a smooth Reproach in the end of it to intimate how much he is beholden to them he advances as follows Char. Now says he let suppose after a long Tranquility of this matchless Monarchs Râ—ign that the immediate Heir to his Crown and a part of his Bloud by the Sorceries of Rome is canker'd into a Papist His meaning is easily suppos'd by stabbing of the very Paper whenever he comes near him And to pursue this Landâ—hape suppose we see this once happy Flourishing Kingdom so far as in all Duty and Reason bound concern'd for themselves their Heirs and their whole Countries Safety till with an honest cautious prudent Fear they begin to inspect a Kingdoms Vniversal Health till weighing all the Symptoms of its State they plainly descry those Pestilential Vapours fermenting that may one day infect their Ayre and sicken their World and see that rising Eastern Storm engendring that will once bring in those more then Egyptian Locusts that will not only fill their Houses and their Temples but devour their Labours their Harvests and their Vintages Here 's a Period for an Apothecary The Inspectors I suppose of our Body politick may be Three or Four of our Anabaptistical Protestant Intelligencing VVater Casters of the State And these are the men that so plainly descry the pestilential vapours he speaks of which in effect are no other then the Breath of their own Lungs But is it an Eastern Storm that they see engendring why then the wind is turn'd I perceive for the Locusts of 40 and 43 came out of the North and did us all the mischiefs too of his Egyptian Locusts And now he has given us the State of our Disorder he is so kind as to prâ—scribe toward our Relief which is in a few words That the Nation like true Patriots do anticipate their woes with a present sense of the future miseries they foresee fol. 9. which is as much as to say Vp. and be dring Now again Char. VVhat is This Popish Heir in the Eye of England but perhaps the greatest and only Grievance of the Nation the Vniversal Object of their Hate and Fear and the Subject of their Clamours and Curses methinks he might afford the Kings Brother a little better Language at whose door lyâ—their Discontents and Murmurs but 't is murmurs so violent that they thrust in amongst their very Prayers So did Curse ye Meroz and become almost a part of their Devotions The Prophet Davids Curse is faln upon them Their Prayer is turn'd into Sin Murmurs so bold that they dare approach the very Palace nay Throne and Ear of Majesty fol. 10. Here 's a large step advanc'd upon the King himself but you shall see him come closer by and by Whenever says he the People of England reflect on this Heir as their King in reversion they have reason to look upon him as no better than Jupiter ' s Stork amongst the Froggs Yes notwithstanding all his former Glories and Conquests his whole Stock of Fame is so lost and bury'd in his Apostacy from the Religion and conseqnently the Interest of these Protestant Kingdoms that all his Services are Cancell'd and his whole Masse of Glory corrupted ibid. I find some People of Opinion that this King in reversion is of the same Perswasion at this day that he was when he acquir'd all those Glories But let that pass and see now what 's the sum of all this Flourish but a labour'd Piece of spiteful Art to render the Brother of his Sacred Majesty as odious as the soulest Character and Calumny can make him You shall fee presently that This Venom against the Duke will terminate in the King and that instead of a Christian and pious Zeal for Religion the end of it is to inflame a desperate Distemper in the State It is in short a Character of the worst of men adapted to a suitable Religion And expos'd to the World in an uncharitable account of things which he cannot possibly foreknow His next supposal is a Rhetorical Speculation and not without Reflexions bold enough upon the unchangeable affection of his Majesty to his Royal Brother What saith he can the consequence of this unhappy Friendship be but that the very Souls and Loyalties of almost a whole Kingdom are stagger'd at this fatal Conjunction till I am afraid there are too many who in detestation of that one Gangreen'd Branch of Royalty can scarce forbear how undutifully soever to murmur and revile even at that Imperial Root that cherishes it Ibid. What a strange Usurpation is this not only upon Majesty but Human Nature not to allow a Prince the freedom of those affections which he can no more put off than his Reasonable Being But this is the Loyalty of the Old Stamp that still gives the Sign with a Hail Master and a Kiss But how comes this Pamphlet to undertake for the sense of the whole Kingdom It is not that he finds them so much dis-affected but he endeavours to make them so by teaching and animating the Sedition that he would be thought to fear Nay so far is he from being afraid of the undutiful murmurs he seems to apprehend that it is scarce possible to do more toward the creating of them And look now how he grows upon His Majesty Those very Knees says he that but now would have bow'd into their very Graves to serve him grow daily and hourly so far from bending as they ought to a Crown'd Head till they are almost as stubborn as their Petitions and Prayers have been ineffectual What is this to say but in his way of intimation to insinuate what the Reader will easily understand though more than I am willing to express Char. Thus says he whilst a Popish Heirs extravagant Zeal for Rome makes him shake the very Throne that upholds him by working and encroaching on the affections of His Majesty for that Protection and Indulgence that gives birth and life to the Heart-burnings of a Nation what does he otherwise than in a manner stabb his King his Patron and his Friend in his tenderest part his Loyal Subjects hearts which certainly is little less than to play the more lingring sort of Parricide a part so strangely unnatural that even Salvages would blush at yet this Religion ncorrigible remorseless Religion never shrinks at Folio 10. It is worth observing that throughout this whole Character of a Popish Successor the Author of it lays more load upon the Heir than upon the Religion for he treats the Latter still in the terms of a fair and generous enemy but when he comes to the Other he shoots Poyson'd Arrows Parricide Gangreen'd and the like without any respect either to Modesty or Honour And what is the whole Tract indeed but an artificial Declamation without so much as one ill thing in 't bating the Perswasion that is either liable to a proof or possible for him to know And yet he does as boldly pronounce upon things to come as if he had
the Book of Fate in his Pocket He charges the Successor here with encroaching upon the Kings Affections It was a little while agoe only the invincible tenderness of His Majesty but it is now turn'd into the working and insinuation of his Brother who stabbs the King says the Character-Writer in the Hearts of his Loyal Subjects But what if it should happen that the King should be here stabbed thorough the Duke It was at this rate that Laud and Strafford stabb'd the late King too And what was the end on 't but that when the Kings Friends were remov'd under the Character of his Enemies his Sacred Majesty left naked and defenceless those Hypocrites that had nothing in their Mouths but Loyalty and Religion those were the very Men that stabb'd him themselves This is the plain Historical Fact without either amplifications or colours But if you 'll see a figure upon the Stretch observe his next fancy where he makes the Duke a Parricide for killing the King in the hearts of his People by his applications and respects to His Maiesty And a Parricide as he phrases it so strangely unnatural too that even Pagans would blush at it Is this Jest or Earnest now is it a pang of Duty and Conscience Or is it not rather the Luxuriancy of a high-flown thought How comes it to be so flagitious a crime for one brother to love another that Humane Nature must be startled at it Or that a Prince may not presume to venture upon the Duties of Christianity Natural Affection Friendship Honour and Humanity for fear of being call'd to account for 't in a Pamphlet Well! but he tells us of the Heart-burnings of the Nation at this conjunction and for that reason he expects it seems that His Majesty shall relinquish his Brother But what if a Man should ask him First How he knows this to be the sence of the Nation Secondly What Commission he has to tell the World so And Thirdly How he comes so positively to assert that it is so when it is clear on the contrary that it is not so For the Peoples quarrel is to the Religion only whereas the Authors is principally to the Duke But let us give him these Heart-burnings for granted and see how far a concession upon that point will carry us at last First The Duke Marches off and then the Kings Ministers back after him and then goes the Militia and so in course the Bishops the Revenue c. To the end of the Chapter of Forty Eight and all this to gratify one longing after another till in the conclusion another Government turns up Trump Plato Redivivus has the whole Scheme of the Project ready cut and dry'd This was the very Method of our Ruine and the name of Religion led the way to 't A Covenanted and in his own Words an incorrigible reâ—orseless Religion But why these Heart-burnings now the Duke is out of the Kingdom unless they would him out of the World too And that would not serve neither for so long as there is a Service-Book a Surplice or a Canonical Habit in the Kingdom and this Humour kept a foot there shall never want Popery to work upon The next clause speaks the plainest English we have had yet Char. The Nation in studying to prevent Tyranny grew jealous of Monarchy and for fear of their Moneys going the wrong way they will give none at all but rather triumph in His Majesty's greatest wants even when his glory nay possibly when his nearest safety calls for their assistance Fol. 11. This way of saying that they will not give Money which is more yet than he knows carries the force of an Advice that they should not which is the thing that this passage manifestly intends and designs So that is the rest of the Nation were of his mind the French King might have this Kingdom for the asking for both King and People upon these terms are manifestly abandon'd as a sacrifice to this jealousie Toward the bottom of the same page he brings in a Deliberation to this effect This Popish Prince cannot either help his Persuaasion or relinquish it nor is it a thing to be exacted from him that he should The Grievances of the Kingdom may be his unhappiness and not his fault for he is onely passive and lives to himself without meddling to encourage or favour Popery in the least But how does it follow says he Fol. 12. that if we do not plainly see him act that he does not act But how does it follow on the other side say I that he does act if no body can prove it It is the rule of Christian Charity in doubtful cases ever to judge the best but the Author of this Character does not think fit to walk by this rule for first he casts with himself what is the worst that can happen and then he improves the far-fetch'd possibility of that worst of Events into a Prediction that certainly that thing shall come to pass And then he considers how mean and wicked it is possible for Flesh and Bloud to be and those Vices and Imperfections jumbled together are the Ingredients that make up his Character Char. But to the Objection says he the Grievance of a Nation may be his unhappiness and not his Fault c. That is in short He cannot help it Very right And so when This Popish Heir comes to the Crown and promotes the Romish Interest with all the severity Injustice and Tyranny that Religious Cruelty can invent His Answer will be He cannot help it or at least cannot withstand those irresistable Motives that prompt him to their Execution which is the same thing Will he have it then that our Actions and our Thoughts are bound up alike under a determinate and insuparable necessity of our doing this or that as well as of thinking so or so Or will he call those motives irresistible that do only prompt and invite us to the doing of any thing He has screwed up Tyranny and injustice here to the highest degree of cruelty and terrour And now if this barbarous rigour be so inseparable from the Genius of the Religion how comes it that a French Popish King should be better natur'd to his Subjects of the Reform'd Religion then he will allow an English Popish King capable of being toward his Protestant Subjects The same impulse of Conscience he sayes that makes a man a Roman Catholique will make him Act like one when opportunity serves Ibid. That 's very Right but I cannot yet think that any Party of men will pretend explicitely to authorize the putting of Christians to death purely upon a Consideration of Religion and Conscience in order to the propagation of the Gospel And yet I know the Jesuits of both Churches have gone a great way towards it Cursed be he says Case in the late Rebellion that witholdeth his Sword from Bloâ—d that spareth when God saith strike c. The Papist he says is
