fully disposed to adhere to the Laws is in no capacity to meddle without the assistance and concurrence of his Parliament And therefore if men will after all that they have seen felt heard and read of a damnable Popish Plot to destroy the person of the King overthrow the established Religion and enslave the Nation to an Antichristian forraign Power flatter themselves upon a bare Declaration that His Majesty will Govern by Law that thereupon all is safe and secure they must not take it ill if they be thought accessary to their own and the Kingdoms ruine through their dull and blockish incredulity to say no worse SECT XVII Another ill tendency of most if not all the Addresses is the reviving the memory of the late unhappy troubles which is the interest both of His Majesty and the whole Kingdom to have buried in perpetual oblivion For the mentioning of that War with reflection and bitterness serves only to make men remember three hasty Dissolutions of Parliaments and Twelve years want of one with some other things which fell out in that space all which both preceded and had too great an influence towards the causing of it Besides there was a Massacre of the Protestants in Ireland by the Papists there and a bloody War commenced for the extirpation of the English Government in that Kingdom which as it too much exasperated the minds of men towards that unhappy War which begun here so I fear the upbraiding men too much with their concern in those troubles will not prove very useful to the party that appears most forward in it Nor is it easie to be imagined how the mention of the late War comes to be brought upon the Stage at this time of day seeing most that were believed either the first fomenters of or proved afterwards Actors in it are dead and gone and for their Children witness many of the most violent and high flown Clergy they are commonly found to be of Principles directly contrary to what they were Nay that which renders all reproachful Discourse of that War at this juncture still more strange is that the ignominy and odium of it is designed to fall upon many of the chiefest of those that served under the Banners of the late King or upon such who sprung from them that did and have their Fathers loyalty mixed with their blood And to deal plainly I know nothing that can so plausibly justifie the Parliaments Cause in that War as the telling the World that there was little or no difference betwixt their Principles and the Principles of those that set in the Two last Parliaments whose actings the Addressers do with so much indecency brand and asperse And the language that is dayly bestowed upon the Members of these late Parliaments as being men of the same complexion that they of the Parliament Forty one were will instead of leaving any reproach upon them on whom it is intended to be fastned beget a better opinion of those to whom they are compared than the Addressers would be willing that they of this Age should find reason to entertain I may add that none have lived more peaceably and with better submission under His Majesties Government than they who were engaged on the Parliaments side in that unhappy War and therefore it doth not seem an act of any great prudence to discourage them in their obedience by upbraiding them with that which the Law hath not only pardoned but which they have expiated by their loyalty since Nor do I think that when the Parliament after the Kings Restauration made the Act of Indemnity wherein among other things enacted which they judged necessary towards the Settlement of the Nation they prohibited under a Penalty one man's reproaching another with his being concerned in that War during the space of three years after the date of the said Act that ever they intended that men should afterwards with the greatest Licenciousness and Scurrility upbraid one another with it Nay they hop'd that if the Spirits and Tongues of men were so long bridled and restrain'd their Animosities would be wholy extinguished before the expiration of that time And none but men of very implacable Spirits would call over and with so much Satyr asperse men for these things especially when there hath not been the least cause administred for it unless it be that such have a greater tenderness and value for the Protestant Religion and English Liberties than to desire they should come to lye at the discretion of a Popish Prince as the Addressers plainly wish they may SECT XVIII As our Affairs are now circumstanced and as the state of the Protestant Religion stands at present in England the Addresses carry another ill Design in them which is to enflame differences further among our selves and thereby betray us into the hands of Popish Adversaries For as if the principal thing we were to aim at were not the preserving our Religion against the Conspiracies of the Papists and as if the united strength of all Protestants were not little enough to effect and obtain it no less will serve most if not all of the late Addressers than the Executing the Laws with the utmost Severity against Protestant Dissenters And as if there very thinking of a Phanatick had made them delirous they will not allow the Parliament to make the least abatement in the terms of Conformity or to give Indulgence in or dispense with one Ceremony though all the Ceremonies and the present Form of Worship and