Jealousy of Religion into the publick Rupture of a National Quarrel to the almost inevitable and irreparable Loss of his Reputation his Friends and his Dominions together Now the other way in case of his being injuriously excluded it would be forty times more easy for Him to recover his Pretensions from abroad by a Foreign Assistance in concurrence with such an English Interest as a generons Compassion to his Wrong a Respect for his Person and the Justice of his Title would certainly create him than to erect an absolute Power against the Wills and Hearts of his People and contrary to all the measures of Equity and Prudence And to do all this too while he might live and reign easily and comfortably to himself and his Subjects within the limits of a Legal Administration And if he can never expect to gain this point by calling in Auxillaries from beyond the Seas much less will he be able to do it upon the bottom of his own Interest and within himself For there must go a great many more hands than his own to such a work And to say that he may do it by his Officers or Ministers by the force of Gratifications Pensions or the Promises and Hopes of Preferment and Advantage That Objection may be easily obviated For it is a thing of clear and easy prospect the Forming of such a Scheme of Laws for securing the Bounds of the Government as no man that has either a Neck or a Fortune to lose will dare to violate But the bare Power if he had it would signify nothing neither unless the VVill as he says goes along with it Now if he may WILL he may NILL too So that he is left at Liberty to make his Election either of the One or of the Other which has in a great measure discharg'd him of the pretended Impulse of Religion and translated the Exception from the Papist to the Person Founding the apprehension upon a pretended Foresight of Tyranny and double Dealing in That Princes Character which being a thing that is only to be seen with His Spectacles and a Prognostick Peculiar to His way of Calculation wee 'l go to the next I will not deny says he ibid. but a Popish King may be totally restrein'd from all Power of Introducing Popery by the Force of such Laws as may be made to tye up his hands but then they must be such as must ruine his Prerogative and put the Executive Power of the Laws into the hands of the People This shift does not at all either weaken or avoid my Assertion for the Kings hands are sufficiently ty'd in holding the hands of his Ministers And This may be done so far as is necessary for This purpose without any Diminution to his Royal Dignity If the transferring of the Executive Power to the People that is to say Deposing of him would do the Job the Character will shew us by and by how That may be done without need of New Laws and in spite of Old Ones But what Monarch says he will be so unnatural to his bloud So ill a Defender and so weak a Champion for the Royal Dignity he wears as to sign and ratify such Laws as shall entail That Effeminancy and that Servility on a Crown as shall render the Imperial Majesty of England but a Pageant a meer Puppet upon a wire He does well to presume that a Prince will not Unking himself but he would do better yet to keep himself clear from such Propositions and Principles as lead to that Dâ—posing End For whatsoever strikes at the Crown in a Papist falls upon the Rebound on the Royal Authority in a Protestant But says he ib. If no King will assent to make Laws to do it this way and no Laws can do it t'other all Laws against Popery in case of a Popish Successor are as I told you before but building the Hedge c This Author seems to scrupulize more then needs upon the fear 〈◊〉 Cramping the Prerogative For he himself will shew us by and by how to do that without a Law which he despairs of ever seeing done by one If he had thought of what the King has lately parted with out of his Prerogative for the begeting of a Plenary Trust and Confidence in his People he would not have despair'd of any Condescension from his Majesty for the securing of his Subjects in their Properties and Religion after so much more done for them already than that which is here propounded amounts to He tells us fol. 14. of the danger of the Popâ—s Supremacy and I must tell him that within the Kings Dominions the Supremacy of the Kirk is every jote as dangerous Wherefore let us look to our selves both ways as well against those Papists that did murther the Last King as those other Papists that are in the Plot to destroy This. No doubt Says he but the Fire that burns the Heretique Law-makers shall give their Laws the same Martyrdom If they have power 't is probable enough that they will But their 's a great difference in the case betwixt a Prince and his own Subjects and the Pope and Stranger Hetiques The one destroyes his Enemies the other his Friends The Pope is in One Barque the Heaetiques in â—onother and the one may Sink and the other Swim now the King being in the same bottom with his People if he runs the Vessel upon a Rock they are all cast away together Châ—r With this certain prospect both of the ruine of their Estates Lives and Liberties where lies the Sin in the Commons of England to stand upon their Guard against a Popish Successor Aye a Gods name let them stand upon their Gaurds and use all expedients to keep out Popery and Tyranny provided still that we preserve the sacred Succession in its right line for that we are told both King and People aâ—e obliged in conscience to defeâ—d and uphold This clause has both more and less in it than a body would imagine and a man hardly knows either how to meddle with it or how to let it alone He begins with the assumption of a thing certainly prov'd though without any colour that I can find of makeing it out to be so much as probable and barely possible is the mosâ— that I can make on 't Nay and it is not that neither without imputing more of Rancâ—ur and Implacable Virulency of Nature to his Popish Successor than ever any Man yet discovered either before â—r beside the Author of this Character But however upon that substratum he takes up the Quarrel as he would have it understood of the Commons of England Where lies the sin says he in the Commons of England to stand upon their Guard against a Popish Successor This is only a Gin set for a Woodcock under the Equivoque of the Commons of England so that if a Man speaks only to the Multitude and he applys it to the Representative there may be matter pickt out
has taken the Stair-Case which is only a prudent Election under a Calamitous Necessity of the less evil of the Two Now the same Action which would have been a madness Without that necessity becomes an Act of Prudence With it the great danger of the Leap being warranted by the greater danger of the Fire And there must likewise precede a Deliberation upon the difficulties Both ways to justifie the Resolution For otherwise at the best a man does well but by chance Now it would have been fair play in the Character-writer if he had candidly Ballanc'd the matter and told us This is the danger One way and That Another Secondly It happens many times that we have no other Choice before us but either to suffer the Highest Degree of Misery that can befall us in this world or else to Prostitute our Souls for the saving of our Skins and Fortunes Now under such an Exigent as This let the Prospect of things be never so Terrible we are to oppose the Duties of Christians of Subjects and of Honest men to all hazzards whatsoever and patiently to endure whatever we cannot with Conscience and Honour either Resist or Decline according to the Practise of the Primitive Martyrs who witnessed their Profession with their Bloud as Christians and Submitted as Loyal Subjects without Resistance So that we are not to govern our selves by a Naked Speculation of the Perils that we are to encounter and the Means of avoiding them without enquiring into the Consistency of those means with the Measures of Conscience and Duty But there is one Main point yet behind which is in effect the very Hinge of the Controversie And this is it If there shall be any thing sound in this Character of a Popish Successour that shall either operate upon the Legal Constitution of the English Monarchy or Reflect Personally upon the Honour or Justice of his Majesty now in Being the Pretext of the Succession will be look't upon only as a Stalking-Horse to Countenance an approach to some further Design In which Case the Question will not be any longer the Religion of a Successour but the very Right it self of Kingly-Power And here I must expound my self once again that I Speak only to the Anonymus Character of a Popish Successour without the least Reference to any Publique and Authoritative Debates or Counsels And so I shall proceed in the First place to the Character of a Papist in Masquerade The Church of England and the Members of it are beset with two Sorts of Papists the One bare-Fac'd the Other dress'd up in several shapes of Disguise And we pass for Heretiques on the One hand and Papists in Masquerade on the Other By this Opposite Conjunction of two Interests which however Divided in Name and Pretense are yet United against us in a Common Principle of Contradiction and Aversion The Church of England is both Weaken'd and Defam'd the Glory of the Reformation blasted and the great Support of the truly Apostolical Cause Vndermined Betwixt These Two Enemies our Persecuted Church is crush'd almost to Pieces and well-nigh brought to the Agony of her Last Convulsions And this Calamity is not wrought so much by the Bare-fac'd Papists that march Publiquely under the Popes Banner owning their Cause and making their Attacks in View not so much by Thâ—se I say as by the Papists in Masquerade that work under-ground like Moles and fall in upon our Quarters under the Semblance of Friends with our own Word and Colours It has been a great part of the businesse of the Presse to set forth the Bare-fac'd Papist to the Life and to affect us with a Just Indignation for the Principles of the Jesuites So that I shall not cloy the Reader with Redunâ—ances especially since the Composer of the Character has been pleas'd to Harangue so copiously upon that Subject But rather apply my self to the Counter-Part of these Jesuits and to obviate the Practises of our False Friends as well as of our Profess'd Enemies The Kings Witnesses have abundantly manifested to the World the Restless Endeavours of Rome and its Emissaryes for the Subversion of our Religion and Government and how far they contributed to the Rebellion of Forty One and to the carrying of it forward thorough all the Succeeding changes and Revolutions even to the bringing of his Sacred Majesty to the Scaffold They have further also Deposed to the Contrivances of the same Party for the prosecuting of the same Design upon the Person of his Sacred Majesty that now is and upon our Government and Religion as by Law establish'd And laid open to the world both the Method of their Proceedings by masquing themselves under the Appearance of Presbyterians Independents Quakers Millenaryes and the like as also the very Names of several of their Missionaryes that have been expresly employ'd upon the disposing of the People to Tumult and Sedition This is so certain a Truth that it will not bear a Dispute beside that it stands with Reason too for they do all cover themselves under an Alias and a Presbyterian an Independent c. alias a Papist Sounds every jot as well as Captain Williams alias Captain Bedloe I am not willing to charge my Paper in a Case so Clear and Confess'd with unnecessary Instances Wherefore I shall content my self with only Two out of many the Former out of Ravillac Redivivus Pag. 41. If Father Brown the Jesuit says the Author that Preach'd so many years among the Field-Convenâ—iclers in Scotland had Penn'd Mitchel's Justification of himself upon his Execution for an Attempt upon the Person of the Arch-Bishop of St. Andrews it could not have savour'd stronger of the Society of Jesus or become such an Authour better then it doth This same Brown â—oasted upon his Death-bed at Ingeston briggs that he had Preached as Downright Popery in the Field Conventicles as ever he had Preach'd in Rome it self The Other Instance is of one Faithfull Commin a Dominican Frier in the 9th of Qâ—een Elizabeth who was a Person generally reputed a Zealous Protestant and much admir'd and follow'd by the People for his seeming Piety but more particularly for inveighing in his Pulpit against Pius Quintus Then Pope He was accused upon Oath before the Queen and Councill for an Impostor and a Sower of Sedition and Arch Bishop Parker took his Examination Foxes and Fire-brands Pa. 7. Commin insisting much upon his Bitterness exprest against the Pope for his Justification He got out of England afterwards by a Trick and with one Farewell Sermon 130 l. for a Viaticum Not long after he was clapt up at Rome for Reviling the Pope and the Catholique Church But he Pleaded for himself that he had done his Holiness and the Church considerable Service for by Preaching against Set-Forms of Prayer and calling the English Prayers English Masse he put them upon the Humour of Extemporary Prayer which took so much with the People that they were come to hate the
which if he had accomplish'd he might easily have done And to do his Memory Justice he told me this Story with very great Inâ—â—ignation the Substance of which as I shall answer for it to God at the day of Judgment I have faithfully related to the best of my memory upon the Faith of a Christian man Now to 〈◊〉 his Point will not the very Name of a Republican Râ—formation which is at Present become the Theme of every Pamphlet warm Our Mud into Monsters again and raise Coblers and Tinkers to Colonels Draymen and Thimble-makers to be Kings Judges Wherefore Now or Never is his Majesty oblig'd if his Word Honour or Coronation-Oath be more then a Name if I may be pardon'd for speaking my Authours words after him to uphold the Protestant Interest which now lyes a bleeding in this Cause of the Church One Branch of the Coronation Oath being as follows I will preserve and maintain to You the Bishops and the Churches committed to your charge all Canonical Priviledges and due Law and Justice and I will be your Protector and Defender to my Power by the Assistance of God as every good King in his Kingdom â—n right ought to protect and defend the Bishops and Churches under theâ—r Government Then the King ariseth and is led to the Communion Table where he makes a Solemn Oath in sight of all the People to observe the Premises and laying his hand upon the Book saith The Oath The things which I have before promised I shall perform and keep So help me God and the Contents of this Book Char. But let us suppose we may have such a Roman Catholique King as shall discountenance Pope and Popery Cherish Protestantism and effectually deterr and punish all those that shall endeavour to undermine and supplant it And then let us examine what This King thus qualify'd must do Fol. 2. Here is a Supposition fairly propounded in appearance but yet without Expounding himself upon the Worâ—d Protestantism there 's no coming to an Issue upon 't If he means by Protestantism the Opions of the Outlyers that have leapt the pale and which are rather Phansies then Perswasions the Law it self animadverts upon those people as the Underminers of our Ecclesiastical Establishment And his Discountenancing of Separatists will amount to no more then a Legal Discharge of his Office But if by Protestantism he intends a practical Conformity to the Orders of the Church the Law provides as well for the upholding of the One as the suppressing of the Other And it would be a strange Oversight for any Prince that should mount the English Throne under the disadvantages of that Perswasion to put his Perogative upon the stretch of Enacting or Abrogating Laws without the Consent of his Parliament Char. First then In continuing the Ecclesiastique Jurisdiction Honours and Preferments in the hands of the Protestant Clergy he must confer his Favours and Smiles on those very men whom by the Fundamentals of his own Vncharitable Perswasion which dooms all that dy out of the Bosom of the Romish Church to a certain State of Damnation he cordially believes do preach and teach and lead his Subjects in the direct way to Hell And next at the same time he must not only punish and persecute but perhaps emprison and hang those very only Righteous men whom from the bottom of his Soul he believes can only open them the Gates of Paradice whilest in so doing he cannot but accuse himself of coppying the Old Jewish Cruelty Nay in One respect he outgoes their Crime for he acts that Knowingly which they committed Ignorantly For by the Dictates of Religion he must be Convinc'd that in effect he does little lesse then save a Barabbas and Crucify a Jesus Fol. 3. Here is First presented a dismal Prospect of a Popish Successour in the Life of a Protestant Prince and the present Government of that Protestant Prince troubled and distracted with Clamours and Jealousies for fear of a Popish one to come If Religion were really the business they would rather blesse God for the Peace and Happiness they enjoy and wait his further Pleasure with Thankfullness and Resignation then with Murmuring and Distrust to anticipate Future Evills and Prejudge Providences to come Or if Religion were All what 's the meaning of their hammering so much of late upon the Subject of Arbitrary Power and so many Models and Projects of a Common Wealth which were the very Method of our late Usurpers as to matter of Arbitrary Power the King has pass'd away so many Concessions already for the gratifying of his Subjects that if he had it in his Will his Majesty has not left it in his Power to be guilty of that which is so ungratefully Charg'd upon him Which makes it look liker a mockery then an Accusation And then for the New-fangled Device of a Free Common Wealth our Republican Agitators should do well to mind the People of England of the blessed condition they were in under the pretended Keepers of an Liberties The Sound of Freedom and Liberty brings the Multitude like Larks to the Glasse but not a word of the Net They say nothing of the Standing Army that must be kept afoot to support it nor of the bloudy Taxes that must be rais'd to maintain those Troops and Martial Law to make good all those Violences Why do they not tell them of their Charters Franchises Priviledges and Tenures which are all swallow'd up in that Gulph of Popular Tyranny And so are all other advantageous Dependences upon the Crown The Body of the Law must be new garbled and a Civil War with all the Miseries and Contingences of it must be the Prologue to the Opening of this Tragical Scene And if the Sedition fails of successe they bring themselves into the state again of a Conquer'd Nation And upon these Terms it is at best that they are to exchange a Condition of Peace Freedom and plenty for â—eggery Bondage and Confusion It was very well sayd of Grotius upon the NetherLanders delivering themselves from the 〈◊〉 of Spain We Fought says he to save the Tenth part of our Estates and now that we have got the day we have Compounded 〈◊〉 th' other Nine Here is a Criminal and a Dangerous but I hope an Impracticable Proposal set afoot But brought in God knows by Head and shoulders under the Countenance of Religion and Succession It is possible there may be no more in it then a Well-meaning mistake But there must be an Infinite Tenderness of Conscience and a most untainted Loyalty to justify the Authour But to return to my Character As to the Influence which a Popish Successour may have upon Ecclesiastical matters as in the Character there needs no more to be sayd in 't then this that the King hath been gratiously pleased to offer the Passing of any Bill for securing the Protestant Religion without barring or diverting the Succession And such Expedients have been also fram'd to that
effect as have been by great Authority judg'd Competent for the Obviating of that Difficulty As to the Rest I will not deny but that it is a hard thing for a Prince to â—eize and persecute a People of his own Religion purely eo nomine for their being so And it is very Probable too that he will connive at men of that Perswasion in many Cases where the Law directs a Punishment And what is there more in this theâ— what has been done already more or less from the Date of the Statutes themselves to This very day and what is done by the Government it self toward the Non-Conformists at this Instant where is the great hurt now upon this Admittance in not punishing the Papists so long as the Protestants are not Persecuted Whereas the Fanatical Papists did not only in defiance both of Law and Gospel engross all Offices Benefits and Priviledges to themselves but without Mercy or Distinction destroy'd the rest of their Brethren Char. A very pretty Chimaera Which is as much as to make this Popish King the greatest Barbarian in the Creation a Barbarian that shall cherish and maintain the Dissenters from Truth and punish and condemn the Pillars of Christianity and Proselites of Heaven Which is no other then to speak him the basest of Men and little lesse then a Monster Beside at the same time that we suppose that King that dares not uphold nor encourage his own Religion we render him the most deplorable of Cowards a Coward so abject that he dares not be a Champion even for his God And how consistent this is with the Glory of a Crowned Head and what hope England has of such a Successour I leave all men of sense to judge Fol. 3. Behold here 's the upshot of this high-flown Paragraph A Popish Prince that puts the Laws in Execution for the punishing of Papists and for the protecting and countenancing of Protestants is little less then the basest of Monsters How comes it then that the Crown of France has not treated the Protestant Subjects there as this Picture-drawer pronounces that a Popish Successour would treat his Protestant Subjects here The Protestants have now and then been severely handled I know in France as the Papists upon some Junctures have been in England And now of late worse then usual All which has been Influenc'd well by Reasons of State as by Impulse of Religion But shall we Pronounce the most Christian King the greater Monster for his better usage of us If a potent Aversion to us in matter of Religion had transported the French King 's into so mortal a Detestation of us to all other purposes they would never have committed so many Eminent Charges both in Councells and in Arms to the Honour and Trust of Protestant Officers and Commanders But the Convenience and Utility of the State preponderated against Disagreements in Religion The Barbarisms of the Holy League were the Results of a Sanguinary Faction as well in Civil Government as Religion And one Egg is not Liker another then the League of these Dissenting Papists to the Covenant of our Jesuitical and Dissenting Pseudo-Protestants To come now to the Reason and Conscience of this Elaborate Padox Taking His Position for granted that a Popish Prince is bound by his Religion contrary to Oaths and Promises Honour and Justice the Dictates of Nature the Laws of Nations and the Bonds of Humane Society contrary to all This I say and to his Interest also to break Faith with Protestants and those Protestants his Subjects too He must be unman'd as well as Unchristian'd an Excomunicate to Humane Nature and excluded from all the Benefits and Offices of Mankind And yet we are not without many Instances in the French League and the Scottish Covenant of an abandon'd Perfidy even to this degree It must be a strange Digestion sure that can put over all other Impieties and turn the violation of all that is Sacred in Nature into a meritorious Virtue Char. Besides what mismatch'd incongruous Ingredients must go to make up this Composition a King His Hand and Heart must be of no Kin to one another He must be so Inhumane to those very darling Jesuites that like Mahomets Pidgeon infus'd and whisper'd all his Heavenly Dreams into his Ears that he must not only clip their wings but fairly Cage 'em too even for the Charming Oracles they breath'd him And at the same Minute he must leave the wide and open Ayr to those very Ravens that daily croak Abhorrence and Confusion to them and all their Holy Dreams and their false Oracles Thus whilest he acts quite contrary to all his Inclinations against the whole Bent of his Soul what does he but publikely put in force those Laws for the Protestant Service till in fine