the very Hierarchy it self can plead no other Authority by which they are enjoined or by which the Subjects of this Land are bound to comply with and submit to them but some Acts of Parliament Nay so little do the persons that have Subscibed the Addresses understand the Interest of the Protestant Religion as now by Law established that they would not have an Act to be repealed which may under a Popish Prince and in case Popery come to be set up prove as fatal and mischivous to them that are at this time the Conformable Clergy as it will to the Dissenters tho' at present it do only reach and be applied to the latter And that I may not seem to impose upon them Is not all this the full and plain import of their joining Popish Recusants and Seditious Sectaries all along together Of their affirming Fanatical Parties to be as dangerous as
Popish Of reckoning up the pernicious endeavours of the Sectaries in consort with the Devilish Designs of the Papists And as if this were not sufficient to declare what they mean they not only take upon them to thank His Majesty For not passing Limitations or Nullifications of such wholesome Acts as were designed for Preservation of the Reformed Religion especially the 35th of Queen Elizabeth and for not suffering that Law and others made against Conventicles to be Repealed but they humbly pray His Majesty that those Laws now in force may vigorously speedily and equally be put in Execution against all Papists and Protestant Dissenters And particularly that the Statutes of the third of King James and the five and thirtieth of Queen Elizabeth may be put and continued in their due Execution It is something strange to find a company of men so zealous for the Protestant Religion when divers of them are the Disgrace and Reproach of any Religion which they take upon them to profess But can we believe that they are Protestants or at least that they understand the Protestant Interest who represent Dissenters as equally dangerous to the Government Established Religion as the Papists are It would administer a ground of too ill an Opinion of our Supreme Rulers and Publick Ministers should they allow and approve what these men have suggested For are there any among the Dissenters that have sworn Obedience to a Forreign Power that they should be thus put into the same List of dangerous persons to the Government with the Papists Or is there any Security that the Legislative Power can require of them for their Peaceableness that they are not willing and ready to give Yea Is not the Religion of the Dissenters established by Law as well as that of the Conformists tho' there be some things Ordained as the Accoutrements and Modes of the National Religion which the Non-Conformists cannot submit unto For as the only Foundation upon which the Dissenters go is that their Faith and Worship are agreeable and according to the Scripture which is the alone Rule of the mind of God to all his People in what they are to believe and perform So from the Authority which the Scripture hath allowed unto it by the Law of this Land and by the Consonancy of their Doctrine to the Establish'd Articles of Faith they humbly conceive that they have the countenance and warranty of the Law for their Religion Nor doth the Law disallow or forbid any thing which they profess it only enjoyns some further things which they cannot come up to And as the Dissenters do not oppose any one Doctrinal Article of the Church of England so they blame and judge no man for the Canonical Obedience that they promise to the Bishops or their Conformity to the Ceremonies but merely beg that themselves may be excused And should they be gratified as to all which in our present circumstances they do desire it would amount only to this That they may Preach the Gospel without being liable to Imprisonment Fines and Banishment Nor do they covet Ecclesiastical Preferments or Parochial Maintainance tho' were it not for some things which are made the Tests to those Places and Advantages and which without any Inconveniency might be laid aside there are many of them that are as worthy of them as others Neither can that which is stiled the Church of England suffer any diminution in the number of its Members by an Indulgence to Protestant Dissenters having both this will I give thee and thus saith the Migistrate on their side unless the Clergy should fall short in Abilities for their Function and in having Thus saith the Lord to plead for them But how dare these persons who have subscribed the Addresses assume the confidence to censure Parliaments for going about to repeal Laws which by woful Experience have been found not only useless but inconvenient both to the Protestant Religion and the Safety of the Kingdom For as Parliaments have Power to Enact Laws so they have the same Power to Abolish them whensoever they find that instead of answering the Ends which they were made for they have proved prejudicial to the Common Good And surely one may humbly say and that without the least Reflection upon the Grace and Favour with which the Addresses have been received that two Parliaments so fairly and unanimosly chosen and consisting of Gentlemen of the Chiefest Quality best Parts greatest Wisdom most plentiful Estates and firmest Integrity to the Interest of Religion and the Nation and all except a very few Zealous Sons of the