for his Nations Peace he ruines his own and is a whole Scene of War within himself Whilst his Conscience accusing his sloth on one side the Pope on the other Rome's continuall Bulls bellowing against him as an undutifull Son of Holy Mother-Church a Scandal to her Glory a Traytor to her Interest and a Deserter of her Cause one day accusing the Lukewarmnesse of his Religion another the Pusillanimity of his Nature all Roman-Catholick Princes deriding the Feeblenesse of his Spirit and the Tamenesse of his Arm till at long run to spare a Fagot in Smithfield he does little lesse then walk on hot Irons himself Thus all the pleasure he relishes on a Throne is but a kinde of Good-Fryday-Entertainment Instead of Royall Festival his Rioting in all the Luxury of his Heart to see Rome's Dagon worshipp'd Rome's Altars smoke Rome's Standard set up Rome's Enemies defeated and his victorious Mother-Church Triumphant his abject and poor-spirited Submission denyes himself the only thing he thirsts for and whilst the Principles he suck from Rome do in effect in the Prophets Words bid him Rise Slay and Eat his fear his unkingly nay unmanly fear makes him fast and starve Fol. 3. This Passage is only the same thing over again in a diversity of Words and Phrase But it is well enough to answer the Ends it was intended for the tickling of the Phansy and the moving of a Popular Passion without one syllable of weight to strike the Judgement My Reply upon the Last Paragraph shall serve for This too which I have not here Recited as requiring any Answer but to shew what pains he has taken with the Ornaments of his Rhetorique to supply the Defect of Argument I cannot liken it to any thing better then the Gaudy Glittering Vapour that Children are used to Phansy in a Cloud They 'l Phansy Lions Peacocks in it or what other Figures they Please but the first Breath of Ayre scatters the Phantastique Images and resolves the whole into its original Nothing And just so it is with this Character There are many things in it finely enough sayd to work upon a partial and an Easy Imagination and to mislead a body at first
fight into an Opinion that there may be something of weight and Substance in it but upon a second Thought it seems to be only a plausible Strain of Words which the Authour has as well Colour'd yet as the matter will bear It serves however in English well enough for an Incentive and Appeal to the Multitude But if it should happen to be turn'd into French or Latin it would become as ill as Office to the Protestants abroad as it is here to the Government For what could be of a more pernicious Consequence from an unknown and private Pen then for one of the Reform'd Communion to tell the French King that if he suffers one Protestant Subject to live in his Dominions he is all those Vile Impious and Abject things that the Authour has here bundled up in the Character of his Popish Successour But for this Popish Successour of his which is a Figure that has no Being in Nature but in his own Brain what if I should match it now in Flesh and Bloud But it must be then among the Jesuiteâ— Successour of Knox and Buchanan and the Spawn of that King-killing Race There are mismatch'd Ingredients in abundance Christ upon his Tribunal as they prophanely ascribe to their General Assembly authorizing Bloudshed Schism and Disobedience a Treaty with the King at Breda and the Murther of the Brave Mâ—ntrosse both in a breath Were ever hand and heart lesse Akin then when they subscrib'd Loyalty and Obedience with the One and at the same time meditated and Resolved Treason with the Other Then when they Extirpated what they Swore they would only Reform and utterly destroy'd that Freedom and Property which they Pretended to preserve Then when instead of advancing Purtity of Doctrine and the Kingdom of Christ they fill'd the Pulpits with Jugglers that imposed upon the People the directions of their Standing Tables or the Close Committee as the Dictates of the Holy Ghost and in place of the Prophets words Rise Slay and Eat cry'd out Cursed be They that keep back their Sword in this Cause You know the Story of Gods Message unto Ahab for letting Benhadad go upon Composition Stricklands Thanksgiving Sermon Nov. 5. 1643. De Justice to the Greatest says Herle before the Commons Nov. 5. 1644. Sauls Sons are not spar'd no nor may Agag or Benhaded though themselves Kings Zimri and Cozbi through Princes of the People must be persu'd into their Tents This is the way to Consecrate your selves to God And what was the Ground of all this Fiercenesse but a Popish King though the Glory of the Reformation for want of a Popish Successour The Kings Counsels and Resolutions are so engaged to the Popish Party they say for the Suppression and Extirpation of the True Religion that all Hopes of Peace and Protection are Excluded and it is fully intended to give satisfaction to the Papists by alteration of Religion and to the Cavaliers and other Soldiers by exposing the Wealth of the Good Subjects especially of This City of London to be Sack'd Plunder'd and Spoyl'd by them And then again His Majesty endeavoured to keep off all Jealousies and Suspicions by many fearfull Oaths and Imprecations concerning his purpose of maintaining the Protestant Religion c. Ib. pa. 665. This is enough to convince the world that the very Sound of Popery will do the businesse as well Without a Ground as With it And whoever goes about to allarm the People upon This Desperate point had need give very good Security for his Allegeance But if it should prove to be the work of some Good-Old-Gausâ—â—â—n the very fact it self is not Clearer then the Designe But however it is the Authour has endeavour'd to prevent any such Conjeeture by a Complement upon the Memory of the Father to make the better way to the venting of his spleen against the Successor here in question If there can be a Son of that Royal Martyr Charles the First says he a Prince so truly pious that his very Enemies dare not asperse his Memory or Life with the least Blemish of Irreligion A Prince that Seal'd the Protestant Faith with his Bloud who in his deplorable Fate and Ignominious Death bore so near a resemblance to That of the Saviours of the world that his Sufferings can do no lesse then Seat him at the Right hand of Heaven If I say there can be a Son of that Royall Protestant of that Vncharitable Faith who by the very Tenets of his Religion dooms for deems I suppose all that die without the Bosome of their Church irreparably damned Then Consequently he must barbarously tear up his Fathers Sacred Monument brand his Blessed Memory with the Name of Heretique and to compleat the horrid Anathema he most impiously execrates the very Majesty that gave him Being Fol. 11. The Authour has wrought up This Phansy to a high Pitch as well in respect of the Father as of the Son and he has shew'd his skill in 't too for the more he advances the Reputation of the One the more scope he has upon the Opposition to depresse the Esteem of the Other I would charitably believe that he means good Faith in the Honourable Mention he makes of that Venerable Martyr But yet there are some passages in this Discourse that would make a man half suspect This Flourish upon the Last King to be intended as a Blind to give him Opportunity of getting a fairer Marque at This. For heâ—s here upon a subject where 't is a Common thing to have the Heart and the Hand as far as Heaven and Earth asunder Witnesse the Close of the Declaration before-mentioned Pag. 666. We do here Protest before the Ever-Living God that the Chief End of all our Councels and Resolutions is to secure the Persons Estates and Liberties of all that joyn with us and to procure and establish the Safety of Religion and Fruition of our Laws and Libertyes in This and all Other his Majesties Dominions without any Intention or desire to hurt or injure his Majesty either in his Person or JUST Power Let any man consider that at This very time they were destroying the Church In Arms against the King Plundring and Imprisoning those that would not joyn with them and lastly that they order'd this Declaration to be forthwith Printed and Read in all Churches and Chappels in England and Wales calling Heaven and Earth to Witnesse the Integrity of their Souls under all these Gross and Scandalous Contradictions Now to the Latter part of his Paragraph First he lays down a false Supposition and then he raises out of it a most uncharitable Consequence For the very Position that there is no Salvation out of the Church is qualifyed yet with an Exception in case of an Invincible Perswasion But if this be so lew'd a Principle in One Religion why is it not so in Another There is not a fouler Character in Hell then he has drawn here of a Popish Successor and he founds it
upon the Irresistible Impulses and Dictates of the Religion which being admitted involves every Individual member of the Church of Rome in the same Condemnation So that he himself damns all the Papists as well as he makes Them Damn all the Protestants So much for the Son of that Royal Protestant as he expresses it But he says nothing all this while of the undutifull Subjects of that blessed Martyr Those that actually divided his Sacred Head from his Body and then glory'd in it as an Acceptable Sacrifice unto the Lord. But was This Prince so pious does he say that his very Enemies dare not asperse his Memory c. What if I should shew him now to convince him of his Mistake three or four of the Fiercest Sticklers we have for the Phanatical Interest that have pass'd their Approbation upon that Execrable Murther Char. However says he if there be such a King in Nature as will not Defend his Own Religion because he dares not but Sneaks upon a Throne and in Obedience to his Fear shrinks from the Dictates of his Conscience If like Jupiters Logg Such a King can be and Fate has ordain'd us for a Popish Prince Pray Heaven shroud the Imperial Lyon in this Innocent Lamb-Skin Fol. 3. He does well enough to pray for Jupiters Logg considering what Havock the Republican Storks have made with us Allready But is it so Base a things says he for a Prince to shrink from the Dictates of his Conscience What if his Majesty himself should make it a point of Conscience not to entertein any Project for the Uniting as they call it of Protestant Dissenters in regard both of the Publike Peace and the Heretical Opinions that must be indulg'd under that Denomination Would not the Kings concessions in that point bring him within the Equity of this Successours Character Char. But I have heard says he a great many say it cannot enter into their Thoughts that a Popish Successour will ever take such an Inhumane and so unnatural a Course to Establish Popery it being so absolutely against the English Constitution that it can never be introduced with lesse then a Deluge of Bloud Surely his very Glory should withhold him from so much Cruelty c. Fol. 5. The Glory of a Papist says he in Reply upon himself a pretty Aiery Notion How shall we ever expect that Glory shall steer the Action of a Popish Successour when there is not that thing so Abject that he shall refuse to do or That Shape or Hypocrisie so Scandalous he shall not assume when Rome or Rome's Interest shall Command nay when his own petulant Stubbornnesse shall but sway him As for Example for One Fit he shall come to the Protestant Church and be a member of their Communion notwithstanding at the same time his Face belies his Heart and in his Soul he is a Romanist Nay he shall vary his Disguises as often as an Algerine his Colours and change his Flag to conceal the Pyrat As for Instance Another fit for whole years together he shall come neither to One Church nor th' other and participate of neither Communion till ignoble he plays the Vnprincely nay the unmanly Hypocrite so long that he shelters himself under the Face of an Atheist to shroud a Papist a Visor more fit for a Banditto then a Prince And This methinks is so Wretched and despicable a Disguise that it looks like being asham'd of his God Fol. 5. If a Popish Successour will do any thing though never so Abject he will comply then and make his Religion Truckle to his Interest But how comes he to be so Abject and Yielding in One Line and so Stubborn in the Next If it be True that he will so Scandalously play the Hypocrite as to Change his Shape and Act any part for his Advantage which Rome or Romes Interest shall Impose upon him what should hinder him from making himself a Protestant to the Law though he continue a Papist still in his Heart And where 's the Outcry then against the Popish Successour If he will do This the Exception is Remov'd For he 's no longer in Construction of Law a Papist And if he will not do it he has great Wrong done him in the Character The Policy or in Truth the Probability of his running from One Communion to Another I must Confesse I do not understand For if he can dispense with shuffling and shifting his way would be to shift once for all into the shape of a Protestant For That 's a Turn would gain him his Point and not to wander thus from One Church to Another to no manner of Purpose Upon the whole Matter the Authour methinks might have treated the Brother of his Sovereign with a little more regard to the Terms of Decency and Respect and kept himself to the Cause without betraying so great an Animosity to the Person But having to do with a Prince of his own Creating he thinks he may deal with him at what rate he pleases Char. Besides If Glory could have any Ascendant over a Popish Successor one would think the word of a King and the Solemn Protestations of Majesty ought to be Sacred and Inviolable But how many Presidents have we in Popish Princes to convince us that their strongest Engagements and Promises are lighter then the very Breath that Vtters them As for Examples sake How did their Saint Mary of England promise the Norfok and Suffolk Inhabitants the unmolested Continuation of the Protestant Worship calling her God that God that saw the Falsenesse of her Heart to witnesse That though her own Perswasion was of the Romish Faith yet she would content her self with the Private Exercise of her own Devotion and preserve the then Protestant Government with all her Subjects Rights and Priviledges un-injur'd Vpon which those poor credulous honest deluded Believers on the Security of such Prevalent Conjurations led by the mistaken Reverence they paid to a Protesting Majesty laid their Lives at her Feet and were the very men that in That Contest of the Succession plac'd her on a Throne But immediatly when her Sovereign Power was securely establish'd and his pious Holinesse had bid her safely pull the Vizor off no sooner did Smithfield glow i' th Piles of Blazing Hereticks But Chronicles more particularly observe that no people in her whole Kingdom felt so signal marks of her Vengeance as those very Men that raised her to the Throne Her Princely Gratitude for their Crowning her with a Diadem Crown'd Them with their Martyrdoms But since we have mentioned her Princely Gratitude 't will not be amisse to recollect one Instance more of so Exemplary a Virtue In the Dispute betwixt Her 's and the Lady Jane Grey's Title to the Crown it was remarkable that all the Judges of England gave their Vnanimous Opinions for the Lady Jane's Succession except one of them only that asserted the Right of Mary But it so fell out that This man proving a
had a Bed for all Travellers but then he either cut them shorter or stretch'd them longer to fit them to it And is not this very charitably done now to imagine the worst things that either ever were or can be done Of a Prince admitting my Author's supposition whose Empire Safety Donions and the wel-fare of whose People are all dependent upon his good behaviour and justice So that he ventures his All on the one side to get nothing on the other Here is the fansie of remote and uncertain difficulties oppo'sd to our present security and well-being and after a Capital Sentence pronounced with a formality of Law upon an Imperial Prince as a Traytor to the Sovereignty of the People We are now opening the way to bring another Prince to the Scaffold For that 's the Scope of several Virulent Libels both printed and written that have at present their free course without controll These are the Incendiaries I speak of and no other Well says he again but if the publick Ministers of Justice betray the Liberty of the Subject The Subject may Petition for a Parliament to punish 'em for 't But what if he will neither hear one nor call the other who shall compel him This is a very artificial way of getting a shoot at the King through the Duke and to intimate the Exercise of an Arbitrary Power by this manner of supposing it It was by these very steps of accusing evil Councellours crying out for justice against them and for a Parliament to punish them that the Faction mounted the Government and strip'd his Majesty first of his Friends then of his Revenue next of his Liberty and lastly of his Life and all this was actually done for fear of no body knew what Ther 's no doubt says the Character but hee 'l find sufficient assistance from the Pope English Papists and Foreign Princes beside the Revenues of the Crown And then having but a prudent eye and a tenacious hand to manage his Exchequer we shall find hee 'l never call that People he shall never have need of fol. 8. He supposes here an assistance for a Prince in possession of his Crown But an assistance for what unless in case of a Rebellion Or is it an assistance to enable him to live without Parliaments As if Foreign Princes would be at that charge to be never the better sor't Or if he means a Military Assistance toward the settling of him in the Possession of an Absolute Power his Interest undoubtedly will be much greater in the supporting of him as an Heir than in advancing him as a Tyrant beside that for one English Man to serve him in such an unwarrantable design he will have an hundred in case of any unjust delusion to stand by him in the defence or recovery of an nndoubted Right This is only the quitting of one Pamphlet with another and to make use of that liberty my self which is allow'd to others But all this while says he the Pope is not Absolute There wants a Standing Army to Crown the Work And he shall have it for who shall hinder him Nay all his Commanders shall be present qualifi'd even by our Protestant Test for the employment We have not forgot the Time when one standing Army was Raised for fear of another and between Thirty and Forty Thousand Men kept in Pay for a matter of thirteen or fourteen years together when the War was over and not one Enemy left in the Field one King imprison'd and another in Banishment Taxes multiply'd The People peel'd to the very Bones and the Persons and Estates of Free-born English Men subjected to the most Scandalous Tyranny that ever was inflicted upon reasonable Creatures And what was the Ground and Foundation of this Calamity The Multitude were Buzz'd in the Head that the King was Popishly inclin'd and govern'd by Jesuitical Councels nothing but Papists about him and two or three Antichristian Bishops a Pack of Tories and Tantvies and a mighty noise there was of German Horse and the bringing of an Army up to Town to awe the City and the Parliament and the very fear alone of these shadows Transported them into the uttermost extremities of rage and confusion 'T is true there was no Plot afoot then as there is now but they made sufficient shift without it to do their own and the Kingdoms business You shall now see the Composition of his Popish Successor's Standing-Army He shall have enough Men of the Blade out of one half of the Gaming Houses in Town to Officer twice as many Forces as he shall want 'T is true they shall be men of no Estates nor Princples c. He should e'en have gone on when his hands were in and quarter'd his new Leveys in Lambeth House or Pauls as in the days of his Forefathers But is not this better yet than Spiriting away of Apprentices from their Masters decoying the poor Wenches out of their Bodkins and Thimbles and squeezing a Rebellion out of the Gospel We have seen an Army of pretended Saints to the value of Twenty or Thirty Thousand in a Body and as many Religions as Men every Article of the Creed call'd in question and the Lord's Prayer exploded as a stinting of the Spirit This and a great deal more and worse is true to the very Letter But forward And that this Army may be more quietly rais'd how many honourable pretences may be found fol. 9. Very right As the fetching of the King home to his Parliament the delivering of him out of the hands of Papists The defence of his person and just rights in the maintenance of the true Protestant Religion and all this in the Stile of his Majesties most humble and obedient Subjects Perhaps says he the greatest and most importunate preservation of the Kingdom shall call for 't and then upon second thoughts instead of defeating some Foreign Enemy they are opportunuely ready to cut our Throats at home if we do not submit and give all that this King shall ask bid This ingenuous Author has directly Translated the true History of the Rise and Advance of the late Rebellion into a Prophetical Computation of the Methods and Proceedings which the World is to expect from a Popish King Did not they seize those very Arms that the King had provided for the Relief of Ireland and employ them against his Majesties very Person at Edg-hil And were not those very Troops that were Raised as they swore for the defence of the City of London Quarter'd upon the Citizens to Ruine and Enslave them Char. Thus far says he we have given the Pourtraicture of a Popish King And now let us take a draught of his Features in his Minority that is while he is only a Popish Heir Apparent I.d. After the Preamble of an Imaginary Prince elevated to the height of a Generous and a glorious Character with a Supposal of a People too not unworthy of the blessing of such a Sovereign and
their Livingâ— the King himself and his Loyal Subjects out of their Lives Liberties and Estates the Crowns Churches and the Peoples Monies into their own â—ockets the House of Peers into a Cypher or Nullity the House of Commons into a Secret Committee the Monarchy into a Republick the Laws into Votes and Ordinances their Committe into a Rump-Assembly That Rump into a Protector and that Protector again into a Committee of Safety And all this was done by the Power of Imagination and a strong phansy of Tyranny and Popery And why may not all this he phansy'd over again But pray let me Phansy a little on the other side Let us Phansy his Majesty to Survive his Brother Let us Phansy an Heir Apparent either by her Majesty in being or by the providence of a Second Marriage or the Successor to be a person of Honour Conscience or Prudence whatever his Religion be And that in Honour and Conscience he will govern himself by the Tyes of his Word and his Duty and that in Prudence he will not venture upon a Project so impracticable as an attempt of Subverting the Religion and Government when every mans Neck shall lye at stake that shall but dare to assist him in 't which might be sufficiently provided for by some previous Act that saving the Kings Prerogative in the Case might secure their not being pardon'd in That particular We shall now Counterpoise Dangers to Dangers Here is a present opposed to a future a Certainty to a Possibility a Greater to a Less and a Protestant King to a Papist The Present danger is the probable Effect of these Intoxicating Methods to the People If Phansy was Poyson to the Multitude under the late King the same Phansy in a larger Dose and with less Corrective to it will be at least as strong a Poyson to the People under This. If the Fact on the one side be true the Reason on the other side is not to be deny'd The dismal Calamities that ensu'd upon it I have â—et forth already Now what is there in the future to weight against the Life of the King the Safety of the Church the Law and the Government the Peace of the Kingdom There may possibly be a Popish King and there may probably not And that King may Possibly have a Will to change the Government but probably not in respect of the very Immorality of Inclining to such a Violation of his Trust and Word But all most certainly not in regard of so manifest an Inability to bring it to pass When I say a Certainty I mean only a Natural Train of Events in the Application of Actives to Passives which in a high degree has taken place already For the People are almost Raving mad at the apprehensions of these Stories the Feaver encreases upon them and they grow every day Hotter and Lighter-headed than other So that we are in Forty times a greater danger of a Sedition at hand than of a Popish Successor at a Distance As to the Ballance of a greater danger and a Less we 'l e'en take the matter as they suppose it A King upon the Throne that 's Principled for Arbitrary Government and Popery But so clogg'd and shackl'd with Popular and Protestant Laws that if he had never so great a mind to 't there is not a Subject in his Dominions that would dare to serve him in his Design But on the