Church and unfained Defenders of the present Hierarchy Discipline Forms and Rites of Worship were in all probability as able and likely to know what will let in or keep out Popery what will preserve us from or betray us into the hands and power of the Papists as Twenty or Thirty persons in a County or Corporation most of whom are not worth Forty Shillings Freehold a year and many of them not able to speak Ten words of sense together But it is easie to conjecture who in divers places set these Addressers at work and who put that in reference to Protestant Dissenters into so many Addresses namely either persons Popishly inclined that they might thereby continue and heighten our differences and make us the more easily a prey to Rome or some ignorant Clergy-men who besides their enmity at Phanaticks have little else to recommend them to the obtaining a common and civil respect but their Cassock and their Surplice SECT XIX And as if all this that I have with the greatest sincerity and justice represented unto you were not enough to blast the credit of the Addresses and to oppose the weakness and folly of such as have subscribed them there is something yet further and which is infinitely more pernicious that they pursue and aim at namely to possess His Majesty and the World with a belief that there is a design carried on by Protestants against the King and the Government Hence they not only thank His Majesty For recollecting the several steps and advances by which we were betrayed into our former confusions but take upon them to observe that there are some ill men who labour the subversion of our Religion Liberties and Properties under the specious pretence of Reformation being the same method that they brought to pass all the miseries of Vsurpation and Tyranny that this Kingdom lately groan'd under and that being seasoned with the old leaven of Common-wealth Principles they have endeavoured to make a misunderstanding betwixt His Majesty and his people and to throw us back into the same confusion we were delivered from by His Majesties happy Restauration and that not only the good order and quiet of the Government hath been most wickedly attempted to be disturbed and shaken but to be overthrown and utterly subverted and the very Monarchy it self to be destroyed Surely had these persons who
presume to suggest this unto His Majesty known any Republicans or Fanaticks who by possessing the people with groundless fears and jealousies would bring us into Anarchy and confusion or that would subvert the known Laws of the Land wherein our Religion Liberty and Property are wound up they ought by their Allegiance to have deposed against them and given in their names that they might be prosecuted and come to suffer according to the greatness and quality of their Crimes But alas this was a Province they durst not undertake and the attempting it would have too palpably laid open their Folly and exposed their malice And because many have been drawn to set their hands to Addresses who do not well understand whence this clamour of a Presbyterian Plot proceeds I shall briefly unfold the mystery that lies at the bottom of all this loud and groundless noise The Papists being charged with a Hellish conspiracy against the person of the King our Religion Government and the lives of all His Majesties Protestant Subjects and this being proved against them to the satisfaction of all the rational part of mankind as well by their own Papers as by the Testimonies of many unquestionable Witnesses and finding that neither their impudent denying it nor their falsely scandalizing some and endeavouring to debauch and corrupt others of the Kings Evidence could either bring them off from the Scandal of this Plot or free them from the Punishment which were a Parliament permitted to Sit more of them must undergo they retreat to this as their last refuge namely the amusing the Nation with the Buz of a Presbyterian and Phanatick Plot carried on to overthrow the Government and destroy the Monarchy under pretence of prosecuting a Popish Conspiracy And towards the obtaining credit to this they not only form'd the Intrigue of the Meal-Tnb but invented the Shams of Sir Edmond-bury Godfrey's murdering himself and my Lord Howard's penning Fitz-Harris's Libel which tho' they have shamefully redounded upon themselves yet having no other game to play they are still labouring partly by suborning Witnesses and hiring impudent Rascals to swear Treason against Protestants and partly by a groundless and impudent clamour to infect unwary and heedless persons with the perswasion of such a design And it is from the Papists that weak and credulous people have taken the scent of a Presbyterian Plot and ascribe it to His Majesties Wisdom and Soveraign authority that we are not relapsing into the miseries and confusions of Tyranny and Vsurpation by the subtile artifice and cunning contrivances of the old enemies of the Monarchy and the Church who by the insinuations of Religion Liberty and Property prevail upon weak and unwary men to make them subservient to their factious and ambitious designs Surely these men never considered what a notorious scandal they have hereby endeavoured to fasten not only upon many of His Majesties peaceable best and most loyal Subjects but what a vile aspersion they have cast upon the whole Kingdom which