other hand there 's no King at all no Church no Law no Government no Magna Charta no Petition of Right no Property no Liberty c. PROBATVM Beside that the Phansy comes to no more in Effect than if the sky fall we shall catch Larks But once again yet Here 's a Protestant Prince expos'd for fear of a Popish one Is the Chimera of a future danger of more value to us then the Conscience of an incumbant and indispensable Duty shall we take pet at God Almighties providence and not go to Heaven at all unless we may go our own way Shall we Level a shot at the Duke at a distance if there be no coming at him but through the Heart of our Sovereign shall we actually break in upon the Protestant profession which stands or falls with the Church of England because the Author of the Character phansies the hazard of a Popish Religion in the Moon and by the unavoidable Consequence of a Misgovernment under this apprehension draws the very plague upon us that we pretend to fear While we thus go on exposing both our Temporal and Eternal peace for shadows The Writer of the Character had most Rhetorically amplifi'd in his Calculations upon his Popish Successor but so Oversiz'd the figure that when ever the people come to their wits again they will look upon the story of Garagantua as not much the less Credible of the Two For his dangers are all out of Ken his Thunderâ—s in the Clouds and the Multitude are all turn'd Star-Gazers and gaping after ill-boding Conjunctions and malevolent influences while with him in the Fable They are tumbling into a Precipice as deep as Hell and take no notice of it Here is a danger suggested and such a means intimated for the prevention of it as makes the Remedy worse than the Disease for the very Expedient undermines the Government But first a word of the dangers on the other side There are several ways started for the disappointing of this inconvenience One by Attainder upon 23. 13. of Eliz. Another by a Bill in Parliament for diverting the Succession And some of the Libellers fall down right upon a Third Proposal of the peoples preventing the Succession though without or against Law And Fourthly either to expel the Successour or to keep him out in case of Survivorship To the first of these ways I shall speak when the point comes on As to the second which is matter of Parliamentary Cognizance I reckon it my duty to acquiesce in the Legal Issue of their Debates as an Authority to which I have ever paid a Duty and a Veneration This only I shall take the freedom to say that there is a vast difference betwixt their Deliberations that purely regard the prospect and interest of both Church and State in what concerns the Popish and Protestant Religion and the passionate excursions of private men on the wrong side of the Parliament Doorâ— that thrust themselves into the Controversie rather out of envy to the Person and fame of the Successour than to promote the more important cause of Religion like men that crow'd into a Church for company to pick a pocket and this to without any respect to the King himself in the person of his Brother or to the measures of duty to the Government Now as to the two last ways of proposal which are eiher for prevention or exclusion I have this to say If there be danger from a popish Successour during his expectancy within the Kingdom the danger is infinitely greater if he be driven
Bloud as well of a great number of the Nobles as of other the Subjects and especially Inheritours in the same And the greatest occasion thereof hath been because no perfect and substantial provision by Law hath been made within this Realm of it self when doubts and questions have been moved and proponed of the certainty and legallty of the Succession and Posterity of the Crown c. Now so far is the intent of this Act from diverting the Succession that the express end of it was the setting of it right by the avoidance of a former Settlement upon the nullity of the Marriage And afterward 26th of the same King cap. 2. the Act here before mentioned is called The Act for the Establishment of the Succession of the Heirs of the King's Highness in the Imperial Crown of this Realm Now there 's a great deal of difference betwixt translating the Succession from the wrong to the right and the diverting of it from the right to the wrong Thirdly this change and disposition of Settlement tho it pass'd all the formalities of Bill and Debate yet the first spring of it was from the certain knowledge of the Kings pleasure to have it so without which they durst never have ventur'd upon such a Proposition Fourthly Matter of Fact in this case is no proof of Right and especially a Fact accompanied with so many circumstances of Cross-Capers and Contradictions as the pronouncing of the same persons to be both illegitimate and legitimate c. And a man cannot imagine without a scandal to that grave and wise Assembly that the levity of those Counsels and that humour of Swearing and Counterswearing could be any other than the caprice of their new Head and Governour Fifthly with reverence to the Utility and Constitution of good and wholesom Laws it is not presently to cite a Statute and say There 's a Precedent for those Laws that are repugnant to the light of Nature and common Right are Nâ—llities in themselves Lastly he brings instances here to prove that a Parliament may divert the Succession but he shews withall that there can be no security even in that exclusion in shewing that what one Parliament does another may undo So that we are now upon equal terms of security or hazard either in the exclusion of the Successor or in the restraining of him For if he be tied up by one Parliament another may set him at liberty and if he be excluded by one Parliament another may take him in again But he that shapes his own Premises may cut out what Conclusions he pleases Char. If then says he which no man in his right wits can deny our Religion Lives and Liberties are onely held by a Protestant Tenure and the Majesty of Englfnd not onely by the force of his Coronation Oath but by all the Tyes whatever ought to be the Pillars and Bulwark of the Protestant Faith and at the same time granting that we have a Popish Prince to inherit the Imperial Crown of England he ought certainly in all justice as little to ascend this Throne as Nebuchadnezzar ought to have kept his when the immediate Blast of Heaven had made him so uncapable of Ruling as a King that he was only a Companion fit for Brutes and Savages fol. 17. It is true that we hold the exercise of our Religion by a Protestant Tenure with a respect to a political union but every man holds the Religion it self that he ventures his Soul upon not on the Tenure of Laws and Constitutions Humane but on the Tenure of the divine will and pleasure Providence having dealt so graciously with Mankind that albeit in our Bodies and Estates which are only corruptible and temporary we lye exposed to Torments Persecutions Violence and the Iniquities of Times and Seasons Our Nobler Part is yet exempt from the Outrages either of Men or Beasts and our faith hope and charity treasur'd up where neither Rust nor Moth doth corrupt and where Thieves do not break through and steal As for our Lives and Liberties we hold them by the Common Tenure of Government the Common Right of men bound up in a Civil Society and under the Protection of such and such Laws and Provisions for the Common Benefit and Security of the Whole and Every part And all this clearly abstracted from this or that Religion In the cases of Treasons Felonies Riots false Oaths Forgeries Scandals and other Misdemeanours that endanger the Publick peace I do not find that the Law puts any Difference betwixt Criminals because they are of several Religions The Protestant Tenure of the King's Judges signify'd no more in the eye of the Law than if they had been Powder-Plot Jesuites But to come now to his Protestant Tenure and to close with him upon it too But as a Supposal not to be supposed If he means by this Protestant Tenure the Protestant Religion of the Church of England as Established by Law and that it is by this Tenure that we hold our Religion Lives and Libertiers it will concern us to support this Tenure but in such manner yet as the Law directs For to set up a Tenure without a Law or to assert a Tenure against a Law will not be for the credit of our Authors Pretensions If he means the Dissenting Protestant Tenure He removes the Very Basis of all our Laws and sets up the Title of the Multiude against that of the Government And further this Protestant Tenure of his cannot be understood barely of the Doctrine of the Church of England as in Our Nine and Thirty Articles for first there are several points of them that are opposed and rejected by the Men that value themselves upon this Character And Secondly Our Laws fall not shorter in any thing perhaps of so great Importance than in the point of Competent Provisions for the Suppressing and Punishing of Heretical and Blasphemous Doctrines So that this Protestant Tenure must of Necessity have a Regard to the Vniformity of worship according to the Forms Rights and Ceremonies by the Law in that case provided And in this sence I must confess that our Lives Liberties and the Religion of the Government tho' not directly yet in a most Rational Consecution of dangerous Probabilities lye all at stake Wherefore again and again I say let us joyn with our Author in the maintaining of this Protestant Tenure For tho' the intent of it be only to intimate a Jelousy of Popery to the multitude we shall yet find it upon Examination to have a Loyal Aspect toward the Government Here is an Vniformity prescrib'd which is neither a New thing to us nor an Vnnecessary Not a New one for it has descended to us from the time of Edward the Sixth and it was the only Expedient that Queen Elizabeth could find out for the safety of her Person and Dominions That Excellent Queen Elizabeth as our Author says fol. 17 Vnder whose long and gracious Reign England was so highly blessed
subscribitur Will. Gogor Methinks this Specimen of an Enthusiastick Zeal should make men wary how they deal with these guilded Pills after so damn'd an operation And it is not to say that this is the transport of a mad man but it is the effort of the very Principle and the whole strain of them that has been taken off by the hand of Justice not for treasonous words neither but actual rebellions have so behaved themselves at the last cast as if the whole Schism were upon a vie who should damn bravest These stories are no Mealâ—tub Shams Death and Damnation are past â—oolling But how comes it that we that wear Christ in our Foreheads should carry Antichrist in our Hearts and under the name of Christians walk so contrary both to the Doctrine and to the Example of our suffering Saviour As if the mere Profession of the Gospel did not onely make void the Scope and Precepts of it but extinguish in us the very Dictates of right nature and then as Protestants under the pretended abomination of Popery to set it up that is to say upon impulse of Religion to do in any sort whatsoever a manifest wrong Let the end be never so good it must yet upon the score of Conscience be warranted by lawful means and with such a regard to Prudence too that the means we make use of toward a good end may not be imployed to a bad one One man wishes a Reformation in the Government another skrews himself in under the same Pretence but to destroy it It would be endless and nauseous to farce up a Pamphlet with Citations in a case where the whole Story of the World is so full of Precedents How came it that Hen. 8 when he was suspected to be more than half a Protestant proceeded so quietly and without Opposition in Declaring and Limiting the Succession and then that the Lady Elizabeth his Daughter being a profess'd Protestant and the Major Party of the People Papists came to the Crown without any considerable Objection to her Religion We do not find notwithstanding the Branded Apostacy of Jeroboam that made Israel to Sin that his People yet laid hold of any pretence to Rebel against him We do not read in the Story of Ethelbert King of Kent upon his being Converted to Christianity by Angustin the Monk that his Subjects though Pagans ever took up Arms against him for 't Nor that the Pagan Subjects of any of the Other Saxon Kings in their Heptarchy opposed their Sovereigns for Change of Religion neither was there any Persecution on the King's Side for matter of Religion Bonos principes says Tacit. Hist. Lib. 4. Voto expetere debemus c. We are to pray to God for Good Kings but to submit to them whatever they are Tertullian Apolog. 