greatly suffers in its honour by standing represented in the face of all the World as broken and divided within it self and sinking back again into all confusion Nor have they duly weighed what a Reflection they lodge upon the Kings Government and Conduct that He who was so lately Restored by the unanimous Consent and with the universal Joy of all his People should in so few years have lost the Love and Reverence of so great a number of His Subjects as are intended here to be be accused Can there be any thing vented to the diminishing His Majesties Reputation more abroad and for discouraging Forreign Princes and States from entring into those Alliances which are necessary for the good as well of His Majesties Kingdoms as of Christendom and for the lessening the expectation and confidence which those with whom we are in League ought to remain possest with of our being able to answer the ends of them than this account which these men present His Majesty with of the posture of the Nation and temper of his People and which our Gazettes have diffused into all Countries And doth not this also directly tend to the filling His Majesties Protestant Subjects with Jealousies one of another thereby to take them off from their watchfulness over and to weaken their endeavours against the Papists who labour no less to destroy the Dissenters than those that Conform to the National Form of Worship and to the Established Discipline and Ceremonies and for the withstanding of whose Bloody Designs and saving our Religion and the Nation from the effects of their malicious and desperate Conspiracies the united Hearts and Hands of all true Protestants will be found little enough And will not this Character which the Addresses are pleased to give of the state of England wonderfully embolden that aspiring Monarch the French King to proceed in his encroachments upon the Dominions of his Neighbours as judging himself secure from any check which the King of Great Britain can give him For as His Majesty can be in no capacity to discourage him from further Attempts against the Peace of Europe or to hinder his Conquest but by being great in the Hearts of all his own People and in a happy Correspondence and Conjunction with his Parliament so we have reason to fear that they who endeavour to beget Misunderstandings betwixt His Majesty and his Subjects and to create in them mutual Distrusts each of other are either Pensioners to France or under the Conduct and Influence of them that are SECT XX. But as if it were not enough for those persons who have subscribed the Addresses to fasten so vile a charge as you have heard upon many of the people whom the better to reconcile credit to what they say they are pleased to call Republicans and Fanaticks they have also taken the boldness to involve the Two last Parliaments under the guilt of the same crimes and accusations Accordingly they tell His Majesty with what an infinite patience and condescention he did submit to hear unreasonable jealousies promoted in them illegal courses and proceedings vindicated and all the great and most benign Indulgences of their Soveraigns goodness misrepresented And they thank the King for His steady resolutions of maintaining the Rights of the Crown c. against the Arbitrary Proceedings of the House of Commons in the two last Parliaments And for not Signing such Bills as were prepared for His Majesties Subjects to associate to destroy the Succession and extirpate Monarchy Yea they profess Their Admiration of His Majesties Princely Wisdom and Councel in the conduct of his Affairs in obviating viz. by Dissolving Parliaments the Designs of the pernicious Enemies of the Church and State And declare That they cannot but admire His Majesties Transcendent and Sacred Wisdom which in that dangerous and confused Juncture did so seasâ—nably interpose and so calmly suppress the threatning Flames which were breaking forth And thereupon
in its due and Legal course of Descent and undertake to sacrifice their Lives to preserve the Kings Heirs and lawful Successors And offer their Lives and Fortunes to his Majesties Disposal for this purpose All people do sufficiently understand what they aim at and that the meaning of all this is That they would have the Duke of York come to the Throne But I wish they had shown so much Ingenuity and Candour as to have taken notice and acknowledged that all His Majesties Subjects are as tender of the Preservation of the Monarchy and as zealous to have it continued in the Royal Line as any of themselves dare pretend to be For it is more than probable that nothing so much influenced the bringing and pressing the Bill of Exclusion as a regard to the Preservation of the Monarchy which some of the best wisest and most Loyal of His Majesty's Subjects think the coming to have a Popish King may shake and endanger especially considering what this Nation felt from the last Papist that possest the Throne and how it hath been of late and still is threatned by the Bloody Conspiracies of the Romish Party Besides it had not been amiss if our late Addressers had owned that the King Lords and Commons have a Power to dispose of the Succession as they shall judge most conducible to the Safety Interest and Happiness of the Kingdom and that he is His Majesties Heir and Successor upon whom the whole Legislative Power shall think meet to settle the Inheritance of the Crown Nor would it have misbecome men professing the Protestant Religion and tender of English Liberties to have recommended to His Majesties second Thoughts and maturer Advice what three several Parliaments have with so much strength of Reason insisted upon and with so much earnestness pursued and desired And I wish they were able to tell us what they mean when at the same time that they engage to defend the Protestant Religion they vow to the last drop of their Blood to stand by the next Successor And the rather because there is some reason to believe that many of them will not be over-forward to dye Martyrs It would be also some satisfaction to be instructed how they think to defend the Crown in the Preservation whereof they pretend to be ready To sacrifice themselves and all they have seeing by being willing to admit a Papist to be King they consent to the robbing it of the Supremacy which is one of the brightest Jewels in it However it is some comfort that one end of setting on foot and carrying on these Addresses being to make a Survey and obtain a List of all that were for the Duke of York they do not upon the Muster-Rolls appear so many as to endanger the Nation in a Civil War in case the King should hereafter so far comply with the humble Requests of his People as to be willing to pass the Bill of Exclusion if tendred to him by a future Parliament SECT XVI But besides what is already said concerning the Quality and Design of the said Addresses there is this farther tendency in them all namely to insinuate to the Nation that we have and enjoy a sufficient Security for our Religion Lives and Liberties For as if it were not enough to acknowledge as all His Majesties Liege-people do His Majesties Easie Just and most Gracious Government since His Restoration and to testifie their sense of the Felicity and Happiness which all His Majesties Subjects have most comfortably enjoyed under a most Regular Gracious and Peaceful Government They are pleased further to add that His Majesties Promise in his late Declaration Of adhering to the Laws of the Land and making them the Rule of his Government is not only sufficient to allay all mens Fears and Jealousies remove the Misunderstandings of all well-meaning and reasonable People and give us all possible assurance of enjoying the greatest Liberty and best Religion that any people in the world have but that no greater Security can be had or hoped for in order to the enjoying our Religion Liberties and Properties than His Majesties Royal Word to Govern by the Laws Whereas not only four Parliaments have represented and declared the manifold Dangers by which our Religion Lives and Properties are threatned and encompassed and how difficult if not impossible it is to preserve and secure them from the Designs that are laid against them but the King also hath been pleased to signifie the same and that as well in several Proclamations published for the informing of His People as in divers Speeches to His two Houses of Parliament whose Advice He both thereupon required and also that effectual Laws might be made for the obviating and preventing those many Mischiefs and Dangers that are impending over us And if the King 's hitherto governing by Law hath not been sufficient to discourage our Popish Enemies from Conspiring our Destruction Can it be apprehended That His Majesties adherence to the Laws for the future will remove the Jealousies and allay the Fears which we have of the Papists Besides tho' His Majesty is always to be supposed resolved and inclined to Govern by Law yet there want not too many Instances wherein His Ministers that are trusted with the Administration of Justice have to the great prejudice of the Subject and the Alarming the whole Nation failed in their Duty Our dreadful Apprehensions do not proceed from any ill Opinion which we have of the King but from the implacable Hatred which the Romish Faction bear as well against Him as His Protestant Subjects and from the Corruption of those Officers of Justice who do either abuse or pervert the Law to base Ends or hinder its due and Legal Execution Nor is it our having good Laws but their being truely executed that will advantage and relieve us and therefore we are to be pardoned tho' we profess our selves doubtful of our security by them whilst some that have been entrusted with the administration of them are suffered to escape the punishments which they have deserved for obstructing their course and for perverting of them And what if we should with all thankfulness acknowledg that we are in some security during His Majesties Life will the Laws which we have without some farther and more effectual provision before His Majesties Death contribute much to our safety when we shall hereafter have a Popish King to Reign over us But can these men be supposed in earnest when they tell us that the Nation is in no danger while the Papists continue so active to extirpate the Northern Heresie and are in a more hopeful way to effect it than ever Alas the Popish Plot instead of being defeated is not so much as yet throughly detected And instead of the Papists being dismay'd by that discovery which hath been made or by the justice which hath been inflicted upon some of the Criminals they are only enflam'd to prosecute their divelish conspiracy