30. Christianus nullius est hostis c. The Christian says he is no Mans Enemy much less the Emperors for knowing that he Governs by Gods Appointment he cannot but Love Reverence Honour and Wish him well with all that belong to him and therefore we pay that Veneration to him that belongs to him as being next immediately under God what he has is from God and God is only his Superiour c. And so far were the Primitive Christians from opposing their Superiours that they would not allow so much as a dis-respectful word to be given them There was no turning of Princes in those days a grazing with Nebuchadnezzar among the Beasts no calling of them Gangreen'd and Corrupted Leprous Branches of Royalty But the very Apostles Canons provided against those rude indecencies that reflect not only upon his Popish Successor but upon all the Crowned Heads of Christendom of that Perswasion Quisquis Imperatorem c. says the Canon Whosoever shall speak ill of the Emperor or of the Magistrate let him be punsh'd If a Clergy-Man Depos'd if a Lay-Man Excommunicated But what needs this recourse to the Examples and Judgments of Antiquity for the clearing of Christianity in a case where the common Principles of Human Nature are sufficient to set us right First There is the violation of a Gospel-Precept in doing evil that good may come of it As certainly the divesting of a Prince of his right in an unwarrantable way of doing it is a very ill thing I speak all this while to the Character of a Popish Successor which pushes on the People hand over head to the end without that regard to the Means which the Cause I think does require But after this when a lawful Authority intervenes the state of the Question is quite another thing for it is no longer Religion but Policy that will be the Subject then in consideration Secondly The admittance of this Position does in a Complement to Christianity overthrow all Religion and puts all Christians into a state of Hostility for there are some particulars undoubtedly of all Perswasions that do firmly believe themselves to be in the Right And then consequently every divided Party is that to the other which a Popish Successor is to the Author of the Character And at this rate Christians are in the worst condition of all Mortals by making it a point of Conscience to Enter worry one another To say nothing of the Scandal they bring upon the Gospel by erecting this Rigorous and Sanguinary Doctrine upon the Foundations of Meekness Charity and Peace And this Position does not only confound the Harmony that ought to be among the Disciples of Jesus Christ but superinduces an utter Subversion of the Fundamentals of Government and Obedience For to say that a Prince of another Faith may be Deposed or Secluded for his Religion does not only Authorize but provoke a Prince of another Perswasion to render the same measure to his People and it absolves both the One and the Other from the obligation of that mutual Correspondence which is necessary betwixt them for the conservation of the Community Nor is it all that the Maxim it self is pernicious which many times is the ill hap of a fair intention but there is so gross a Partiality in the Conduct of this Character that a Man must have a great deal more Charity than appears in the Author of it to allow it so much as the possibility of a good meaning Here 's a Clamour advanc'd in the Name of the English Protestants against a Popish Successor But upon what ground Because it is a Persecuting Religion Well! and what Religion is it in a Successor that would please them The Protestant Religion But the Religion of the Church Protestants will not please the DISSENTING PROTESTANTS and then 't is impossible for the Dissenting Protestants to please one another and as impossible for a Successor of any one Religion to please them all But now which of these Protestant Religions must he be of for there are a matter of Two Hundred Divided Sects that list themselves under that denomination Well! but if they be True Protestants they 'll Vnite
against Popery Yes As the Fellow united his Ratts he put them all into a Tub together and then they eat up one another View them well and you shall not find above three of four of them that have any consistence one with another And which are they nay that 's a Secret But if Popery be so dreadful because it is a Persecuting Religion why is not the Writer of this Character as sensible of 150 Persecuting Religions on the one side as of One Persecuting Religion on the other God preserve the Church of England I say from both Or if that bitter Cup be our Lot the Lord in his Mercy grant that we may not add Sedition to Persecution It were no Ill Embleme of the Original of our Late Troubles to phancy a Man in a Fright and leaping from a painted Lion upon a Wall into a Bed of Vipers And no better are the pragmatical part of the Revolters from our Communion while in the mean time Thousands and Thousands of the Credulous and Well meaning Multitude are by them inveigled to their destruction About the middle of the 17th Page the Character-Man is either laid down to take a Nap while some other less skilful hand supplys his place or else he writes on in his Sleep And it would have been well if all the rest too had been no more than a Dream There is a Finical Marchpane Spark here about the Town that takes a huge deal of pains to get himself suspected for the Author of this Book he makes me think of a little Gentleman in a Yellow Coat that would still be talking how rarely he plaid o' th' Organ and this poor Wretch phancied that he made all the Musique when it was his part only to draw the Bellows He has done some very pretty things they say upon Touzer But for this Character I dare venture to be his Compurgator at least to the middle of the 17th Page But further I dare not undertake for the next two rages and a half a Man may trace them upon the Hoof to the very Ink-pot His Story of Paris's Mother some body should have told him that it was Hecuba that dream'd she was deliver'd of a Fire-brand His Debate upon the Parallel betwixt the dis-inheriting a Private Popish Heir and a Popish Successor His Proposal of the Successors following Curtius into the Gulf the Third-bare Story of Damocles's Sword And then his Argumentum à fortiori These fragments might possibly be the Fruit of his own Minerva But now toward the bottom of the 19th Page we have the First Hand again Char. But to Sum up all says he if no reason must or shall prevail and that right or wrong a Papist must succeed when all the inseparable Cruelties of Pope and Popery shall surround us suppose the worst that may be that the dreadful approach of certain Slavery so opposite to the Free-Born Genius of England has exasperated them into a Spirit of Rebellion What is it but the Pestilential Ayer of Reigning Popery that bloats and swells them into that Contagion And if this Popish King Summons all his Thunder to punish them for 't what can the greatest Favourer of Rome make more on 't than that he warps them crooked and then breaks them to pieces because they are not streight Just as he serves his Popish Successor he draws ye the Picture of a Tyrant and then Deposes him And what 's the whole Sum of a Revolting Nation under a Popish Tyrant but using a violent Cure to expel an Universal Poyson Fol. 19. This Clause is only Buchanan Janius Brutus c. Translated into English and for brevity sake a fair hint toward a Rebellion and an Apology for it both in one As who should say If it must come to a Popish Successor the English Genius would never brook it and there 's no remedy but one that is to say a Revolt which they may e'en thank themselves for And then up goes Forty One again â— the Factions dismount the Government set up for themselves and so go on plucking down him still that is uppermost till they come from Reforming to Levelling and there is an end on 't I would he had not been so positive upon the Free born Genius of England for we have been inveigled actually into a slavery under Cobblers and Tinkers We that with so much Indignation at present oppose ourselves to the bare Possibility of a Royal Successor And that have Sacrificed three Kingdoms already to those degenerate fears Char. But here says he will some pretended Pious Objector say How shall we dare to Revolt Remember we are Christians and we must Obey or at least yield a Passive Obedience to our King be his Religion Principles or Government never so Tyrannique He is still the Lords Anointed and our Native Sovereign I would ask says he what this Lords Anointed is And who t is is our Native Sovereign When instead of being free-Subjects Pope and Tyranny shall rule Over us and we are made slaves and Papists That Person is the Lords Anointed who by Gods Providence and a Legal Succession of right to the Crown is the Supreme Magistrate whom if we may cast off for Popery and Tyranny we may depose at any time by saying That 's the Case For 't is but saying so to make it so Nay and he goes further yet For here 's a Prince Depos'd for fear he should be so without any allowance for intervening Contingences Or any Limits to the Extent of the Prospect So that 't is but the carrying on of our Jealousies to future times and without any more to do dissolve the Monarchy upon the self-same Contemplation It would be as pertinent a question now what are those Free Subjects as what is This Lords anointed If by this Freedom he would intimate an Exemption from the Law His Free-Subject is a palpable contradiction For in This Case he makes the Lords Anointed the Subject and his Free Subject the Lords Anointed Char. We are bound indeed says he by our Oaths of Allegiance to a constant Loyalty to the King and his lawful Successors Very Right By that Oath we are bound to be his lawful Successors Loyal Subjects but why his Loyal Slaves Or how is an Arbitrary Absolute Popish Tyrant any longer a Lawful Successor to a Protestant Established and bounded Government When lawfuly Succeeding to this limited Monarchy he afterwards violently unlawfully and Tyrannically overruns the due bâ—unds of Power dissolves the whole Royal Constitution of the Three Free-States of England and the Subjects Petition of Right whilst wholly abandoning those Reins of Government which were his Lawful Birth-Right and making New ones of his own Illegal Creation he makes us neither those Free-born Subjects we were when we took that Oath nor himself That King we swore to be Loyal to What have we here but a Jesuitical Dispensation for the breaking of an Oath and slipping our Necks out of the Collar of our Allegiance by
be purely Divine which opinion in truth needs not any other Support than the Authority of the Holy Scriptures By me Kings Reign c. I have made the Earth the Man and the Beasts that are upon the Ground by my great Power and my Outstretched arm and have given it to whom it seemed meet unto me Jer. 27. 5. That which we now call Kingly Government was at first called Paternel and after that Patriarchal c. And we find by the Powers they exercised as Life and Death War and Peace c. that their Paternal Power did Then extend to all the Acts of our Regal Power The Objection is could there be a King without a People Which is all one with the Supposal of a Father without a Son But This does not at all conclude that Adam had not both a Regal and a Paternal Power before he had either People or Children actually to govern and exercise it upon It being a thing so consonant also to the Methods of the Divine Wisdom to supply him previously with all needful Abilities and Authorities for the Discharge of his Fatherly and Governing Office The whole Race of his Posterity lying open even before they had any Existency in Nature to the Omniscience of God with whom there is no PAST or FUTVRE but all things always PRESENT Again if Adam did not bring his Authority into the World with him when did he receive his Commission Or if he had none at all how could he justifie the Arbitrary Rule he exercis'd over those People that were only his Fellow Subjects under the same God and without any Subordinate Ruler over them Or if Adam was vested with a Right of exerting the Power he exercis'd how came our Authors Imaginary Multitude to chuse a Governor of their own in opposition to the appointment of Providence Or who absolved them from the Bonds of their filial and primary Duty and Obedience What he says afterward of Conquest which he calls his Other Acquisition of Monarchy serves only for an occasion to tell us that our Last Norman Conquest was little more than a Composition which is an error and nothing at all to the point here in hand which refers only to the constitution and Settlement of the Government as now it stands without any respect to the manner of acquiring it But he is now drawing to a conclusion Char. If now at last says he Popery must and shall come in as by law it cannot and consequently must be restored by Arbitrary Power If a new Monarchy then a new Conquest and if a Conquest Heaven forbid we should be subdu'd like less than English-men or be debar'd the Common Right of all Nations which is to Resist and Repel an Invader if we can fol. 21. This is spoken upon the supposition of a Popish Successors coming to the Crown whom he calls an Invader though qualifyed with a Legal Title and he incourages Violence against him tho' in this case the Law pronounces him a King and this Resistance to be made like English-men too that is to say English-men of the late stamp So that there goes no more I perceive to the destruction of a Lawful Prince but to say that he either is or will be this or thaâ— And the King himself stands in as much danger upon the admittance of this Principle as his Royal Brother But before Subjects proceed to these terms which without a legal Authority are criminal in any case whatsoever Malice it selâ— will not deny but that there ought to be an infallible certainty of the Inconvenience whereas as I have said before this is a case lyable to many disappointments the prospect of it remote the expedient unwarrantable and the danger it self at last not so mortal as it is represented He supports his presumption upon this ground for granted that a Popish King must do whatsoever the Pope will have him do and subject his people to the Tyranny as well as the Religion of the Church of Rome What does he say to the French Kings Pyramid then and the vindication of himself and his people in divers other cases from the Insults of Rome and to several other instances already given in this particular Char. But to summ up all this says he I must say the most vehement Disputants against the Peoples right of defending themselves must at length acâ—nowledge thus much that whenever a Papist King shall by Tyranny establish the Popes Jurisdiction in England undoubtedly in the eye of God he is guilty of a greater sin than that People can be that with open Arms oppose that Tyranny Fol. 22. This is a clause of double consolation First to the Author that this Popish King shall be damn'd the deeper of the two And Secondly to the People that they shall go to the Devil in good company Char. The very Essence he says of a Popish Successor is the greatest Plot upon England since the Creation a Plot of God himself to scourge a Nation and make three Kingdoms miserable This must be a very great Plot if it be the greatest Plot that we have seen even in our days a Plot upon our Laws and it subverted them upon the Church and it destroyed it root and branch upon our Estates and it took them away by violence upon our Liberties and it enslav'd us upon our Lives and it was made death to do our Duties It was a Plot that left us no other choice in many cases but Death or Damnation If I had ask'd my revenues says the late King 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sect 24. my power of the Militia or any one of my Kingdoms it had been no wonder to have been denied in those things where the evil policy of men forbids all Restitution lest they should confess an injurious Usurpation But to deny me the Ghostly comfort of Chaplains seems a greater rigour and barbarity then is ever used by Christians to the meanest Prisoners and greatest Malefactors whom tho' the Justice of the Law deprives of worldly Comforts yet the Mercy of Religion allows them the benefit of their Clergy as not aiming at once to destroy their Bodyâ— and to Damn their Souls But My Agony must not be Reliev'd with the Presence of any one Good Angel for such â—account a Learned Godly and Discreet Divineâ— such I would have all Mine to be They that envy my being a King are loth I should be a Christian while they Seck to deprive Me of all things else they are aâ—â—aâ—d I should save my soul. Has the Author of the Character heard of this Un-Christian Barbarity toward a Prince of the most Exemplary Goodness and Piety one of them that ever liv'd And how he was yet after all this Murther'd on a Scaffold in the Name and under the pretended Sovereignty of the People of England How has he then the hardness of Heart to set up that Regicidal Principle afresh and to pronounce the Government of a Popish Successor to be a
greater Plot upon England than the Execrable Bloud-shed of that Protestant Prince And yet he carries it one step higher A Plot of God he calls it and at the same time lays the Foundation of it in Hell and most Heroically opposes it From hence to the end both of the Page and Book there 's only more variety of flourish to the same purpose MY pretending to Answer this Discourse looks methink as if a Man should Reply upon an Almanâ—ck for several Years to come it runs altogether upon Phansys Suppositions Predictâ—ons c. And there 's no dis-proving of a Prognostication nor hardly any reasoning against it but so far as it is Calculated according to Rules of Art And wheresoever I have found any thing that looks like a Logical Connexion I have spoken to those Passages what I thought convenient But for the rest my business has been to encounter the drift of it and to expound the danger of these present Iealousies by referring People to the miserable effects of the same Jealousie in the Late Times It is an easie thing for People to foretel Calamities and Judgments of their own Contriving There is not any Man Living that more passionately desires the Ripping up of this Damâ—'d Hellish Plot to the bottom than my self but I must confess withal that I am for Suppressing the Malice of Popeâ—y as well as the Name and utterly against the Damning of any Position in a Papist that I practice my self The best way to discover a Jesuite is by his Principle for it is the Doctrine and not the Order or Dâ—nâ—mination that creates the Danger So that we are never the nearer for rocting out the One unless we purge our selves also from the Leagen of the Other Which will be the oâ—ly safe way of faciâ—itating a Comprehensive Union of those Conscientious Dissentâ—rs that wish well to the King and his Government And in Order to this Discrimination I shall give the Reader here a Taste of the Harmony and Agreement betwixt the Jesuites of the Society and those of the Covenant That is to say such other Jesuites as under the Cover of Dissenting Protestants take advantage of the Credulity and Weakness of the Common People toward the working of Distempers in the Nation Popish and Jesuitical PRINCIPLES DOminion is founded in Grace says the Romish Jesuite and upon That Principle Deposes Protestant Princes But the Covenanting Jesuite is even with him and upon the same Principle deposes Popish Princes as Knox and those of the Congregation in Scotland depos'd the Queen Regent Cambden ' s Eliz. An. 1559 Penry told the Lord President of Wales That without advancing the Presbyterian Discipline he could have no Commission to Rule there for having rejected Christ he was but the Lieutenant of Satan And our Character does pretty well too in ranking a Popish Prince with Nebuchadnezzar fol. 17. The Pope may deprive a King of his Royal Dignity for Heresie Schism c. B. of Lincoln's Popish Principles pag. 20. and after Excommunication says Mariana in case of Obstinacy the People may take away his Life Now says the Covenanting Jesuite All men as well Magistrates as Inferiors ought to be Subject to the Judgment of General Assemblies See Bishop Bramhal pag. 501. Ministers says Buchanan de Jur. Reg. page 70. may excommunicate Princes and when they have cast them into Hell they are not worthy to live any longer upon Earth Pius Quintus absolv'd the Subjects of Q. Eliz. from all their Oaths of Allegiance to her for ever And now says Knox to England and Scotland If Princes be Tyrants against God and his Truth their Subjects are Free from their Oath of Obedieâ—ce And our Jesuitical Covenanters did the same thing too with a Penalty in abolishing the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and setting up their Covenant We command says the same Pius Quintus all the Peers People and Subjects of England not to pay any Obedieuce to the Queen her Commands or Laws And was not this the same thing that our Covenanting Jesuites did in commanding upon pain of Imprisonment and Sequestration not to obey the Kings Proclamations and in making it Death without mercy for any man that had taken the Coveâ—ant to go without a Pass into the Kings Quarters Pope PAVL 3d. Interdicted all publick Prayers for Henry 8. or his Adherents after his Denyal of the Popes Supremacy to the whole Nation And did not our Scottish Jesuites the same thing in refusing to to pray for the Mother of King James when she was in her Distress though the King desired it and did not our English Covenanting Jesuites make it Malignancy and Sequestration to pray for the King in their Churches If a Clergy-Man Rebel against the King it is no Treason says Emâ—nuel Sa because Clergy-Men art not the Kings Subjects The Jesuits of the Kirk told King James That He was an incompetont Iudge of Matters in the Pulpit wich ought to be exempted from the Iudgment and Correction of Princes And the Assembly brought off Gibson and Blake for Cursing and Railing at the King in the Pulpit upon the same Plea And the Late King had as little Remedy for Treason deliver'd in the Pulpits here The Papal Power says Sciopptus is Supream and the Pope has a Right to Direct and Câ—mpel and a Power of Life and Death And did not Our Jesuits in the Assembly and the Two Houses Practice the same Usurpations in 1642 Does not the Kirk in the Cases of Bloud Adultery Blasphemy c. take the Pardoning-Power out of the King's Hand Did not the Scottish Jesuits in 1638. Proteâ—t against Proclamations make void Acts of Parliament Levy Mâ—n Monies and Arms for the Glory of God and preservation of Relâ—gion Kings Declaration Pag. 415. Do they not claim Power to Abrogate and Abolish what Statutes and Ordinances they please concerning Ecclesiastical Matters See Bishop Brambal Fol. 497. c. And in short in ordine ad Spiritualia take into their Cognizance all matters whatsoever Snarez approves of a Subjects killing his Prince in his own defence and much more if it be in defence of the Publique Buchanad Seconds him and would have him rewarded for it as if he had kill'd a Wolf or a Bear For says he in his de jure Regni the People are as much above the King as he is above any one Person Which Our Jesuits have Translated into Singulis Major Vniversis Minor Does not our Assembly set up for Infallible as well as the Pope And have not Our Jesuites their pious Frauds as well as those of the Church of Rome their Dreams Visions and Revelations Where was there ever more Equivocation or mental Reservation then in their swearing to preserve the King with a Design to destroy him Where did the Pope himself ever take more upon him as to the Indicting of Assemblies abrogating Acts of Parliament and in the Exercise of all other the Ensigns of Royalty Does not our Assembly expect to be submitted to with as implicite a Faith and as blind an Obedience as the Pope himself We must â—â—sign up our Judgments says the Church of Rome our VVill and our Vnderstanding in a deferencé to our Superiors To which purpose as I find it in Lysimachus Nâ—canor page 48. Andrew Cant when he found he could give no reasons for subscribing the Covenant told his Congregation at Glascow that they must deny Learning and Reason and help Christ at a Lift and told them further upon the same occasion that he was sent to them with a Commission from Christ to bid them subscribe the Covenant which was Christs Contract and that he himself was come at a Wooer to them for the Bridegroom and called upon them to come to be Hand-fasted by Subscribing That Contract and told them plainly that he would not leave the Town till he had all their Names that refused to Subscribe and that he would complain on 't to his Master It would be endless to run out the Parallel at length so far as This Argument would carry a man But this will suffice I hope in some measure for a Caution that while we are running down of One Sort of Jesuites we do not Incorporate our Religion with Another The End Character Declarat Prot. of Lords and Commons to the Kingdom and the whole world Octob. 22. 1642. Exact Coll. pag. 664.